The History of Maggie Lakes

In Memory of John Stowell Sammond December 27, 1928 to January 31, 2006 The Maggie Lakes Owners Association dedicates this page of our web site to John Sammond, the previous owner of Maggie Lakes. After his years of enjoying and preserving Maggie Lakes, it was his love of the land that led him to pass on the property to the next generation of owners as a development that respects the beauty of the land and water. The story of Maggie Lakes in his words: History of Maggie Lakes Rudolph Vogel, (of the Milwaukee Tanning family Vogels) was an investment banker in Chicago. He was married to Marjorie Niedringhaus, who was a descendant of the Busch family of Anheuser Busch. In 1948, or shortly before that, Mr. Vogel was diagnosed with a heart ailment, and his doctor told him to "go fishing". Marjorie had her agent acquire 1800 acres in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on which they planned to build a fishing cottage so he could obey doctor's orders. They hired a Lake Forest architect and a Michigan landscape architect and turned them loose. The architect created a house which had been a contemporary ranch. It was beautifully designed for the best building site on the entire 1800 acres, as the home provides six separate lake views in three directions. The home has five bedrooms and five baths, the master suite containing his and hers dressing rooms and baths. There are three fireplaces: one in the living room, one in the master bedroom, and one in the patio area. The north end included a wonderful screen porch, and the south end was completed with a working greenhouse. The materials used were of the very best. The exterior walls were made of stone which was shipped on railroad cars from Tennessee on the rail line that then went to Pentoga. The guest book indicates that the Vogels used the property all year around, and it appears they had a full time servant who lived there. The Vogels and their friends would travel from Chicago by overnight Pullman and the train would stop for them in Pentoga where their resident servant would pick them up. Subsequently they built a two bedroom apartment complete with kitchen for a caretaker couple. The caretaker's cottage is over the garage with a lovely view straight down Big Maggie Lake. Mrs. Vogel ran the dairy farm on West Maggie Lake as an absentee owner until 1968. Ted Sammond, my son, worked the farm from 1977 to 2000 and still resides in the remodeled farm house. In 1968 Marjorie Vogel passed away and the property was in her estate. I learned of the property through bar room chatter in Dunbar, Wisconsin, where I was fishing at the Coleman Lake Club in the spring of 1969. I located Mr. Vogel and contacted him by phone, and Mr. Vogel made arrangements for his caretaker to show me the property. I was awestruck by its beauty. Mr. Vogel had remarried and spent his winters in Delray Beach, Florida. His new wife saw the property once and chose not to live there. I met with him in Delray Beach and struck a verbal deal. I could not afford to buy the property all by myself, so I enlisted three of my friends as partners and together we purchased the property. The same partnership owned the property until I dissolved the partnership in the 1990s. In the interim, my three partners sold their interests to me. I subsequently sold acreage containing two small lakes. Dam Lake and Mud Lake, which are north of Maggie Lakes. In addition, I paid normal real estate taxes on this property since 1969, rather than put it in Forest Crop status where taxes would have been reduced, but where the general public would have had free access to the land for hunting and fishing. In 1998, I was approached by an agent who was looking for land for Secluded Land Company. Subsequently, after negotiation, I agreed to sell my remaining lake frontage to Secluded Land Company. In doing so, I negotiated minimum lot sizes and the protective rules and covenants that appear in your deeds. The Maggie Lakes project has succeeded beyond my expectations. I am impressed with the quality of the homes that are being built and the environmentally sound attitude of the new owners.