TRAVELLING BY WATER.
In the sixties Charlevoix people came to Beaver Island to do much of their trading, going back and forth in small boats. All travelling had to be done by water. People felt no fear. We were going from island to island in summer time. In those days at Little Traverse, now Harbor Springs, there were just a few white settlers, with one or two stores. In the early fifties Mr. Richard Cooper started a store and another was kept by the "Wendells" of Mackinac Island. Many Mackinac Island people took their families every summer for several years to the Gull islands, that being a fine fishing ground. Thousands of dollars worth of fish were caught there. Beaver Harbor was then the center for trade. Near to reach. "The boats were our carriages, the wind our steeds." Sometimes there were accidents and many were drowned, still people had to live, and their work was on the water most of the time.
The winter of 1861 my husband and I went to Milwaukee to spend the winter. Mr. C. R. Wright was elected to the State Legislature at Lansing that winter, his family spending the winter in Fairport, Ohio. We all returned to the island in springtime. My parents had now gone back to Traverse City to live. Frank, my adopted brother, had enlisted as a drummer boy at the beginning of the Civil War.