The biographical sketches in this chapter by Selma Moore, Rilla Greco and Alice Gretsinger were pieced together from many letters and from taped conversations.

"When I was a child it was nothing for us to have 19 or 20 at the dinner table. My dad had several hired men who lived right with us. Sometimes married couples worked for us the men helped my dad, and their wives helped my mother. For a time I even tended the steam engine which operated one of the sawmills. I recall only one accident. One hired man was in the habit of drinking too much. Pa had told him never to drink around the com husker, nor to wear gloves when operating the machinery. Well, he didn't pay any attention. His hand was pulled into the machine, and it took his arm off at the elbow. He was taken right to Dr. Richardson's office where he remained while Mrs. Richardson nursed him. Gangrene set in and the arm had to be taken off at the shoulder. Of course, there was no penicillin then, but those old doctors knew what to do. When my dad went to pay the doctor bill, it was only $15. The old guy got better and lived to be 83 years old. He died at Beech's Convalescent Home when I worked there.

"At one time we owned the old Dundee Fairgrounds. When we lived on Rawson Street, Pa built a large house at the end of the street on this property. We intended to move into it, but it was sold to my uncle, and this is where my Uncle Ervin and his family moved after they sold the homestead.

"My husband was Thomas Moore from Jackson, Mississippi. I met him at the rooming house where I worked when I was attending County Normal in Monroe. He worked on the railroad that ran from Detroit to Toledo. We were married June 12, 1917, and stayed in Michigan and Ohio for awhile, and then we moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where Tommy worked on the street cars. We lived there twenty years, during which time I was matron of an old men’s home. I made $65 a month. This was during the Great Depression. In 1943 after my son went in the service, we moved back to Dundee, Michigan, where I still make my home."

Selma Moore

"My dear grandparents were gone by the time I was born, but I had heard my older sisters and brothers speak of them. I was envious as I felt I had been cheated. Pa's father was a good fanner. I don't know how much land he had, but he set a comer of his farm aside for a school. He was an educator and believed in school. All my kin folks could read and write, and do arithmetic, on both sides of the family. He wrote books. Some had been published, but over the years they were either lost or destroyed. Ba's father had a store and also sold liquor. I don't know if he made it or not, but I heard that he had a whiskey still in his house. I've his journal where he noted that he was plowing for com on the 7th. of July and the snow was still high in the fence rows (rail fencing), so they had a lot of long hard winters. I also have a letter from Grandpa to my dad telling him his barn had burned and asked if he would come and build him a new barn for his crops and livestock before winter. Grandpa went back to Ireland and came back with Ellen. My dad liked her. He said she was a very generous person. A big woman must have been around six feet tall. Her apron my mother held up to her chin and it was to the floor, beautifully trimmed with Irish lace. Her cape was all bead work, and small furry tails gorgeous. It should have been in a museum. We kids used her clothes for our plays.

"When my dad and mother were first married they lived in a log cabin with a dirt floor. As soon as my dad could, he bought a canvas of some type to cover the floor. It was over around Rea someplace. There were nine children living. One had died in infancy. Russell, my eldest brother, helped my dad on the threshing machines, and ran the carriage on the saw at my dad's lumber mill which was in the woods on the Walnut Grove Farm west, north west of Dundee. As a child, I used to use a cant hook to help roll logs up on the carriage. Pa had the steam engines and when I got finished I used to run and jump in the cab to get warm. We tapped maple trees in early spring for sap. We cooked it down out in those woods. My job WC\.S to keep the fire going from 7:00 to 11:00 when one of the boys would take over, usually Ernest, as Bill was younger than I, and Bud was a baby. Then my father or Russell would be relief man. Winters were hard, but when there was snow, men skidded in on flat boats their logs to be rough sawed into lumber.

