For our upcoming The Lives They Lived issue, we invite you to contribute a photograph that illustrates a story from the life of someone close to you who passed away this year. It could be a wedding snapshot, a travel brochure, a book cover, a blueprint of a dream house: any image that you think captures one moment from the life of the person you’re remembering.

The deadline is now as the issue comes out December 25, 2011. They are requesting high-resolution scanned originals or digital images representing the life of that person, along with a 200 word explanation and permission to publish.

Can you pick a single picture that represents an entire life? As I think back over the past of the family members we’ve lost, is there a single image that represents their life in total? That’s a tough question.

For my Aunt June DesRochers, the last picture of the whole DesRocher clan around her taken just before she died a few years ago represents her life to me. She had six kids and managed to raise them by herself after her husband died when the youngest was in diapers. It wasn’t easy, and maybe she didn’t do a perfect job, but the six kids turned out great and they all have children and grandchildren, an amazing family, one that June was actually pretty proud of even though she might not have said much about it.

I’m trying to find it, but the only image I have that comes immediately to mind of my grandmother, Nora Knapp Anderson, is one of her reading to me in bed. I think of it every time I think of her. I don’t remember her physically, so this single photograph represents my visual memory. I was only two or three years old and it was months before she died. As I look through all of the family history photographs I have of the Knapp family, Nora, the only girl among eight boys, is often seen with a brother hanging off of her, helping them read or reading to them, laughing, playing, or just hugging together. Images of the close knit family they were. According to family members, me, her first grandchild, brought back those happy and joyous family feelings and she dreaded missing a moment with me. To me, that photograph represents the sense of togetherness, family, and sharing that made up most of her childhood.

Tent built by Robert and Wayne Knapp circa 1924 along Peshtigo River, Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin. Burnt down by Earl Fugate in bully prank.

For my father, I wonder if I even have a photograph in my collection that would sum up his life. I have pictures that represent moments in his life when he played various roles, and the picture I used on the cover of his funeral card taken in the last few months of his life looking happier and healthier than anyone had seen him in 30 or 40 years, but does that truly represent his life or a moment in time?

Actually, when I stop and think about his father, Howard West, Sr., then I find the picture that completely represents both of their lives. It is of the two of them standing next to each other in their Coast Guard uniforms, standing apart from each other yet looking so much alike. Howard Senior has the same expression I ever remember on his face, stern, unsmiling, just there because someone told him to stand there and he wants to look like he had the idea in the first place. My father, Howard junior (“Bud”) so wanting to look proud but knowing he would never measure up to his father or the expectations of the world in general. While only serving about 18 months in the Coast Guard, almost all of it on land, my father spoke of the Coast Guard as if he was a lifer. It defined who he was, what he did, and he used it to create expectations with others. He wore a Coast Guard cap and told long stories of his “life” in the Coast Guard, but most of those were built upon little moments not a life time. He wanted the world to think of him as someone better than he was, but who he was was good enough, if you just looked past the made-up stories to the caring and simple humanitarian who wanted so much to be like his father, though his father seemed to barely notice.

I’d have to say that photograph of the two of them completely defines my father’s life.

As for my mother, I have many photographs but only one that comes immediately to mind when I think of a “defining” image. The picture is in a frame in a box right now, but I’ll use a similar one of my mother, Ramona Anderson West Boylan Fletcher, from 2006 until I can find the one I’m thinking of. The picture features her dressed up in a bright red pants suit made of nylon or some high-tech fabric, her blonde hair all punked up, a lightning strike painted on her cheek, safety pins in her ears, all dressed up for a fun day in downtown Seattle at the Bumbershoot Festival. We decided we’d dress up like punkers for the event just for fun. She’s swinging off a stop sign, laughing and full of life.

