Keepers of the county

Cassopolis, Mich. Who inherits a society’s memory? In 1873 about two hundred settlers met at the Court House to found a society that would keep the county’s past. A century and a half later two organizations can trace their roots to it, and we have not yet found the paper that would prove an unbroken line to either.

On 17 September 2026 a short annual report was filed with the State of Michigan for a small nonprofit called the Cass County Pioneer Log Cabin Museum. It lists as the museum’s president Darren Bettinger, who was already president of the Cass County Historical Society.

It was an ordinary piece of paperwork. It also meant that, for the first time on record since the cabin’s volunteers incorporated in 2012, the two bodies that trace their roots to the Cass County Pioneer Society of 1873 had the same president. Their paths had crossed before: in 1923 the papers called the cabin’s society the “Cass County Historical society,” George R. Fox led the Society and helped reopen the cabin, and Lee Dodd was the Society’s president by 1970 and the cabin’s listed contact in 1973. One line of that society kept the log cabin its secretary built in 1923. The other kept the name “historical society,” and with it, by 2026, a schoolhouse it owns, a farmhouse it runs and is set to buy, and a lecture series.

This is the story of the second line, from the 1920s to today, and of the question that runs under all three parts of this series: is today’s Cass County Historical Society the same society the pioneers founded at the Court House in 1873? Part 1 tells the Pioneer Society’s story to 1924, and Part 2 the cabin’s.

From pioneers to historians, 1923–1942

Documented In 1923 Charles O. Harmon revived the old Pioneer Society around the log cabin he led the county in building. From January 1923 the papers used a new name, the Cass County Pioneer and Historical Society, and that name was still in print in 1939. Its officers in 1924 and 1925 were Benjamin Franklin Thompson, a Cassopolis merchant, president; Charles A. Ritter, treasurer; and Harmon, secretary. Its June picnic of 1924, which one report called the first annual reunion, drew a huge crowd: “more than 5,000” by one estimate and “between 6,000 and 8,000” by another. The “third annual picnic and reunion of the Reorganized Cass County Pioneer and Historical society” followed in 1925, and another in 1927. Reading The 1925 notice probably counted the 1923 dedication picnic as the first; a 1924 report counts 1924 as the first, and a 1928 notice dates the resumption of the reunions to 1924.

Documented Harmon died on 26 March 1928. His obituary said that “In 1924, he reorganized the Cass County Historical Society, and was secretary of that organization” (South Bend News-Times, 29 March 1928). That June no picnic was planned. The News-Times gave two reasons, a lack of parking and the death of Harmon, its secretary, and called Thompson “president of the Cass County Historical society, which has annually sponsored the reunions since they were resumed in 1924.” Thompson died on 24 October 1929, aged 73.

Documented The museum carried on without them. By June 1930 Ritter was “the only survivor of the original officers,” and the caretaker, Peter Eby, was past eighty and “still on duty.” That spring the Cassopolis Woman’s Club began cataloguing and labeling the relics, after studying the Chamberlain Museum at Three Oaks. At the village centennial in August 1931 much of the program was held at the cabin, and a souvenir airmail cachet showed an engraving of it. A 1941 state guide still lists the cabin as open June to September.

New finding The short name is as old as the cabin. On 7 April 1923 the News-Times report of Log Hauling Day said the logs were for “the cabin to be erected by the Cass County Historical society.” Documented The short name was in the papers again by June 1927, in a headline over a story about the Pioneer and Historical Society’s picnic, and again in 1928 and 1929, while directories kept the longer name until 1939. Reading The name seems to have shortened in everyday use long before 1942. Open Who led the society from 1929 to 1941 is not yet known; the Cassopolis Vigilant for those years, on microfilm, is the place to look.

Documented By the summer of 1942 a new president’s name appears. Michigan History magazine thanked “Mr. George H. Tolbert, president of Cass County Historical Society, Cassopolis,” for an article on the Bookfellow Library. Tolbert, a Porter Township farmer born in 1867, had married Linda Harmon, Charles Harmon’s sister, and died at Dowagiac on 26 June 1944. Open A “Geo. Tolbert” of Jones gave log No. 43 to the cabin in 1923; whether he was this George H. Tolbert of Porter Township is not known. Documented In 1944 a national directory of historical societies listed the Cass County Historical Society with Jay C. Northrop as its secretary, though Northrop had died in Calvin Township on 14 April 1942. Reading So the listing cannot describe the society later than April 1942. Documented Northrop had given a log in 1923. New finding He wrote the words of “Old Log Cabin,” the song on the program for the cabin’s commemoration on 28 October 1923.