"There was butchering to be done, and cows to be taken care of. We made butter which was exchanged for groceries. We raised wheat and had a certain amount milled into flour. We raised oats, corn, and buckwheat. We kept bees for honey. We started early in the spring to process and can maple syrup, vegetables and fruits. Just as the season progressed, so the huge cellar under the house was well stocked. We stored carrots, potatoes, tubs of celery, and pails of our own apples: Baldwins, Greenings, Northern Spys, Russets, Grimes Golden, and winter pears. We grew red raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cherries, and Bartlett pears which went into jars, jams, and jellies. We put up a 52 gallon barrel of sauerkraut and another one of huge stuffed peppers. We grew our own popcorn which the whole family loved on winter evenings.

"Rena and my mother were beautiful seamstresses, so we never lacked for nice looking clothes; many were made over. The small pieces were used for quilt blocks, the scraps cut or tom and sewed together for rag rug making. We wasted nothing. We had wood stoves to cook by, and a parlor stove for heat. In winter many neighbors would gather in our place to square dance in the huge old room we called the parlor, and they'd bring pot luck dishes. They were fun times. My father called the square dances. He had posted up that floor heavily from below, so it was safe for dancing.

"Fanning was hard work, and putting food on the table for so many of us took a lot of time out of the day. My dad was a good carpenter. He owned the Dundee Fairgrounds at one time, and had a couple trotting horses. When a tornado tore the grounds up, what was left of the buildings he tore down, and used the lumber which he was able to save to build a house.

"People liked George Getty. He was hard working, honest, had foresight, was very inventive, he was a good blacksmith, an excellent fanner, liked to hunt and taught his sons how to use the gun. He didn't drink nor smoke; neither did Russell. I loved to see him work. I learned a lot by watching. I used to pump the forge when he did his blacksmithing. He made the most of what he had. Both Pa and Uncle Ervin were wonderful carpenters. My dad built frame work for beautiful buildings which were then moved to other people's places so they could finish them themselves. In his blacksmith shop he made parts for machinery repair. He also made horseshoes and shod horses. Uncle Ervin was a small man. He was called 'Nub' because of his size. I believe Aunt Lena was quite a bit taller than he was. We kids all liked him, for he took a special interest in Ernest, and Ma was sorry she didn't name Ernest after Uncle Ervin. He never had any sons, only daughters.

"My dad had seven beautiful work horses. The barns were kept immaculate by us kids. We all had jobs to do and all worked together. My father thrilled over everything new. He owned the first automobile in Monroe County, an old Polk of Toledo, looked like a lumber wagon. My brother Russell went to Chicago to get it. My dad bought it from a friend of his, by the name of Hoxie. I remember Ma saying the car cost $4000. Now I don't know whether Hoxie paid that for it or if my dad did, but it sure scared heck out of all the horses.

It had carbide lights, big brass ones, a canvas top with straps, the gear shift, a horn on the outside of the door, and a crank. Ernie broke his arm cranking it. We'd all go on Wednesday night to hear concerts in the Dundee Square.

When my dad parked it everyone crowded around to see the great curiosity, and they would run to hold their horse’s heads when my dad started it to drive us home. It was fun. We were considered the 'in' bunch.

"My family was generous and always helped out any of the neighbors down on their luck, with loads of wood, meat and vegetables, milk and goodies. Pa loved baseball and his summer pastime was spent out in the field after the hay was cut. Neighbors around us took part. One time a small plane flew over. Pa made the remark, 'sometime in the future planes as big as boxcars will be flying overhead'. The men looked at him and laughed. My dad loved ice skating and bought us all skates. Did we all have fun on moonlight nights. We had 93 acres where we lived when I was growing up and another 40, on the road going toward Britton. Pa rented the buildings out and the man ran a livery in there. Pa found out he had the bakery in the old chicken coop, even kept his chickens in there, too. I hope he mixed the dough elsewhere. No doubt a brick homemade oven. Anyhow I remember Pa sputtering about it. Pa took time out from his hard work to take us kids fishing. He loved his mother and sisters. He said they were gentle folks and they all enjoyed each other. His dad was devoted to his family, and he and his dad worked to take care of the sick ones, when they had consumption.

