It all started with a Prince

In 1820 Jefferson County, Indiana had a population of only 8,038. The town of Madison had been settled about 1810 and was located on the Ohio river. When my 3x great grandparents Aaron and Lavina (Chapman) Porter arrived from the Lake George, New York area with their four children the surrounding countryside would have been heavily wooded.  Early descriptions of the region emphasized the tree-covered hills and the beauty of the Ohio River valley. One early settler even marked the location of what would become Madison by carving his name into two large beech trees. The Ohio River marked the southern border.  New settlers were slowly arriving from Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and other eastern states. The pull of western migration, the offer of free and/or cheap land were a great incentive to make the hazardous trek. They would have built a one or two room log cabin, a small garden and planted a patch of corn. Maybe an outbuilding for oxen and a cow. The forest would have come right...

I grew up with my mom having five or six pieces of Guardian service Cookware. They were given to her by my grandmother Nellie (Dillingham) Porter.  As I am older now, I wonder why Grandma Porter would have given them to her?  Did she not like the way they cooked? Did she have other pieces and the ones she shared were extras? I never heard that they were a wedding gift.... boy, I sure wish I had asked a whole lot more questions. When J Holly founded the Guardian Service Cookware company in 1930, he never realized that the durability of his cookware would survive generations of homemakers. He was looking for a product that would incorporate long-lasting aluminum (a fairly new product), innovative design that would produce successful heat conductivity and help women to create a satisfying meal. The hammered aluminum pieces had domed shaped aluminum lids that helped with 'waterless' cooking and maintained moisture so the food would cook in its own juices and at a lower temperature...

Not having a lot of multiple births in my family or accountants that are into multiple numbers, I chose to write about my great-aunt Lois Ann Dillingham. 'Loattie' was the oldest of 12 children of Sidney and Katherine (Sweet) Dillingham, my 2x great-grandparents. Of those 12 children, 10 lived to adulthood and there were no multiple births. She was the original 'Loattie' in the family although there were multiple descendants that also carried that nickname. She also married multiple times and had a total of 11 children. She was born June 23, 1837, in New York. The family had moved to Cherry Valley, Winnebago County, Illinois by the 1850 census, after a stop in Michigan for a few years. At the young age of 15, she married John Beard July 17, 1852, in Winnebago County, Illinois. They had four children: Catherine, Margaret, William and Alicia. William and Alicia both died in 1864 at ages four and three. John enlisted in the Civil War in the 52nd Illinois Infantry, Company ...

The Sheridan family has been in Perrinton, Gratiot County, Michigan since the 1850's when Patrick Sheridan filed for 80 acres of land in Gratiot County through the Bureau of Land Management in Ionia.  The first school in Perrinton was built in 1888 and had 52 total students with one teacher. The brick Perrinton High School was built in 1917 and was the one that my mom (Lorraine Sheridan) would have attended. 1939 was the last graduating class when Perrinton and Middleton consolidated and they built the Fulton High School that we know today.  At the time of my mother's High School years (1939-1942) the town's population was less than 400 persons.  Including students from Middleton along with Perrinton, 33 were in the graduation class of 1942. Mom's sister Alice Sheridan was in the first graduation class of the new High School in 1940. My mom's 'Autograph Book' from 1939 has comments from friends from her community.  Some were neighbors and others were just sc...