Reading A society whose president was Harmon’s brother-in-law and whose secretary was one of Harmon’s log-givers looks less like a new beginning than like Harmon’s society under a new name.

George Fox and the second revival, c. 1933–1963

Documented George R. Fox, an archaeologist and museum man, served the Chamberlain Memorial Museum at Three Oaks, first for some months in 1917 as curator of the new museum and later as its permanent curator until 1930, ran a boys’ camp in Ontario for three years, and then settled in Cass County. In 1927, at a meeting at the museum he directed, he had been “elected president of the new association,” the Michigan-Indiana Museums Association, which grew into today’s Association of Midwest Museums (the election: Science, 1927). He wrote a column on Cass County history for the Dowagiac Daily News, contributed to The Acorn, and in 1941 compiled An Audit of the Scenic, Historical and Recreational Facilities of Cass County and Dowagiac for the Dowagiac Chamber of Commerce. His papers at the Bentley Historical Library say that after 1930 he “moved to Cass County, worked for the city of Dowagiac, and founded a local historical society,” without naming it. Documented The Library of Michigan’s entry lists, under 1933 and Dowagiac, “Worker for the city of Dowagiac and founded a local historical society.” Reading The only society file in his papers is the Cass County Historical Society’s (minutes, 1954–1973, and a short history of the society), so the society he founded may be this one; but since a Cass County Historical Society was already in print by 1923, “founded” would then mean revived or reorganized. It may instead have been a Dowagiac society.

Documented The Society was active again by August 1955, when Michigan History listed it among the county societies represented at the Upper Peninsula historical conference at Sault Ste. Marie. By the winter of 1955–56 Fox was its president, and he still was in March 1958. The Dowagiac historian Everett Claspy, who sat in on several of his meetings, wrote that Fox “was Chairman of the meeting at which the Cass County Historical Society was revived in 1958 and its President until his death,” and that the Society’s meetings were “still opened with the George Fox Roll call,” at which “each member gives his name and place of residence.” In September 1956, when the Historical Society of Michigan met at Niles, its Saturday tour was “directed by George Fox, president of the Cass County Historical Society” (Michigan History 40:4, p. 499). Claspy adds that Fox was treasurer of Wayne Township, that at eighty-two he went to the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962, and that a scrapbook he kept is in the library of Southwestern Michigan College. Fox died on 3 June 1963, aged 83, in a Kalamazoo nursing home. He also helped reopen the log cabin after a period when it had been closed. Reading His path had crossed the cabin’s before. In the spring of 1930, the last year of his curatorship at Three Oaks, the Cassopolis Woman’s Club studied the Chamberlain Museum before it began cataloguing and labeling the cabin’s relics, so the cabin’s first labels may well have followed the example of the museum Fox ran.

Reading Fox was already president before 1958, so “revived” probably means reorganized. Documented The Society had a Court House address in 1956, and its long-serving secretary, Berenice E. Vanderburg, Mrs. Lionel Vanderburg, a correspondent for the Dowagiac Daily News since at least 1934, was described in 1976, when she was honored for her history writing, as “one of the founders … and its secretary for 21 years.” Reading The notice does not say when her twenty-one years as secretary ran; the directories below help. Documented In 1973 a book of Michigan place names thanked her and Mrs. S. L. Loupee of the Society for their help. She died in 1999, and her A Dowagiac Collection (1982) was reprinted in 1985 “for her many years of service to the Cass County Historical Society.”

New finding The directories of historical societies give the Society a founding date of its own, and it is not 1873. In 1959 the American Association for State and Local History listed the “CASS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Dowagiac. Mrs. Bernice Vanderberg; secretary,” with 260 members, a summer museum, a library and manuscripts. Its directory of 1963 gives the Society, under Cassopolis, as “Mail % Berenice E. Vanderburg, sec., 101 James St., Dowagiac. f. 1952,” with 150 members, and the Historical Society of Michigan’s directories of 1973 and 1974 both say “founded in 1953,” again at 101 James Street, Dowagiac, with Mrs. Vanderburg as its secretary. Later accounts name charter members of a Cass County Historical Society: Dr. Sherman L. Loupee of Dowagiac, a physician and state representative from 1939 to 1948, called “a charter member of the Cass County Historical Society” when the Michigan House honored him on his ninety-third birthday in September 1965, and the Bowmans of Decatur (1976). Mrs. S. L. Loupee was one of the two members the 1973 book of place names thanked. Reading Neither account says which founding it means. The Bowmans, still living in 1976, fit the 1950s better than 1923; Dr. Loupee, born in 1872, could have been a charter member of either. So the Society that Fox led was most likely organized in 1952 or 1953, with its seat at Dowagiac, where Fox worked and Mrs. Vanderburg wrote for the paper. That makes her “one of the founders” in the plain sense, and her twenty-one years as secretary would run from about 1955 to 1976. It also makes this Society the likeliest candidate for the “local historical society” Fox founded, though the Library of Michigan dates his founding twenty years earlier. Claspy’s “revived in 1958” is the hardest piece to place: the directories, Fox’s presidency by the winter of 1955–56 and minutes that begin in 1954 all describe a society already at work, so 1958 was perhaps a reorganization, or a slip of memory twelve years on.

