How to celebrate 100 years as a small city - 1931 in Lowell, Michigan

 

Michigan cities local history series*, "Images of America - Lowell" (zip 49331)

As part of the 100-year celebration of the founding of modern-day Lowell, Michigan in 1931, only a year and a half into the Great Depression (October 1929) the caption to the upper photo lists the special events and exhibitions organized for entertainment and edification of visitors and residents alike. How different will things be arranged in 2031, by comparison? At the centennial celebration the first day included an ox roast, crowning the Centennial Queen, band concert, baseball game, a hot-air balloon ascension, and a pageant of progress to end the evening with a look back at 100 years. For the second day there was a parade, addresses by dignitaries, a ball game and another pageant. On the last day they held a mass picnic, a reunion of current and former residents, dancing, singing, and exhibits. There is no mention of radio or print journalism gathering stories or special pamphlets and publications, photobooths or the carnival rides and games captured by pictures in this book. But in the time before TV and Internet, the airwaves for radio and the words of newspaper writers helped to document and report stories like these to surrounding towns and villages.

Jumping ahead to 2024 it is hard to imagine all of the same undertakings being expected or allowed to proceed due to caution about large crowds spreading Covid or attracting domestic terrorist groups or mass shooters. The social fabric has a few of the old threads but is largely woven into different patterns to give a much flimsier durability and texture than in 1931. This big event almost 100 years ago presents a kind of mirror for reflecting on the present. What they recognized as 'dignitary' might be more readily understood today as 'celebrity' or 'influencer', for instance. Parades are far less common now that so many people own personal automobiles, sometimes hugely expensive things depreciating by the day. And with so many people with jet travel experience for business or pleasure, the pass of parades is not so interesting or thrilling to impatient and multi-tasking people with fragmented attention spans and weighed down by debt, social anxiety, and dark imaginings about future uncertainties as consumers striving in a race to the bottom quality and prices. With the contagion of Artificial Intelligence echoing back and infiltrating all sorts of unexpected places and times, the task of building and protecting trust becomes all the more difficult.

Like any good history book, this slim set of photos and extended captions stirs interest in bygone times, places, and people. But it also invites comparison to today's livelihoods, aspirations, and range of experiences. On the one hand things change a lot. But on the other hand, the well-worn saying still holds truth, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more that things change, the more that they stay the same). The words change but the song remains the same when it comes to a lifetime of striving, dreams, temptations, stresses and reliefs.

*Authored by Lisa Barker Plank with the Lowell Area Historical Museum

Quest for ancestors' lives, places, and legacies

 

West Michigan Genealogical Society guest speaker Oct. 7, 2023

From 1:30 to 3:30 members of the public and of the Genealogical Society got together for the monthly meeting at the auditorium of the Grand Rapids Public Library to listen to advice and anecdotes from a long-time professional ancestor researcher. She spoke this time about the kinds of sources online and in public libraries that one can tap into remotely; not having to be physically present with printed matter. Although she sometimes travels to verify grave details, chase down archives without any digital presence or indexing (or local colleagues to help do the search), the majority of her work is carried out from a computer at home. After several decades helping many clients find their roots, her database of individuals numbers about 70,000 names.

Something like 50 people were in the audience, mostly above the age of 50 or 55. Perhaps it is most natural to take a personal interest in ancestry around that time as one's own parents and grandparents have died or are dying. One's own mortality usually comes next in order, although there are also many examples of a child dying before the parent. Thinking about the wealth of digital sources and ways to find and then engage with them, the present moment is a particularly fine time to pursue family trees. Much like the detective skills of TV dramas, there is also an art to building up a mental picture of the person one is chasing after. The transformation of a living person with a history and with aspirations to become a mere mention in the branching structure of a family tree seems inevitable as stories, images, and preferances are seldom recorded or written down, hence lost to memory. But turning the bare details of name, dates, locations into something more three-dimensional and palpable takes a little imagination.

Looking at the transformation from 3-D person filled with life to flattened, streamlined name and dates can be sobering when considering one's own place in the tree; an ancestor yet to be. And even if somebody in the distant future were to wonder what sort of person was one's own self, there are limits to what that can know. Perhaps there are video clips and photos that describe some of one's moments and decisions. Finding a signature invokes a kind of surrogate presence; a proxy for one's own hand and by extension, one's whole self. Anything you author may partly reflect something of one's voice and worldview, too. Personal writing like journals, diaries, or letters offer a lifelike trace of oneself. But even if a future person had the benefit of all these sorts of clues, along with the generalized context of the historical moment, probate records of one's chattels at time of death, and census records of basic household particulars for a place and a time, the resulting composite image of the person would not be filled with breath, words, and glint of eye. So bringing the names on a family tree back to life is only a dim reflection of what was once a fully formed social calendar and cultural landscape.

