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Cadillac Footliters record Historical Drama By MIKE NORTON staff writer Record-Eagle Traverse City, Michigan EMPIRE -- David Kann is from Chicago, and that's where he spent a good deal of his career as an industrial and exhibition designer. But when he moved to northern Michigan in 2000, it was the drama and adventure of turn-of-the-century life in the North Woods that captured his imagination. Within a matter of months, he wove the stories of several real-life characters into a historical drama that illustrates the region's agrarian frontier to industrial-age resort, and now he's working to bring it to the stage, to radio and to the record store. Kann's play ' The Cherry Buggy Whip, ' tells the story of three true-to-life characters in the history of the Thompsonville, Mich., area: August Ziesing, a Chicago civil engineer who made his fortune designing railroad bridges and spent summers at his 760-acre Thompsonville farm, Thornhill Orchards; Ella Diamond, owner of the Diamond House Hotel; and Adolph Kann, of Wirth-Hammel & Company based in Milwaukee whose operations were the nations' largest supplier of horses and mules in the U. S. for the lumbering industry. According to Steve Daily, Curator Research Collections - Milwaukee County Historical Society: Wirth-Hammels' operations at 197 Broadway in Milwaukee were considered as the finest in the nation. Branch stables were also maintained in Iron Mountain, Mich., Manistee, Mich.,( Adolph Kanns' Operation); Ludington, Mich., Eau Claire, Wisc., and Valley City & Wahpeton, North Dakota. In 1891 the company handled 2,500 head of horses and mules. For further information on THE CHERRY BUGGY WHIP contact: Dave Kann at CherryBuggyWhip1@AOL.COM (Continued see next post).