Man restores canoe with historic ties to St. Joseph

One St. Joseph resident didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he received a call to take a look at a canoe, less than a year ago.

Greg Hatten, who calls himself a ‘boat fanatic’, was on a house call to appraise a canoe that had been hanging up at a home belonging to the late Robert and Mary Helen Stuber ahead of an estate sale.

Little did Hatten know- the very same canoe would become his next project and obsession.

“I took one look when the barn door swung open, and I was like, ‘that’s love at first sight,” said Hatten. “And even though I didn’t know the details about the boat, I was very intrigued.”

It was then, that Hatten turned his hobby of boat restoration into an obsession, dedicating his time to researching and learning the background of the 1929 Old Town Canoe Co. boat.

Old Town Canoe Co., located in Old Town, Maine, is one of the largest wooden boat manufacturing companies in the United States.

After reaching out to the company with the serial number from the canoe, a work order showed it was completed in July of 1930 and was shipped to Stone Lake, Wisconsin under the names of ‘Harry Glaze’ and ‘Frazer Ford’.

Harry Glaze and his wife were the full-time caretakers of the main lodge for the WisMo Club on Lac Courte Oreilles — a lake located in Stone Lake, Wi.

WisMo — is an abbreviation for Wisconsin and Missouri combined.

“That was a big clue,” said Hatten. “That was my first clue of ‘so the boat got at least from Old Town, Maine to Stone Lake, Wisconsin. Now, what’s the tie to St. Joe between Stone Lake, Wisconsin?’”

The WisMo Club was founded by a dentist and St. Joseph native who took a fishing trip to Stone Lake in 1906.

Dr. F.P. Cronkite (grandfather of CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite) came back to Missouri from his fishing trip with a plan to buy a lodge and some surrounding land on the lake to host trips for his friends.

The WisMo Club became a summer retreat for many founding St. Joseph families like the Bartlett’s, Ford’s, Wyeth’s, Bradley’s and more.

Frazer Ford was the president of three local banks in St. Joseph.

Out of his three children, his middle-child, Margot, utilized the canoe more than her siblings.

“That opened up a whole new world for Margot,” said Hatten. “She was the only one who really used the heck out of this canoe...It was kind of known as ‘Margot’s Canoe’.”

Hatten credits Margot Ford for being the ‘Amelia Earhart’ of St. Joseph, as she became one of the 800 women in World War II to serve in a corps called, ‘The Wasps’.

“Their job was to be test pilots and trainers,” said Hatten. “This corps of women would be the first one’s to fly the airplanes out of the factory, to the front, to the boys...And then they would- once they got them (the planes) there...They would train the men how to fly the plane.”

After spending many summers up at the WisMo Club with her family growing up, Margot eventually brought the green canoe back to St. Joseph to have adventures with a family of her own.

“They had adventures on the Missouri River and on the Platte River,” said Hatten. “Later in life, when Margot was...Her health was failing- she gifted the canoe to her best friend, Mary Helen Stuber. So, Mary Helen Stuber hung the boat for safe-keeping in the barn, and that’s where I found it.”

Hatten presented the canoe, its history and its deep ties during the first ‘Tuesday Night Talks’ lecture series at the Pony Express Museum, located at 914 Penn Street.