THE CENTER OF THE WORLD ON THE MOVE

“Ron, I need help washing the school windows.”  I eagerly awaited the first morning of my new assignment with yet some guarded apprehension. …

Looking back, I have to admit a feeling of relief intruded upon a satisfied smile when we sat on the board washing the lowest tier of windows looking into the kindergarten – first grade room. My thoughts briefly skipped back to the first day of school in this very room where my education career began some 12 years ago.  For two school years I had gazed out to the real world wondering what this vast universe had in store for me. All of a sudden reality kicked in.   Once again - up the steps to the second floor to emerge through the trap door onto the roof.  One by one, we took on each tier of windows working our way from top to bottom. By mid-morning I was feeling confidently secure. We completed the east windows. “We’ll do the south side next,” Albert declared. “Washing the south side windows will not take long. We only have one set of windows on the third floor and then another on the second floor. As we went over the top, my confidence, fast turned into guarded skepticism. Three stories suddenly seem like ten stories. “What the heck, if Albert can do it – I can do it too,” I thought. 

* * *

December 16, 1867 was the big day for twenty-nine year old Hosea Tirrell and the twenty-six year old Laura Jane Williamson.  Getting an early start, the young pair walked south on Log Cabin Trail.  They followed the winding route for a half-mile until they came to Wagner trail.  Turning east Hosea and Laura walked along the rough new trail, barely wide enough for a team of horses pulling a buck-board wagon.  Moving along the frozen road-bed fractured by sunken hoof prints and wagon wheel ruts was not easy.  By 1867 the surrounding forest countryside was already giving way to the emerging farm lands.  The cleared fields would provide a view of the welcome morning sunrise in the south-east. Two and a half miles from New Troy, the morning walk, brought the two travelers over the Wagner Trail hill.  They soon came to Cleveland Road. Traveling Fifteen miles north, the road would lead to St. Joseph. In the fall of 1670 the French explorer, LaSalle built a fort on the bluff above the mouth of the St. Joseph River. That fort was perhaps the first in the entire mid-west. The French explorers’ control followed by the English ruling slowly but surely gave way to the emerging United States.  St. Joseph was beginning to become an important Lake Michigan port city.

Today Hosea and Laura were not going north to St. Joseph.  They walked south to the home of a minister, in Galien, to be married.