Sometimes You Really Luck Out!

Me at Tecumseh Historical
Society Museum

 For nearly 35 years, Jim and I have lived every summer about 10 miles from Tecumseh, Michigan (where lots of Jim’s ancestors are buried). I have visited Brookside Cemetery often where 14 of his direct ancestors are in their final resting place (from grandparents through great-great-great-grandparents) and spent hours in the History Room of the Tecumseh Public Library, but for whatever reason I never knew that there was a Tecumseh Historical Society with a Museum! Last week in my Facebook feed, I saw a posting about Memorial Day activities sponsored by the Society and it dawned on me that I should stop by. It is open once a week on Saturdays from 10:30-3pm. So, last Saturday I stopped in, not knowing what I would find, I was expecting to only spend about 30 minutes to an hour there. Well, 4 hours later I was smiling and so very excited by my finds and looking forward to going back! Let me give you a little perspective and background about Tecumseh and Jim’s ancestors before I share my finds!

Bi-centennial or Semiquincentennial?!

When I think of bicentennial, I think of 2nd grade and wearing a colonial outfit that my friend’s mother made for me (Thanks, Mrs. Wennerberg!), and this year as part of a DAR Meeting someone brought up that we need to start preparing for the 250th celebration of the Constitution. What? How is it possible that we’re already at 250 years when I swear it was just the bicentennial?! (I guess you now know how old I am.) Yep, 2026 the US will be celebrating its Semiquincentennial!

Michigan is a little younger, though, it wasn’t given its statehood until 1837, so we have a little while before even its bicentennial. In 1824, it was a territory and towns were popping up all over and Tecumseh was founded, when Musgrove Evans, a surveyor, arrived to the area. Tecumseh will be celebrating its Bicentennial anniversary this summer and I’m delighted to be here!

According to Clara Waldron’s One Hundred Years: A Country Town (1968) another man arrived that year with his family, an Abner Spofford, who traveled with livestock from Jefferson County, NY to Tecumseh. Note that the Erie Canal did not fully open until 1825, so they could not take it, and as long as the ice was cleared on Lake Erie they could take boats to Buffalo. For Abner, his route was to travel by land from Jefferson County along the southern shore of Lake Ontario to Buffalo. At Buffalo, they took  a ship across to Detroit. Since he had livestock, he herded them from Detroit to Tecumseh along the Sauk Trail. His wife and their 8 children made the same trip to Detroit, but they then boarded a schooner named the Firefly to Monroe. The last leg was a 29 mile journey from Monroe to Tecumseh that took them almost 2 full days with carriages and oxen with a stop in Macon. I can’t even imagine! Abner is Jim’s great-great-great-great-grandfather and lived 1778-1859.

Lenawee County

Dr. Joseph Howell

Tecumseh is in Lenawee County, which includes a few other important towns for my husband’s family, all within 7 miles of Tecumseh. They are Macon, Ridgeway, and Raisin Township. To these towns 5 important early settlers came between 1824 and 1837 and a “latecomer” in the late 1840’s. They were Abner Spofford (4th great-grandfather) in 1824, Dr. Joseph Howell (3rd great-grandfather) in 1831, James Wheeler (4th great-grandfather) in 1833, Anson Bennet Webster (3rd great-grandfather) in 1834, James L. Remington (3rd great-grandfather) in 1837 and Samuel Conklin (3rd great-grandfather) sometime between 1840 and 1850. You should know by now how important photographs are to me and I’m pleased to say that I have photos of 4 of these 6 men.

Samuel Conklin 

Why am I so lucky?

Well, as I was perusing the Memoirs of Lenawee County (1909) again, a book that I have read and known about for decades with a fresh view keeping in mind these various settlers. I found a few tidbits that were new. I also reviewed the Atlas from Lenawee County (1893), and found a few maps of homesteads. There was a 3rd resource I was provided and that was the Directories of Tecumseh from 1869. I knew that Dr. George Howell, son of Dr. Joseph Howell was a Dr. in Tecumseh, but it was fun to see his office information and also Samuel Conklin(g) now retired and living at the “s e cor Pearl and Pottawatamie st” and a map that shows where that was! Here’s a rendering from 1868 of the houses in Tecumseh.

"Scary Woman"

But the really lucky thing was that I went into the research room and found a binder (actually many) filled with cabinet cards and other photographs, some unlabeled and others labeled. It’s needles in haystacks, but once you find one needle you can’t help yourself from going back again and again. And sometimes it pays off, like today! I didn’t find photos for people I didn’t already have photos, but I did end up with numerous photos representing different times in people’s lives. I only need one photo to hang on our family tree wall, but having a variety of photos provides insight into people’s lives, one photo just doesn’t capture a life. (I’ve written about this before, see A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words)

Ella, Harriet, and Virginia

Harriet Spofford, 1897

The first new photo to me is this one with three women. The mother in the photo is Harriet Spofford Hoag Webster. She is the daughter of Abner Spofford who moved his family to Tecumseh with the original settlers in 1824 at the age of 8. She outlived 2 husbands (Milton Hoag & Anson Bennett Webster) and lived as a widow for over 30 years. My daughters are very delighted to have a new photo to put on the wall because the only photo I had of her they used to run by fast down the hall fearing the “scary woman”. That “scary” photo was a photo I had found as part of a collage of early settlers to Tecumseh in the Tecumseh Library. This photo shows Harriet with her two of her three children, probably about 1880. Harriet had 3 daughters, one with her first husband and two with her second. The eldest daughter died in 1874, so this is a complete family photo of her immediate family with daughters Eleanor (Ella) on the left and Virginia on the right. Eliza Virginia Webster was married at this time to Myron Henry Conklin. In the same album a few pages later is an older Harriet Spofford in July 1897, a year before she died. 

I couldn’t stop at just one binder, so I searched through another and was rewarded by what appears to be the engagement photos for Eliza Virginia Webster and Myron Henry Conklin when they were married in 1870. I love these photos for two reasons-the first is that while I have several wonderful photos of Myron and Eliza, they are all taken in their older years and I love seeing them as young newlyweds (See Close to Home for a beautiful family photo). And the second has less to do with the photo and more to do with who took the photo. 

Eliza Virginia Webster, 1870

Myron Henry Conklin, 1870

Back of Virginia, taken by
Cynthia Spofford Bissell

Famous Tecumseh Resident

Virginia’s photo was taken by her aunt (Harriet’s sister), Cynthia Webster Bissel Tilton. Cynthia was famous in Tecumseh for being the first white woman to be married in the town, when she wed Theodore Bissell in 1827! She was a celebrity in the town, so much was written about her and also by her. She appeared to be a force to be reckoned with. She went with her husband (Bissell) to Texas but didn’t enjoy the lifestyle so she left him and returned to Tecumseh and became a photographer! She owned her own studio and as you can see from the photo of Virginia touted her award winning photography prowess in 1869. She owned her own house and made her opinion known in the newspaper. If she had lived long enough to be suffragist, I’m positive she would have been.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to go to the Tecumseh Historical Society Museum but you better believe that I have learned that sometimes the treasures are right under our noses!