Name/Title
Fursman Lighthouse summer memoriesEntry/Object ID
2023.50.45Scope and Content
Exploring Underwater
My last two years of high school were spent in Saugatuck, 1929 and `30. Fred Fursman was the judge for a poster contest in which I won 1st and 2nd place. I was offered a scholarship at the Summer School of Painting in Saugatuck and lived with Mr. and Mrs. Fursman in the old light house in exchange for "brushing up" on Saturdays and pumping water and rowing Mrs. Fursman in the boat as needed. It was the happiest summer of my life.
During the summer I spent at the Summer School of Painting in Saugatuck [1929] I rowed a boat from the school to the old lighthouse. Sometimes I went in the canoe with Avis and Elsa who lived in the boathouse near the lighthouse where I lived with the director of the Summer School of Painting and his wife.
One day I saw some young people out on the lagoon with a rowboat and some rigged-up equipment for going underwater. They had a kerosene can and some rubber hose and a bicycle pump. The kerosene can had been made into a helmet and was connected to the house which was connected to the pump. they were taking turns going down while another one pumped.
They said they thought they had located the remains of a boat that had sunk there in winter several generations before.
I joined them and watched for a while as each of them put the helmet on and went down under water while another pumped. After a few minutes they asked me if I would like to go down. I put the helmet on and dropped off the edge of the boat. They weren't pumping me enough air so I came back up and we tried again. There wasn't much to see but the top rim of the wooden deck covered with brown silt, but I walked along it before coming up.
It was exciting. Naturally, Mother was horrified!
-- Anne Partridge RichterContext
The lighthouse that the Frederick F. Fursman family lived in during the summer had been constructed to serve as a harbor beacon in 1859 but was retired in the fall of 1914. In 1959 it was destroyed in a tornado and replaced by the present summer cottage, which still has a lighthouse theme. Elsa Ulbricht, a member of the Summer School faculty who also assisted with the administration of the school, lived in a small boathouse near the lighthouse dock. The wreck that the amateur divers were rediscovering was probably the scow-schooner Condor that went down in Ox-Bow lagoon in the spring of 1904 when its rotted sides were crushed by the spring ice. Portions of the wreck are still visible in the lagoon. The wheel and a few other items have been recovered and are occasionally displayed at the Holland Museum Special section of historical letters, recollections and reprints concerning the Saugatuck area.Collection
SDHS NL Inserts, NauticalCataloged By
Winthers, SallyAcquisition
Accession
2023.50Acquisition Method
Found in CollectionNotes
SDHS Newsletter insert page 97Location
* Untyped Location
Digital data in CatalogItRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Condor (ship), Fursman, Frederick Frary 1874-1943, Ulbricht, Elsa 1885-1980, Ox-Bow/Summer School of Art, Richter, Anne Aurelia (Partridge) 1913-2012, Kalamazoo Lighthouses 1839/1858/1956-presentGeneral Notes
Note
This information was OCR text scanned from SDHS newsletter supplements. A binder of original paper copies is catalog item 2023.50.01Note
See 2023.10.54 for possible diving rig connectionCreate Date
November 10, 2023Update Date
March 30, 2024