Building a society, 1960–1982

Documented The Society compiled historical information on the county in 1960 and leased the Red Brick School in the mid-1960s. In 1972 a body under the older name, the “Cass County Pioneer and Historical association,” was still running the log cabin. In 1973 the county created its own Historical Commission, which opened the Newton House for Sunday tours by February 1975, furnished largely with pieces “donated or loaned by private individuals,” and was restoring it in 1977. Documented How the house was offered to the Society is told in an undated South Bend Tribune article, “Offered as Cass Museum,” kept in a Decatur scrapbook: the hundred-year-old forester’s home at the Fred Russ Experimental Forest “has been offered to the Cass County Pioneer Historical Society for a museum,” on what the forester, John Bright, expected would be “a five-year lease. During that period it would be determined if they could manage the property.” If no one took it, the university planned to raze it. Reading Bright was at the forest from about 1960 and gone by 1975, and the county’s Historical Commission, which opened the house, was created in 1973, so the offer was probably made in 1973 or 1974. A Decatur teacher, writing her recollections about 1975 in the same scrapbook, put the Society’s taking over of “the old Newton mansion” at “about 1974 or 1975,” which favors 1974. A five-year term from 1974 would have run out in 1979, and a new lease, dated January 1980, was in fact made, though not with the Society (below). The article’s name for the society, with “Pioneer” still in it, is worth noting too. New finding We have found no earlier telling of this offer or of the proposed trial lease.

Documented Lee Dodd, a Howard Township farmer, former township trustee and county road commissioner, and a county commissioner in 1972–74, was its president by 1970: Everett Claspy, writing that year about a meeting of the Society at Crystal Springs reported in the Dowagiac Daily News of 26 July 1966, calls him “Lee Dodd, who is now President of the Society.” In the same book Claspy names Mrs. Barbara Hunziker, a trustee of Southwestern Michigan College since its organization, as “now Treasurer of the County Historical Society.” In June 1975 a newspaper caption named Dodd as the Society’s display chairman, with James Holtz as vice-president. He was its president in October 1976, when the Herald-Palladium profiled him as a candidate for the county board. In September 1977, at the unveiling of the state historic-site marker at the Court House, the same paper named him “chairman of county historical society.” In 1975 and 1976 the Society raised money from shows of Earl Marhanka’s collection of restored antique tractors and trucks; in 1976 the proceeds were shared with the Van Buren County historical society. Documented The record also shows how wide his reach was, and how long it lasted. The Historical Society of Michigan’s Bulletin said in 1974 that he “heads the Cass County Historical commission and Society and the Niles-Fort St. Joseph Historical Association.” Benjamin C. Wilson’s 1980 study of Cass County’s Black settlers thanks “Mr. Lee Dodd (chairman of the Cass County Historical Society),” and The Official Museum Directory 1991, published in 1990, gives “Chm. Cass County Historical Society, Lee Dodd,” with a mailing address of 1666 Dodd Road, Niles. The federal lists of exempt organizations from 1982 to 1996 give the Society’s address as Niles, and a state directory of 1999 still gives it as 1666 Dodd, Niles. Lee William Dodd was born on 26 November 1915 and had died by 1995, when a Niles history listed him among its late contributors; in 1998 the authors of Pokagon Township Reflections dedicated their book to him, a man who “probably knew and forgot more about local and Cass County history than we will ever learn.” Open No president has yet been found for 1963–69, or for the years between Dodd and 1994.

Documented On 27 May 1977 four members, among them Lee Dodd and James Holtz, signed articles of incorporation, filed on 20 June. The Society’s stated purpose was to be “a vehicle to preserve and to perpetuate historical projects and interest in the county.” It declared no real estate and no personal property, and said it would be financed by donations. Before the year was out the members amended the articles twice, adding a clause that would pass the Society’s assets to other tax-exempt bodies if it were ever dissolved, and a line saying that it “is organized and operated exclusively to promote historical education, restoration and collecting only.” Reading That is the standard wording the federal tax rules required, and it explains what followed. Documented In March 1978 the Society received federal tax exemption. In late 1977 it sponsored a reprint of the 1872 Atlas of Cass County, prepared, with an index, by the county library’s staff, and in 1981 it joined the county Historical Commission and Planning Department in publishing Historical Reflections of Cass County.

