Another
link for Amelia 20Mar2004
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Memories
by Amelia Langworthy Arnold Worthington
with newspaper articles included submitted by
pklein@stratos.net (paul klein)
Ruth Noteware Johnson, b. 1901 Williamsburg, MI; died 1988 in Ohio, wrote this in the 1960s for her grandchildren. She spent most of her life in Ann Arbor.
The following was dictated to my father, Roy Noteware, by Grandfather, John Harmon Noteware, when he lived with my parents in Lansing during the winter months. He was 87 years old at the time.
Index to Article following:
Bodine
Brown
Button
Fairbanks
Hannah
Langworthy
Noteware
Odell
Rodgers
Scofield
Tarel
Welton
Wood
******************************************************
Lansing, Mich. March 2, 1933 to:
Traverse City Record Eagle
My dear Editor:
Sixty-four years residence in Grand Traverse County has limited my thoughts pretty largely to the development and welfare of the Traverse Bay region.
The State Capitol has much that is interesting, but nothing so comforting as the news about home folks and neighbors which comes through the columns of the Record Eagle.
In this time of depression, when new sacrifices are constantly demanded, I am still hopeful. We lived through the privations of a pioneer country and the panic of the "Seventies" and cleared our farms. It is true we didn't have much, but the foundations were laid for a pretty substantial county.
It may encourage some who have become discouraged to know the obstacles we met.
I first heard about Grand Traverse in 1868. The next year I left Pennsylvania, a young man of 23, and came to Grand Haven. The trip from Grand Haven to Northport was made by boat. The lake was so rough that the passengers thought that the boat would roll over. I was so sick I cared little if it did. In time we got to Northport and came in to Traverse City by the General H. E. Paine.
I expected to find quite a city but it was not in proportion to its name. Mr. Hannah had a small sawmill which was cutting out pine lumber. A lot of the lumber was stacked in piles between the river and the bay. I stopped at the Cutler House. This was a hostelry which stood somewhere near the present site of the Traverse Hotel years later. I met a neighbor of mine (A. K. Fairbanks) in this hotel. He was a tall man and his head reached nearly to the ceiling of the men's room.
In Elk Rapids, Mr. Noble's mill was also sawing pine. ages were very low and the stack of goods in the Company's store consisted only of essentials, and the supply of these was limited.
After eighteen months I returned to Pennsylvania. In those days, we staged it to Grand Rapids and then took the Grand Rapids and Indiana train to other points. It cost about seven dollars to get to Big Rapids, and the road was so rough that a suit of clothes became threadbare on the journey.
The horses were changed every twenty miles. e crossed the Manistee River somewhere near the village of Sherman. A log cabin stood on the bank and to the corner of the cabin was chained a large black bear.
Although it was a pretty wild and underdeveloped country, it was not without appeal, and I returned in a few months to make my home at Williamsburg.
Truman Schofield was operating a little water power sawmill and a gristmill at Williamsburg. There was mighty little money and nearly all exchange was carried on by barter. Mr. Schofield wiggled and schemed and managed to give work to the people of the community a part of the time. For the rest we raised as many crops as possible. Our surplus was hauled to Traverse City over very poor roads. From Acme to Traverse City we curved along through sand which was ankle deep. After disposing of our produce, we tied our horses in some free sheds standing on the present site of the M. and N. E. depot. This spot was the seat of more horse trades than any other place in Northern Michigan. Many of the animals secured in this way caused a lot of trouble and disappointment on the way home.
We paid our taxes with money earned by cutting 4-foot wood for the Elk Rapids Iron Company. When delivered on the bank at Elk Lake, the wood brought $1.25 per cord and was partly paid for in scrip.
It seems to me that a great deal of credit is due these early leaders of Grand Traverse County who helped others to secure a living and make homes.
We had mighty little in comparison with what the present victims of the depression have. We were happy, however, and I can assure you we appreciated a chance copy of the "Grand Traverse Herald" which reached us occasionally. We looked forward to better conditions then and were willing to work and hope. Today, at the age of 87, I still feel that the same brand of hope and effort will bring us back to prosperity.
J. H. Noteware*
Returning to Grand Traverse County, John Harman purchased a farm in 1875 from German Button and wife, Frances E. Button, for $1800.00. As a newcomer to Williamsburg, he boarded and roomed with the Schofields and worked at a water-powered muley sawmill. Grandpa played a violin and my brother says he used to play for country dances. He also played a jew's-harp. Sometime in the 1930s, when he was in his 80s, he picked up my brother's violin and played "Turkey in the Straw" very well ... and demonstrated very sprightly how one would CLOG.
Not long after he arrived in Williamsburg, he met Martha Jane Langworthy, a very pretty redheaded, vivacious young lady with a good sense of humor. She was teaching school at Barker Creek several miles to the east. She preferred being called Jane and sometimes she was called Jennie.
