Hug Those Historians!

Their work is often a labor of love but OH so laborious, tedious, challenging and time-consuming.  

Their summarized results may bore many readers to death but thrill others into lively enthusiasm.  

Their products are made to last---a long, long time---or until someone else comes along to add something else to the mix. 

The product may take on new form, but every single ingredient within the newest rich blend remains a sparkling nugget of good stuff to some appreciative beholders. 

This morning I'm very beholding to a man name Charles Showalter, whom I've never met.

Still, I'd like to give him a great big hug.  

Charles wrote to me out of the blue yesterday, telling me he'd read a blog posting of mine where I had mentioned my great uncle William Douglas of Manistee, Michigan.

He offered to send me information he had compiled and did so last night. 

William Douglas's  wife Anna served as my mother's guardian after Mother's mom Lily died in 1924.  

Following his wife's death, Anna's brother Frank took his two young daughters from one gold-mining area near Wallace, ID to another in the Trinity River area of Northern California.  

They lived in a small hamlet called Burnt Ranch.

When Aunt Anna learned the whereabouts of Virginia and June, she had her chauffeur drive her from Texas to the remote mountainous area where she could "snatch them up"  and take them back to "civilization."  

Anna was still living in San Antonio after her husband William, a lumberman and railroad owner, had died in 1910.  

Before his death and because of his chronic lung problems and asthma, the couple had spent winters in San Antonio for William's health. 

As a little girl and now under guardianship of her aunt,  Mother began living in Catholic boarding schools, starting with the Ursuline Academy in San Antonio (now the Southwest Center for Arts and Culture).   

Meanwhile, her aunt lived at the city's fine Gunter Hotel while taking some college business courses.

Later,  they moved back to Michigan where Mother resumed the boarding-school routine clear through her college graduation from Nazareth College in Kalamazoo, except for summers spent with family.  

After her aunt's death, Anna's adopted daughter Louise became my mother's guardian and "mother," so to speak. 

For Mr. Showalter to send me 71 pages of fascinating information he has compiled about the Manistee and Northeastern Railroad, the Manistee lumber mill, the salt block and the extensive logging operations  where our great uncle is mentioned,  and highly acclaimed throughout,  is truly life-changing.

The information adds many, many dots to stories already told by my mother and to those few items I've managed to locate on the Internet over the years. 

This gift from a dedicated historian also creates a clearer picture of the impact a much-loved and very generous family member had on his community and his state.   

William Douglas has been dead for 102 years, but Mr. Showalter's sharing of information has brought him almost back to life in my mind.

I can't wait to get it all printed and share it with my mother.

And, I send a giant thank-you to Mr. Showalter for assembling the information and sending it to me.  

Some day I may even hug this historian who has added so much to our family's story.