"I received a letter from my mom once, saying she wished we were all at home and little again. Now wasn't she a glutton for punishment? I guess we never caused them much trouble. We were too busy to get into anything bad. We had lots of friends come out from town. There were always three or four more places at the dining table. My folks just laughed about it. There were so many of us it always looked like a banquet anyhow. My mother used white linen tablecloths. We washed over wash tubs with a wash board. I always remember the shock I received after Mom and Dad sold the farm and moved into town. I came home to find them eating lunch off a white oilcloth. My job was washing dishes. I never tired of washing dishes. I stood on a box by the old kitchen range when I first started doing them. During the First World War, Ruby and Ernie went to Detroit to work in shops there. Russell still helped Dad. We also had a couple hired men. Dad made over the com crib and they lived in it.

"My sister Rena was an accomplished pianist. Russell played the comet.

Selma the violin and so did my dad, and we would sing together. Ernest had a beautiful voice. So did Ruby, so they harmonized beautifully. We also used to put on plays and amused the family that way. After graduating, Rena taught school. Selma did, too, for a time.

"We had a long table in the kitchen dining room, and when my mother baked bread or cookies, cakes, or pies, we children kneeled on chairs across the table and watched. She was an excellent cook. When she dressed a chicken or wild game we watched and learned how to do it. Both boys and girls learned how to cook and bake, and enjoyed it. We ate lots of wild game, as Ernest, like my dad, loved to hunt and trap, and although we butchered hogs, the wild game, fish and of course the poultry kept the family eating well.

"I remember my mother mentioning one time that on the old farm where we lived on the road where the D.T. & I. tracks ran along beside and crossed the farm that my dad was always looking for a well that used to be around where Grandma Russell's house had stood. He knew it had only been planked over, and he used to go through with a rod to try to locate it. He was afraid a horse would fall in it. We had a nice orchard there. When we lived in the big brick house, which burned in later years, at one time there was a house across the road, and there was a well on that place. Pa used to fill the water tanks for the steam engines from this well. There were the most beautiful flowers around the well, even roses, lilies, etc.

"I have never forgotten one experience which none of us could ever explain. I must have been five years old, Ruby was ten. It was Saturday, winter, sunny. It had snowed the night before, and Pa said it was five below zero. The boys had gone to the bam to do the chores. Ma was in the kitchen baking cookies.

She laid a white cloth on the end of the table and was stacking them along there. Pa was sitting in the parlor reading, Ruby was making doll clothes, I was cutting out paper dolls, allro the parlor stove. I heard my mother say 'what are you doing in here?' A.SBaa.l1 man not dressed for cold weather came into the sitting room where we were and stood behind the stove. My dad pretended to be reading but his eyes told my mother to go about her work, and us children not to move. He stood there for quite a bit, and then quickly left, taking the first row of Ma's cookies and stuffing them in his pocket. Not a word had been spoken. As soon as the man left, Pa flew out of his chair. When he returned, Ma asked him, 'where did you go?' 'To the barn. None of the boys saw him.

And I was afraid if he walked in on them they might work him over with a pitchfork.' 'Oh, George,' Ma said, 'That little old man wasn't dressed for winter. He will surely freeze to death. We must find him. What way did he go?' Pa said, 'I, too, thought of that. I've looked all around for tracks. There are no tracks!' I will never forget the look on my mother's face. The man was strange, and as I sat at his feet and he stared down on me, all I remember is his piercing dark eyes, a kindly face with a beard. A warm glow came into my life. He didn't have to speak or touch us or nothing. It was an experience to remember. I remember Ma called the Halls up the road a mile, for fear he'd walk in on them, and also the Sunderlands, but no one else ever saw the man.