That’s my mother. To the world she is vivacious, energetic, and the first to jump off the bridge, out of an airplane, off a cliff in a hang glider, or tell someone exactly what she thinks of them so they actually thank her afterwards. She’s quick witted, terrible with a joke but great with a pun, and ready for anything. She’s led an incredibly full life and while she tells me she’s too tired to come for a visit or too old to travel, she’s off on another airplane to Cancun, Bahamas, Hawaii, New York, or wherever, sailing her boat, skiing down a mountain, hiking the foothills, dancing the night away.

These are pictures that don’t visually represent a life. They represent the story of the life lived not the life itself. Finding an image to contribute to The New York Times is harder than you think.

If your family member invented something or spent their life’s work on a specific project, then that would be an ideal image to contribute. For the rest of us, this is an excellent exercise in how we define the life of our family members.

(Image galleries are shown on full posts only. Please click the post title to view the entire post.)

For stories and information on many of these people, see our Knapp category.

For a list of descendants and family history details, see Nicholas Knapp Descendents.

Titled “Blogger digs into her roots: Snohomish County native works to uncover her family’s history,” the article quickly describes some of my family’s history related to the Snohomish County area on the Knapp and West sides.

For the most part, the article is correct, though the fun and adventure of my family’s history in Snohomish County is condensed due to the column’s limitations. Still, columnist Kristi O’Harran did a great job fitting in all the detail in the limited space, but I wanted to expand upon some of the story more here.

UPDATE: O’Harran just sent me an email with several names and contact information for people who recognized some of the people in the photographs from the article or know my family or has information to help me with my family history research. I’ll be calling them in the next day or so. I can’t wait. What a gift!!

The Story Behind The Story

This is from the Elwell/Knapp family archives, we'd love help identifying the people and place.

She was fascinated by the West family’s role in protecting the coast of Washington State, my grandfather raising his kids first in Marysville then Friday Harbor, Washington, while he worked with the various naval military such as the Marines, Navy, and Lighthouse Brigade, which became the Coast Guard. She loved the stories of my father and his sister growing up in Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands in the lighthouse there.

What fascinated her most was the Knapp family’s connections with logging, Frye’s Lettuce farm, the Elwell family (with brothers Robert and Lloyd marrying into this family descended from Chief Seattle), and then both Robert and Wayne going into security, with Robert working the Monroe Penitentiary and Wayne at Seattle’s Boeing Security, key industries in the Pacific Northwest.

Snohomish County settlers Horace Harriman and Charles Elwell, but which one is which?

The West family were part of a religious migration arriving with the Mayflower and splitting off south in what became the United States, with my branch breaking north into Canada, eventually following the Quakers to Raisin, Michigan. Several generations back, one ancestor broke from the mold of pious farming and community building to ride the rails to Oregon to the logging camps up and down the Pacific Northwest. His son, Walter, caught up with one of our recent family’s biggest mystery women, Louella Brunner Pinder Parrett and had a son with her. That son, Howard West Sr., ended up in a Catholic orphanage in Portland, Oregon, with his half sister, Carmen. Eventually, he got out, lied about his age, and joined the military, eventually leading him to the USS Arizona, from which he kept a log book from 1924-1925 which I’ve published on the blog for historical purposes. In it, he casually ends the log with his marriage to Faye Vaughn in a courthouse in California. He continued with the military at bases along the Pacific Coast until he finally reached Friday Harbor, then his last years as a guard at Chief Joseph Dam in Bridgeport, Washington, with his second wife, Anna Mae Larmar.

What’s missing is the legacy left by the descendants of both sides. I still know so little about my living relatives, but I can tell you that on the Knapp side, my mother, Ramona West Boylan Fletcher, became a leading real estate agent and broker, owner of the well-known American Properties agency in Everett, helping residents and immigrants “settle” and build in Snohomish County for almost 40 years. Her grandchildren recently graduated from high school and one is playing college baseball locally.

There are doctors, lawyers, writers, business owners, teachers, a fire chief, and more among their descendants who cover a lot of Snohomish County as well as Skagit, Whatcom, King, Pierce, and other counties in Washington State. Others are in Oregon, California, and elsewhere around the country and world.

