My parents died two years ago within a month of one another. I didn’t realize the grounding their physical presence gave me until they were gone. They were my connection to childhood,…
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Lumberjacks were lousy with bedbugs and lice. Common knowledge in the 1880’s was to avoid the hemlock tree. Lumberjacks thought this slow-growing, long-lived evergreen that lent elegance to the landscape brought blood-sucking…
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Consume 9000 calories a day? Lumberjacks did. My grandfather, Wilhelm F. Hartman, cooked meals for Michigan’s lumberjacks from 1886 until well into the 1920’s. When this experienced woodsman made breakfast for his…
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Lumberjacks at one time in Michigan’s history were as common in beer joints as millennial men are today. The ‘jacks of a hundred years ago share a similar language with men today…
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My great grandmother sailed to America on this ship. The North German Lloyd Steamship Line’s Werra I left the Port of Bremen in Germany on October 12, 1882 on her maiden voyage.…
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Last October I walked through Woodmere Cemetery near Standish snapping photos of grave markers, looking for my great grandmother’s stone. I tramped along the track that looped through the grounds and found…
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This handsome hunk is my great-grandfather, Fred Hartman, circa 1885. I found his photo in the genealogical archives of the library in Alpena, Michigan. I started my search in Alpena because of…
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I never met my great grandmother, Wilhelmina Bublitz Hartman. She’s somewhere here in this old, unlabeled photo. I understand from family stories that she was a great beauty. You’re probably wondering how…
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Meet my grandfather, Wilhelm F. Hartman, oldest son of Frederick and Wilhelmina Hartman. He left the Port of Bremen in Germany in October of 1882 with his mother and two brothers, and…
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The 63rd Annual Jewish Book Fair is being held November 5-16 at the JCC in W. Bloomfield, MI…and I have been invited to speak about my new book, The Atomic Sailor. The…