No invisible birds in the mist today, although they’re coming soon. For one thing, it’s a beautiful day and you deserve to see some nice blue skies. For another, we have presents – I love presents – and they’re all in black and white. Let’s begin with the blue skies.
Now the presents. Every now and then a note arrives from Bill Bennett. He is a descendant of the Bennetts who arrived Around Here in the 1870s and settled along the Townline Road between Banks and Central Lake Townships – the one that came to be known as Bennett Hill Road.* In today’s note Bill enclosed three items.
There was a picture of the Bennett farmhouse taken in 1916. Bill says the house was torn down in the 1980s, but it stood a long time at the top of Bennett Hill, near the Ogletrees and the Wiltses.**
There was a picture of the Bennett family at the old Wiltse millpond on Ogletree Creek, taken in the 1940s. That very tall man is Bill’s dad, William Arden Bennett. The tiny little woman standing on the dock in high-heeled pumps is his mom, Stella. In between them is sister Sylvia, and w-a-a-a-y in the back (I’ll bet he’s standing in a rowboat) is Bill himself. They visited the pond because Bill’s dad wanted to show them where the Wiltse mill was. That’s where the lumber for the Bennett farmhouse was milled.
These are rich memories, and the inspiration for “a bit of poetry” Bill composed. He says it’s his Anthem to Antrim.
Bill hasn’t lived here for many years, but he thinks about Antrim County. His memories are as green as the great white pines.
*Note: The Bennetts most likely bought their land from the Grand Rapids and Indiana Rail Road. (Even before the Homestead Act, Congress passed the the Act of June 3, 1856 granting to the States public lands “to aid in the construction of railroads.”)
**Note 2: Bill’s grandfather and great-uncle Stewart helped to build the Wiltse barn in 1910. The barn burned, but the Wiltses still live there on a Centennial Farm.
Torch Lake Views 
WOL
April 25, 2014
I love houses and places with history. It’s an interesting exercise to put the faces in the photographs into the context of where they lived. So many of the places where my family’s history took place have changed out of all recognition or have been torn down and hauled off.
Gerry
April 25, 2014
That’s so almost everywhere, isn’t it, that the past is torn down and hauled off. Perhaps a little less so in Torch Lake Township, but only a little. I’ve been thinking of a series of comparative photos showing “then” and “a little later” and so on down to “now.”
shoreacres
April 27, 2014
Somehow, this just has me holding my breath. We so rarely get a “big picture” – but… Right now, this very afternoon, I’m working on a post about Council Grove, Kansas, and the rise, fall, and rising again of another house. I’ve been reading about people who were moving into Kansas during this same period – 1854-1870 – and it’s just amazing to think of the movement that was going on all around the country.
All of it stands hard against our assumption that we’re the movers and shakers. There was so much coming and going in those days it’s just breath-taking. My own great-great-grandfather left Iowa, went to Colorado, came back to Iowa for the Civil War, spent the war in Texas and Louisiana, went back to Iowa, married, came to Texas, didn’t like it, and went back to Iowa. Good grief! And he didn’t even have a car!
I went back to my grandparents house just once. The old hand pump was still there, and the front porch. Otherwise? Time had marched on. But I still can see every detail of the house as I knew it in my mind. Those memories are good.
Gerry
April 27, 2014
I never realized how much people moved about in the 19th century until I started doing historical research by studying individuals. Then I followed their descendants in the early 20th century and discovered they moved a lot, too. We are constantly in motion. And yet . . . we have our anchor places. That’s one of the things I’m giving a lot of thought to lately.