The Derby Hats of Good Harbor
The following tale comes from Julia Terry Dickinson's The Story of Leelanau (Omena: Solle's Bookshop, 1951). According to Mrs. Dickinson, back in the days when Good Harbor was a thriving community supplying cordwood to the steamers that plied Lake Michigan, Dick Schomberg was the local shopkeeper and a shrewd judge of what would sell to his clientele. On a buying trip to Chicago he was able to get a good price on a shipment of bowler hats. Although some might think that such an urban refinement would find no market among the farmers and lumbermen of Leelanau, Schomberg knew better. He offered a derby hat with every purchase of ten dollars worth of merchandise, and soon his hats were worn with pride to all sorts of social events, and especially to church on Sundays. According to Mrs. Dickinson, at the time she wrote (over fifty years ago today), the derby was still part of the Sunday best outfit of some Leelanau residents.