Totem Pole Tales-Roberts School, Irene Cole & Trails Tales Part II Submitted by Nute Chapman From Onaway Outlook December 28, 2012

CAPTION #1:  JOHANN, KATHERINE and Steve Hell, students at Roberts School 1920.



CAPTION #2: GEORGE ELLENBERGER, a student at the Roberts School 1920.



CAPTION #3:  FRANKLIN COWPER, a student at the Roberts School 1921.



   Unpublished by Oscar Adelbert Roberts and edited by daughter Ruth (Roberts) Schmidt

 
   My parents moved from Tilsonburg, Ontario to Duncan City, a suburb of Cheboygan, in the middle 70s. Together with Mother's
sister Hannah Jane and her husband James Sanderson and their family. 

   At that time the family consisted of our family, father whose name was John, mother whose name was Rachel, and the
children, Ollie, Jim, Ida, John, Charlie and Sarah.  Myself, and our younger brother Homer, had not arrived as yet.

   Perhaps in 1878 or 1879 my father, John M. Roberts and Uncle Jim Sanderson came to Black Lake and hired Ed Buck's
father as a "Land Looker."  After locating land, they soon moved, crossing Black Lake and following the county line
between Cheboygan and Presque Isle counties, and homesteaded the North West North East of Section 19 Township 35N-R2E; 
Father taking the east 80 acres, and Uncle Jim the west 80 acres.  This was a part of Allis Township.  James Sanderson
was later appointed postmaster, which he held for the rest of his life.  Our folks did no more moving.  I don't believe my 
mother ever went to Cheboygan.

   My mother's brother, William Robison, came from Canada each winter to work for my father in the timber.  Her sister, 
Sarah Ann, came once alone and again with her husband John Swance.  About 1910, my two cousins, Mary and Susan Swance
came, but my mother was not alive at that time.  I never knew anything about any one of my four grandparents.

   We, Maybell and I, made one trip to Tilsonburg about 1928, driving a Studebaker light six sedan.  We stayed with
Cousin Mary and her husband Frank Rogers, who lived on their large farm and milked 20 cows.  Uncle John Swance came over, 
he was 82, and cried when we said goodbye.

   Roughly speaking, the following families moved to Allis during the period of 1870 to 1884, mostly coming from the 
Cheboygan area to the north end of Black Lake by ox team, crossing the nine miles of lake in row boats or flat bottom scows-
landing at one of the following beaches: Stewart's, Hodge's, Kincaid's, Morgan's, Balongie's, and Rogers', getting their 
belongings to their homesteads "some way"- mostly by lashing them to poles and  being carried on the men's shoulders over 
just trails through timber.  They may have come in about the following order:  I.J. Stewart, Rube Kincaid, Nathan Morgan, 
Jerome Hodge, William Thomas, Charlie and Johnnie Balongie, John Walter, Caroline and Agnes Rogers, John Smith, Jarvis
Smith, Will Walter, John Roberts, Jim Sanderson, Royal Taylor, Andrew Metheony, Emery Purty, Charlie Hutchinson, 
Add Doolittle, Ben Avery, Bill Poland, A.S. Merrill, Sam Woodruff, Lewie Lawson, L.P. Aiken, Tommy Sayer, Wesley Bush, 
Walter Ward, John Caldwell, George Benz and Chris Miller.

   To be continues next week.

 
   
-From The Onaway Outlook, December 28, 2012, p. 7.
    

Retyped by J. Anderson.