The Spokesrider

This is yet another photo of Volinia taken on August 13. The road in front of the two buildings is called Dutch Settlement Road. I’ve already mentioned that it’s a road that’s busy enough that I usually try to find alternative routes for bicycling. But I had never bothered to find out why it was [...]

After getting photos of Elijah and Eliza Goble’s framed portraits (in the back, behind that fancy dress and hat from the 1930s) I eased myself and my camera out of the front room of the Log Cabin Museum in Cassopolis (August 13). But I stopped when I spied a note saying, “Rocking chair owned by [...]

From a Spokesrider point of view, the portrait on the left is the most valuable item in the Log Cabin Museum in Cassopolis. I hope it doesn’t get destroyed in another leaky roof incident. I took the photo on our visit there Sunday before last by holding the camera up and aiming it in the [...]

Judging by plat maps, the barn appears to have been on property owned by Richard J. Huyck. Huyck had been a volunteer in the militia, though not in the company that was raised in Volinia Township. He didn’t move here until several years after the Black Hawk war.

Howard S. Roger’s “History of Cass County” is notable among county histories. It was a personal project that was written before the production of county histories got to be a regular industry. Not many such histories were written before our country’s 100th anniversary in 1876, an event that triggered much retrospection and the production of [...]

Rogers said that already in 1875 all that was left in either place but a few scattered houses. (His own residence was one of them.) But while the site of Charleston now consists nothing but farm fields and a small cemetery, Volinia still has a few houses.

I visited four cemeteries in the afternoon, three of which I had never visited before. In all four I found graves of Black Hawk militiamen, some of which I had not particularly been looking for.