Relative Something

By simply driving south on the gravel road winding along Isabelle Creek, I felt transported to the time my ancestors lived there in the second half of the 19th century. We were on our way to the Pierce County Historical Association.

Our visit to their office in Bay City was a treasure. The old log cabin they have preserved is from near the community of Esdaile where the Sleeper mill was located. Standing in that structure made it even easier to imagine we were no longer in the year 2024.

Our conversations with volunteers covered multiple subjects, including how quickly things changed when the railroad arrived. I learned how to interpret the symbols for structures on old property maps: round = log; square = frame; triangle = brick.

Something I didn’t anticipate was a tip that old newspaper information is available from the Library of Congress online through their Chronicling America site where it is possible to search historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963.

I took a stab at “S. W. Hays” in Wisconsin between 1855-1895 and found this morsel in The River Falls Journal:

Now, this is particularly cool because, in addition to my ancestor Stephen Hays, it includes mention of my 2nd-great grandfather Charles Church and refers to “C. Betcher” who owned the lumber business Stephen (S.W. Hays) worked for. The only family missing is someone from the Sleeper clan. That’s okay though because when I searched for Joseph Sleeper there are a large number of pertinent results.

In fact, I discovered there was a summons published in the Prescott Journal about a complaint between Joseph and his wife, Abagail:

Spring is the wrong time of year for me to be discovering a new resource for losing hours on end searching old newspapers for the names of my ancestors. There are acres of grass that need mowing outside!

I hope today will be a little dryer out there than it was yesterday.

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