To people of imagination the history of a country they perchance visit always proves interesting.   Annuals of stalwart men and women whose lives are woven into that history, their hardships and triumphs as they carved homes in the wilderness, often outstrip the most exciting fiction.
Western Michigan, and particularly the City of Ludington, is rich in unwritten pioneer lore.  To convey at least a glimpse of the valorous past to our visitors, these stories present the Saga of Ossawald Crumb – mighty prototype of a vanished past.

Ossawald Crum was the first white man to establish a permanent residence on the land now occupied by the city of Ludington.  Jamesport Brewing Company thanks Bob Gable for allowing us to share the stories of this historic figure.

New chapters in the life of Ossawald Crum will be added periodically so please enjoy.

Family Portrait

Ossawald Crumb was the first white man to establish a permanent residence in what is now the City of Ludington.  Mr. Crumb pitched his first camp in 1838, close by the spot where now stands City Hall.  After a strange disappearance the following summer, Mr. Crumb returned bringing his blushing bride and built his permanent home on the site now occupied by the Stearns Hotel.
“Women know that kind of a house they want to live in,” said Mr. Crumb, “so let’um build ‘em”—one of the wisest sayings Our Hero ever let slip through his whiskers.
 In this picture it will be observed that Mr. Crumb holds an axe.  Unlike most frontiersmen and pioneers, Mr. Crumb never carried a gun.  “A gun,” said he, “is an agent of destruction to maim, to kill—to tear away the foundation of civilization.  Give me the axe.”  His ideas were apostrophized in his memorable speech at the church oyster* sociable.
 “The axe,” declaimed Ossawald, “is synonymous with progress, is man’s greatest friend.  Before it the lurking dangers of the swamp make way for the sunlight of Heaven’s smile.  It lays low the forest and the thicket and allows the sun’s sweet rays to pluck from the hands of death the little flowers struggling for existence.  It proclaims the march of progress—it creates empires.  The axe!  The axe!  Give me the axe!”**
 “Hear! Hear!” shouted the assembled guests.  “Give him the axe!”  That was the night Ossawald tore his trousers so immodestly getting out of the back window of the church.

Daniel Webster afterwards used Mr. Crumb’s apostrophe in one of his senatorial debates and got a big hand on it.  Daniel substituted another word for “axe” and changed  some other expressions, but the real idea was Mr. Crumb’s, for which he never received recognition.
A poet by the name of Markham wrote a poem about Ossawald, but as most poets do, he got it all wrong.  He called his poem, “The Man with the Hoe.”  Ossawald hadn’t any more use for a hoe than he had for a collar button.  The axe was Ossawald’s greatest fried.  By day he lived with it, slept with it by night, ate with it, hunted with it and fished with it.  How could Mr. Crumb fish with his axe, you ask?  Well, I will tell you how he could fish with it.  It was because he knew HOW to fish with it!
Mr. Crumb and his axe were inseparable.  He was never without it—even when his wife was away from home.

*      While the word oyster appears in notes of Mr. Crumb’s diary, it is exceedingly doubtful that fresh oysters could be obtained in Michigan at that early date.  It probably refers to cove oysters which made into a delicious soup by the addition of condensed milk, make a dish always to be remembered.

**    The old college football yell, “The axe, the axe, give’m the axe.” That was so current a few ago—supposedly the product of advanced college profundity—originated with Mr. Crumb, though he was never given credit for the exalted and esoteric thought the words convey