City Connection: We aren’t the First Chamberlains in Point

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Winter sucks. We don’t going anywhere and I spend my days dreaming about all the cool ‘ancestral’ places I’d like to visit. Yesterday, I was particularly bummed about it being February, -25, and the ground covered with snow, then I remembered something I had stumbled across quite awhile back. We aren’t the first Chamberlains to live in Point . Of course, there are quite a few families with that surname but not all of them belong to my husband’s Chamberlains. I decided to revisit that little discovery.

While researching Todd’s 2nd Great-Grandfather, William Henry Chamberlain, I spent some time investigating William’s brother. Joseph Addison Chamberlain isn’t particularly interesting to me, I was hoping to find more clues about the brothers’ father. Joseph’s obituary popped up in the Ancestry hints section with some surprising information in it. One of his daughters lived in Stevens Point. How cool!? I left that tidbit floating in space for over a year, until last night.

This home isn’t a deeply important connection to our family history, but it’s a fun one.  It took me less than hour to track down, Carrie May Chamberlain and her husband, Joseph Robert Weyher, living in Stevens Point. They lived here for at least a few years between 1918-1920 based on the obituary and census records. By the 1930 census, they lived somewhere new.

Which house!? That was the real question. The 1920 census has the street name and house number. They lived right on Main Street. Sometime in the 1970s (If I remember correctly) Point renumbered their streets/addresses, so I had to do a little digging. Using the Sanborn Maps from the Library of Congress, I was able to track down the old address and figure out which house it is today. It’s still standing!

I checked it out on Google Maps to see what it looks like now. I’m hoping to get a chance to drive by it soon. It will be fun to think of that little connection we have to the town, however small it may be. And it’s fun to think there were Chamberlains living here 100 years ago!

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Refocusing for 2020

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Sometimes, I get wrapped up in sharing so much about my garden,  that I forget some of my other plans for this project.  Beautiful flowers and plants are just so dang distracting! I’ve shared a lot of my garden already, but I have more plans for the other side of my “Grow Your Roots” project, family history.

Last year was quite a reality check for the complexity of my project. There are so many factors that go into growing and writing about a heritage garden that it easily overwhelmed me. I also felt I spent so much time working on weeds, at my real life job, and strict genealogy, that I missed out on some of the more fun and probably more interesting aspects of this project (the  journey and experience).

I want to share the excitement of finding new information about my ancestors and finding their homesteads (or whatever is there now). I also want to embrace the travel aspect of it. While visiting my grand-father’s likely birth place was amazing, I missed the chance to experience more of the area and culture. While it is obviously different from the culture of 1915, spending time in the area can teach me about the landscape, people, and history of that place.

One of my core beliefs about history in general is that if you can find a way to personally connect to a historical figure, event, or place, history becomes much more important to you. While I have a degree in US History, I will admit much of it just went in one ear and out the other, aside for some cool bits of trivia. It wasn’t until I started researching my genealogy that history really became important to me.

Two examples of this are inspired by one ancestor. John Finley. Oh, is he a thorn in my side. But I have to give him credit for sparking my interest in the War of 1812 and the pioneer history of Illinois. I had really never given much thought to either topic, until researching him. Through that one ancestor so much history has come to life and I gained deeper appreciation for a state I previously only grumbled about.

So this year, in my quest to find ancestral homes and plants. I want to stop, take in everything about the place, and really dive into that moment and all the history that has lead up to it.

Plus,  tracking down the actual plants and flowers, is much more difficult than I originally expected.  Even if I don’t come home with a cool plant, an experience is worth it. And I can find an appropriate plant to honor my ancestors that will live in Zone 4!

A Facebook Page: Test

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I have created a Facebook page for Grow Your Roots! Currently, I am just playing around with settings, trying to decide if I want to commit to the upkeep of a page.

Pros: I would be able to automatically share my posts, and allow others to share their stories of heritage gardening and family history.

Cons: It’s Facebook. It can be horrible and overly complicated. I already struggle keeping up on this!

Anyway…link below to the new page.

Grow Your Roots Facebook Page

Don’t be surprised if suddenly it’s gone.  I’m still working out some ideas.