Part of the story I also told the writer was about how tough it is to work on the family history blog without much help from the family. I do what I can, but it isn’t enough to record all the stories about family members to help paint a fuller picture of what our family’s history is really about, the whys, hows, and lessons learned along the way as they pushed themselves through their lives on this planet. I’d love more help, and it’s hard for people to understand how they can help, which is why I do so many articles describing how someone can contribute to a family history blog or start their own. It’s so important to preserve the past for today as well as the future generations who will have the same questions as we do now about where we came from.

If you would like to contribute to our family history blog, I’m looking for photographs, audio, video, stories, notes, legal documents, whatever it takes to help define a life. I’d love a biography written about every family member, dead or alive, that helps us preserve their story. Through the family history blog, I’ve been honored to connect with people whose family connected with ours recently and hundreds of years ago. I’ll take whatever anyone wants to contribute to help paint their family’s story and how it connects and intertwines with mine.

If our family isn’t related by blood but you recognize pictures of people or have any information on our family’s history, I’d still love to have your help.

It takes a village to raise a citizen, and it takes a village to help preserve that citizen’s history.

Thanks to the Everett Herald and Kristi O’Harran for sharing the story of my family history research and my family.

In The Peshtigo River, Marinette County’s Greatest Remaining Natural Resource was put together by Jim Frink on the High Falls Flowage site, a site about the lake and surrounding land and rivers, based upon a report in “The Water Powers of Wisconsin” by Leonard S. Smith, C. E. which was published by the State of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1908. The report was commissioned the state and the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Frink excerpted the information about the Peshtigo River for his site, and I’ve highlighted a few bits that describe the river in context to the impact and influence it had on my Knapp family living in Taylor Rapids along the Peshtigo River.

As far as rivers go, the Peshtigo is neither very big or significant. In many places an average person can throw a stone across it. Its drainage area is listed as 1,123 square miles, which includes roughly half of Marinette county. Its total length is listed at 94 miles, or 80 miles the way the crow flies. It does have some unique features, however. One is that its drainage area only has an average width of 14 miles with no tributary streams of any great significance feeding it. Although its water has a rather dark color derived from its swampy sources, it seems to be relatively free of pollutants or contamination. This is probably because for most of its course the shoreline is forested and wild, while the only cities of any consequence are Peshtigo and possibly Crivitz which are located far downstream from the source. Another feature, which is very important is that in its 94 mile total length, there is a drop in elevation of 1,040 feet, or an average of over 11 feet per mile. This is the largest drop per mile of any major river system in Wisconsin, and provides for more and larger rapids than any other river in the state. This compares with an average of 5.1 feet per mile for the Wolf River, 6.7 feet for the Menominee, and 10.8 feet for the Oconto. All of these rivers contain stretches of rapids, but not to the extent of the Peshtigo. The upper two-thirds of the river flows through pre-Cambrian igneous rocks while the lower third basically has a sandstone and limestone base.

This rapid flow, the fact that the river is relatively shallow and meanders considerably in the first few miles must have ruled out the Peshtigo as a viable means of transportation for the early settlers. They undoubtedly considered it as a hindrance and just another natural barrier in the way as civilization moved inland. It is even questionable if the lumbermen truly found it to their liking for moving logs from the forests to the mills due to the many rapids which must have caused considerable jams and danger. Their history and adventures would make for an entirely different story, however.

Having survived the arrival of settlers, the logging industry, the building of dams and bridges and the Peshtigo Fire, the river flowed peacefully into the 20th century, still flowing relatively unchanged and performing the tasks which nature intended.

The report admitted that while it might be possible to consider dam sites along the river, it was recommended to not. In 1905, the Wisconsin government was working hard to electrify their entire state and dams were the number one source for electricity beyond coal plants. This caused them to initiate a survey of the river to test its worthiness for damming it. For the most part, it has remained pretty much as it was, especially in the area where my ancestors grew up.