A very interesting account of her family, written by an older sister, Amelia, gives one an insight as to some of the struggles and hardships the pioneers endured. This account is worth including with this writing. Martha Jane's father was William Langworthy, b. May 18, 1813; d. Feb. 22, 1898. Married to Martha Jane Welton - b. Jan. 11, 1813, d. May 1891. She bore six or seven children. Yet, with all her children to care for, she was a midwife and any hour of the day a distraught young father-to-be might ride up on a pony to the Langworthy log cabin to seek help in bringing a new baby into the world. (Information given me by my Uncle George Noteware.)
*
PIONEER, in Passing, LEAVES MEMOIRS of SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
(Printed in Traverse City Record Eagle, January 1929)
Funeral services for Amelia Langworthy Arnold Worthington, 82, who passed away Wednesday evening at the home of her youngest son, Clayton L. Arnold, 226 East Ninth Street, will be held at the son's residence Sunday afternoon at one-thirty, central standard time. Rev. John E. Bodine, who knew the pioneer in earlier days, will conduct the rites, and burial will be in the old Williamsburg cemetery, beside her husband, Jared W. Arnold, and the two children, Willie D. and Nellie, who preceded her in death by many years. Amelia Arnold lived in the Grand Traverse region for 75 years, and at the age of seventy reminisced of the early days and penned the following:
*
MY HISTORY OF THE OLD DAYS WHEN I WAS NOT MORE THAN EIGHT OR NINE YEARS OLD:
I was born in the State of New York, Monroe County, town of Clarkson, on November 7th, 1846. I think I must have been a child of great memory for I can remember things that happened when I was only three years old, when I called a knife 'yaark' and the sulphur springs where we played, and how a girl named Reynolds fell into the deepest place and scared us half to death for fear she would drown ... and my little brother William Alonzo, who was only three years younger than myself. Being the first living boy in the family after three girls he was a great prize.
My father was a moving planet. There were eight of us children and no two were born in the same place. I can remember moving every time after the birth of William Alonzo until Father finally got the Michigan fever, and to Michigan we came, and with us, two other families' George Brown was a brother-in-law - he had married my oldest sister Mary - and Filander Odell was an uncle of ours - his wife was my Mother's (Martha Jane Welton Langworthy) sister.
In their family were seven children and ours five at that time. George and Mary Brown had not been married long. There was with us a young man named Alonzo Ferst. We came to Buffalo on the cars and then shipped on the Propeller Plymouth Rock and came to Mackinac, where we took the Arrow for Grand Traverse Bay. We started in the morning and about 10 o'clock the wind began to blow and I heard the Captain tell Father to take the children and the rest of the "landlubbers" to the cabin, and in a few minutes there was a terrible gale. Everyone was sick, men and all, except the Captain and Father. When the Captain told the men to do anything they were so sick they could not move. He even hit them with ropes to liven them but it was no use - they did not stir. He turned to Father and said, "It is no use, Langworthy, we will all be in hell in less than ten minutes."
Father said, "Tell me what to do and don' give up." The first thing was to reef the topsail and Father did that and worked all day with the Captain, and just at night we rounded into Old Mission Harbor, and the shore was lined with people who came to see what vessel had stood such a storm as had raged all day. (Oct. 1855)
All these things will never be told unless I tell them, for I was a child and now I am over seventy. It was way back in October, l855 when we landed at the Old Mission dock that night after the terrible storm, and father left us there until February so that we children could attend school, while he came over here in Whitaker Twp. to work. (The only textbook used in that school was a primer with English and Indian on opposite pages.) The winter was very severe. The snow was three feet deep on the level and the bay froze over in December.
In February Father came home and moved us on the ice as far as Elk Rapids. He got a man by the name of Thomas Patterson to move us with his team of ponies and, when we reached Elk Rapids, the team that Father expected to meet us there did not come; so Mr. Patterson brought us as far as the house of a man by the name of Riley Johnson, where we spent the night. The next day the team came and we started for our new home. The team were oxen and we were loaded on a long sled and started through the woods. The road had not been logged out and logs and stumps made it rather rough riding. Part of the time the sled was under us and part of the time we were under it. At last we came to a log hut or shanty which Father told us was our home. It nearly killed other to think that we must live in such a place.
There was a fireplace in one end and this was against one end of the shanty. Father would cut what he called a back log, just as large as he could roll in, and one a little smaller to put on top. He then would pile a lot of small stuff in front of it and the fire would last all night. All the chimney we had was a hole in the roof to let the smoke and the sparks out when the wind did not blow. When the wind did blow the smoke went everywhere but outdoors and we had to stand it. We had no windows to let the light in. The weather was severe and we all came down with whooping cough we caught at school before leaving Old Mission. My youngest sister was only a little over a year old and Mother was so afraid she would take cold that she hardly knew what to do but we all came through all right, though with coughing and whooping we made plenty of noise day and night.
