Santa Claus and his taxidermied reindeer visit the front yard of the home of John and Grace Voelker on Deer Lake Road north of Ishpeming in this photo from the Dec. 18, 1962, edition of The Mining Journal. (Photo courtesy Marquette Regional History Center)

An article not so long ago in The Mining Journal lamented that children had lost their innocence — no longer believing in Santa Claus or enjoying the simple pleasures of playing marbles or riding a sled down a snowy hill.

The author, Kate Verne, regretted the loss of “the merry old days, when it was no sin to laugh and we didn’t have to be dignified.”

Well, maybe it was a while back. Oct. 22, 1870, to be exact. 

Despite this grumpy perspective, the children of the Upper Peninsula, and often adults as well, have managed to continue to enjoy visits from St. Nicholas over the last 150 years.

As early as 1869, The Mining Journal reported that Santa made a visit to the children of the Episcopal sabbath school in Negaunee, bringing “toys, candies and other presents.” The paper also noted that Santa was assisted by a $150 contribution from the church’s ladies society. 

The local merchants certainly understood that Santa often needed to shop locally. Stafford & Sons advertised in 1885 that they were “Santa Claus Headquarters! Presents! Presents! Presents!”

A front-page poem in 1875 began, “From out the realms of antiquity / An ancient monarch came / With merry face and snowy locks / His raiment was the same.” Five stanzas later, it concluded “And leaves some treasure from a sleigh / Drawn by his spritely steeds / And now you’ll hear the people say / ‘He gets them in at Meads.'”

The enduring faith in Santa Claus was vividly illustrated by two pages of letters to Santa printed in the Dec. 21, 1906, issue of The Mining Journal. Blanche Ryan wrote, “I am a little girl, and I live out at the Powder Mills. For Christmas I want a book, a set of furs, a game and some candy. Mama says she will leave a lunch on the table for you.” 

Leo De Martin of Ishpeming upped the ante by promising Santa two cigars. Arbutus Brown said she told her papa to let the furnace go out so Santa would not get burned, while other children reassured him that the chimney had been cleaned or the door would be left unlocked so he could avoid the chimney altogether. 

Most of the children said they had been good, but 8-year-old Mariam Swinton Bay of Marquette confessed that it was very hard to be good with her “too teasy brothers.”  

Even the Great Depression did not keep Santa from visiting Marquette. In 1932, the newspaper announced that Santa would be arriving on the South Shore train at 2:25 p.m. He would then transfer to a big sleigh with more than 1,000 pounds of candy, packaged in quarter-pound bags.

Santa telephoned Police Chief Hurley the day before his arrival to ask him to tell the bigger children not to be greedy and make sure the younger children got their candy, too. After half an hour by the depot, Santa would make a quick trip downtown and then head to the hospital and orphanage to deliver candy there as well. 

But the biggest news about Santa’s visits to the U.P. during the Great Depression were his underground visits to iron miners on the Marquette Range. The tradition of underground celebrations around a tree began as early as 1920, when, as the story goes, a tree fell into a mine shaft at the Morris Mine and the shift captain, Charles Miron, decided to decorate it and have a party. The tradition spread to other mines, including the Greenwood and Armour #1.

At some point, Santa became part of the tradition. At the Greenwood Mine, Edward “Socky” Sequist played Santa. At the Morris Mine it was “Genial Jim” Fowler. In addition to the decorated tree and Santa, there was sometimes a German band, and at least once, the music teacher from Ishpeming High School directed the carolers. A 1937 article explained that each gift was distributed with a “jingle explaining it, (often) in the robust language to be expected at a party of red-blooded men.”

Indeed, Maryann Zawlocki, a granddaughter of Jim Fowler, has a family story about one of those gifts that even now cannot be fully described in a family newspaper. 

In 1938, the Associated Press picked up the story. It was just four years after AP introduced the “wirephoto,” which allowed photographs to be transmitted over regular telephone lines. The result is that photos of the Morris Mine tree, at 1,500 feet underground, and of Genial Jim Fowler giving a present to miner Elmer Waara, were reproduced in more than 400 newspapers from Bangor, Maine, to Globe, Arizona. 

Although the tradition of Christmas underground ended with the arrival of World War II, the stories were not forgotten. The Inland Steel float in the 1954 Ishpeming Centennial parade commemorated the tradition, complete with Santa and an ore car. 

Where there is Santa, there must be reindeer. For many years, Ishpeming was fortunate enough to have a pair of real — albeit carefully taxidermied — reindeer pulling Santa’s sled. Originally, they were in the holiday window at the Atkins store, but by 1962 they were pulling Santa’s sleigh in the front yard of a home on Deer Lake Road. 

That home on Deer Lake Road belonged to John and Grace Voelker. And when Christmas was over, Mr. Voelker’s thoughts turned to the last weekend in April.

Writing as Robert Traver, he begins his collection of fishing stories, “Trout Madness,” with a little ditty, “‘Twas the night before fishing / When all through the house / Lay Dad’s scattered fishing gear / As strewn by a souse.”  

For a dramatic reading by Bruce Closser of the original “A Visit from St. Nicholas” also known as the poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” join us for the Marquette Regional History Center’s holiday open house at 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday. Light refreshments will be served with some special surprises in store. This is an event free to all, though donations will be gratefully accepted. For more information, visit marquettehistory.org or call 906-226-3571.