Brothers Robert F. Knapp and Wayne Knapp have written extensively in published and unpublished stories about the “Old Peshtigo River” in stories such as Lunch On the River on Old Jim With Nonie and Wayne, Trapped On The Island, and poems like Early Memories of Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, and The 1967 Trip Back to Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, where my two great uncles revisited their former homestead. And there are more stories of Taylor Rapids and the Peshtigo River on the way as I edit them.

I don’t have many pictures of the river in my files, from the family or from my trip there, but I want to go back and photograph more of the river that served them during their many years there. So I needed some words to help me understand more about the importance of this river for my research. Robert and Wayne talk about how there was a loading ramp/doc for the logging camps that had been abandoned about the time they were entering their early teens, and how logs from there were then loaded up onto the train that took the logs from the camps into the bigger cities, mills, and beyond.

My ancestors lived very close to the land, so it’s important that I understand that land. For many researchers, the buildings, city, and its culture is their focal point for some of their family’s history, but for this group of logging folks, it’s the forest, lakes, rivers, and sand plains of northern Wisconsin. Through their stories and my understanding of the land, I get a better picture of how they lived.

Rev. Seneca Primley (1871-1966) died at age 94 in Winona Lake, Indiana.

He was a retired Church of God minister, member of the Warsaw Church of God and American Legion, and Spanish-American War veteran. He was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on October 29, 1871, and lived at 708 Chestnut St., Winona Lake, Indiana. at the time of his death. He died of a heart attack after a year of failing health.

On August 2, 1903 he married Mabel Funk, who died in 1961. They had one surviving daughter, Mrs. Shelby (Gladys) Thomas, of Knox.

But what do we really know about Seneca Primley?

Seneca Primley and wife, Mabel, in Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin. Circa 1920. Seneca was the minister for the logging community for many years.

Seneca and Mabel lived in a solid log house near the church and the one room school house, though Wayne and Robert describe Seneca having church services in the school house many times. Nothing remains in the area, though where their home was is a bare area where the foundation used to be.

The Knapp family moved into the Primley home after Seneca and Mabel left, presumably to return to Indiana, in middle of the 1920s.

There is some confusion over Seneca’s connection to the family. He is mentioned numerous times as both the brother of Emma Primley Knapp, mother of Wayne and Robert Knapp and their brothers and sister, and wife of James Asa Knapp, as well as the Knapp boys’ cousins. In Historical Data of the Knapp Family (as of 1984) by Wayne Knapp, Seneca is not listed among the siblings of his mother, Emma.

Descendant, Charles K Connon, comments on this site that Seneca and Mabel Primley were cousins, saying “my great grandfather and Seneca’s mother were brother and sister.” He tells of the Primley family story of how Seneca and Mable “fed the fire in Wisconsin,” though details aren’t clear as the Knapp family doesn’t mention any fires in Taylor Rapids at the time of their residence. He also mentioned he has photographs of Seneca and Mable homesteading near Pembine, Wisconsin, which could have been before or after their time in Taylor Rapids.

According to Connon, the Primley family includes many Native Americans, which is news to us and fascinating.

In 1966, Seneca Primley died immediately after participating in the annual parade and memorial in Indiana for Memorial Day, as one of the two last surviving members in the area from the Spanish-American War. His death made headline news in the local newspaper.

According to the Tippecanoe County Military Pensions for John Elder’s request for pension, a Seneca Primley is mentioned:

Seneca Primley, jr., comrade, testified that at Tampa, Fla., about July, 1898, soldier became sick and complained of his back paining him, and he was treated for said disease by the regimental surgeon; that he became so badly afflicted with said disease that he was at different times excused from duty; that he complained of said disability from that date until his discharge.

The records note that John Elder served as a private in Company M, One hundred and fifty-seventh Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry, in the War with Spain; he was enlisted June 27, 1898, and honorably discharged November 1, 1898, which coincides with the records for our Seneca Primley. As of 1917, the army granted Mr. Elder $17 a month in pension payments.