“If someone does not take it, I understand the university plans to raze it. The society has first choice.”

New finding The lease went to the county, not to the Society. Michigan State University had owned the house since 1942 as part of the Fred Russ Experimental Forest. The National Register nomination of 1982 says: “In August 1974 the university leased the Newton House and its four acre site to the Cass County Historical Commission, which now operates the home as a county museum.” A letter from the university’s Department of Forestry in the same file, dated 10 February 1982, says the house “is leased to the Cass County Historical Commission, Cassopolis, Michigan, under a lease dated January 8, 1980, and expiring June 30, 1984.” Documented The minutes of Michigan State’s trustees for 15 October 1976 already say that in 1974 the university “leased a house on the Russ Forest property to the Cass County Historical Society,” and its trustees’ paper of June 2026 dates a lease to the Society from January 1980, at a dollar a year; the university’s own list of leased properties still names the Commission. Reading So the mix-up is almost as old as the lease, and it is an easy one to forgive. In 1974 one man, Lee Dodd, headed both the Commission and the Society, and the 1990 museum directory lists the “Historical Newton Home” as governed by the commission and “affiliated with Cass County Historical Society.” The lease of January 1980 was most likely a renewal of the Commission’s first lease, not a beginning. Documented The house was listed on the National Register on 12 May 1982. Documented George Newton of Volinia, for whom the house was enlarged in 1865–68, had taken the chair at the first meeting of the Pioneer Society at the Court House on 9 October 1873 (Part 1). So the Society now keeps the home of the man who opened the pioneers’ first meeting. Its story, from George Newton’s farm to the university’s forest, is told in The Newton House.

Today, 1994–2026

Documented The Society’s state filings name a line of presidents: Claude E. Parker in 1994 and in 1997–98; Marilyn J. Fry of Cassopolis, president for seventeen years, from 1999 until her death, which the Society’s 2016 annual report records; Marilyn Seitz in 2017–18, when the Society described itself as “in charge of preserving the Newton House in Cass County”; Allen Butchbaker in 2019–21; Ronald McAdam in 2022; and Darren Bettinger from 2024, with Melissa Bettinger as secretary and treasurer. New finding The Society’s yearly e-Postcards to the Internal Revenue Service, filed for every tax year since 2008, name a “principal officer” for every year but 2018: Alan Palmer for 2008 to 2015, Marilyn Fry for 2016, Allen Butchbaker for 2017 and 2019–21, Ron McAdam for 2022, and Darren Bettinger for 2023 to 2025. Alan Ray Palmer (1935–2023), formerly of Dowagiac, retired after more than thirty years with General Telephone; he was “a proud member of the Cass County Historical Society,” where he volunteered, and he helped establish the Dowagiac Area History Museum. Reading A principal officer is whoever the filer names, not always the president: the state reports name Fry as president through 2015 and Seitz for 2017. So the filings suggest who led the Society in 2016 and 2023 without proving it (the 2016 filing, made in May 2017, may simply carry over Fry’s name), and Palmer may have kept the Society’s books. Open The annual reports for 1979–1993 and 1995–96, which would name the presidents for those years (1978 is not yet traced), are held by the Archives of Michigan.

Documented The Society resumed regular meetings in 2021, and it now meets on the third Tuesday of each month at changing places. In 2024 it took ownership of the Red Brick School, which dates from 1848. In June 2026 Michigan State University’s trustees authorized the sale of the Newton House to the Society, which runs and maintains the house and wants to own it so that it can apply for restoration grants; the proceeds go to the Russ Forest endowment, and the university keeps the forest.

Documented Today the Society runs a lecture series from April to October that meets in a different part of the county each month and ends with its Fall Festival at the Newton House, which it calls its biggest event of the year; in December it opens the house for Christmas. Its events are on our Seasons calendar. The cabin museum’s annual report of 17 September 2026 lists the Society’s president as its president too. Documented The Society’s stated purpose has changed with the years. Its annual reports gave it as “promote History of Cass Co. & Educate its citizens of our History” in 2001 and “Historical Education & Preservation of Local History” in 2019, and since 2024 as “Dedicated to preserving the history of Cass County, MI for future generations.”

