I was looking at my hometown newspaper & found this old article about my great-grandfather.

[catbyte]

Sam Alexander and the Ironton Ferry

Nov 21, 2014

CHARLEVOIX — Sam Alexander was born in 1868 in Kentucky. He came to Ironton in the mid-1880s to work as a fireman at the great iron smelter there, located on the land just north of the ferry crossing five miles south of Charlevoix on Lake Charlevoix’s South Arm. By 1890 he was working on the ferry itself, and rose to captain in 1900. Sam married and lived in a house just to the southwest of the ferry landing. It is still there on the right near the waterfront as one boards the ferry on the way to Boyne City. Thus began a half-century career that eventually gained him worldwide fame when both Sam and the ferry were featured in the syndicated feature “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” on Dec. 5, 1936, in hundreds of newspapers in 40 countries. Readers around the globe learned about the man who had traveled 15,000 miles while never being farther than 1000 feet from his own home.

The cartoon caught the attention of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the two men who portrayed Amos ‘n Andy on the smash hit longtime radio show of the times, to the extent both men made it a point to journey to Ironton for the sole purpose of meeting Sam and taking a ride on his vessel.

By the time he retired in the early 1940s, it was estimated that Sam Alexander had probably traveled the equivalent of the circumference of the earth on the rustic putt-putt Ironton Ferry. It is still in operation today.

https://www.petoskeynews.com/charlevoix/news/community/sam-alexander-and-the-ironton-ferry/article_0a86f8a6-6017-5b78-ae89-3f3029629b1f.html

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The Ripley's blurb says: "Sam Alexander, ferry boat operator, has traveled 15000 miles and was never 1000 feet from his home."

My family's claim to fame.

[MLAA]

1. So cool!

[safeinOhio]

2. What a great story.

Do you have any memories of him and his story? I only had one grandparent that I ever remembered meeting, my dads mother. Dad had told me a story about her having the Spanish Flu in 1918. She survived it.

[mgardener]

6. My grandmother

Talked about the 1918 flu.
She knew whole families that were gone.
She said it was a horrible time.
She was a strong woman.

[tblue37]

3. Cool! K&R. nt

[Dem2theMax]

4. What a find!

I do genealogy research. If I found something like that, I'd be yelling 'it's Christmas!'

Whenever I find something like that, or a photo of an ancestor, it's Christmas! It always feels like whatever I find, it's all wrapped up with a bow on it, a gift from the past.

[TNNurse]

5. What a treat and a treasure.

[llmart]

7. Genealogy can be interesting.

My daughter has been into family history and genealogy for about 20 years. I only knew one of my grandparents, my father's father and he was quite eccentric. So far she's found several articles on that family's side about a number of petty thieves (I'm so proud). He was married four times and made the front pages of newspapers for a huge fight he and his second wife had.

My children's great great grandfather was a Catholic priest who got the housekeeper pregnant and gave the baby her last name so no one would know he was the father. My daughter got the church records from the church in the European country he was from and found out the priest's name which is what my children's real last name should be.

Years ago she found out that my parents had to get married and fudged the dates on their honeymoon pictures with the wrong date so no one would know. Until she started digging, none of my siblings or I ever had any inkling this was the case.

Yes, genealogy can be fun.

[world wide wally]

8. If this is the ferry that takes cars back and forth from Charlevoix to Boyne City,

I have been on it. I have a good friend with a summer home in Boyne City. We both live in Colorado now,

[catbyte]

9. That's the one.

[world wide wally]

10. Great story

I know the guy who has been operating it for the past few years (if he still does...Graham)

[Demovictory9]

11. that's so cool

[Raven]

12. Runs in the family. You've broken some kind of record in wonderful kitty posts! n/t