I’m eager to learn more about the Primley family that comes in through my mother’s mother’s side.

Other Seneca Primleys

There are, surprisingly, a lot of Seneca Primleys born about the same time period as ours. I’ve included these to be helpful to those who are researching a Seneca Primley that isn’t mine. Mine was married to Mabel. Like other Seneca Primleys, ours was nicknamed “Sink.”

Please do not contact me about these Seneca Primleys as I cannot help your research. These are noted here to guide you towards your possible family member.

• Seneca Primley and Seely Primley mentioned in Record of Insane – Marshall County, Indiana (April 1854 before our Seneca and Seely Primley were born but wondering if a family connection with the two names)
• Michigan marriages Berrien County – Seneca Primley marriage 1870
• Seneca Primley (born 1887) RootsWeb’s WorldConnect Project: DESCENDENTS OF JOHAN DANL FREYLIGH / FROLICH / FRAILEY (Indiana) (Also had nickname “Sink”)
• Seneca “Sink” Primley (1887 – 1956) – Find A Grave Memorial Riverview Cemetery, Michigan
• Seneca Primley married to Mary – Allendorf to America list of names
• Primleys who were Indian – Seneca Primley, Indiana – Family History & Genealogy Message Board – Ancestry.co.uk
• The New England Ball Project – Seneca Primley born 1864
• Primley Seneca married Primley Caroline – 18 Feb 1867
• Seneca Primley (1864-1942 – Wilsey & Roberts Genealogy plus others
• Robert Primley and Seneca Primley – Leah Wilsey Millard’s Genealogy and individual notes

Knapp homestead in Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, June 2006

The article in the Rotarian describes Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, as “snuggled down in the northern Wisconsin wood” and refers to it as not even a ghost settlement as nothing remains and the area has reverted to nature and forest.

Even the surest things, death and taxes, have vanished along with Taylor Rapids community, so complete has been its elimination. Its disappearance is due to the Badger State’s theory that it is better to go wild than to go broke.

Twenty years ago, when the boom was on to make an agricultural empire out of Wisconsin’s “slash” or cutover lands, Taylor Rapids, like score of other settlements, was self-sustaining. Hundreds of hard-working families, lured by the promise of rich land at a bargain, had put their life savings into the clearings, many of them locate at the end of dim forest trails.

But fate had stacked the cards against them. A crop or two, and the shallow soil faded out. Savings – what little they still had – were quickly dissipated. Taxes piled up. The future was black with despair. It was a case of move, starve, or do on relief. Realizing they were licked, many pulled stakes; others hung on in poverty and isolation.

Taylor Rapids community declined in population to seven families, six on relief, with no out-look for self-sustenance.

The article, written ten years after my Knapp family left in 1930 during the Great Depression, paints a picture of the dreadful living conditions of the area, and a surprisingly innovative lesson in state and county land management that we can all learn from today during this tough economic times.

Nothing Left Behind

As Wayne and Robert Knapp experienced on their 1967 trip back to Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, and I and my mother experienced in 2006, nothing remains of the logging community and homesteads of our family. While not surprising as the area is a great distance from “civilization” and off the beaten path, for the past forty years, there has been quite a mystery around the why of Taylor Rapid’s disappearance. Thanks to Dan Giese, we now have a clearer picture of what happened.

According to the Rotarian article, it was just too costly to maintain Taylor Rapids as a viable community. While the dates are not clear, about the same time as the Knapp family were preparing to leave, the county sent in an auditor to uncover the real reasons behind the town’s drain on the county’s finances. He found that while Taylor Rapids was paying approximately $276 in taxes over a six year period, it was costing the county $21,602 for the same period.

The portrait the article paints of the area is sad. Many were promised viable land for farming left behind in the clear cut area by the loggers. It looked like rich, healthy soil, but it was shallow, good crops lasting for one or two years and then all the soil nutrition was gone. The sandy soil wouldn’t sustain much agriculture, for crops or animals.

