Fiacré's spade: Quick trip

For a fun little getaway over spring break, Jane and I finally took the trip we’ve been talking about ever since she got hooked on genealogy. Her folks got to Illinois by way of southwestern Michigan. My interest was in visiting the places where I spent my first 8 years in Elkhart and Bristol, Indiana. My memories are vague and patchy (e.g., I recall quite vividly sitting on the school bus and wondering when my legs would be long enough to touch the floor, but remember next to nothing about where my grandparents lived), and I wanted to go back to connect some dots in my mind.

We cruised Main Street in Elkhart to see if I would recognize any landmarks. We discovered that Elkhart is a big railroad town. We got caught by long trains on the southbound and northbound trips. Nothing seemed particularly familiar in the downtown area. It looked pretty much like any other small Midwestern town, now an assortment of old brick buildings and shiny new ones. I did remember the McDonald’s by the river. It’s all been rebuilt, of course. It looked much different when it first opened in the early 60’s. My, how excited we were to have one of the new-fangled fast-food restaurants that served hamburgers for 5¢!

Jane, being a lady of leisure since her retirement, did some research for me. She found the graves of my grandparents, aunt, and uncle at the Rice Cemetery in Elkhart. A very nice lady in the cemetery office helped me locate the graves on a map. I didn’t immediately realize that when we looked at the map on the table, it was upside down relative to the real world. After some frustration and wandering around in the cold wind, I managed to locate the markers. How does one pose by a grave? A big smile seemed inappropriate, so here I am looking somber. Note map clutched tightly in my left hand.

By my grandparents' graves

We found the old brick church where my dad has his parish. A sign outside said, “Heritage Church.” I wasn’t sure what that meant at first. Had another congregation taken it over? Eventually, we noticed that there was a new HUGE church kitty-corner from the small one. Judging by the windows, the “heritage church” is primarily used for storage now.

Zion Lutheran "Heritage" Church

The house where we lived is still down the road a bit, although all of the surrounding area is now taken up by sprawling housing developments. It was hard for me to believe how tiny the house was. This little house has three bedrooms and an office. The office door is in the picture. The front door to the house is over to the right. When I was young, that driveway seemed very long to me. I remember thinking that going to the end of it was about as far as a person would want to walk in a day.

Bristol itself is a one-horse town. As with Elkhart, there was nothing that made me think, “Hey! I remember that!”

We headed out of town toward Constantine, MI, in search of the Rich side of Jane’s family. Her great, great, great grandfather, Learned (spellings varied) Rich, had a farm in Constantine. He was struck by lightning in his bed one night and killed. His wife, Amanda, later married Heman Harwood (“What a name!” Jane said.). The trail goes cold at that point because the Rich children were absorbed into the Harwoods and/or farmed out to other relatives.

We got to the Constantine Library at 4:50. I ran out to check the hours. To our delight, Thursday was one of the nights they were open until 7:00.

Jane on her way to the Constantine Library

A very nice lady showed us to the Michigan Room in the back where all the old stuff was. Unfortunately, the earliest history they had was from the 1870’s, and Learned had died in 1839. “Unless he was famous,” the librarian said, “there probably won’t be much on him in the history.”

“But you never know,” I said. I did some research on McHenry County related to the Crystal Lake watershed some years ago and was amazed at the number of weird stories that were included in the 1885 history. Someone being struck by lightning inside his house might have been unusual enough to enter the folklore. It wasn’t, though.

The librarian disappeared for a few minutes and came back with record of the graves in the Broad Street Cemetery. It listed Cornelia Rich, child of Leuned & Amanda, 12y, 5m, 1851. She explained that there was no public access to that cemetery any more. I did the math for Cornelia and figured she was either an infant or not yet born when her father died. We couldn’t find any record of Learned’s grave and concluded that he was probably buried on his farm.

I found an early plat book that had Harwood properties all over the place, but no Rich that I could see. Presumably, whatever Amanda inherited from Learned/Leuned passed to Heman Harwood. One of the Rich boys grew up and married a Dyckman girl. The Dyckmans were associated with Schoolcraft, Paw Paw, and South Haven. But that would be tomorrow’s adventure.

I correctly guessed that Three Rivers would be our best bet for lodging. We checked into the Holiday Inn Express. This is the only motel I’ve ever been in that had the pillows labeled.

Embroidery labels on the pillow cases for easy reference

While I was getting the room, Jane was Googling restaurants on her smart phone. The Chinese restaurant of my childhood was now Mexican. Oh well. Better to have it closed entirely than to find out it was not as good as my memory of it. I still have the memory intact.

Jane found a place 5 miles out of town called the Fisher Lake Inn. The menu seemed to be in the style of the Wisconsin supper club. We were not disappointed. We sat at a window looking out at the lake, watching the wickedly cold wind blow the ice to west. We had a lovely dinner of prime rib.

Front of the Fisher Lake Inn

The view from our table

The following morning, we set out for Schoolcraft. We followed a historic marker sign to a house build in 1835 by Dr. Nathan Thomas, the first medical doctor in Kalamazoo County. In 1843, he “quickly agreed” to use his house to shelter fugitive slaves as part of the underground railroad. One thousand to 1500 slaves passed through the house on their way to Canada, which was still, I have to say, a heck of a long walk from Schoolcraft.

Dr. Thomas' house on the Underground Railroad

While the Michigan Richs weren’t particularly rich, the Dyckmans were quite successful. Evert B. Dyckman had his hands in everything. His grave was not hard to find. Jane had downloaded pictures from FindAGrave, and I spotted the marker from the road.

Dyckman Family memorial

I thought the initials on the marker were odd. The B is entertwined with the D, and it looks like the E just tipped in afterwards. It couldn’t have, of course, since it is carved from stone.

Evert B. Dyckman's initials

The Schoolcraft Library did not open until 1:00 on Fridays, which was three hours from when we were there. We took a turn through B & G’s where I bought two high-quality stocking caps for Terry for 69¢ each, a pair of mittens, and a pair of gloves ($5.50 each). Jane got a pair of gloves.

Jane's car in front of B & G Discount

We went on to Paw Paw where once again, the Dyckman presence was easy to find.

The Dyckman Building in Paw Paw

The street had some pretty wonky parking. I wondered if it had been one-way at some point because the only way to get into the angle spots was to back in. Why didn’t they just paint the stripes the other way? Was it somehow safer to back in? I guess it was easier to see if you were going to hit anyone when pulling out.

Wonky parking in Paw Paw--you have to back into the spaces

On to South Haven, where Evert and his sons, Aaron and William, and grandsons, Evert S., and William Jr., had even more business interests. It was getting to be lunch time. We drove down to the beach to have a picnic in the car. The wind was so cold and so strong that not even the seagulls wanted to be off the ground. They hunkered on the sand facing into the wind.

Seagulls hunkered down

Me freezing in the cold wind

Jane had found an old directory that listed addresses or intersections of several Dyckmans. We found that Superior St. and Erie St. were one block apart, which meant that the corner of LaGrange and Superior, where Aaron S., lived, may have actually been adjacent to the corner of LaGrange and Erie, where Evert S. lived. We speculated that it might have been these two houses.

Possible Dyckman homes

We stopped in the library, where we found quite a lot of information about Evert B. and Aaron S. We made a bunch of copies of various accounts of their various ventures and adventures.

Finally, we went up to the Lakeview Cemetery. There were no kind ladies to help us find anything. We had a picture of the gravestone, but it was a very popular style. There was a little building with a bulletin board on it. The map of the graves was not helpful when one didn’t have any clue where to look, but there was an important warning.