 

A Look Back on 2019’s Big Garden Plans

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Now that I am wiping away the failures of 2019 and looking towards the opportunities of 2020, I’m ready to start planning.

Do you remember my big plans for the garden last year? I wrote about them in 2019 Garden Plans. Here’s the list of plans and notes about what was accomplished:

  • Create a “holding bed” with good soil and good drainage while better permanent beds are made (this actually turned into my herb garden while my iris just hung out in buckets for while. oops)
    A ton of herbs and flowers
    This happened in several stages
    I had to sort, thin, and cutback
    I was able to share most of my extras with friends and family!
    I painted this sign the first year we moved in!

     

  • Paint my existing shed, add better shelves inside (HURRAY! I DID THIS! And I organized it!)
    Before!
    After!
    I painted an old chain-link gate and hung it as a trellis.
    This is organized!
  • Move plants from the “Big Bed” to holding bed, and dismantle “Big Bed” (We kept the Big Bed. I like it. It’s there. It would be a lot to move it. We did amend the soil though and I replanted my iris collection there)
    Newly planted and packed in!
    I still have more plans for this bed
  • Replace the Big Bed with space/pad for new shed (coming in 2020?) and two new 8×8 square beds flanking each side (Hahahaha. None of this happened, but I do have hopes for a new shed…some day)
  • Replace existing raised beds with better quality materials, refreshed soil, and good drainage (I did take out the beds, and removed a lot of the rubble at the bottom, but we never got around to rebuilding them)
  • Add two large 8×15 spaces with landscape timbers and mulch as pads for my grow bags (Nope. didn’t happen. I marked them out. Put landscape fabric down in one area. This is still on the list)
  • Add large row for cut flowers in front of the garden (HEY! I did this too. It definitely still needs some work…and to be widened a bit.)
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    Left to right: the new flower row, grow bags on weed barrier, dismantled raised beds, and the Big Bed before it’s makeover!

    Looking down the new row
    I planted some random squash in the row…which will not be in the plan for next season
  • The most expensive but the most important addition will be the privacy fence. It will probably the big project of the year (We got an estimate which was so far out of our budget that we had to rethink the whole thing. I’m thinking hedges.)
  • Pour cement for new patio slab (this is all Todd) (The ground is sort of prepped, aka we have a huge section of cut out yard making walking out the back really interesting)
  • Extend and clean up the rock area along the backside of the house (I don’t even remember this plan. But we do still need to work on cleaning up this area)

What Now? I’m making a new list. For sure.

Here are few extra pictures from the 2019 season including our house’s new paint!:

This photo is from the real estate listing in 2016
We painted the house in early spring, but here is this fall!

Falling off the Map

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Hello? So much for my posting goals of 2019. What happened? Well, I never did hear back from the current owners of the Hall Homestead (or if they emailed me it was lost in the infinite, junk mail folder). We had a huge storm in July that dropped branches over most of our yard, including my iris bed. The bed was mostly cleared out except for some special iris I didn’t want out of the ground for long. The tree, of course, fell right over that section. Thankfully, everything made it and by the end of the summer I had over 20 wheel barrows full of sandy soil added to the notoriously winter-flood prone bed. All the iris were replanted by the end of August. Hopefully, they’ll make it. This turned out to be the BIG project of the year. 

I still have more plans for this bed

My grow-bags were, once again, a success. This year in general wasn’t the greatest garden year. Lots of rain and cool weather kept most of my veggies from producing at the top of their game. It also kept my motivation at bay. It seemed every day I had off was raining. My flowers did pretty well though, as well as the new space created this spring.

Looking down the new row

The summer and fall turned out much different than I expected. I ended up putting in many more hours at work than originally planned (I work in soul-sucking retail). In January, I hope things slow down, so I have a chance to reevaluate what was accomplished in 2019, what was successful, and what I want to attempt next.

I already have big plans for 2020, of course. 2019 was overall, more successful than 2018. Moving forward, no matter how slow, is all that matters. Did I accomplish everything I planned? Not even 10%. My goal for 2020? I hope to accomplish 15% of my plans. Small steps.

I do have many ideas and plans. I hope some of them come to fruition. I also hope I can keep motivation to share the journey!

Good Bye, 2019. Hello, 2020.