Without a local museum or historical society, librarians at the Fennville District Library play an important role in keeping the city’s history. They regularly take inquiries from locals and traveling researchers. In doing so, they’ve uncovered peculiar chapters in Fennville’s history.
Kendra Onken is a librarian who works in the Fennville District Library’s local history and genealogy room. She was recently surprised with a call from a history buff inquiring about local robberies that she hadn’t heard about.
“They were saying, ‘Oh, you know, I do believe there was a train robbery and a bank robbery in Fennville,'" said Onken. "And so I did some digging around and we found, you know, what they were looking for.”
Calls like this, Onken added, are par for the course. Someone calls the library with questions about a particular place or event and opens a community-wide rabbit hole into a chapter of Fennville’s history that most have forgotten.
Teresa Kline is the director of the library. She said that word spreads fast in Fennville. Locals hear about the event, then visit the library’s archives to see the “nitty-gritty” — the old newspaper archives and record books —for themselves.
“Usually it becomes a conversation in the community," Kline said. "So usually if one person starts, we get more than one phone call. It'll be, like, numerous phone calls.”
Onken learned that on an August night in 1895, five men held up a train at gunpoint. When they were caught by a police detective days later, they shot and killed him. Onken says Fennville locals find it hard to believe that events like the train robbery happened in their town, which has a population of about 1,700.
She added, “I would think that it was something that would happen, but you know, odd to happen here.”
Another shocking find was a 1933 bank heist. Kline said that rumors of the event have made their way around Fennville for years. Locals have been calling the library to confirm what they've heard.
"People still call us because they'll say, ‘Oh, we had parents that remember this or we had grandparents’ or whatever and they're like, ‘At first we didn't believe that there was actually bank robbery in Fennville, so that's why we're calling to find out more information.’”
Because the library holds many of the city’s records, they often get inquiries from genealogical researchers. One family reached out about a relative from Fennville who appeared to die mysteriously in the 1800s. Consulting the archives, Kline found the cause of death in a newspaper article.
"We later found out that it looks like that they had been poisoned by another family member," said Kline. "So, of course, that was a very interesting story because there wasn't a lot of poisoning in the area back in those days.”
The archives also serve a more practical purpose. Kline cites a case where a family was searching for the gravesite of a sibling who died in the 1960’s. Drawing from their archives, the librarians located the site and the family was able to put a headstone on the previously-unmarked grave.
“It's very rewarding when you can do things like that," said Kline. "It makes your day.”
Onken hopes that one day, Fennville has its own museum to house its archives. Until then, the local librarians are eager to be the keepers of Fennville’s history. The library invites residents to get in touch with their questions and historical items.
