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!

Serendipity or Determination? The Cascading Photos of George

Dr. George Howell, Class of 1863
Enhanced by myHeritage

 My whole life “things” have worked out for me. I am a hard worker, goal oriented, and determined, but I sometimes wonder if I don’t live under a rainbow of serendipity. Instead of having a raincloud follow me, I tend to arrive when the rainbow appears and find a proverbial pot of gold! And it’s never been so true in my family history journey than the past two weeks!

It’s no secret that I love old photos, especially ones of our ancestors. I feel so fortunate to have as many as we do and have at least 1 photo of both Jim and my grandparents (collectively all 8), great-grandparents (collectively all 16), and great-great-grandparents (collectively 21 of possible 32). Earlier this summer I shared that I found a number of “new to me” photos about Jim’s ancestors I had photos of but a different point in their lives (See Sometimes you really luck out!), today this Blog is about Dr. George Howell (1836-1909) and a cascading number of photos I have seen and acquired in the past three weeks. Was it serendipity or determination?

Original Photo

Previously, my only photo of George

Prior to this summer, I had one version of a photo of Dr. George Howell, a portrait from the Lenawee County Biography (see Our Genealogy Angels). Over the last 3 weeks, I have acquired 5 more portrait photos from very different points of his life and numerous family group shots, which might not have happened if the order of events were different.

The first domino

After learning that George was instrumental in the Lenawee County Court House (see Connections at the Court House) and that he earned his MD from U of Michigan, I decided to go to the Bentley Library Archives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’ve been there before for my own family (see Always Check the Original), but there is so much more to their holdings. It was fun to find not only his original handwritten Thesis on Cholera Infantum manuscript, but also a Class of 1863 Photograph.

(These are over 160 years old!!) There were two versions of the photographs, one where his portrait was labeled and a second where he wasn’t identified. If the unlabeled version had been the only one to survive, I’m not sure I would have figured out which was George or even if he was present! (Call Number: 87253 Bimu C 46 2; Oversize Folder 3) (It is interesting to note that class photos like these were few and far between, in fact there is NOT a class photo for his brother who graduated the year before.)

Maybe you can see the resemblance, but I don’t think that I would have ever identified young George! I now had 2 portraits, young and old.

The Cascade

The next day I decided to go to the Lenawee County Museum, looking for images and records for my other project on Sand Lake. I didn’t find a whole lot, so I turned my attention to George and other ancestors from Lenawee county. There was a file on George Howell and in it was a fading pixelated copy of a family portrait scene and a distinguished gray George portrait. I definitely would have identified this George, but had never seen these photos before.

Two days after the Bentley and the next day after the County Museum, I was at the Tecumseh Museum to buy some tickets for a Bicentennial celebration and had time to chat with some other members and relook through the binders. I’m not sure if I missed a binder or now that I had seen young George’s image I was sensitized to it, but I found an unidentified tintype that looked like George! 

Equipped with a photo on my phone of young George, I compared them and was in awe that here is an image of George probably a year later for his wedding in 1864. If I had not had the Medical School photo, there is no way I would have identified this one now. Fascinatingly, it was with 4 other tintypes that I didn’t recognize but hoped to identify (I have since figured it out, a blog for another day!). My count had increased to 4 portraits and a hard to recognize family shot.

A Relative’s Collection

Jim and I became acquainted with one of his second cousins and her husband in 2016. They had several plastic tubs of photos and albums they were willing to bring to us to see. Her grandparents remained in Tecumseh through the 1960’s and her mother became the owner of all of the family photos and her husband is the family historian. Jim’s second cousin has since passed away but her husband is still actively searching and sharing the collection. I knew that he shared photos on Ancestry.com and also to the Tecumseh Library. I thought maybe he was the source of some of the other photos at the museums, so I reached out to ask if he was and if I could see the originals for better copies. I sent him the “new to me” photos and asked if he had seen them.

The young George photos were new to him and although he had provided a few photos to the Tecumseh Library, he had not provided any to either of the museums. He did have the original of the family shot and asked if I wanted to come over to his house to see the collection the next week. Of course!!

Spending nearly 5 hours with Rich Renaud and his collection of his wife’s family portraits, I took over 150 photos of his collection (not all George!) and among them collected four more family group photos and originals of another, and one more portrait and a fun little business card.

The cherry on top

After I left Rich’s that afternoon, he realized that there was one more photo he wanted to show me but had forgotten. He sent me a picture and asked if I knew who it was? 

Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that it was George Howell, probably a high school or Hillsdale College photo. A beautiful ambrotype in a case taken about 1858.

