Hickerson Family in East Gull Lake, and other environs (by Jack Hickerson)
It all began sometime in the 1920s when my grandfather Sam Hickerson and his wife Marie and their four sons, Lester, Art, Frank and Perry moved to Gull Lake. Sam started his life in Grantsburg, Wisconsin, in 1885 and moved around from Duluth, Jefferson City, Missouri, and Minneapolis learning his trade in the garment manufacturing business. The Hickerson family then moved to the east side of Gull Lake (on what is now Gull Lake Drive), a property later owned by C. Elmer Anderson who would become Minnesota’s governor in 1961. An old corrugated boathouse built by the boys still marks the spot (or did until recently).
Much to the boys’ disappointment, Sam next moved his family to some acreage on the south side of Nisswa Lake, where they lived for many years, sometimes spending time in Cuba, and Florida, or renting a house in Brainerd during the winter. Sam was well-known and liked around the Nisswa area for a number of reasons: he was an affable man who loved people and fun times; he once owned the fastest boat on the Gull chain (a Chris-Craft with a racing hull which he called the “wonder boat” since it was a wonder he ever saw it with his four boys commandeering it whenever they could); he was a successful Brainerd businessman (along with his boys), providing a large payroll and supplying 1700 J.C. Penney stores with jackets and coats every year from their factory located on East Laurel Street; he and his friend Marmaduke Corbyn in 1947 started the Gull Lake Yacht Club, the main function of which was to dredge channels, pull deadheads, and install buoy markers for boating safety; and he was mayor of Nisswa in the 50s, started a municipal liquor store and used the revenue to pave the streets.
During WWII, his two youngest boys joined the military, Frank emerging twice as the only survivor in his outfit during The Battle of the Bulge, and Perry a B-29 Aircraft Commander whose plane probably dropped the last bombs on Japan (Nippon Oil Refinery in Akita) on the night and early morning of August 14-15, 1945.
During the War, my father Perry decided that lakeshore real estate would be a good place to invest, so he bought the 400 feet north of Bishop’s Creek (which flows out of Round Lake into Gull) and paid eleven dollars a foot for it. Later, when he and his war bride Faye were getting started with their family, he sold this property for twenty-two dollars a foot, doubling his money.
Sometime in the later 1940s, Perry and Faye and Perry’s brother Art and his wife Irma each bought 100 foot lots from Dr. Gerber on what later became known as Birch Grove Road in East Gull Lake. Art and Perry each built cabins, but Art’s was more distinctive since he built their living quarters above the double boat house which can still be seen today. Subsequent owners later built a house farther up the hill. Perry and Faye’s cabin next door and up the hill was enjoyed for many years by family and friends. This cabin was added onto and modified many times by subsequent owners before it was torn down for a new home. Perry’s youngest son Mark still has the hammer that his dad used to build the original cabin.
Perry’s two older brothers, Les and Frank had places in town but also lived on Round and North Long Lake respectively in the summers. Art died young at 38 (1953), and Perry and his family left the Brainerd area in the late 1950s for Missouri and then the West Coast. It should be noted that relatively few people lived year around on Gull Lake in the 40s and 50s. Finally in the 1960s a few people decided to fix up the old cabins or build and live on the lake year around. Paul Reed was one of the first “year rounders” I knew to build a new home in East Gull Lake.
While still living in Brainerd, Perry and Faye Hickerson had three sons, Perry, Jr. (Jack), Jeff and Mark. The younger two sons remained in the Pacific Northwest where they still reside, but after college and a master’s degree, I (Jack) moved back to Minnesota in 1968 where I met and then married (1970) Mary (Riedy) after taking a new job teaching at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, MN., where we both lived and taught (after earning doctoral degrees) for over 40 years. But the call of the lakes beckoned.
In the winter of1976, while visiting friends in East Gull Lake, Mary and I spotted a snow-covered sign near a cabin on Ruth Lake. Originally called School Section Lake, its name was unofficially changed to Ruth because of a few ladies named Ruth who lived nearby including Ruth White, who lived across the road that separates Ruth Lake from Gull Lake (now part of the Mills properties). The cabin that we spotted had been cottage number one of the Fagan resort which had been parceled off and sold a few times (as were all the cabins).
