Letter from Norton: GAR emerges from mist

Norton Bretz saw the Mystery flag post and began digging through his copious files of Eastport and Pearl family history.  He writes:

One of the photos from the Pearl collection is of the members of the Eastport GAR post taken, I think in front of the Grange Hall, now Dennis Inch’s house at the head of the DNR access road. It is attached.

The names of the GAR members are on the back of the photo and are as follows:

187. MAB Eastport veterans of Civil War (GAR) “, Sc. c. 1900
First Row: Wm. Cook, John Jackson , Geo. Glasier, Dr. Hill, R.R. Wilkinson, John McEwan, James Arnold, S.B. Anway, Wm Burns, Chas Hults, Elisha Parker, Norm Larabee, Oscar Whitney, John McPherson, Luther O. Evans, Andrew Cook.
Bottom Row: Sage, J.R. Childs, Henry H. Chamberlin, Dan Momson, Hiram Blakely, A.J. Drake, Dr. Serene Chamberlin, Jack Waffle, Ned Skinner, John Keefe, Overhultser (?)

Perhaps oddly, Geo. Martin is not one of the members of the group. He may be someone who was killed in the Civil War, a friend or relative of someone in the EP post.

In my partly written History of Eastport I have the following:

There was a grange and a Post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) with twenty members. A photo with 27 members was taken near the Grange Hall in about 1900. The George Martin Post #227 mustered in 1884 by Major E.H. Green and Adjutant Frank Shaubut. Original members were D.W. Sage, W.H. Barnes, A.J. Drake, D. Blakely, J. McPherson, S.B. Anway, H. Blakely, J.R. Childs, L. Kinyon, W. Cook, and L.R. Rogers. These war veterans were referred to by Eastport residents as “vets”.

I don’t know where I got this information.  The question for me is how can we get a copy of the George Martin Post Desciptive Book from the SVC?

[Note from Gerry: I found references to a Judge George Martin, who presided at the first session of the circuit court for the newly-organized county of Grand Traverse in 1853 (A History of the Grand Traverse Region). He became the first Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court when it was reorganized in 1857, keeping the job until his death in 1867 (Michigan Supreme Court Historical Reference Guide, p. 47). He was a widely respected jurist, and an advocate of civil rights. See People v. Dean – An early suffrage case in Michigan Supreme Court History, Society Update, Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society, Spring 2001.  Alternatively, he was a lazy jurist and an alcoholic. See Michigan Bar Journal, December 2008, The Pond and Maher Cases: Crime and Democracy on the Frontier.  Isn’t history fun?  I’m going to lunch with the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in Traverse City on Saturday.  I’ll let you know what I find out.]