Describing the benefits to the state and county for costs spent to accommodate those living so far from metropolitan services, the article also describes the living conditions many suffered under in Taylor Rapids.

Zoning has eased the tax situation. The road-and-school guaranty, plus relief to mendicants, kept many counties on the verge of bankruptcy. One county spent $1,200 to build a road into a squatter’s $300 clearing, and he used it just once – to travel out to Rhinelander, where he got a job in a factory. Another county spent $1,800 servicing one family for a year, although the total family investment in the county was less than $800. Another paid $4,000 for snow removal one season for a community of six families.

Where zoning is effective, rural slums – marked by shacks in which disease-breeding vermin hide, wells infected by outhouse near-by, primitive educational facilities, and an absence of medical and nursing care as well as religious and social life – have been almost wiped out. Cabins and shacks which once housed pioneers became the haven from year to year of squatters, who shift with the seasons. They moved, but communicable diseases remained. A mother died of typhoid in one of these shelters. A squatter family moved in the next season – in a month three of them were dead of typhoid. Such tragedies have spurred “slum clearance.” Counties have destroyed many tar-paper shanties, old logging camp bunkhouses, and other refuges, filled impure wells, burned obnoxious outhouses, sanitized premises, blocked old trails.

Rural-school standards have advanced. Instead of poverty-stricken little schools of four to ten pupils each, consolidated schools of 25 to 50 pupils each have become frequent – and at a much lower cost. A rural school with 30 or 40 children can be operated at a cost of $40 per pupil per year, while if there are six children or less, the expense may range up to $300 each, or even more, and with a fraction of the efficiency. In Three Lakes, one school serves six former districts, busses operating 20 miles to transport the children. Yet the expense is less although schooling has improved. Scores of isolated schools have been closed as a result of consolidation.

Forest fires have decreased, rangers say, through the elimination of squatters who, working alone clearing land, often were unable to control their brush and stump fires. Also needless deaths, inevitable to isolation – such as an old lady who was taken sick and died in remote cabin without a medical attention. Three days later a trapper found the husband helpless by her side. Snowplows cut a road part way to them. Then a man on snowshoes dragged a toboggan the last few miles to bring the body out for burial. Medical aid went in to the man.

The new principle has brought to the rural regions the idea of collective action toward Wisconsin’s goal – rural families on self-sustaining farms, accessible the year round, with mail, school, cream-route, and health service always available. It gives them opportunity for religious instruction and social intercourse as well as improved economic status. It paves the way for local government reorganization.

The article also includes photographs from Taylor Rapids, including a picture of the one-room school house where my grandfather, Raymond Anderson, taught, and where the Knapp children went to school, and where Seneca Primley, brother to Emma Primley Knapp, held church services.

The other buildings in the article might be ones discussed in the many stories by my great uncles, but without better identification we’re not sure.

It also includes a dramatic perspective of Taylor Rapids in its logging heyday. The river crammed with logs in the article isn’t labeled, but it is very likely to be the Peshtigo River that passed Taylor Rapids. My great uncles described it as a rough but wide enough river in places that would transport the logs from the logging areas to the camps and transportation locations.

A County’s Ingenuity Leads to State-wide Benefits

Faced with the huge ever-growing deficit a community like Taylor Rapids was costing the county, they came up with a novel idea. Buy the land from them and pay for them to move to better lands and access to services. This gave the family hope and a boost in the right direction.

The county went out of their way to help, seeing the long term benefits over the short-term costs. As described above, by bringing people closer to services, they could lower their long term costs while preserving and restoring precious natural areas of the state for future use or just conservation purposes. Wisconsin law required access to a road and a school to every family, and bringing these remote communities closer to road access and schools minimized the costs of providing them.

