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.