Tombstone Tuesday: Application for Headstone or Marker

Next to a day in a library or court house, I love nothing more than spending a day wandering around a cemetery. After Wisconsin's long, dark winter days, I look forward to the annual Memorial Day cemetery visits to our family members graves.

Having Lunch With The Family

My childhood summers were filled with activities: summer camp, extended visits with my cousins and long, lazy weeks spent with my grandparents. While I had to share my paternal grandparents with several cousins, my most memorable visits where the ones my sister and I got to spent "alone" with our grandparents. I loved reading books on the front porch and wandering around the upstairs (being careful to avoid the broken spindle in the railing) but especially looking at the photographs on my grandmother's dressing table. In the past I've written about the sadness surrounding my grandma and grandpa Bergeron with the death of their oldest son, my uncle Earle Bergeron. Sometimes - not often - I accompanied my Grandpa Charlie on his weekly trip to the cemetery in Aniwa, where Earle is buried - those visits were always quiet (the grandchildren were all frightened of Grandpa Charlie except for my sister Lisa.). Had I known that as an adult I would become obsessed with his family history, I would have filled those trips with nonstop questions.

Visits to my maternal grandparents also included visits to cemeteries but those trips were much different. I recall Gram taking me "down the road" to visit the grave of Grandpa Harley's mother, Nancy Stone Space. At that time the grave was unmarked only with a rose bush but even at that, the reverence of it being a member of my family drew me like a magnet. While I walked (ran!) among the headstones, Gram would tell me stories of the people who were buried there.

But my favorite place to go with my Grandma Almas was to visit "the little girl."

When Gram had time and a trip to visit little Virginia was promised, I would go off to pick a bouquet of flowers - a bunch of fragrant purple lilacs, peonies from Gram's row of pink, white and red peony bushes or Tiger Lilies that grew around the old water pump - and we'd drive up to Forest View cemetery to visit the grave of Virginia. But that is another story.

Just like the sadness that surrounded my Grandmother Bergeron's room over the loss of Earle, that same sadness encloses me whenever I visit the Aniwa cemetery. I'm reminded of how young Earle was when he left home and the almost unconsolable loss that his death created in the family. I had never given any thought to the fact that there once was a time when Earle's grave was unmarked until a hint on Ancestry.com in the U.S. Headstone Application for Military Veterans 1925-1963 collection led me to the application my grandparents made to the government for a headstone.

The date of the application, June 28, 1948, is over five years from the date of Earle's death and according to records, three years from the time Earle's body had been returned to Wisconsin for burial.

I am struck by the beauty of my grandmother's penmanship and picture her holding the pen in her hand - the long fingers with her buffed fingernails - and wonder at the emotional cost  of signing her name for the headstone application. 

Tombstone Tuesday: Willard Ackley

There is saying attributed to Lois Wyse that says in part, "A good friend is a connection to life, a tie to the past, a road to the future ..." As I've researched my ancestors and widened the research net to include the siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, I am reminded every now and then that there are others who shared their lives - those we call friends. My selection for today's Tombstone Tuesday, Willard Ackley, falls into that category.


Willard Ackley was among the first white settlers in what is now Langlade County, Wisconsin, and appears in concert on several documents (including land and marriage records) with my maternal great-great-grandfather Isaac Stone. Rounding out the third of my family's version of the Three Amigos is John Hogarty, another early settler in this part of the state.


According to his death certificate Willard was born William in 1818 in England. His family immigrated and settled in Chenango County, New York, his last known place of residence prior to his arrival in northeast central Wisconsin. 


Oral history and legend states that the original spelling of the surname was ACLY, but a feud with his family, who remained in the east, caused Willard to adopt the spelling ACKLEY.  As the story goes, this separation of the Acly/Ackley family was said to be due to Willard's marriage to Ma-Dwa-Ji-Was-No-Quay of the Ojibwe band of Native Americans. A common theory but unsubstantiated.


Ackley, Hogarty and Stone all appear to have been actively logging in this area around 1850 and all three worked at one time or another for Charles Hazeltine in Kelly in Marathon County.


Ackley built a cabin and homesteaded on what is now part of the Riverview Golf Club outside of Antigo, WI. Ackley also had a logging camp along with the cabin site on the 1851 government survey map. The camp was listed as Ackley and "Hoyaroy" farms which I believe is a misspelling of Hogarty. Hogarty, Ackley and Stone, as stated earlier, were close friends and at one time or another, business partners. All three men had trading posts and had supplies brought in from Stevens Point at the same time.


During the time that Ackley, Hogarty and Stone were engaged in logging, the venture wasn't very profitable as the price for pine was so low it barely paid for the supplies. When the men first arrived, the logs were hauled to the Eau Claire River on a travois pulled by oxen; a distance of about a half mile. Later, horses were used and the logs were hauled two or three miles in winter to streams. Logs were floated down the river to Kelly, then Schofield at the mouth of the Wisconsin River.


Each camp had their own logs marked so when they reached their destination, they could be sorted out. Records indicate that Ackley preferred to release his logs ahead of the other loggers to avoid mixing them with those sent down the river by Isaac Stone and Jesse Boyington, another early settler.


Willard Ackley and John Hogarty shared more than business ventures: they also shared wedding anniversary. A family history told by a granddaughter of Ackley recounts that Ackley and Hogarty married women from the Sokaogan Chippewa tribe near Post Lake. The men first walked to Post Lake to the home of their brides and then the two couples walked to Wausau where they were married by a Justice of the Peace. Witness to the marriages? None other than Isaac Stone.


