Endeavor Christian Academy

[Erato]

I found another interesting YouTube video today - the story of the Christian Endeavor Academy in Endeavor, Wisconsin.  The Academy was basically a family business, at least until Eli A. Childs was run out by Rev Cheney and the board of directors in 1898.  Eli was the husband of my great aunt, Emma Logan, and it was my g-grandfather, John Logan, who provided the seed money to purchase the land and get the ball rolling.  I'm not sure exactly why Eli was fired by the board, but it seems that he was a poor financial manager and the lengthy squabble over the name of the village didn't do him any good, either.  I think that it was really Emma who was the brains behind the Academy.  The four oldest Logan sisters all taught there; the youngest sister, my grandmother, graduated from the Academy in 1897.  My grandfather, a native of Merritt's Landing, was in the first graduating class of five students in 1894 and he recalled working in that brickyard.  Perhaps he's in the photo but I can't spot him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fItGxn0EEtk

[DianaCanada]

Very interesting!  Always good to find something online or in books that add to our family history.

[Erato]

It's definitely worth taking a look at the websites of the historical societies in the places where your ancestors lived.  Many of them have old photographs, maps, diaries and other such materials.  I recently came across a photo [ca. 1902] of cousin T.J. Ennis and his daughter working in a strawberry packing shed in Kennewick, Washington. 

[DianaCanada]

That’s a good idea.
I came across a reference to a case about the death of a relative’s husband in the late 1920’s; Sir Bernard Spilsbury was an eminent British pathologist and he was involved in the case.  It was pure chance I stumbled on it, though, as I had no idea how the young man had died (knocked off his motorcycle by the heir of American tobacco fortune who subsequently left the scene - he spent a year in jail but interestingly no mention of this in his Wikipedia entry), and his very young widow was given a nice settlement. So because I decided to read that particular secondhand book, I found out a lot about a momentous time in my relative’s life!