"We lived during that period when life was hard but more slowly paced. Our work, as Ma used to say, was cut out for us. We didn't inquire why. We just did it because it was there to be done,  wash by hand, heat irons over the cook stove to do ironing, carry all the water from the well, rain or shine, or freezing. We lived in that big brick house from about 1910 until about 1925, when my dad sold out and moved to Dundee. He drove truck for Karners, who owned the mill. My dad had his own trucks. Russell worked some, too, during the busy season, when he wasn't busy at farming. All in all, we had a wonderful childhood. "

Rilla Greco

"Our family moved to my grandfather's homestead on the south side of what is now known as Downing Highway in about 1904. I was born there in 1905. The land was situated on both sides of the road, with a small creek at the end of our property. I was allowed to go to that creek, but not to the Macon. Flossie always told me there was a griffin under the bridge.

The house, garden and orchard were on the south side of the road, and after Addie was married, an ice house was torn down and a house built for her east of our house. On the west was a shed where father butchered his cattle for our winter's meat. He and Mother would put meat through the grinder to make sausage and they would fry down the fat for lard. There was headcheese to be made and hams to be smoked; apples and potatoes brought into the cellar and cider put in barrels for vinegar.

Downing's farm joined ours, and I recall Marion and Emery Downing, and the names of young Charley, Nellie and Nora. It seems to me that Titsworth land joined our apple orchard on the south.

The McCarberys lived near. There were children, but the only one I recall is Rhea, a tall pretty dark eyed, dark haired girl. There were Rose and Nancy, married to Underwoods. There was Nellie Curry, too, with red hair, I believe.

"On the north side of the road were the barn and farm buildings and back of that a woods. The field east of the barn was planted to corn. One year my father ploughed it round instead of square and in the center of the corn field he planted a watermelon patch, even yellow ones, and the first we had ever seen. At the end of the field to the east was the schoolhouse on land donated by George K. Getty. It was called the Getty School.

"There was an Irish Church somewhere along there to the north of us. As I recall, it was brick. On that road just across from the school was an old house with huge willow trees in front and Edmond Lloyd's family lived there. He fell into the basement, I believe, and broke his neck. Francis, Marjorie, and LaVern were the children, and Cindy, the wife. Once I had a birthday party and Vern gave me a beautiful little cup which I have had all these years.

"Peter Getty, my father's uncle, wanted my father to go 'out west' with him and thank goodness he didn't, for now I find that 'out west' was Minnesota, and that is colder than Michigan.

"I remember when Pa had his sale; the auctioneer and his cry. We took our three horses with us, Nell, Topsy and Prince, for Pa needed them to haul his tank wagon as he kept on threshing grain.

I was five or six years old when we moved to the old fairgrounds at Dundee. It was a miniature farm 25 acres. Uncle Charley helped put in the com and alfalfa. He used to plough up lost jewelry and money, I suppose lost at the Fair.

Here we lived in a big house, three bedrooms all with big clothes closets, and a large hall upstairs, and a big attic. Downstairs there was a parlor, parlor bedroom, sitting room, bedroom with clothes room, dining room, kitchen with coal room and washroom, a back porch, side porch, hall, bathroom and cellar, all leading off the kitchen. On the enclosed back porch a cream separator, a well where mother hung her cream and butter to keep cool, a washing machine run by a gas engine which was attached to the machine by a belt, and which was also used to pump water to the barn for the stock.

"We had a playhouse which had once been the ticket booth for the Fair Grounds on which the place was built. One of the display buildings my father used to store his threshing equipment. He had blacksmith tools there and an anvil where he repaired what he could. He built a new barn and corncrib and the chicken house was a remodeled Fair building; the 'judge's stand' was a place for the pigs.

