[Magdalen] Fwd: Local History.

[Cantor03 at aol.com]

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No, not that of NE Pennsylvania, but the Upper Midwest of my youth.
 
A retired teacher in my home region in Wisconsin is in the process  of
writing a series of small books about a half-dozen pioneer citizens
(all men, of course!) and a half-dozen communities in my home  county.
 
Many of the persons and communities of which she writes are well 
known to me, or, at least I've heard stories about them.  She  does
come up with some facts I hadn't appreciated, however.  For  example,
my home village was founded by and the population is heavily of
Norwegian origin, and yet the next rural community to the east is
just as solidly Swedish.
 
Because many of the small, wooden churches have completely
disappeared, I hadn't realized that there were so very many small
congregations of Pietist origin.  The Swedish and Norwegian  Lutheran
churches had to compete with Swedish and Norwegian Baptist
congregational (later Covenant) and Swedish and Norwegian
Methodist churches.  Lutheran clergy were not always very  popular.
There were more than a dozen such ethnic churches.
 
There are stories and pictures of the tremendous lumbering of the
virgin Eastern White Pine, and the spring log jams.  Later,  when
railroads entered the region, they went after the hardwoods.   All
those oak floors in Chicago, etc., had to come from somewhere.
 
When I drive by the Weyerhauser Mansion on Saint Paul, MN's
stately Summit Avenue, I quietly swear at such lumber barons'
raping of the natural vegetation of the region 1865 - 1900.
 
Let's hope they can keep it from happening in the Amazon!
 
 
 
 
David S.