Taken from the 2005 MIPCA History Book, Volume 3.
(UPDATED by Penny Chisholm 4/2026)

THE CHISHOLM / SISSON COTTAGE (# 46) “SKY HIGH’

Shareholders have included:

1922 Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Bowman
1944 Mr. and Mrs. Ben DeVoe
1955 Holmes and Beatrice Boynton
2001 Estate of Beatrice Boynton
2006 Sallie (Penny) Chisholm and Don Sisson

The Chisholm cottage, originally the Bowman cottage, is about the most predominating cottage on the Point as viewed from the lake or Presque Isle. Sitting up on its rocky pinnacle it is immediately noticed from a distance. Its outline in the sky materially adds to the glory of the setting sun.

Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Bowman had been enthusiastic campers before coming to Marquette. They had been accustomed to camping along the Atlantic Ocean either in Maine or Massachusetts. The first summer they were here they rented Miss Spalding’s (Thomas) cottage. They were enthusiastic over the beauty of the Point and liked the folks who owned cottages there.

In the summer of 1922, they decided to become stockholders of the Association and immediately began plans for a cottage. They designed it after a cottage they had rented at Brant Rock, Massachusetts several years before. Three carpenters were hired to handle the basic construction Job but much of the interior finishing was done by Dr. Bowman personally.

The exterior of the cottage had not been changed since it was first constructed, but in 1937 new windows and a new hardwood floor were installed by Mr. A. Bussiere of Marquette.

Dr. Bowman will never forget the night of the forest fire back of the Spalding and Swan cottages. He reports that Harry Lee aroused a goodly number of the members of the Rotary Club who came out with picks and shovels after midnight and fought fire until daylight. On this occasion Ernest Pearce got wet in dipping water from the lake with pails and it resulted in his developing a heavy cold.

The Bowmans always took a great deal of pride in their cottage and often entertained students and friends. Since Dr. Bowman’s retirement as Professor of English Literature at Northern State Teachers College, he spent a great deal of time at his cottage. He now spends his entire time writing. Many of his books have received wide recognition. (Dr. Bowman sold his MIP stock in 1944 and moved to St. Petersburg, Florida where he died in 1962.)

Mr. and Mrs. Roy A. Young and family spent several summer vacations at the Bowman cottage while Mr. Young was Governor of the Federal Reserve Board at Washington, D. C. Mr. Young was born and raised in Marquette and received his early banking training in the First National Bank of Marquette.

In July 1944 the Bowman stock was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Ben H. DeVoe. Ben died in the spring of 1954 and his stock was transferred to Holmes and Beatrice Boynton in October 1955.

The DeVoes installed running water in 1951 and had plans for a septic tank but it was never built. True Pointers, the DeVoe children are back for an inspection trip each year and spend part of their summers at the family house on Island Beach.

Between 1956 and 1960 the Boyntons completely rebuilt the cottage and except for the plumbing the work was done entirely by the owners with great assistance from students and staff of Northern Michigan University who hauled 25 tons of materials to the top of the Point by packsack or wheelbarrow. Seven or eight tons of gravel were carried just for the septic tank field.

On the main floor there was a large (20 x 30) living room in raked redwood, kitchen, toilet and screened-in porch. Above there was other large (20 x 20) room finished in pine. The living room plate glass windows took advantage of the unsurpassed vie Lake Superior to the east, the north, and the west. An outdoor shower was added.

In June 1965, both Holmes and Bea resigned their positions Northern Michigan University and joined the mathematics department of Grand Valley State College (now University) in Allen Mich. They opted for early retirements in June 1967 and moved to Bea’s family home in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Bea intended to be a full-time homemaker and Holmes to devote more time to fly-fishing.

Holmes’ and Bea’s last summer together at the Point was in 1968. In December 1970 Holmes died of a heart attack.

In the summer of 1974, Bea had the camp re-roofed and the downstairs hardwood floors refinished. She drove down from Vancouver every year from 1974 to 1984, her last summer at the Point.

In 1988, she was admitted to the Icelandic Care Home in Vancouver. She died in 2001, just two months short of her 92nd birthday.

In their heyday in the 1950s, Holmes and Bea gave elaborate summer cocktail parties at their camp with its spectacular view of Sugar Loaf Mountain in the west, Partridge Island to the north, and Presque Isle on the east. While Pointers arrived in hiking boots, their guests from town would climb the steep trail in tennis shoes and then change into their high-heeled party shoes.

Harold E. O. Gislason, Mrs. Boynton’s nephew, inherited this site upon her death but spent very little time there. In 2006 he sold the camp to Penny Chisholm, an oceanographer at MIT, and her husband Don Sisson of Watertown, MA. Penny had grown up in Marquette and spent many summers visiting friends at the Point before her family moved away from Marquette in 1965. A good friend of the Sponberg family, she had been advised by Grace Sponberg to contact Gislason and get her name on a list should the camp ever come up for sale. Many years later, she got an email from Gislason saying the Boynton Camp was up for sale. She jumped on the chance.

After a few summers dealing with the carpenter ants and lack of air circulation (summers have gotten hotter since the picture windows were installed!) Penny and Don, a general contractor, decided it needed a facelift. Recruiting his brother Scott, a builder on Cape Cod, and Peter King, an architect friend from NYC, he drew up plans that would help the camp “breathe” and provide outdoor space. They turned the kitchen into a guestroom, moved the existing kitchen to the site of the outdoor porch on the SW side, and attached large screened in porches on the North and NE sides of the camp. The rather extensive renovations, executed by Fred Baij, were only possible because Phil Pearce and his fleet of strong young men hauled all the supplies up the path.

Penny and Don are very proud that the camp is featured on Peter’s web site as an “Upper Peninsula Camp” alongside Cape Cod Mansions he has designed. He claims that the picture of the porch with its Penobscot Bay Swing gets more hits than any other image on his site.

Even though the camp as a septic system, remnants of the old outhouse down the path on the SE side of the camp inspired Don to rebuild it one summer, while it was still grandfathered. It now stands proudly as a shed, deemed by Penny to be too beautiful to put holes in. May we never need it.

Sadly, Don now lives with Alzheimer’s disease and can no longer make the journey to Camp. Penny still visits every summer for brief periods, and Elizabeth Pearce, daughter of Doug and Jo Pearce of Camp Gwamp, has enjoyed a few weeks there in recent years. Camps need company.