Project Scroll Research Note 2026-46: Two buildings, two leases: the county's 99-year lease of the Pioneer Log Cabin grounds (1972) and Michigan State University's offer of the Newton House to the Cass County Pioneer Historical Society

The Cass County Historical Society's two best-known sites, the Pioneer Log Cabin at Cassopolis and the Newton House near Decatur, have long stood on land the Society did not own. Two newspaper items show how each came under its care. In June 1972 the St. Joseph Herald-Press reported that the Cass County commissioners had taken a 99-year lease on the cabin from the Village of Cassopolis at $1 a year, "rectifying an apparent oversight of many years": when the Cass County Pioneer and Historical association asked to be covered by the county's liability insurance, "a check revealed the village retained title to the land." The Society's own certificates of 1924 had spoken of a "Lease Deed" from the village. An undated South Bend Tribune article, "Offered as Cass Museum," kept in a Decatur scrapbook, reports that Michigan State University had offered the resident forester's house at its Russ Forest, the George Newton House, "to the Cass County Pioneer Historical Society for a museum," on what the forester expected would be "a five-year lease," and that "if someone does not take it, I understand the university plans to raze it." Michigan State's trustees recorded in June 2026 that the university has leased the property to the Society since January 1980 at a nominal rate of $1.00 a year. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-46, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-46/.