Fishing from Grattan to Smyrna

A great fish story as told by E. John Knapp - my father - just had to share as it says much about the freedom of life as a youth in the 30's in Michigan

Fishing from Grattan to Smyrna
By E. John Knapp

When I was a teen, I loved to fish. My buddy, Russ Moore, and I fished in every lake and every river and stream within 50 miles of Belding, Michigan. My Dad gave me a bamboo fly rod. I took it apart and rebuilt the rod to a thing of beauty. I varnished the rod with some of my dad’s best spar varnish.

John as a Young Teen

One day we decided to fish Seely Creek. It runs from west of Grattan east for several miles to Smyrna. This stream runs south of M44 for miles until it reaches Flat River. This cold-water stream had rainbow trout living in it. Of course rainbow trout were a big attraction. Not many of the men in my life were aware of this fishing place, so we never gave away this secret.

The Fishing Trip from Grattan to Smyrna and then northeast to Belding

We had my Dad drive us out to Lincoln Lake Road and drop us off at Seely Creek, south of M44. There is a camping spot there. We told Dad we would be home before dark. We had no food, just fishing equipment and teen energy.

We started fishing about 1:00 pm. The first half mile--no luck--only small bites. By this time the stream was wider and the trout hid in small holes on the river bottom and under fallen trees. We began to catch a few fish each mile. Trout are a smart fish--they hear you and hide. You can see why we loved this place.

This stream wandered back and forth, around farms and fields. Most of the way was in thick woods of maple and oak trees with a few pines and lots of willows along the main stream bed. Often the scene would break into pastures with cows and horses feeding on grass. When we reached Flat River, the Creek was quite wide.

The Flat River at Smyrna

At this site is the old flour mill next to the Flat River. We decided to go into the mill and see if it was still running. As our luck had it, a farmer had just unloaded a large wagon of wheat to be ground into flour. We were favored with watching the entire process.

Walking home takes an hour or so and we left then for Belding. We got home around sunset, tired and quite hungry. Mom was glad to see her big son home and she cooked up those fish for Russ and I. We let Dad eat one fish. Did those trout ever taste good!

Six Young People Begin Their Married Lives as Dakota Territory Pioneers

Thomas and Catherine Fountain had three beautiful young daughters growing into young women with little prospect for a good future. I think this was a real concern for these parents. Iowa was totally settled with little land available except at a high price and with no guarantee they would be close to family.

The family’s oral history speaks of this concern of Thomas and Catherine’s. How they saw no future in Iowa for their daughters, or their younger son, Pat. How they looked around at opportunities and found that the U.S. government was offering “free” land by homesteading in Dakota Territory. By this time two of their daughters were married. Mary Cellecta (Lecky) had married Manny Winklepleck and Frances Margaret (Frankie) had married Charley Dyce. It looked like Evalina Anderson (Lina) would marry Will Krech. None of these young couples had much chance of getting ahead in Iowa. So they all agreed to leave all they knew behind and carve a new life for themselves in Dakota Territory.

Thomas thought this was a good opportunity for his children and the young people of the neighborhood so he sold his home and made up a wagon train of covered wagons drawn by oxen. They loaded up their worldly possessions in the wagons and started out for Dakota. In the wagon train were Thomas and Catherine Fountain, their son Pat, aged 13 at the time, their three daughters and husbands and fiancé, along with Charley and Will Wellman, Uncle Delan Smith and his sons, Ed, Charley, and Harry, and some other neighbors who wanted to come “west.” They started out to a new country and a new life in the spring of 1878.

They stopped near Luverne, Minnesota along the way where Catherine’s brother, George Barclay, lived. According to the family’s oral history, the young people made arrangements to come back here and work on the farm later that summer.

This map shows both Luverne, MN, and the Flandreau, SD area (near Egan).

The wagon train went on to what is now Egan, South Dakota, where the government land office was located. A man from the office took Grandpa Fountain with him in his horse-drawn buggy and led the way with the wagon train following. As they drove through the prairie country he would point out which quarter sections were taken and which were not. When they came to what later became the Wellman Church corner, the agent stopped and said, “From here on nothing is taken,” and Grandpa Fountain, tired from the long journey, said without hesitation, “I will take this one and that one,” pointing to the first two. And when the wagon train came up each man picked his farm all in the same neighborhood. They drove their oxen and covered wagons onto their farms and lived in their wagons until they could build their claim shacks.

Will and Lina in front of their claim shack, by this time sporting a few additions.
Young son, Claude, is 2nd from left. Unknown who the other adults are
but most likely one of Lina's sisters and her husband and small child.

Later that summer, after the first crops were planted, the Fountain young people, Manny and Lecky, Charley and Frankie, and Lina Fountain and Will Krech went to Luverne to work in the harvest of their Uncle George’s crops. It is thought they brought back the lumber that was used to build the first claim shacks on the homesteads, hauled by an oxen team, when they received their earnings for helping harvest their Uncle’s crops.

Will Krech and Lina Fountain were married October 12, 1878, in Luverne before they returned to their claims that fall. As far as we can tell, the parents were not present at the marriage of their daughter, Lina. But it is inspiring to think of these six young people leaving the new homesteads, traveling 65 miles to Minnesota, working in the fields all that late summer and fall, attending the marriage of Will and Lina, and then hauling enough lumber back, purchased with their field work wages, for the family to build claim shacks, 12 feet by 16 feet in size, before the cold winter blizzards hit Dakota Territory.


