Looking Back at St. Clair Shores is a series of historical articles featured most months in the St. Clair Shores Sentinel newspaper. Unless noted otherwise, the photographs used are part of the St. Clair Shores Historical Commision's Photograph Collection. These photographs, along with many others, are available to view through the Digital Media Archive.

Previous articles can be found by clicking on the year.

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During the 1940s the children in the village of St. Clair Shores enjoyed Santa’s arrival in a horse-drawn sleigh driven by Roy Kaul. Icy roads, dark starless nights and bitter cold weather never stopped Santa from greeting the residents and cheering them up during hard times. According to the 1940 U.S. Census, Roy Kaul was born in Mount Clemens on October 20, 1896.  He was a mortician in the funeral business. At that time, he lived with his wife Blanche and daughter Donna on Jefferson Avenue.

The 1927 Nellis Newspapers Pageant of Progress edition described Roy Kaul as a veteran of the Great War, who served a year with the famous Michigan Polar Bear unit in Russia. After the Great Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, these troops were sent to the Arctic Circle near the Russian border and fought an unsuccessful attempt to unseat their new Communist government.

In 1927 Roy Kaul was the treasurer of Lake Township and was associated with the Harry P. Pequignot Company in the undertaking business. Later the family owned the Kaul Funeral Home on Jefferson Avenue. He was a member of the St. Clair Shores Goodfellows, that was founded in December, 1926.

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John and Ernestine Green are seated with their children Walter and Mary in the yard of their farmhouse on its original site around 1898. Sons William and Charles are standing on the left of the image. The house was built by her parents, John and Mary Selinsky, German immigrants who came to Erin Township in 1871 from Chaliszka near the Polish-German border. It was a one and a half story salt-box style house built of logs and covered with clapboard.

Daughter Ernestine and her husband John Green lived in the house after their marriage in 1874. In March, 1888 they paid her parents $3,000 for the original property plus 20 acres which the Selinsky family had purchased in 1876. John and Ernestine Green raised five boys and one girl, born between 1875 and 1892, in this farmhouse. Ernestine lived there until her death in 1937. The house was moved to its new site behind the St. Clair Shores Public Library on Eleven Mile and Jefferson Avenue in 1975 and has been restored to the time period of the early 1900s. You may visit the Selinsky-Green Farmhouse Museum on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM during regular winter hours of operation.

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In the late 1890s, the area of Macomb County that we now call St. Clair Shores was named Erin. It was an agricultural community with long narrow ribbon farms extending from Lake St. Clair, summer cottages, and one-room schools. The Frank Trombly (Francis Trombley) farm was located near the northern border of Erin on the old Private Claim No.199, according to the 1895 Standard Atlas of Macomb County. Their neighbors were the William Meldrum and August Prell families. There are various spellings of the surname on different documents.

The photograph has been dated with the help of the 1900 U.S. Census and notes on the image. From left to right are: Nettie (age 16), Pauline (age 48), Albert (age 12) and William Trombly (age 22.) The woman with the baby in the carriage is tentatively identified as Mrs. Prell and her child. August Prell owned property on Private Claim 556 near Masonic Boulevard and Jefferson.