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January 2003 - Edition No. 1

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The graphic shown here is from our Home page. It represents a composite grabbing portions of history from different time periods. Ranging from when the Chippawa Indians freely roomed the land until white settlers arrived to build ships, cranes, churches and lay rail for trains. Picture is James G. Birney, who retired to Lower Saginaw after achieving notarity as one of leading abolitionist of his time.

Commentary by Bay-Journal

Welcome to the first issue of Bay-Journal Monthly!

Thank you for joining our "new" mailing list. We are pleased that you found Bay-Journal and apparently have an interest in what we are doing. As of this writing, there are over 234 pages on Bay-Journal and well over 300 photos mostly related to history about our community.

We decided try a "mailing list" as a way to keep our viewers informed about what's happening on Bay-Journal.com. We'll also include other current or historic information related to Bay County -- it's people and communities. Whether or not such a mailing will be effective will depend on viewer's interest. You can help us determine this by giving us some feed back about Bay-Journal Monthly -- what's good, what's not or what you want included. You may even have something you would like to include for the awareness of others.

We expect Bay-Journal Monthly will change over time as we better understand how to make this a useful form of communications. Our desire is that it will meet some needs -- be informative, educate and entertain. You will be the judge of how successful we are in doing this.

A Comment About Bay-Journal - by Marvin Kusmierz

Bay-Journal.com went online in April 2002 as a special project of mine. It began with an interest of mine to learn more about our community's history. My first attempt was to look for this history on the internet. What I found were a few pages and each limited to a short history summary. Unsatisfied with their offerings, I went to the local library where I found many resources and a wealth of information related to the history of Bay County in books, articles, and on micro-films. What became apparent to me is that our community has a rich and important history -- and, it much of it should be available online so others may easily enjoy it. Bay-Journal.com was created with this in mind. It has evolved to become a much larger project than I intended, it has become somewhat of an enterprise requiring additional resources to support its continued growth. I'm hopeful that one day it will become a valuable resource to the people of Bay County and in deed, to all who would like to learn more about us.



Featured Local History

History Time Line:
Hidden inside Bay-Journal is a history time line for Bay County. We've place links to it on some pages, but you may have over looked them. The information is presented using a "pop-up" screen that scrolls. We add/change this page as new or better information becomes available. It has become an excellent quick source for bits of "important" events in our history.

  • Learn more: http://bay-journal.com/bay/msgs/bj-in-events-timeline.html

    Rolf Armstrong:
    Thanks to one of our viewers, we were please to learned this famous Bay City native. Rolf was born and lived in Bay City during his early youth before his family moved to Detroit. Like many kids, he liked doing art work. But, for Rolf, it was a passion that he pursued as an adult and made him the top commercial artists of the 20th century. He was aptly known as the "Father of Pin-up Art" for his popular renderings of beautiful women on canvas. His work appeared on calendars and sheet music -- in magazines and commercial ads. (View his page and some of his art work featured on Bay-Journal.)

  • Learn more at: http://bay-journal.com/bay/1he/people/fp-armstrong-rolf.html

    There's History in Old Maps - by Marvin Kusmierz:
    Geography changes with time. This may not be a new awareness for you. It was for me until I closely viewed some old maps of the Saginaw river. I hadn't realized how dramatically its shoreline has changed over the years. Gone are the many inlets that once serviced businesses such as sawmills and shipyards. If this is a new awareness for you or if you are interested in a close look yourself at these old maps -- go to the Maps Library where a link is provide to the NOAA government site (http://historicals.ncd.noaa.gov/historicals/histmap.asp). Once you are on their site, enter "Saginaw River" as the "Enter keyword(s) box" of the Search Box. This will display a long list of maps. Look at the Saginaw River Map for 1918.

  • Learn more at: http://bay-journal.com/maps/maps.html



    Changes and Up Dates to Website

    Heritage/People: Frederick Arnold - Bay City - Article written by Jim Arnold about his Bavarian ancestor who immigrated to Bay City where Fred and his brother Gottfried started up Bay City's first bakery in 1856. Includes a quality photo taken about 1900 of bakery and a horse drawn wagon of a group promoting "Ma-Ma" bread.

    Heritage/Groups/Churchs: St. Anthony Church - Fisherville
    This church community was started by Polish immigrants at the beginning of the 20th Century out on farmland in Williams Township. Includes several nice photos of this early period.

    Information/Community: Crossword Puzzles
    Here's a new page where you can have some fun as you learn about history. We call it "Learning Fun" and presently have put a couple of crossword puzzles there related to Bay County. We'll have have some fun creating a variety of puzzles that we hope will be challenging and entertaining to do. Some of you will be glad to know that the puzzles do have a "cheat" key. I've had to use it myself and I created the puzzles!

    Information/Special Features: News, Weather & Finacials
    We've broken down the old News-Weather page into "three new pages": News, Weather and Finance. In the process we changed some of the sources used for this information. We believe they are an improvement what we were using before. The financials page is completely new - featuring stock index charts, mortgage rates and a number of calculation tools, there even a standard math calculator. We've added a humor feed to each page that we hope will bring you a chuckle or two.

    Information Center:
    This section has been completely revamped to make it easier to locate the various special pages. We've set up three categories to help you find information specific pages related to Bay County, to Special Features or to Bay-Journal. Each category has its own menu side bar allowing you to move easily to another page.

    Pictorials: New Slide Show Viewer
    We're testing a new JavaScript viewer for the Pictorials Library. This viewer has a couple of features that our standard one does not. It shows the picture in its original size and it has an "auto display" feature which you can set the seconds/slide interval. We want to add features for a "Search" and "Selection Box". We need help from a volunteer that knows JavaScript language to accomplish this! Contact us if you can assist with this. If you would like to try out the Test Viewer, go to the PICTORIAL LIBRARY and select "Miscellaneous". Let us know if you have an opinion on what viewer you like best.

    Personals: Schaefer's Super Service, Inc.
    Full service gas sations and auto repair business located at 490 Tuscola - Bay City

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