Deduction is a powerful way to invent some probable details of the person's life, based on contextual circumstantial particulars. The state of the art for medicine, transportation, (tele)communication, and so on can be pictured for most points in history and possibly fine-tuned according to location (rural vs. urban, semi-tropical vs. temperate) and social patterns for people similar in socioeconomic status (education, employment, wealth). According to the guest speaker, though, until about 1960 many local papers would chronicle individual accomplishments, travels, and other notable experiences of interest to the general readership. These "society pages" gradually disappeared after that, though. But finding one's ancestor's doings there can bring them back to life, if only for a moment; making them flesh and blood, again, something greater than the "born__ - died__" hyphenated lifespan. See the guest speaker's notes and illustrations in blog form at https://genealogyframeofmind.blogspot.com .

Putting one's branching ancestry into visual representation produces a fan of bifurcating lines, something like the branches radiating from a central tree trunk. But the custom of following a single surname on the father's side leads to less effort and therefore knowledge of the surnames collateral to the father's own line, and neglect sometimes of the bloodline of the mother, as well. When asked how many generations to travel back in time before the many lines are too confusing or blurring into a point of relatedness to thousands of others, the guest speaker said her practice is to continue until there are no more records to go back in time.

In an immigrant society, one's own image (presentation of self) and one's own abilities for successfully doing particular products and services is more highly valued than one's status resting in a family name. In other words, you see yourself and others define you by what you DO, not WHO you are. As a result, roots and relatives are overshadowed by the luster of gainful work and peer-praised recognition. But by middle age and into elder years, the urge grows stronger to know one's roots and to know where one fits into the larger family tree. The surprises turned up in the genealogy process may be happy or sad, or something in-between. But thanks to software and personal computers interacting with online databases, there is a pretty good change that one's searches will bear fruit: names and dates will come up. Then it remains to turn the dust-dry data points into real lives, if only long enough to trace into the family tree in fullest form.

Millstone of 1834 is silent witness to early years

Coarse millstone at bottom center testifies to long Grand Rapids

Year after year, in cold weather or hot, people brought their grain to the mill near this location on the Grand River to run it through the rough surface of the rotating millstones to produce flour suitable for baking bread and other skillet or oven-made treats. Doubtless there is a full story about how the stones came to be (quarried locally, or transported ready made from another location) and how builders harnessed the river before its flow was controlled and it rose and fell with weather and seasons of the year. As well as stones and building, there is probably an interesting story about how a miller or millers gained training and experience before arriving on the scene. Once all the elements were in place, there remained only the matter of spreading the word among settlers and travelers passing this way that milling services were now in operation. Then with bags or bins of grain for the milling to produce flour, the farmer or merchant had to protect the grain in some sort of container before making use of it, day after day.

Looking at the silent stones in their present location near the east wall of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, overlooking the once untamed, unharnessed river, it is hard to imagine all the years these stones rotated while tons and tons of grain passed through to be transformed into flour. Countless souls were raised on the flour from these stones, from earliest solid food until the person's deathbed and the last morsel of bread tasted on this side of mortality. This one piece of technology was a common denominator for a majority of  local residents and those who bought the ready-ground flour that was distributed to stores in the surrounding county or counties. The sound of grinding stones and associated waterwheel machinery will have been the soundtrack to many people living nearby. Some of the particular facts are recorded on a bronze plaque attached to the stones on display.

FIRST MILL STONES (transcribed text, below)

 ...brought to Grand Rapids and placed in mill on Indian Mill Creek about 1834, removed by John Ball for a horse block in 1867 and donated by his heirs to the Kent Scientific Museum. Tablet placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

In the age of gas-powered automobiles transitioning reluctantly to electric vehicles, the mention of Horse Block may be baffling. Judging from the height of the mill stones, Mr. Ball took the decommissioned geological mass as a convenience to step from ground level up to a position closer the the horse's saddle, hence the name 'horse block'.