In eight years, one-seventh of the entire area of Wisconsin – “more than all of Massachusetts” – totaling five million areas, was acquired by the county and state. Most of these were by tax delinquencies and abandonment, or bought by purchase or trade, like the Knapp family properties leased from the Goodman Lumber Company. Some areas were set aside for sports and recreational activities, but the vast majority of the land was replanted or left to recover on its own.

The article calls this Wisconsin’s weapon of attack against the drain on its resources as well as advanced thinking in preservation and conservation all around.

A unique zoning law – an adaptation of the familiar city plan of property restriction – is Wisconsin’s weapon of attack. The first State to adopt such an act, it permits, but does not compel, counties to regulate and restrict their land to forestry, agriculture. and recreation.

…It proposed that county boards of supervisors be given right through the enactment of county zoning ordinances to “regulate, restrict, and determine the areas within which agriculture, forestry, and recreation may be conducted.”

In 1923, Wisconsin had passed a law enabling counties to zone land next to cities so that the suburban development might be harmonious with the metropolitan. In 1929, by simply amending that law so counties could segregate land for farming and non farming purposes, rural zoning on a comprehensive scale became legal.

These actions weren’t taken in a vacuum. The county consulted with the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, College of Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, and with their constituents. According to the article, seventeen public meetings were held throughout the county to explain the zoning changes and the rights of the people to keep their land or take advantage of the chance to relocate. “All was done on a democratic basis – no pressure was applied, no orders were handed down from above. It was the will of the people, expressed 24 to 1.”

Over the next five years, twenty-three counties enacted the same procedures, finding tremendous support from within their own communities.

…they had not raised a bar against new settlers. In fact, it encouraged them. It kept them from being victimized by the purchase of barren isolated land and guided them to the 3 million acres of productive land in the 24 counties still open to settlement – enough land, according to University of Wisconsin – to take care of all expected newcomers for the next 50 to 75 years.

A side benefit to this action was a temporary increase in jobs. Thousands of people were hired to clean up the land, removing the old buildings, tearing up railroads, and restoring the land. Others build recreational and sporting facilities to suppport those who would soon return to hunt and fish, or just to enjoy the unique beauty of the area. As we witnessed, 20 years later the entire area around Taylor Rapids had been returned to nature, with nothing left standing save the trees.

Today’s states and counties are suffering greatly from the economic downturn. Wisconsin at the turn of the previous century serves as an example for others to follow. They looked at the costs to maintain those living in remote areas with little hope of economic benefit and found a creative way to not just help them but themselves in the process, saving millions of dollars while protecting their natural areas. We need some of that creative thinking today.

For our family, we now have a better picture of how and why Taylor Rapids disappeared from the map. While we’ve joked for decades about the Knapp family being the last to turn out the lights and leave Taylor Rapids and logging in northern Wisconsin, it turns out that this is more fact than fiction.

According to the History of Riley, Illinois, of McHenry County, my ancestor, Ezra O. Knapp was the first white child born within the township of Riley, son of Charles Sidney Knapp and Laura White, from our Nicholas Knapp Descendents and family tree.

Erza Knapp was born in 1838 and died in 1916 in Marengo, McHenry, Illinois. He was the third child of eleven children and the one year older brother of James Acy Knapp, father of James Asa Knapp, who married Emma Beatrice Primley and had Nora Knapp, who married Raymond Anderson, who gave birth to my mother, and then I came along eventually.

The 1877 McHenry County directory for Marengo Township and Riley Township lists Ezra as:

KNAPP, EZRA O., Butcher, Marengo; born in Marengo January 8,1838; owns 31 acres of land, one mile from Marengo; value of property, $3,500; was a member of the Ninety-fifth Ill. Vol. Inf., under Col. Avery; was in twenty-one battles and at the siege of Vickburg; was Brigade Butcher one year. Married Elizabeth Wise, April 28, 1861; had four children- Hearma A., born July 19, 1866; Ezra O., born December 18, 1870, died January 24, 1871; George H., born March 1, 1873, and Laura S., born April 4, 1876.

