…Holland and Springfield Township Recollections
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of stories on mayors of the Village of Holland. Holland-Springfield-Spencer Historical Society president Karla Miller submitted this story as part of the village’s centennial celebration this year.
Each month, the column will feature one of a dozen mayors the village has had over the past 100 years. This month’s story is about Mabel Hovey.
Holland celebrates 100 years of incorporation in 2023, and in that time, there have been 12 mayors.
The very first mayor was female, and her name was Mabel Ellen Hovey.
Mabel was born October 8, 1879 in a house on Chicago Pike (Airport Highway) just west of Albon Road to George Hovey of Lorain County and Addelaide Bamsey of Lucas County.
Mabel attended the first Holland High School and was one of its first graduates.
She went on to become a school teacher in Holland and Lucas County, retiring after teaching for 35 years. Records show her teaching at Brandsville School in 1914, and in 1916, she was principal at Haughton School.
On August 3, 1918, her father was struck by a taxi cab in Toledo and killed. The family had just the week before paid off the indebtedness for the Holland Methodist Church on Columbus Street in Holland.
When Holland was incorporated in 1923, Mabel was elected to the mayor’s office, serving one term. After seeing the town through the difficult first years as a municipality, she declined to run for a second term.
She was a past president and active member of the Holland High School alumni and also helped establish the Strawberry Festival.
During World War II, though confined to a wheelchair in her Maumee Street Home in Holland, she compiled a list of servicemen and women in the township, and organized a group to erect an honor board bearing the names of those in the village.
The honor board became a reality and was built on land across from Lormer’s Hardware on Front Street. After her death on September 21, 1946, the hardware store took charge of the board.
A constant worker in church activities, Mabel was active in the establishment of the Methodist Church in the village, and the church tower bell was presented in memory of her father by her brother- in-law William Stollberg.
Before the days of Lucas County bookmobiles, she and her mother donated their time and use of a room in their home to provide library services for villagers on certain days of the week.
Children and adults paid regular visits to the Hovey home at Maumee and Railroad streets to obtain books.
Her mother died April 20, 1939. Six years later, Mabel, 68, died on a Saturday evening in a rest home where she had lived for 10 weeks. She is buried at Springfield Township Cemetery with her family.