A long lane led to a small wood lot where the cows pastured in summer and where I picked wild flowers and blackberries, wild strawberries and black eyed Susans, if I climbed through a convenient hole cut in the fence to the neighbor's lane and a few paces across another gate to the railroad tracks, the ones that led to Britton and beyond. There were thorn apple trees and a choke cherry along the fence that hemmed our lane and three huge stones about halfway to the wood lot and another one at the end of the fence that enclosed the corn field.

"What a wonderful place for a kid like me to grow up. I have always thanked my parents for a beautiful childhood.

"Blanche was the gardener. She had 'four o'clocks' planted all around the fence and sweet peas growing and blooming on the north side of the house, and a lovely garden. I brought a horse chestnut home from school and planted it by the kitchen walk. The south porch was screened by wild cucumber vines which provided nice shade on a hot day.

Blanche hatched three duck eggs by a hen one spring, and they found the little ditch that separated our place from the neighbors and one night when we came home here were the little ducks having a moonlight swim and talking away in their delight while mother hen walked the bank imploring them to come and go to bed.

"One other night we came home from the show and here was a big white grunting ghost on our lawn. Mom said, "Oh, that old hog is out again', so we had a job getting her back in her pen.

Blanche was a born teacher and held school daily when we were children. If Veyirl and I wouldn't play, we weren't all that crazy about school, she would teach the dolls propped up on stools and a chair for a desk.

She had two little white pigs when we were kids. They were runts, so Father gave them to her. She called them Fanny and Floyd. Eventually they died and we buried them, with many tears, in the corner of the apple orchard. This corner became burial place for chickens, birds, and whatever else, with stones at each grave head.

Addie's oldest was born when I was five years old and Flossie was married, and so Blanche was my big sister, my teacher, my love and comfort. She came out here two times before her death to see me.

"Pa bought a Ford and it was the kind you had to crank, a Model T, with an 'ooga, ooga' horn. One day, while cranking the car, the crank flew back and hit his arm and broke it.

"He would take us for a ride along the river road and the fireflies would come out and amuse us with their flashing lights. When he needed parts for his machinery we would all pile in and go to Toledo. He would take us to a restaurant to eat. Pa always ordered white fish. Then we would take in a Hoot Gibson or Tom Mix 'shootem up western'. We would pick up his parts and head for home. The side curtains were flopping and we kept warm under horsehide blankets.

"In the summer we would load Addie's family and us in the Ford and go to Wamplers Lake on a picnic with eight or nine people, lunch baskets, bathing suits, babies' necessities, and happy hearts in anticipation of a super holiday; not to mention fish poles, bait and straw hats.

"My father was a farmer and a sawyer. I remember him pointing out barns which he had sawed the lumber for. He was also a thresher of grain. He had a steam engine and a grain separator, a tank wagon which carried the water for the engine, a pair of bay horses that pulled it and he went from farm to farm threshing, starting with barley and on through the season. He even had an ensilage cutter for filling silos.

Then the farmers bought their own rigs and he went into the garage business. He bought out the Wadsworth Brothers in Dundee and opened his Square Deal Garage. Everyone knew him as Nub Getty. His sister named him that because he was so small. She called him 'Nubbin'.

Pa loved baseball, boxing matches and was good natured and full of fun. He loved cats and dogs, but had to shoot Old Ring, so he would never have another dog. He worked beyond his physical strength, and was miserable with arthritis for years.

"My parents belonged to the Grange. They went to dances and card parties when young and later, in Dundee, I believe Pa was an Odd Fellow and Ma, a Rebekah.

Sometimes a peddler with one of those huge suitcases stopped, selling Watkins, Rawleigh, Porter's Pain King, and products of that nature. There was one that Pa called Jake the Peddler. A grocery wagon stopped by the farm regularly and Ma bought such things as Quaker Oats, sugar, flour, salt and soap. Sometimes the Quaker Oats contained a teddy bear as a prize, cut from some sort of paper, would curl up and do tricks in your hand if you blew on it first. Also stick candy with a finger ring around it, which was very popular with me at the time. Fairy soap and The Gold Dust Twins Cleanser, also ball bluing and Fels Naptha soap, were found in our home. How times have changed in fifty years.

