Mystery Solved

William Lyon (Billy) Phelps was, in his day (1865-1943), a noted professor of English literature (Yale), proponent of Jane Austen, writer of popular prose, public lecturer, and preacher (he was also an ordained minister). I learned of Phelps because he and his wife summered at Huron City, Michigan, not far from the village where my grandmother lived.

The Phelps's summer home (which Mrs. Phelps inherited from her father) is known as Seven Gables. It is preserved as part of the Huron City Museum, a collection of old buildings and artifacts from the early days of Huron City. Below are successive views of Seven Gables. The first is from the road that runs in front of the house. The second shows the house and its seven gables from above. The third shows the house (toward the bottom of the photo) and an abandoned golf course across the road. The fourth, in which the house is a white speck near the center, shows the proximity of the house and golf course to Lake Huron, which is at the top of the photo.


The mystery (to me) was the golf course. Whenever we stopped at Huron City on the way to grandma's house, I would walk to the edge of the road bordering the course, gaze down upon the derelict fairways and greens, and wonder about the course's history. Had a country club been founded there in the boom times of the '20s, only to fall victim to the Depression? Was the course too isolated to be a going proposition?

The mystery was solved when I learned recently that the course was on the Phelpses' property -- a personal, private course -- and that Prof. Phelps played there regularly when he was in residence at Seven Gables. There it sits, abandoned -- probably since 1939, the year of Prof. Phelps's last visit to Huron City.