The ice did not go out of the Bay until May and it was late before a vessel could get here, and everybody was hungry - it did not make any difference whether they had money or not for there was nothing to buy. Potatoes were a dollar a bushel and not half enough of them at that price. The story came over here that there was flour and pork at Old Mission and Father and two other men started over there. They did not expect to be gone more than a day, or a day and a half at the outside, for we had only about enough potatoes to last three days if we were very saving of them. But when the men went across the Bay the ice followed them. The north wind broke it up right after them so they were obliged to come around the Head of the Bay, with no road except as they made it themselves, and the snow was wet and heavy. And all the food they could get was a little flour and a few potatoes at Charles Tarel's store, not a bit of meat or grease of any kind, not even wagon grease. Butter was out of the question and a wagon was a luxury not known to Grand Traverse at that time, so it took them a week to get back and we were three days without a mouthful of food of any kind. But we were a happy family at last for, besides having something to eat, Father had come home and was all right except for being nearly tired out.
Then the old ship 'Poland' got there before our food gave out again, and we never saw the time again when we could not get food if we had money.
I forgot to tell you about the start up here. The first tree that was cut this side of Elk Rapids was cut by Father and a man by the name of Rodgers, at Williamsburg. It was a big hemlock. They came through the woods and marked trees for a guide. The deep snow made them late and the shades of evening were upon them before they found the creek. They cut down the big hemlock and made a fire by it. They had to fell it with their axes. Sawing down timbers was not heard of at that time. The forests were full of wild beasts such as bears and wolves and wild cats prowled and screamed through the woods and kept them from being sleepy.
They started back as soon as it was light enough, and that was the first night human beings ever spent a night at Williamsburg. They reached the Rapids about noon the next day, with some more men, an ox team, and we must not forget the long sleigh, for that carried the provisions and blankets to where Father had cut the big tree. It was not too long before Mill Creek (Williamsburg) could boast a house - such as- it was, not much of a castle - and they commenced work on the dam, and George Copeland and some other carpenters began to cut out timbers for the mill, and the first board that was sawed was used for a table at my cousin's wedding. George Wood was the bridegroom and Silvia Odell was the bride.
The 14th of May a little girl was added to our number. Folks would hardly think that to as poor a family as we were a baby girl would be a joy, but we welcomed and loved her as much as though we lived in a mansion instead of a shanty without windows or chimney. She was a lovely child who grew to womanhood and was buried near the spot where she was born. You can visit her grave and read her name on a tombstone which her husband (Philo) put there to her memory - Christina Evelo Scofield (always affectionately called Ainie).
The first grist Father sent to mill was at Little Traverse - the nearest gristmill at that time. We sent it in December, it got caught in the ice in Lake Michigan and did not come back until the next June and much of it spoiled, so if it had not been for a hand-mill we might have starved. My brother-in-law owned the mill and he lent it to his neighbors. It did great work. Each family would grind up a lot of meal and send the mill around.
One time Father wanted to send it down to a man's house and he was very busy so Tom and I said we would carry it. It was in the winter and Father was in a hurry to get a load of shingles and we were sure we could carry it - it was only three miles to the man's house. So we got out our hand sled and started, but we found the snow too deep, for the sled dragged heavily, so we left the sled and tried to carry the mill on a pole between us. But the snow bothered us so that we had to take turns breaking a path and it nearly tired us out. It took us nearly four hours to make the three miles and we never could have walked back, but Harry Langworthy came up with an ox team and we rode home-. Our folks got frightened about us and Father came to meet us and said if he had known how bad the road was he never would have let us start. I think, old as I am, that was the hardest journey I ever took.
The trees that stand in the old orchard that Father set out laid in the bottom of Lake Michigan one year before we got them. The vessel sank and was given up for lost for a while, but after a time they raised her and, to everybody's surprise, the trees were all right. So Father set them out. That was the first orchard up here.
At another time Father and one of his brothers and a nephew by the name of Abram were on the Bay and were struck by a squall. The boat was small and both Uncle and his boy gave up but Father said, "There is no danger." He took the rudder and told the others what to do. They put the boat ahead of the wind and they were carried clear out into Lake Michigan but, after the squall was over, returned safely to shore. Uncle said, "William wasn't scared a bit." Abram, whom we called Dick for short, said that but for Uncle William they would all be in the bottom of the Bay. Father remarked that he was scared all right but when he thought of his wife and children he was determined to reach shore.
Most of the old friends and pioneers have been called to their long home and there would be but few of us to answer here, should roll be called.
Amelia Langworthy Arnold Worthington
the end
Created 22 Aug 1999, Updated 24Sept2003, brenda k. wolfgram moore