If I had not seen the 1863 identified photo, I would have never known it.

Serendipity or Determination? Maybe a little bit of both!

References and Compliments:

Thank you to Rich Renaud, Bentley Library Archives, Tecumseh Public Library, Tecumseh Historical Museum, and Lenawee County Historical Museum for maintaining and sharing their collections.

Connections at the Court House

 Last week, I was doing research on the owners of the cottages on Sand Lake. For background, my family has had a cottage on the west shore of Sand Lake in Lenawee County for over 60 years, but most of these cottages were built in the 1880’s by farmers and businessmen from Lenawee County. My family lives in 2 of the 13 cottages built on lease land from the Brighton-Marsh family. Since they are built on Lease Land the sale of the house (personal property) is not required to be registered with the county, so tracing their histories takes ingenuity and a lot of digging. I helped my dad in the 1990’s to search the tax assessment records and we figured out quite a bit, but we are still unsure about 4 cottages and whose names go with which cottage. Something sparked me to think about this now and I contacted the Lenawee County court house to ask if they might have different records. The Deputy Register of Deeds offered that it might be possible and welcomed me in.

The Court House

A few years back when I was doing different research in Lenawee County I was directed to the “new” County Court Building, a 1978 boxy uninspiring building, so that’s where I first went last week. It turns out that the old County Court House was recently refurbished and the Register of Deeds office is now housed on the first floor of this building. I was so happy because it is an absolutely beautiful 1885 Romanesque Revival building and was excited to have a reason to go in.

It is just as striking on the inside as it is the outside. I would love to work in this building with the vaulted ceilings, wood, plasterwork, and ceramic tile floors. I know that some people prefer the new austere, white, windows, and stainless steel look, but for me, I prefer the craftsmanship of the 1880s!

Register of Deeds Office

As for the Sand Lake research, the 4 hours didn’t really net much. Of the cottages that I searched, there were no records of sales, but I did find 4 lease agreements (which also don’t have to be registered) but for some reason these 4 were. They were from 1887 (one of the first, if not the first!), 1905, 1908, and 1943. They are interesting but the true value was finding a name in 1908, Nellie Palmer Wilcox, that was completely new to us. Turns out, she was the wife of a Austin Wilcox, but curiously the Lease is not tied to his cottage but another cottage previously owned by Miner Finch. (A mystery I am now investigating!!)

But since my husband’s family is from Lenawee County, I took some time to search for some records for them. I was able to find, in one easy place, the “Location of Lands Book” that had lists by section and township of each of the land sales from the federal government to pioneers. (You are not allowed to take photos while in the office, so I could only hand record the information.) I was able to find Joseph Howell (1830 & 1833), James Wheeler (1833), and Abner Spofford (1824 & 1832) land records, Jim’s g-g-g-grandfathers and g-g-g-g-grandfather. It also identifies where they were living at the time, such as “Seneca County, NY”.

More Searching

The Register of Deeds office may not have answered a whole lot of questions, but it did spark my curiosity about the Sand Lake Cottage owners and what connections there were among the owners. I have been spending the last week searching the family histories of all of the names that I do know and the connections are actually more like a web! I won’t bore you with the details here’s just one example Jonathon Howland (1833-1899) was the uncle to Lewis Cass Baker (1844-1917) through his sister Almeda Howland (1812-1897) and during the same years, the Howlands and LC Baker’s two different cottages on the shore! 

So, while I was searching the lives of these men, I came across a reference to one of those books of history and biographies I’ve written about before. (Illustrated history and biographical record of Lenawee County, Mich by Knapp, John I., & Bonner, R. I. (Richard Illenden) 1903. Adrian, MI.) I decided to search for some of Jim’s relatives, too, and came across the most interesting biography of his great-great-grandfather Dr. George Howell.

Back to the Court House

In addition to learning that his wife, Ann Amelia Remington, attended Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) in the 1860’s and that he attended Hillsdale College in the late 1850s before attending medical school at the University of Michigan, I learned that he played a significant role in the building of the Lenawee County Court House! Dr. Howell was elected (and re-elected) Supervisor of Macon and served on the Board of Supervisors in the 1880’s and was appointed to the committee on public buildings. The original court house had burned in 1852 and they were using Dean’s opera house. He offered the resolution to submit to the voters to raise the money ($50,000) to build a new court house on March 22, 1882. Without his resolution and associated politicking, we might not be enjoying this beautiful example of Romanesque Revival architecture and its Register of Deeds office! 

