Dowagiac: Heddon lures, Round Oak stoves, and the first orphan train

Three very different Michigan stories meet in Dowagiac: a fishing-tackle business, a stove works, and the first trip in the orphan-train movement. Each is interesting without sanding off the uncertain parts.

Start with Heddon. The Dowagiac Area History Museum says the company made fishing tackle here from 1898 to 1984. Heddon was not the first or only maker of artificial lures around 1900, but the museum says it has a strong claim as the first company to make and market them on a large scale. The Heddon Museum credits James Heddon with early wooden-body lures and a commercially successful lure called the “Dowagiac.” His 1902 U.S. patent identifies him as a Dowagiac inventor and describes a bait designed to stay upright and throw little jets of water as it moved.

Then there is the mill-pond story: Heddon supposedly tossed a piece of whittled wood into the water, watched a bass strike, and saw the idea for a lure. Even the Heddon Museum gently warns that it may be just that — a great story. It belongs in Dowagiac’s history, but not as an eyewitness fact.

Round Oak has firmer numbers. Philo D. Beckwith cast his first heating stove around 1867, and the Michigan Central Railroad soon ordered heaters for depots between Detroit and Chicago. Heating stoves became his main product in 1871. At the company’s early-1910s peak, the museum says Round Oak employed 1,200 people while Dowagiac had about 5,000 residents. Several competing furnace companies followed. Round Oak’s buildings and name were sold in 1947, but its stoves are still collected around the country.

The last story begins in September 1854. The first trainload in what became the orphan-train movement brought 46 children from New York to Dowagiac. The city museum says 37 were taken in by local families over several days; the National Orphan Train Complex says all 46 had found homes by the end of the week. The placements continued around the country through 1929. The city museum also makes an important point: not every child had a good experience. That fuller version is harder than the tidy hometown first, but it is the one worth remembering.