THE WAUPACA REPUBLICAN POST

June 5, 1913

 

LETTERS FROM WAUPACA RESIDENTS

 

            Waupaca, Wis., May 26, 1913.

To the Home Coming Committee:

            The John Gordinier family came to Wisconsin in 1855 from New York, coming by boat from Buffalo to Chicago where we changed boats for Sheboygan, where we landed with our family of three children, household goods, horses, cattle and chickens – horses of the old St. Lawrence stock, Durham cattle and White Brahma fowls.  We spent our first winter in Green Lake County, arriving in Lind, Waupaca County, April 1, 1856, when we set up housekeeping in a little log house on the farm where Mr. Gordinier died on July 18^th, 1903.  Our oldest son was killed by lightning June 23, 1858, in this same log house.  A few years later we moved to the new house which is owned and occupied by Fred Spencer at the present time.  For neighbors at that time we had the family of Abraham South on the west, and on the north the families of David and Susan West.  We passed through all the hardships and vicissitudes incident to frontier life and I am the sole survivor of my generation left to tell the story.                         Mrs. Juliette Gordinier

                                                                                                (Aged ninety years.)