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,…
Browsing Tag
writing
-
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…