The Henry Law Office

Carl Henry was a prominent Alpena attorney in the 1920s and the 1930s. He ran for a number of public offices in the northeastern Michigan area Also, Mr. Henry was the president of the Michigan Bar Association during the late 1930s. He lived in a well-known house at 302 S. State Street (across State Street from and slightly south of the Bayview municipal park. There are a couple of photos of the house below as well as of the museum's exhibit of materials from the Carl Henry law office.

My mother, Catherine Huston, has many memories of this house. She was a sharp character apparently. She graduated from Hillman High in 1937 after having just turned sweet sixteen. She graduated the next spring at seventeen with a teaching credential from the County Normal School, but at that age she was too young to teach. The times being what they were at the end of the depression coupled with the fact that the "Roaring 20s" didn't roar very loudly in northeastern Michigan, she took a job as a maid in the Henry household before it became the Henry House. Any way to make some money to help the family as there had never been a couple of coins rub together in her lifetime. She worked there starting around June, 1938 until mid-March, 1939. At that time she replaced a teacher at the Green School near Hillman. She says she often saw Mr. Henry go to the train station on his way to Lansing for Bar Association business. Sometimes he returned the same day. Have to love those trains.

Mom must have done alright executing her duties because the following summer, 1939, Mrs. Henry asked my mother to chaperone their daughter Mary, their youngest, I believe, at the Henry's cottage on the shore of Hubbard Lake. Mary had a half-dozen girlfriends along so Mrs. Henry gave mom pretty explicit instructions: "No boys." A couple of the girls apparently had boyfriends staying at the lake so my mother spent a couple of weeks dutifully earning Mrs. Henry's fee. She was, after all, a professional woman now with a professional reputation to maintain.

The Herron family has a second, more peripheral connection to the Henry family. Mr. Henry established an orchard in the neighborhood of the shale beds west of Alpena. It was on Wallace Rd. off the King Settlement Rd. midway between the Werth Rd. and M-32 at abrupt turn in the road. The orchard was near end of Wallace Rd. where it peters out in river swamps. John Kaiser managed the orchard for a number of years, and, eventually, title to the place transferred to him. His son Francis grew up on the old Henry place, and he is now married my uncle Orville Herron's youngest daughter, Doris. They still spend summers in Alpena, most days at the golf course on the Werth Rd.

A view of the Henry House from the corner of State and Dunbar (NW corner). It shows the area my mother recalls as the maid's quarters as the west wing of the hous visible i adjacent to the garage on the lower right in this photo. If Iget back up I'll take a photo that shows that wing of the house to better effect.

A view of the Henry Office exhibit showing his lawbooks. There is a second similar case on the opposite wall. Judging from the size of the library the practice of law must have been simpler in that era. Of course, I don't any laptop to search those books.

A view of the desk in the Henry Office exhibit. Photo courtesy of museum staff.

The data processing area of the Henry Law Office. Photo courtesy of museum staff.

A panoramic view of the Henry House across State (West).