Oh, what a find!

I am volunteering again this summer at the Tecumseh Historical Society & Museum, helping to organize and catalogue their vertical files. Last week, I came across a set of photos donated in 2006 by a woman whose aunt was a subject of some of the photos with the family she married into. This family was the Rosacrans family from Tecumseh whose family owned the Rosacrans & Sons dry goods store for 95 years, closing in the 1960’s.

A few of the photos were particularly interesting because she claimed that they were taken in 1922-24 at their cottage on Sand Lake! This is the lake that I have spent every summer of my life. I have spent hundreds of hours researching many of the people and cottages around the lake with my father and was curious where this cottage was.

After a week of various investigations…searching deeds in the court house and tax rolls at the Lenawee County Historical Museum, looking for people/photos at the Tecumseh Library, watching the 1980’s Oral History of Ned Rosacrans (a young boy in the photos), and posting the photos to two different historical facebook pages, I had nothing!

I learned a lot about the Fred Rosacrans family, their kids, and grandchildren. I even learned that they lived (and Ned grew up) in a house at 207 N. Union St, which was next door to my husband’s family! (A house that my husband’s great-great-great-grandmother, Harriet Spofford Webster built in 1850 and 4 generations of his family lived in for almost 100 years! In the 1920’s Jim’s great-great grandmother Eliza Virginia Webster would have still lived in the house, although her husband Myron Conklin died in 1922 after over 50 years of marriage.)

                                                                                            Fred Rosacrans House, 207 N. Union St.

Webster-Conklin House, 211 N. Union St. c. 1980s

Webster-Conklin House, 211 N. Union St. c. 2023

There was one last place I learned about to look…it turns out that there were home movies that Fred Rosacrans made. So yesterday at the Tecumseh District Library, I watched the Fred Rosacrans home movies that he took in 1928 and 1929. It was an amazing silent film filled with every day and special occasions. There were images of boys ice skating on a local pond, playing baseball, men bailing hay, Memorial Day parades, GAR gatherings…and then there it was!

Unexpected and so surprising... nothing about Sand Lake...instead there was a home movie of Eliza Virginia “Jenny” Webster in 1928 (Jim’s great-great-grandmother)! I have seen plenty of photos of her and in fact last year I found a few more (check out blog Sometimes you really luck out!) but I never imagined I would ever see a video of her! This is NOT AI or just animating a photo, this was really truly Jenny sitting on her front steps welcoming (I think her granddaughter) Georgianna Conklin. I wish I could hear her voice, but this is an absolutely amazing find, so I will take it!

This is a reminder to me to keep my eyes open, you never know when you will come across something completely unexpected and totally wonderful!