Wisteria

From the Library of Congress James Moffit (1843-1911) started The Ellicottville Post newspaper in 1884 and his son John A. Moffit (1867-1915) became an equal partner in the business in 1888. The younger Moffit arranged and edited the column “Echoes from the Long Ago” under which the following letter to the editor appeared in the Wednesday, April 15, 1914 edition (.pdf file courtesy of Fultonhistory.com ). The author of the letter was William W. Canfield (1854-1937) who at the time was editor of the Utica Observer Dispatch newspaper and the brother of John A. Moffit’s wife, Mary Gertrude Canfield (1867-1946).  Wednesday, April 15, 1914. To The Editor of The Post: President Lincoln was assassinated on the evening of April 14, 1865 or 49 years ago this year. I have heard it said that no man or woman living, who was old enough to understand about Lincoln and sense what his murder meant, ever forgot the exact circumstances under which the assassination of...

My maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother was Gertrude Bos Kiel. I imagine her to have been like my own maternal grandma, Theresa Katsma Timmer, whom I loved dearly, but I really knew little about Gertrude. Me with my grandmother, Theresa Katsma Timmer. November 2006. When I asked, my grandma told me this story of her grandma: "My grandmother, her name was Gertrude, took care of us when mother worked at the mission.   She was in a wheelchair.   She could walk though, maybe she had what I have.   My mother cleaned at the Bradford Street Mission.   My Uncle John was superintendent.   My Uncle Heiny worked there, too.   Uncle John moved out to California, near Los Angeles.   He came back to Michigan and took my grandma Gertrude back to California with him.   She died out there. " Margaret Katsma DeWitt, Theresa's sister, later said that when her grandmother died in California, her mother could not go out there, so Uncle John sent a pi...