In this artifact intersects so many features of modern and ancient life. The connection to grain hearkens back to the Fertile Crescent where wild forms of wheat and barley trace their origins and the association of calorific surplus with permanent settlements, law codes and armed forces under the command of religious, political, and/or military heads. Hand in hand with grain cutting is grain grinding, first at the household, "as needed" scale, but later in organized and mechanized scale. Thousands of years later, the lessons of best grinding stone, best sources of power, and best varieties of grain for a given soil and temperature condition all came together in these stones at this place at this time. Prayers for [Lord God, may thou] "give us our daily bread" may be far less often spoken in 2022 than in 1822, but bread still does figure in to many city residents' routine variety of foods eaten throughout the year, although almost all of the flour is baked in factories and a few local bakeries, rather than by hand at home.

Even when the service life of these gritty stones ended, they were still useful to Mr. Ball and his horse for many years. By looking at traces of long-ago times like these mill stones some of the people and the lives they lived comes back to life. In this way the material culture that lingers long after the original makers and users have gone can accompany later generations into years to come. Not only does a little of the past live now in the present, but the reverse may be true, too: some of today was already existing when those long-ago people went about their business, following their routines, adapting to innovations that appeared, and dreaming of some indefinite time ahead that they themselves would not live to see but which their efforts - whether wise or foolish - would have consequences among people alive now in 2022.

Michigan historical commission marks this farmhouse

Farmhouse at former city outskirts of Grand Rapids-(click image for full-size view)

Farms operated for 100 years by the same family (3 or 4 generations, in most cases) are marked with plaques, usually not much bigger than a sheet of letter-size paper on a post within sight of the road edge. But this one gives a more detailed recounting of the significance of the location and its residents. In other parts of the world with far longer records of occupation, probably 150 years would not be of special interest or meaning, by comparison.

Immigrant countries like USA, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, and so on view the connections to the land and history differently to the societies where relationships to the past, to ancestors, and the land worked by those people is long-standing or perhaps taken for granted; not worthy of plaques or other official recognition by the local government. A major theme among immigrants is economic advantage; bettering your economic (and possibly social) status in the new country in exchange for giving up claims, meanings, and connections to the old country. As a result of this strong urge to succeed in material terms, many immigrants move from place to place to seize better work opportunities, rather than to commit to the community and social relations of just one locale. So the number of farms with many generations holding ownership is rare enough to acknowledge the fact with "Centennial Farm" plaques (100 years of ownership and active agricultural production) or this one telling the story of an early resident on this rural land that now has been surrounded by the expanding city boundaries and house-building of WWII and afterward to accommodate the Baby Boom generation.

Update: current owner removed this marker in 2020

Curating your local history - why does the past call us?

local history museum & marker (state historical commission), 48879

This brick house covered in brick-red paint served the health needs of the people in St. Johns, Michigan with three successive medical practices: Drs. Paine, Gillam, and then Scott. Click the photo for full-size view and legible bronze marker text.

This photo prompts the question of what kind of people recognize value, curiosity, or merit in knowing the past and communicating it to others; or more generally of all the currently living residents, what place does the (local) past occupy in their minds, their self-image, and the plans they make in reference to those earlier generations of residents in the area? For a point of comparison there are parts of the world where relatively little changed in status and possessions and aspirations or imagination from one generation to the next. So the separation of past and present and future was not very clear or necessary. And even when the pace of changes goes faster and one generation's experiences and life chances differ to their parents and grandparents, as well contrasting the generations that follow, then the significance of the past-present relationship might not necessarily be emphasized much. After all, in a land with long history and identities adopted from one's family line rather than of one's single-handed, self-making, then the past serves as a kind of unearned, accumulated cultural capital; something that is background like sunlight or air, available to all and abundant in supply with little need to articulate, package, or label. It just "is."

But in an immigrant country it is your achievements that stand for who you are; not your surname, your original property base, or "your people." So in this county seat in mid-Michigan that dates its establishment to 1856, there were settlers from many places to the east and sometimes across the ocean. Neighbors probably did not know your family history or ethnic achievements, so only the fruits of your working and your appearances could identify you in the eyes of peers and even for your own self-image. When there are relatively few generations, and there are relatively many technological changes and world events that punctuate the 150 timeline, then curating a story about the past takes on meaning to some segments of the population, especially for the mainly retired people volunteering at the museum and the ones bringing donations of artifacts, documents, images, and oral histories. In one's elder years, reflecting on the world and one's lifetime is a natural preoccupation; wondering if one has made a positive difference in others' lives and the local landscape. And so, while it is only a fraction of the overall residents in the area who take interest in participating, visiting the museum, or hunting for clues and answers to the past, for these people at least, the local past is vivid and rich with connections to the present and one's own self.