Damian Wolf/For the Miing Gazette This recent photograph, taken from in front of the Ontonagon County Road Commission building, shows Mass City, facing north on Depot Road.

GREENLAND TOWNSHIP — The topic of last Week’s Then and Now photo series focused on the main street of Mass City, the location of the former Mass Mining Company venture.

According to the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Mineral Statistics for the state of Michigan for 1880, the Mass Mining Company was incorporated on March 31, 1856. Curtis Grubb Hussey was the company’s president, Joseph M. Cooper was secretary and treasurer, with the remaining officers of the Board of Directors being Charles Avery, Thomas Howe and William Clarke. In his book, “A history of Rockland, Greenland, Mass, and other towns in Rockland, Greenland, and Bohemia townships in Ontonagon County, Michigan,” James K. Jamison states the Hussey group purchased the site for $11,0000 with an actual downpayment of $750. Jamison, in his book “The mining ventures of this Ontonagon country,” The property was purchased from the estate of Noel Johnson, who discovered the copper vein on which the Mass Mine was organized.

Johnson, one of the earliest pioneer residents of the Ontonagon district, arrived in the region sometime between 1845 and 1848; there is no known record of his exact time of arrival. But he was in the district long enough to acquaint himself with the region and explore for copper. What he found was the mineral deposit that would become the Mass Mine. Johnson, however, could not capitalize on his discovery because he was what was referred to in that time period as a fugitive slave.

Jamison, in his book “The mining ventures of this Ontonagon country,” stated, on page 16, that Johnson was brought to the region by Cyrus Mendenhall. Mendenhall was the president of the Cleveland and Northern Lake Company, which owned the schooner Algonquin. Mendenhall was one of the two of the very first pioneers to organize mining companies in the Porcupine Mountain district in 1845. Mendenhall organized the Lafayette Mining Company at the same time that William Spaulding and his Ontonagon partners organized the Union Mining Company.

In order for Johnson to capitalize on his copper discovery, he first had to obtain his emancipation from the man who held him in enslavement. A slave was forbidden from owning property under federal law.

Johnson’s name, according to Jamison, was found on a petition to Congress from Ontonagon in 1849, which indicates that he had discovered the copper prior to that time.

It took Mendenhall three years to find out with whom he had to transact business in order to secure Johnson’s emancipation, one William S. Pemberton, of Missouri. Mendenhall, states Jamison, negotiated for and purchased Johnson for $250. Mendenhall, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, paid the cost himself, but it was subsequently repaid from Johnson’s estate.

Mendenhall was not done yet.

Johnson’s probate records indicate, Jamison states, that Mendenhall further paid large sums to “pay certain political figures at Washington” to intervene on Johnson’s behalf at the U.S. Land Office. Among them was another early Lake Superior investment capitalist, Horatio Bigelow, for whom the Bigelow House Hotel in Ontonagon was named. Bigelow alone charged Mendenhall $500 which, in 1851 was a year’s income for a middle-class wage earner.

Although Jamison did not include a date, he reported that the land patent was issued to Johnson upon the Mass Mining Company for $10,000, to be paid in 10 annual parts.

Sadly, Johnson did not live long enough to profit from his mine. He passed away in 1853. According to doctor’s bills presented against his estate, Jamison wrote, Johnson had been ill since 1851. At the time of his passing, Johnson owned a home in Ontonagon, was married and had two children.

Almost immediately after his death, his wife, Mary Ann, remarried, moved to California and abandoned the children. She also abandoned her husband’s estate, which was valued at $18,000.

Mendenhall was appointed administrator and guardian of the two children, wrote Jamison. He brought them to Ohio, where he enrolled them in school, paying the expenses from the estate fund.

His son, Theodore, died in Cleveland at the age of 18; his daughter, whose name was not disclosed, reached the age of maturity and disappeared from the records.