"When we were still living on the farm, George (Roggeman) came with a horse and cutter and took Flossie for a ride and took me along, too. We were all packed in under the white fur robe.

"It may have been the same winter on Christmas morning that Pa was so excited and told us to come out and see Santa's reindeer's tracks in the snow. Sure enough there they were and on the roof top, too, however I could not see them up there. Well, the tracks on the ground were real enough. The cows had gotten out in the night, but that was the story Pa was telling to please his family. Christmas was always beautiful.

"After awhile the place got too big for my parents. My mother had kept the whole lawn mowed, the garden planted, the butter churned, the chickens hatched and off to market along with all the other chores, so they sold it around 1918.

It nearly broke my heart, but I realized that my parents were getting on and it was too much work for them. We rented a place on Pearl St. for a year or so and then bought the 'treasure house' (the house where the old Getty portraits were found, mentioned in the Introduction), and lived there until my father passed away of a stroke in 1929.

The 'treasure house' which was on the same street where we lived, was the home of a dear old friend, Lyda Kent. One morning it caught on fire in the kitchen and she was so badly burned that she did not survive. Pa bought her house and had to remodel it some. He closed off the only storage place there was at the top of the stairs. He left a crawl space to it but it was difficult to get into that space. The big pictures which had graced our parlor and sitting room in the big house just overwhelmed the smaller one and so were stacked in the hallway upstairs. I have never been able to stand clutter, and so laboriously I hauled each picture through that tiny crawl space and into the storage room along with the postcard albums and the rest of the clutter, one at a time.

When remodeling, my father added a two car garage and coal bins hard and soft we had one of those wonderful old hard coal burners, and a room for Ma's washer, a sink for drainage and a place for our oil stove on which we cooked in hot weather. My son was born there and my father died there. What a blow to the family when he passed away and my sister Addie was killed in an automobile accident six months later.

"Ma tried to live in the house after my father's death. I was married by this time, and my son was two years old. We lived two houses down from my mother, and Veyirl lived two houses down from us, so we were near her. She decided to have her brother, Uncle Charley, come and live with her, but that didn't work either. He dug up her flowers, or hoed them out, and when fall came she decided to rent the house to a teacher, and live with Veyirl and Dewey for the winter.

I went back to work when Don was a year old and my baby sitter graduated from school so Veyirl cared for Don along with her 1 year old Robert, who died of pneumonia and measles at age seven. Mom lived with Veyirl during the winter and when the teacher moved out, after the school term ended, I rented her house and paid her for looking after Don, so we lived there until she decided to sell the place to her sister and brother in law, Bertha and Frank Monk. We then moved into an upper apartment.

We were so forlorn after Pa's death. Veyirl was the only one really settled. Addie was killed in a car accident (the car hit a horse) six months after my father's death, and Flossie was living on a rented farm in a small house. Blanche was on a farm in Northern Michigan and practically starving because of her husband's illness. The Great Depression had us all in its choking grasp.

• "Addie was born to Ervin and Lena Belle Getty on March 16, 1891. She married Ralph Raymond Roggerman. She was killed in an accident on November 26, 1929.
   

• "Flossie Mae was born. January 30, 1893, and married George Roggeman September 27, 1911, in Dundee. Flossie died in a nursing home in December 1978, George died in Lansing November 15, 1977.
   

• "Blanche Irene (1898  1974) married Elmer Durward Rolph (1898  1960).
   

• "Veyirl (1902) married Dewey John Wittkop (1899  1972).
   

• "Alice Naomi (1905) married (1) Elmer Koster (2) Gordon Gretsinger (1904  1980). "
   

• Doras Helen was born March 12, 1908. She died July 24, 1909, at the age of 1 yr. 4 mo. 12 days. Cause  hydrocephalus."