Did the Pioneer Society become the Historical Society?

Reading Here is the honest answer as the evidence stands.

• For: the Historical Society presents the Pioneer Society’s history as part of its own, and its website dates the Pioneer Society to 1874 (Part 1 gives 1873, from Mathews and Glover); in 1925 Harmon’s society called itself “Reorganized,” not new; its presidents included Harmon’s brother-in-law (1942) and its secretary was a 1923 log-giver; the name changed step by step, from Pioneer Society to Pioneer and Historical Society to Historical Society; and Harmon’s own obituary already used the short name.
• Against: the directories of historical societies date the Society to 1952 or 1953, with its seat at Dowagiac; it was “revived” in 1958; a 1976 notice called its long-serving secretary, who had held the post for 21 years, “one of the founders”; it was incorporated in 1977, and its articles list no property; and in 1972 the cabin was run by a separately named “Pioneer and Historical association,” nearly the name Harmon’s society had used in 1924, which suggests the cabin’s keepers saw themselves as that society’s heirs.
• So far: the Historical Society is the Pioneer Society’s heir in purpose and in some of its people. The cabin has a line of its own, from the 1972 association to the 2012 nonprofit, which may be the more direct descendant of Harmon’s society. Since September 2026 the same man has been listed as president of both. We have not yet found a record that documents an unbroken organizational link between either of them and the society of 1873.

Why it matters

Reading The question of who is the pioneers’ heir is not a quarrel about a name. The heir is the one who holds the memory: the minutes, the relics, the buildings, and the duty to hand them on. Records go missing when nobody is sure whose they are, and that may be one reason this story has gaps.

Reading Whichever line can claim the pioneers, both are doing what the pioneers set out to do. The Historical Society keeps a schoolhouse and a farmhouse, and runs a season of lectures that moves around the county; the cabin’s volunteers open its door on summer weekends. The best answer may be the one the pioneers gave in 1873: come to the meeting, sign the roll, and bring something worth keeping.

Test yourself

How you can help

Who’s who across the series

Timeline

• 1873 The Cass County Pioneer Society founded at the Court House (Part 1)
• 50 years later
• 1923–24 Harmon revives it as the Cass County Pioneer and Historical Society; the log cabin built (Part 2)
• Apr 1923 “Cass County Historical society” in print, in a report of Log Hauling Day
• 1924–28 B. F. Thompson, president; Charles A. Ritter, treasurer; Harmon, secretary
• 26 Mar 1928 Harmon dies; no picnic planned that June
• 1930–31 The Woman’s Club begins cataloguing and labeling the relics; much of the Cassopolis centennial planned for the cabin
• 1939 “Cass County Pioneer and Historical Society” still in print
• 1942 George H. Tolbert, president; Jay C. Northrop listed as secretary in a 1944 directory (he died in April 1942)
• 1952–53 The Society founded anew, by the directories of 1963 and 1973–74, with its seat at Dowagiac
• 1955–63 George R. Fox, president until his death; the Society “revived” in 1958
• 3 Jun 1963 Fox dies
• mid-1960s The Society leases the Red Brick School
• 1970–c. 1990 Lee Dodd, president or chairman; in 1974 he heads the county Commission too
• 1972 The “Pioneer and Historical association” still runs the cabin
• 1973 County Historical Commission created
• Aug 1974 MSU leases the Newton House to the county Historical Commission
• 20 Jun 1977 Incorporated as a Michigan nonprofit
• Mar 1978 Federal tax exemption
• 8 Jan 1980 A new lease to the Commission, to June 1984
• 12 May 1982 Newton House on the National Register
• 1994, 1997–98 Claude E. Parker, president
• 1999–2015 Marilyn J. Fry, president; Alan Palmer, principal officer on the federal filings, 2008–15
• 2017–22 Marilyn Seitz, Allen Butchbaker and Ronald McAdam, presidents
• 2021 Regular meetings resume
• 2024 The Society owns the Red Brick School; Darren Bettinger, president
• 12 Jun 2026 MSU authorizes sale of the Newton House to the Society
• Sep 2026 The cabin museum’s nonprofit names the Society’s president as its own

Editorial independence. Project Scroll is an independent publication. It is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Cass County Historical Society or the Cass County Pioneer Log Cabin Museum, and it does not speak for either. Neither organization commissioned, reviewed or approved this story; their names are used only to identify them. We would welcome either organization as a sponsor of this series, and we would be glad to collaborate on research and writing projects or to publish articles by their members and volunteers. Sponsors and collaborators are always credited on the page, and our research remains independent. Ways to work with us ›