These pioneer families and their descendents owned and lived on these homesteads for three generations and in fact some of the land is still owned by descendants of Will and Lina Krech. I am blown away by the bravery of this family. They wanted a future for their children and they sacrificed their comfortable Iowa farm life for that future. They left their homes and friends and church and land, and headed west with what they could cram into a few covered wagons, and did exactly what they said they would do. They made a good future for the whole family by risking all and working hard and never giving up, even though many hardships (blizzards, grasshoppers, droughts) were faced before they “proved” their homesteads.

Margaret Krech, wife of Eldon, Will’s great grandson, still proudly displays the patent that Will and Lina received when granted full ownership of the land. This “homestead” land is still family-owned and will be passed down to future generations of Krechs.

The Farm Property

A photo of the Farm taken in the 1950s.

The Michigan property has been in the family for over 150 years. The original owners were Reuben Clark and Lucinda Russell Clark. Lucinda was a daughter of Josiah and Betsey Hastings Russell. Russells owned other property in other sections nearby. The property is in Section 11, Grattan Township, Kent County, Michigan, on Lincoln Lake Road. R. Clark is on the Grattan Plat Map of 1855 for the property.

In 1863, the name on the Grattan Plat Map was O.H. Russell. This is Otis Harrison Russell, who was Lucinda's brother. I think he must have bought the property from her after Reuben died, either to take over the responsibility of the land or to give her money to live on. The family has a history of taking care of each other so I am not surprised by this. Otis Harrison died in the Civil War in Tennessee.

The next Grattan Plat Map of 1876 shows Julia A. (Ackley) Russell, wife of Otis, as the landowner. She received a pension via her husband's Civil War service so was able to keep the land.

She sold it to her daughter Jessie Florence and husband John Irving Weeks, who remained the owner well into the 20th century. Elmer Grant Weeks, Jessie and John's son, either inherited the property or bought it from his mother sometime in the 1940s or 1950s because he was the owner during my childhood in the 50s.

Grant eventually sold the property to my cousin, Lyle Weeks and his wife Judy. Lyle died in late 2006 so the land was then owned by his widow, Judy, although I think one of their sons now lives in the original farmhouse and Judy lives in a new house built at the back of the property. So that son must now own the property.

This makes the ownership of the Farm in "The Family" from at least the 1850s to 2007.

Robert Lester's Story

At her 90th birthday party, with all her children present, Margaret Krech revealed that she had a brother who died at 6 weeks old. For some reason, she had never talked about this in the past. She was bringing it up now because it had always bothered her that a headstone was never placed on the grave. She had tried to find it long ago but with no success. I think she was hoping her children might help her find the final resting place of her brother and help get a headstone placed there...finally.

This summer, Warren and I drove up to South Dakota to visit Warren's brother, Bill. Our primary mission was to locate Robert Lester's grave. We started by visiting the Brookings Public Library's microfiche area. A nice librarian helped us find the birth and death dates of Robert Lester. Knowing that he died on 2-2-22 was a good start. We looked at microfiche of the two weeks following Robert Lester's death.

First go-around, we found nothing, except that there were no "official" obituary notices in the Brookings paper. We did know that Margaret and her family had lived in Aurora, South Dakota at the time and we noticed there were little neighborhood news sections, including one called Aurora News. So we went back to the week of Feb. 9, 1922, found the Aurora News section, and there it was! One small paragraph that spoke volumes.

"The six-weeks-old babe of Mr. and Mrs. Aberly who had been seriously ill for some time passed away Thursday and was laid away in the Aurora cemetery Saturday afternoon. The funeral services were at the home and were conducted by Rev. B. A. Benson of Brookings."

Margaret talked more about Robert Lester when we visited this last week in Arizona. Her most vivid memory of her little brother is that he was very sick almost from the beginning and cried all the time. Her mother fixed up a little bed in the wooden rocking chair and Margaret and her twin sister, Marjorie, stood on either side and held the arms of the rocking chair and slowly rocked the chair to soothe their brother's cries.

After the funeral services, their father put the coffin on the bob sled and led the horses around to the front window so the girls and their older brother, Lyle, could watch as they went down the snowy, bitterly cold, road toward the cemetery.

We later met with the Aurora Cemetery's sexton and after measuring out the area listed in the sexton's records, actually found a small indentation in the ground, just the right size for a small coffin! We had found Robert Lester's grave!


The two nephews took a moment to silently acknowledge their Uncle Robert Lester.

Bill has contacted the Brookings Monument Company and a headstone is in the works. Margaret is so happy that her brother is finally going to have a headstone!

Welcome to "Be Mindful"

Welcome to Be Mindful of Thy Ancestors! I have been looking for a way to publish family photos and videos that explain where the Krechs and Knapps came from.

What about our ancestors has made us all what we are today?

Can we recognize the birth of our Family's Personality in the Struggles of our Ancestors?

This photo, for example:

The John I. Weeks Family Home. My great grandfather and great grandmother had a photo taken of their home on Lincoln Lake Rd. in Grattan Township, Kent County, Michigan. They sat themselves on their front porch with all their children gathered around them. My grandmother, Eva, sits in the wagon.

This photo talks to me of the PRIDE of the family. They were proud of what they had accomplished. A beautiful house, which still stands to this day, still owned by the family. A beautiful family, working together to wrestle a homestead out of the wilderness.