I had fond memories of the area since I had played around this property as a boy, buying popsicles at the resort store; marveling at the coldness inside the log-sided ice house in mid-summer with its slabs of winter lake ice packed in sawdust; playing in the woods behind the resort only to discover a grave replete with carved stone, and farther on, the remnants of copper coils and wooden frame that once served as a still for a neighboring banker who went to prison for banking irregularities; and visiting an old Finn named Mike Setula (whose wife had been buried in the woods behind the cabin) who had two log cabins at the south and southwest corners of the lake and outbuildings composed of cement and brightly colored bottles.
We bought the place partly because it was only $13,000 and I remembered that the lake bottom was sandy, and the lake stayed cool all summer due to several 40 foot holes. We added a fireplace and screened-in porch and enjoyed the place for several years along with Jennifer, our big collie girl.
We soon discovered that much of the history—both recent and ancient—of our newly purchased 70 foot lot and cabin lay less than a foot beneath us. When I began digging to plant new trees and set footings for a new porch, I discovered charred ruins—wood, glass, china, nails—everywhere I dug. We also puzzled over a huge cement slab that crossed over the neighboring property line. We also found several cement raised rings several feet in diameter in the boggy land behind the cabin. Through inquiry and research, we discovered that our property once contained a mansion and expansive gardens owned by the Butler family (Walter and Helen). The cement slab was the footing for a mammoth fireplace, and the cement rings were part of the sprawling irrigated formal gardens. The Butlers owned several acres that included shore land on both Ruth and Gull Lakes. The houseboat they once owned has been a high and dry summer residence on the end of Schaefer’s Point on Gull for many years. They also had a hand-dug ditch built from deep in the woods across what is now Shady Lane road and across what is now Green Gables Road and into Gull Lake to help drain the lowlands (and water their gardens) on their property. For whatever reason, the Fagans (George and Lucille) bought the Butler property in the 1940s, built their resort (including several cabins) and lived in the mansion before it burned to the ground in the later 40s or early 50s.
More ancient history was discovered on the property after 1990 when we sold our cabin to our friends Joe and Eileen Van Wie from Marshall, and the new owners began digging and looking around, perhaps preparing for a new home to be built on the land. Joe discovered several Indian artifacts. These included a number of stone tools used to grind grain or other foodstuffs, (pemmican?), two partial arrowheads, and hide scrapers used to prepare animal skins for clothing and shelter. Whether these tools were used by the Ojibwe people before or after part of the reservation covered this property or if the tools belonged to their predecessors, the Dakota People, or if they belonged to an even earlier people, i.e., the Blackduck or Woodland People who lived here before the Dakota arrived around 1600, has not been determined. In any case, the area has been a very desirable place between the lakes for many generations of red and white peoples.
While still living in our old modified resort cabin in the 70s and 80s , we made friends with almost everyone in the neighborhood, including an older couple named Maggie and Ken (mostly known as “Peenie”) who lived two lots north off Green Gables Road. Maggie had once been married to my Uncle Les after his first wife died, and Peenie had owned Swisher’s Pinehurst Resort on Gull between Sandy and Rocky points and had once been the croupier at Bar Harbor when gambling was running high. Maggie had taught physical education at Pillager, and she and her first husband were a trampoline act for the Harlem Globetrotters. Peenie died not too long after we got to know him, and Maggie moved to Florida the next winter, renting out her house to some people who trashed it, and she died shortly after. The house had been built by the Fagans (resorters) in the late 1940s and needed a lot of work. In 1990 we sold our cabin to the VanWies, bought the old Swisher place, and moved two houses north on two hundred feet of lakeshore with a large back yard. We eventually gutted the old place and more than doubled its size, added two outbuildings, bought more contiguous land, and turned the property into our retirement home where we have lived ever since.
Both our first cabin on Ruth Lake, and later our remodeled house have seen a lot visitors and fun over the years. Both sets of parents came to visit at various times, all the brothers and sisters (including Mary’s brother Jack and wife who used to fly into the grass strip across from Maddens), many nieces and nephews, and many friends from all over the country have shared in the fun on Ruth Lake. We have always kept a boat or two on both Ruth and Gull Lakes. Special memories include many porch parties, a big neighborhood pig roast at the Hickersons and an afternoon of aerobatics in a yellow Stearman bi-plane performed by my dad Perry with his old WWII friend Gene Sundburg who lived across the road on Gull Lake in the old Governor Youngdahl home.
We have enjoyed living in East Gull Lake and hope to continue doing so for years to come.