A Brastrom History Tour

Sign from store

Old 16 School

Old Mesick High School

Uncle John's Store

store interior/post office

Saturday, August 20th.  We woke up to a cloudy day and decided this would be a good day to travel to Mesick, Harrieta and Cadillac to seek out Brastrom history (Brastrom is my mother's family name). Our first stop was in Mesick, where we went to the Mesick Historical Museum.  We asked about Mesick High School and the Old 16 school.  It turns out the director of the museum was Deborah, who is a cousin of Joe Brastrom thru his mom, my Aunt Lois.  Joe is my cousin and the son on Uncle Lester, the only son in my mom's family with nine sisters.  She directed us to the old high school, which is now an elementary school. We then went cross country and found the old school (number 16).  This is where my my mom and all my aunts and uncle went to K-8.  It's not a school any longer, but is used as a township meeting hall.  Immediately adjacent to the school is the cemetary where my grandmother and grandfather are buried.  As we wandered around the cemetary, we found two other Brastrom family plots.  They are for the families of my grandfather's brothers, John and Joseph.  My grandfather died in 1938 and my grandmother is 1967.  It was pretty amazing to find their plots.  The family had planted small evergreen trees next to each of the plots.  In the last 40+ years they have grown so much that they covered the headstones and it was hard to find them.  But we finally did.

Grandma & Grandpa B.'s gravesite

Grandpa's head stone

Grandma's head stone

Grandma's house

Our next destination was Harietta, where Grandma lived when she remarried.  The house seemed bigger in our memories.  But it was still a great old house.  As we were taking pictures of the house, the current owner drove up.  We explained who we were.  She invited us in to see the house.  The parlor, living room and dining room were just the same.  The dining room even had the original furniture, light fixture and doors.  The stairs led upstairs to 4 bedrooms, which were quite small, but seemed big in my memory.  The big change was with the kitchen.  I remember a large wood fired cooking stove and a sink with a hand pump to draw the water.  Those are both replaced with now conventional fixtures.  The kitchen was made much larger and a sun room was added along the side.  It was amazing to see grandma's house again after so many years.

There used to be an old school behind the house.  I remember playing at the school and climbing the tubular fire escape to the second floor  of the school.  The building burned down a few years ago and the  only remaining item is the school bell as a monument.  The town is barely hanging on...no stores or services.  The general store/post office that was run by Uncle John (our grandpa's brother) and Aunt Wretha is closed.  But you could see where the sign hung and where the gas pumps were.  A pretty sad little town.

We had been trying to contact my cousin, David Stark all day.  He is the son of Aunt Ruth and lives in Cadillac.  But cell service out in the country is nil.  So when we finally got service we contacted him, he invited us to his home.  It was great to see him.  Of course we had all aged in 50 years.  But I could still see the David I remember in his face.  We went out to lunch and did some catching up.  It was very fun. After lunch, David took us to the Cadillac Historical Museum.  There they had on display the sales counter and post office boxes from Uncle John's store.  It looked as I remembered it.  There was a framed certificate on the wall from the U.S. postmaster authorizing Aunt Wretha to be postmaster of Harrieta.  Out in the garage at the museum is the sign that hung on Uncle John's store.  It was really  something to see how much of a presence the Brastrom family had in the Cadillac/Harrieta area.