- Date
- 1933-02-15
- Kind
- Transportation
- Where
- Beaver Island
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- educationcommunitytransportationheritage
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
A February 1963 Beaver Beacon retrospective, republished in expanded web form in 2003, recounts that islanders crossed Lake Michigan ice in February 1933 to obtain materials for a Roosevelt School said to replace the burned Little Red Schoolhouse. The account dates the departure to February 15, names Emmett McCann as organizer, and describes two trucks and sleighs traveling to the mainland before returning to Saint James with the load.
The retrospective says the building was completed that spring and opened the following term for children from Greentown and areas south. These are preserved as claims of the 2003 account, not as independently verified construction, opening, enrollment, or attendance facts.
Evidence and limits
This is a detailed local-memory account first located in print thirty years after the reported trip, not only in the seventy-years-later web republication. It does not provide a 1933 newspaper report, school-board minute, building permit, contractor or payroll record, parcel, exact route, surviving building identification, or an independently verified participant list. The source’s specific storytelling details—mechanical repairs, ice conditions, mainland assistance, and later use of the building—should not be upgraded into separate factual claims without contemporaneous evidence.
Open questions
- What school-district, county, or state record identifies the Roosevelt School, the Little Red Schoolhouse, their locations, and their dates of construction, fire, opening, and closure?
- Can contemporaneous reporting or family papers verify the February 1933 trip and the people named in the retrospective?
See also
Sources
- A thirty-years-later account gives the same core narrative later republished in 2003: departure about February 15, 1933, material haul over the ice, and school completion in early spring. This materially reduces the publication gap from seventy to thirty years but is still not contemporaneous evidence.
- A seventy-years-later retrospective recounts a February 15, 1933 crossing from Beaver Island to the mainland and return with construction materials for a Roosevelt School said to replace the burned Little Red Schoolhouse. It names Emmett McCann, Charley Martin, Stan Floyd, Pat “the Truth,” and Archie, but is not a contemporaneous construction, employment, transport, school-district, or property record.
- Described in this archive: Beaver Island History Map, 1978 revision.Dates the school to 1934. The earlier 1963 Beacon account instead says the crossing and completion occurred in 1933.
Added 2 August 2026 · revised 7 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Reported ice crossing for Roosevelt School materials, 1933”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/roosevelt-school-ice-material-haul-1933/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Beacon, February 1963, Roosevelt School ice-crossing account. (and 2 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-07. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Reported ice crossing for Roosevelt School materials, 1933”RIS for “Reported ice crossing for Roosevelt School materials, 1933”