R. G. Peters, Michigan Lumber and Salt Baron.

As taken from an article about a receivership notice in the Niles Daily Star, October 17. 1890

R.G. Peters has been forced to make an assignment to A.M. Henry of Detroit. Mr. Peters was a heavy dealer in lumber and salt and was interested in a score of enterprises. The failure is the largest financial crash in Michigan for many years. The assignment covers millions of dollars' worth of property and will be far reaching in its effects.

Meigs & Co., lumbermen, and Dunham & Co. of Grand Rapids and the Fifth National Bank of the same city are all interested in the collapse. A bill of sale of a half interest in the wholesale firm of Lemon  & Peters of Grand Rapids, was filed Thursday morning by R.G. Peters in favor of G.M. Davison, of Detroit. The sale calls for $40,000, and was given to protect the Detroit National Bank and General Alger. No schedule of assets or liabilities has been filed in Manistee as yet. From outside but reliable sources, it is learned that the liabilities will be fully $3,000,000.

The failure is the biggest that has occurred in the Northwest for some years. The plant here has made enormous profits, but the outside ventures as a rule have been disastrous, especially the Southern ventures, which absorbed an enormous amount of capital without much returns. R.G. Peters owns 78,000 of the 80,000 shares of the R.G. Peters Salt and Lumber Company, which is capitalized at $2,000,000 and whose last annual report showed real and personal property of $2.5 million and credits of $142,524 while the debts reached $510,573.

Besides being president of the Peters Salt & Lumber Company of Manistee, Mr. Peters is a member of the firm of Dunham, Peters & Co. of Chase and Grand Rapids. He owns a 2/5 interest in the Stronach Lumber Company of Manistee, a half interest in the firm of Butters, Peters & Company of Ludington, a leading interest in the lumber firm of Peters & Morrison, which controls 15,000 acres of land at Menominee and 150,000 acres of land in various states. He is also president of the Manistee National Bank and a director of the Fifth National Bank of Grand Rapids. He also owns personally 100,000 acres of timber lands in Alabama and the Carolinas.

Friends of Mr. Peters say that the R.G. Peters Salt & Lumber Company's assets will care for the liabilities. Mr. Peters' individual liabilities are probably about $2.5 million and his assets are nominally considerable more. The Interior Lumber Company will not be affected. Bickford, Knox & Co. of Chicago are on a large amount of Peters' paper; also James Kneeland of Milwaukee, for about $150,000. T.R. Lyon & Co. of Ludington is a very large creditor but amply secured. Peters & Morrison of Menominee will probably be compelled to assign, as they are on a large amount of Peters' paper.

The assignment was caused by Mr. Peters being obliged to put up such large amounts of capital for his several ventures away from here, and which have not paid. The Manistee National Bank, of which he is president, anticipating that some might connect his failure with the bank, kept open doors until 6 o'clock p.m. to pay any depositors which wished their money. A few drew their money. The bank loses nothing. Mr. Peters is a public-spirited and generous man and has the sympathy of all in his misfortune.

Peters was a salt and lumber dealer of Michigan and his company was a rival of the great concerns of Fred Weyerhaeuser of Rock Island, and Knapp Stout & Company doing business in Menominee, Dubuque and St. Louis. The firm that failed had a large plant at Manistee where it turned out about 200,000 feet of lumber a day and from 50 to 60 million feet annually. At East Lake it had another immense plant. The sawlock had a daily capacity of 225,000 feet of pine, hemlock and cedar lumber. Here the firm had great salt-works and owned a shingle mill, a logging railroad and a general store. At Ludington, Peters was a member of Butler, Peters & Co. which owned a salt-mill and salt works. This firm is not involved in the failure.

Peters was a man of action in every way. He owned great quantiles of timber lands in Michigan and Wisconsin. He had a large plant at Brewton, AL and another at Cypress NC. He was the possessor of a reputed valuable silver mine at Fort Arthur, Canada on which he is said to have made $250,000. He attempted to sell it to ex-Governor Alger but never could consummate the sale.

He was proprietor of a railroad between Manistee and Luther, a distance of forty miles. His firm was a member of the Michigan Salt Association, which embraced all the important producers in the State, through organization all the salt productions are marketed.

GRAND RAPIDS, October 17. Arthur Meigs & Co., in which R.G. Peters is the company, went to the wall Thursday night, filing mortgages aggregating $126,000.

[NDS-1890-1017]