Chandler Township School (SD No. 5)
[Located in same township section as Dot]
~ Section 10 ~
Known as Gokee School
Confusion exists regarding this school SD No. 5... as noted in the article about the Mystery Cross at Dot:
"The county plat book showed the one-acre plot in the very northwest corner of section 10 belonged to a school. Records in the county courthouse were checked.
Register of Deeds files only complicate the mystery and apparently finalized it.
In 1879, the Register’s libers show, the northwest one-quarter (160 acres) of section 10 was the U.S. government. The year before in 1878, Abbey had deeded the one-acre parcel to Springvale School District Number Five.
But the confusion deepens. In 1890 Abbey sold the whole 160 acres--without exempting the one-acre--to Davis Salisbury. In 1899 Salisbury sold the whole 160 to Cobbs and Mitchell, at that time the major timber company in the area.
Cobbs and Mitchell gave the whole business to the State in 1924.
None of these transactions would nullify the 1878 deed to the Springvale school. But there is no Springvale school. So even if the deed were still good there would be no owner.
Perhaps the deed had a reversionary clause in it giving it back to the original owner when it was no longer used for a school. If so it appears that no one will ever know. The county’s records burned in 1887. The deed went up in smoke.
Old county school board records for Chandler township go back to 1919 and show no school on the site.
Orne Fraley, who is a member of the Chandler school board and helped dispose of all school properties in the township when Chandler merged with Walloon Lake in the 1950’s, says there was no deed in the files on the property.
Some of what the official records couldn’t reveal Chandler township pioneer Carl Clark, 86 now of Petoskey could.
Clark recalls that when he came to Chandler township in 1894 there was a school on the site, which is a mile south of the Emmet county line and three miles west of the Cheboygan county line."
Article Below: 1920 ~ Miss Mabel Gladding in District Number Five...
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