| Central Office Chair The operator who ran the telephone switchboard for many years before automatic telephone service was installed in Michigamme sat in this chair. It was sat in by some notable people, including Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and Fred Miller, owner of the Miller Brewing Company in Milwaukee. They would come to the Kergan House to avoid the necessity of using less reliable rural phone circuits outside the village. The switchboard was installed in a front room of the Kergan House, a boarding house, which stood at the northwest corner of Gaylord and Main street. The operator was Agnes Kergan. Small town phone boards were simple operations with the entire system contained in a small table and a back extending chest high against the back wall. In front of the seated operator against the wall were a series of brass-rimmed holes that would accept phone jacks or plugs. Each hole had a metal plate just below it. On the horizontal surface of the table were two rows of plugs that stretched from left to right across the board. Each plug could be lifted from its position and with the attached extention cord allow the plug to be inserted into any of the holes on the backwall of the board. When a caller picked up his or her telephone, a buzzer sounded in the switchboard and the metal plate (held in place magnetically) that identified that caller's number fell into its open position, indicating that someone wished to make a call. The operator would answer the buzzer by inserting any one of the electric cord plugs into the caller's connecting hole (indicated by the dropped metal plate) and acknowledging the connection by saying "Hello, or Number please," or somesuch phrase. "Mucks," the caller might say. Or, "Paquettes," Never a number; just a name. Agnes knew the numbers for most of her customers in the community, so she would insert the "sister" plug from the row of plugs into the hole in the switchboard that was assinged by number to Mucks or Paquettes. Then, she would give a few turns on a crank on the board to ring that number and summon someone to the phone. If a number was unfamiliar to the operator, he or she could quickly thumb through the small phone directory that listed the Michigamme numbers and find the one needed to complete the call. Agnes Kergan did not sit at the switchboard waiting for calls; there simply weren't that many on the average day. Summoned by the buzzer, she would put aside some other chore---cleaning, table setting and so forth---and walk to the switchboard, sit in this chair and complete the call. Local phone service came to Michigamme in ( ? ). The switchboard operation was outmoded when direct dial service came to the village in 1940. This chair was donated to the Historical Society by the Neil MacKay family of White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Neil's mother was Edna Schwendeman, whose mother, Mary, managed the Kergan House for years after her husband, William (Will), was killed in a railroad accident in Minnesota. (Mrs. Schwendeman's family operated the Michigamme House, a competitor to the Kergan House, at that time.) |