Willard Ackley's wife was the daughter of the chief of the Sokaogan tribe of the Chippewa, Me-gee-see, known as Great Eagle. He lived a very interesting life which must have been evident to everyone he met: he lost his nose and one eye during of the many battles he had taken part in between the Ojibwe and the Sioux. A treaty signed in 1825 bears his signature.


By all accounts, the Ackley's were very kind to the early pioneers of Langlade County. Many of the early settlers lived with the Ackley's until their homes could be built and much has been written of Willard's generosity and willingness to help his neighbors. One settler wrote of Willard "[he] was a prince among men." 


Willard's wife, who took the name Mary following her marriage, was also generous to her neighbors. It is noted she never turned down a call for help in case of illness, using her knowledge of medicinal herbs and acted as mid-wife, helping to bring many of the pioneer children into the world.


Willard was small in stature, weighing approximately 130 pounds but he is said to have had a booming voice. Hearing him speak, people expected to see a man "... who weighed 400 pounds."  The Chippewa called Ackley "the little man with the big voice."


On the tax rolls, Willard paid the highest in the area. He owned more horses and buggies than his neighbors and kept two or three canoes on the Eau Claire River but never went farther than one and a half miles from Hogarty in Shawano County. 


Willard Ackley's death is recorded in the Langlade County Death Records, Volume 1, Page 44: Wm. L. Ackley; white male; page 76; farmer; born in England; date of death Nov. 25, 6:00 a.m. 1894.


His obituary in the Antigo News reads, "The first of the week, Willard L. Ackley, undoubtedly the oldest settler in Langlade County, died at his home, about four miles west of Antigo, at the age of 77 years. Very little is known of the early life of the deceased, but the memory of man in this section runneth not to the time when he was not located on the bank of the Eau Claire River. As near as we can learn, he lived there fifty years, most of the time with no other companions than the Indians. He lived with them and was one of those erratic individuals, who for some unknown reason, preferred their company to that of the whites. He was a familiar figure among old residents and those who lumbered on the Eau Claire."


Mary Ackley died on March 8, 1899. Her death certificate states she was 97-years old at the time of her death placing her year of birth 1802. Her maiden name is listed as Mary White Eagle; father Great Eagle and mother Roaring Water.


Willard, Mary and a granddaughter, Lillian McDonald, are buried in the Antigo Cemetery in Lot 1, Block 9; just south of the main gate.

The name of Willard Ackley isn't found listed in my family tree but I've discovered he was someone my great-great-grandfather called a friend, earning him a place of importance in my family history.

Digital Images. Undated. Copyright (c) Cindy Bergeron Scherwinski. 2011

Orphan Photos

There are only two references that help place these photos. One is the identification of the photography studio placing my "orphan" as being in Antigo, Langlade county, Wisconsin.

On the back of this photo was a faded written notation, so faint I almost missed it. After viewing it under a desk lamp, I was able to read a date: 1926.

A relative or neighbor? My plan, on my next visit to Antigo is to check church records. My grandmother, Mildred Little Bergeron, was a long-time member of the Methodist church. Could my "orphan" be a godchild?

"Orphan Photo(s)." Digital Image. 1926. Original photographs privately

held by Cindy Bergeron Scherwinski. 2011

Fearless Females: March 6 - Heirloom

Whether or not the grandchildren were allowed to roam around in my grandmother's bedroom, it is one of my many memories of time spent at Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Bergeron's. We never called my grandma by her first name, Mildred, and to me she was always Gram.

Her bedroom was on the second floor of their two story home at 103 10th Avenue in Antigo Wisconsin. At the top of the stairs was a open area with a double bed, a buffet outside of Gram's room and a large radio/photograph where I recall listening to a scratchy 78 rpm record of Thumbelina (yes, I can still recite the story and sing the happy little tune). At the far end was a small storage area created when the staircase was closed off and relocated to the front of the house, and two bedrooms, one of which served as a guest room. Hanging on the wall in the guest room was a certificate, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, expressing thanks on behalf of the country for the sacrifice made by my uncle, Earle Bergeron, in service to his country. Thinking about it now, I wonder why this token of appreciation was in the guest room and not in either of my grandparent's rooms.

Grams's room wasn't very big: a bed, a dresser, an overstuffed chair in a deep shade of indigo blue and a dressing table with a mirror. There were two windows that looked out the front of the house down Aurora Street and the other looking west over the alley. Other than the times when my cousins and I were playing hide-and-go-seek when we would steel ourselves to hide in Gram's closet (it was situated behind a wall and therefore very dark and scary), my memory of her room is that of quiet sadness. I have written about my uncle Earle on several occasions; his death at the age of 20, two months and one day short of his 21st birthday, had a profound affect on our family.

When Gram died in April 1968 and Grandpa Charlie decided to sell the house and move to Minneapolis, I was asked if there was anything special that I wanted of Gram's. Without hesitation I said I would like to have her jewelry box. When I was given a white covered jewelry box, I was crestfallen. What I wanted was the glass sided box that sat on her dressing table next to a photo of Uncle Earle dressed in his flight helmet and goggles. Inside was a photograph taken of Earle in the front yard of the home on 10th Ave. I thought the box was 'lost to me' until I discovered that my mother had the box. When I told her how glad I was it was still in the family, she presented it to me.

The box now sits on my dresser; the photograph of Earle that once was inside the box is now framed. My Dad shared that this photograph of Earle was on his last day of his leave before heading to North Carolina to begin the long trip overseas. The photo that is now inside the box is one of Earle at Fort Kelly, TX, when he was attending flight training as part of the federal program that created the "Flying Sergeants."

Thank you to Lisa Alzo for Day #6 for today's blogging prompt.

Copyright (c) Cindy Bergeron Scherwinski, 2010