I know that I haven’t been dedicating much time to my blog
these last eighteen months. It’s been a busy couple of years. After nearly
three decades, I decided to end the commute between the desert and the Great
Lakes to settle in my birth state of Michigan. I am home. To stay.
Additionally, as some of you may know, I’m now in charge of
Manitowen Press, a tiny publishing company that gives new writers a leg up,
something to put in their cover letters to other publishers. Being one of two
chief editors with Manitowen Press, as well as writing my own books and stories
has kept me busy; and if that wasn’t enough, my husband and I have decided to
build a log home on five acres we recently purchased.
It was just last year that we were looking at five wooded
acres of pine and oak with a little cherry here and there. On the property stood an old cinderblock house
with jerry-rigged wiring that dated post World War Two. The original owner
“Jonah” and his wife “Natty” lived in that home for more than 70 years. Jonah
passed away about a decade ago. Natty is in her mid-to-late nineties and is
sweet and sharp for her age. It was a delight to meet her at the real estate
office to close on the place last spring. Natty had moved out just before her home was
put on the market. Her family has owned the surrounding land for about 150
years. Last month, we had the old house, built in 1948, torn down. It wasn’t in
the best shape. Recently, I dug up and relocated some “heirloom” tea roses that
graced the crumbling foundation of what I believe is the original farmhouse. That
foundation can still be seen just behind where the cinderblock structure once
stood. I hope to replant those rose bushes close to our new home, once it’s
built.
The old man, bless his heart, had cows and a horse in the
woods back in the sixties and seventies. To save a buck, about sixty years ago
he wrapped barbed wire around some of the saplings instead of using fence
posts. Those plants are now much taller, but diseased since the trunks grew
over the wire. With each windstorm, another tree or two snaps, coming down so
violently that it makes the ground shudder.
Since my daughter Kay and her husband are splitting the lot
with us, we had those trees and some others next to them removed so that they
won't come crashing through the roofs of the homes we're building.
Friday, the arborists left for the weekend. They aren’t
finished yet, but being the nosey person that I am, Saturday evening I walked
to where those trees were removed and found
ASH.
Yes, ash -- about two feet under where, until the other day,
tree roots were solidly imbedded into the ground. The soot is thick and goes
down about three or four feet. I guessed the oldest trees to be about 120 years
old, but I am no expert. I wondered what kind of fire would have caused that
much blackened debris to be visible, and so very dense, scores of years after
the incident. It had to be an inferno.
I was so excited. My husband and our daughter Kay thought I
was crazy and said, "Who cares?"
Eagerly I said, "It's HISTORY! Aren't you the least bit
curious?" Well, they were not interested in the least. I know May my
youngest child, who is away at college, would have been all over this
discovery.
I stood in awe at the site. Again, I wanted to know what
kind of catastrophe in recent history would have done this much damage. In
spite of my family’s disinterest, I did a little sleuthing. I found out that
the Great Fire of Chicago in October 1871 was not an isolated event. According to Mike Hardy, the Chicago, Illinois
fire was famous but the Peshtigo, Wisconsin fire was horrific. In Chicago,
three square miles were burnt to cinders and three hundred lives were lost.
Compare that to Peshtigo where eight hundred souls perished when families
fleeing into the river boiled to death.
Michigan was not spared Mother Nature’s conflagration. Hundreds
of miles across Lake Michigan, flames sprang up. Hurricane strength winds intensified
the blazes along beach towns and the western shore. In the city of Holland, founded
by Dutch settlers, not a barn nor fencepost was left to mark property
boundaries.
Manistee, about a hundred miles north of Holland, was also
affected by the flames in addition to some points in between. The embers were
further carried east by the tempest, across the state, and eventually into the
thumb area. Residents from lumber towns and farms across Michigan fled the
flames that were now one hundred feet tall. People jumped into wells. Children
were cast into boats and set along the rivers. In one case a boat full of
children bobbed for days until it reached Canada. After the fire, masses of people
were found wandering to the very tip of the thumb, hair singed, skin blistered
and their clothes burned from their bodies.
Reading these tales gave me a lot to think about. I realized
that I was off by about a couple decades using the tree trunks that would have
gotten their start a couple years after the fires. In my defense, it had been
drizzling all afternoon and it was too dusky to count each ring.
Most people do not know about the infernos of October 1871,
yet a few historians speculate as to the cause. One debunked tale is the story
of a cow knocking over an oil lamp in a barn. There is no possible way that
such a fire beginning in Chicago would consume much of the Midwest and Great
Lakes regions. Some scholars claim a meteor breaking apart across the United States
sparked many small fires that grew in unimaginable magnitude. Some blame
trapped methane. Whatever the reason, I won’t speculate. It is known that the
Summer of 1871 was hot and dry and that autumn was warmer than usual.
Next time you take a walk in the woods or along a beach or
even on a city sidewalk, stop for a moment and ponder what lies below, the
lives that once occupied that same space, the events that forever influenced
the geography or geology. Think about the history that preceded your mortal
experience, and please, don’t ever say, “Who cares?”
(Photo, Public Domain - Great Chicago Fire October 8, 1871)
I would like to thank Alan Naldrett and Mike Hardy for their
keen interest and research.