Lenawee County Court House, c. 1885

So I come full circle and back to the Court House!

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!

Close to Home

 Three Generations of Conklin Family in Tecumseh c. 1921
Back: Virginia Irene, Viva Amelia (Howell), Myron,
Eliza Virginia (Webster),  Gertrude (Howell), Viva Gretel (Conklin) Collins
Front: Georgianna, Stuart Erwin, Jack Webster,
Herbert Roy, and Ellsworth Collins (MyHeritage Enhanced)

 Jim and I laugh that we are never very far from where his ancestors have lived…and we didn’t know it before moving there! It started when we were first married and spent our summers at Sand Lake in Lenawee County, Michigan, just along M-50 from Tecumseh. Jim didn’t have the opportunity to know his maternal grandparents, as they both passed away before Jim was born and since he grew up on the west side of the state they didn’t visit the cemetery plots for them. 

Some Connections in MI

One day Jim was talking with his mother when she said, “Well, you know, your grandparents are buried not too far from you in Tecumseh.” Nope, he didn’t know. That kicked off my investigation of the Conklin family in Tecumseh which led to the Webster, Howell, Wheeler, Spofford, and Remington families all who settled in Lenawee County in the 1830’s and were prominent (mostly farming) families in Macon, Ridgeway, and Tecumseh. I recently found while visiting the Mid-West Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri, a wonderful collection of transcribed Plat Map books which identified the original land granted/purchased by each of Jim’s ancestors in the 1830s! Here’s an example from James L. Remington with a drawing of him I’ve shown before. I don’t think that I’ve shared the resource for finding the original Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office Records, so I’m sharing the US Department of the Interior BLM Land Patents search page.

Some Connections in PA

But that was over 30 years ago. We have now lived in central PA for over 20 years and we keep finding connections to Jim’s family here, too. One of our earliest discoveries was learning about Pealertown, Asbury, and Orangeville, where there was a church with stained glass windows in honor of Russel Ralph Pealer’s parents (the GAR member of the previous blog). You can see our kids who have been dragged along on this journey (and more cemeteries than they can count!)

Asbury Church in Orangeville, PA

Our daughters in front of the window dedicated
to their 4xgreat-grandparents!

Since I have become Jim’s family’s family historian too and we are the joyful recipients of boxes of photos and paperwork from both

John Harold Breyfogle &
Elizabeth Santee Homestead
Nescopeck, PA c. 1900
(MyHeritage AI Enhanced)

sides. About 12 years ago, we were given boxes of family things from Jim’s aunt. In it I came across a photo of Jacob William Breyfogle as a little boy. I knew by that time that the Breyfogle’s came from the Nescopeck, PA area (about 30 minutes from where we live now) and had a farm there (see photo of John Harold Breyfogle 1835-1910 and wife Elizabeth Santee 1842-1913), but the photo of little Jacob was taken at the McMahan & Irland photography studio in Danville (just across the river from where we live now!). What a funny coincidence!

Jacob William Breyfogle
c. 1871 (MyHeritage AI)

McMahan & Irland
Danville, PA

Traveling Back Home

Last week’s blog started with an investigation of the Gettysburg Glass matchstick holder that Russel Ralph Pealer must have picked up that Jim brought back from his parents house. As I have been continuing to look through the boxes of items, I came across something else a little closer to our home now!

When Russel Ralph Pealer traveled, he apparently kept his wife up to date with where he was through the US Mail. I found numerous letters on wonderful stationary of the hotels and locations where he visited. When I came across this envelope and letter, I was thrilled. 

On September 18, 1892, Jim’s great-great-grandfather stayed at the Neff House, which was a hotel in Sunbury, PA.  Unfortunately, this hotel no longer stands, it appears that it fell into disrepair in the 1980’s but it started its life as the Washington House in 1790 and renovated twice over the course of its life. (If you are familiar with Sunbury, it was at the corner of 2nd & Market across from the Court House--now where a Bank and Weis Market are.)

It’s not easy to read his penmanship, so I will transcribe a bit here:

“Dear Wife,

I am well and had a good night rest. I am going to Danville this morning-....” 

Danville?! How fun! He doesn’t say if he is visiting someone or what he is doing there, but his sister Matilda Pealer Price is living in Danville at the time and his father is still alive although appears to be living in Fishing Creek.

Jim and I were both born and raised in Michigan and although we’ve lived in PA for more than 20 years, we still consider ourselves Michiganders…but it appears Jim’s ancestors and all of their connections (and belongings) are finding their way closer to home and taking us with them.