Ezra O. Knapp died April 25, 1916, and is listed as buried as a war hero in the Marengo Cemetery near Riley.

According to the Descendants Of Knapp on Rowte’s Genealogy Pages, Ezra O. Knapp may have been named for Ezra Knapp (1724-?), among the fourth generation of Knapps born in the new world and married to Sarah Adams. The family moved from Connecticut to Illinois in the early 1800s, and the senior Ezra Knapp might have been an influential old man or well remembered. Ezra named his son, Ezra O. as well. Ezra was also a popular biblical name at the time.

It’s clear from the records that other than the Civil War, Ezra rarely strayed from his birthplace of Riley and the neighboring town of Marengo, Illinois, where he became a respected member and long lasting pioneer family of the area.

Riley and Marengo, Illinois

The book, History of Riley, Illinois, of McHenry County, published by Munsell Publishing Company in 1922, available online, talks about Riley Township as a town in the southwestern part of McHenry County in Illinois known for its agriculture. Once a vast prairie land, “the farms were spoken of as being among the best in Northern Illinois.”

Founded by T.W. Cobb, Roswell Bates, N.E. Barnes, Jenikins Underwood, and Osborn Underwood between 1836 and 1843, Ezra’s family shows in the records as appearing just before his birth in 1838 among the pioneering families, and staying there permanently, with Esra raising his own family there and in Marengo close by.

It was said of this township in 1877: ‘Having plenty of facilities in adjoining townships, they have erected no church buildings within its limits. The population for many years was evenly divided between the Congregationalists and the Methodists. Meetings were frequently held in nearby schoolhouses.’

From the start, this township has been alive to the value of a good common school system and has improved every opportunity given it along this line.

The township was among, if not the very first in the county to provide itself with a good town hall, centrally located, where it held its elections and transacted all business, while other townships put up with tile schoolhouse that happened to be situated nearest by for all such affairs.

It had a cheese factory in the early seventies [1870s]. It also was early among the townships of the county to set out fruit trees and reaped the reward of such action by later harvesting large crops of luscious apples and cherries.

In 1890, Riley Township had a population of 830, and grew to 915 in 1900. Even today, Riley, Illinois, is considered too small to even count for the census, and is called an “unincorporated hamlet” served by the larger Marengo nearby, where Ezra died.

The Civil War

During the Civil War, Ezra signed up for the Company E 95th Illinois Infantry in Marengo, September 5, 1862, at age of 30, followed by his brother, Justus, on November 28, 1863. Justus was transferred to Company E of the 47th Illinois Infantry, and Ezra mustered out August 17, 1865.

In the History of 95th Illinois Regiment, it tells of how the 95th Illinois Infantry was under General McArthur’s Division, Army of the Tennessee, and how it took part in the turn of the eary in General Grant’s campaign in Northern Mississippi in the winter of 1862.

After the capture of Holly Springs by General Van Dorn, General Grant’s Army took up its line of march for Memphis, starting soon after Christmas. The Ninety-fifth arrived at Moscow, a small town between LaGrange and Memphis, December 30. On the 1st day of January, 1863, it resumed the march, and on the 2d arrived at Collierville. Colonel Deitzler’s Brigade, to which the Ninety-fifth was assigned. It was ordered to halt here a few days prior to advancing on Memphis, during which time the regiments were mainly occupied in repair ing and guarding the railroad. While remaining at this place the regiments were required to be up and in line of battle at 3 o’clock a. m. for several mornings in succession, watching for the enemy until daylight. The disaster which had occurred at Holly Springs made all commanders more watchful. On the 13th of January the Brigade moved forward to Memphis, arriving there in the afternoon, and went into camp three miles out from the city. The campaign thus closed in Northern Mississippi.

Simultaneously with the presence of General Grant’s Army at Memphis a large fleet of transports was also collected at that point for the purpose of conveying the troops down the Mississippi river to operate against Vicksburg. These were ready by the 19th of January for the reception of General McArthur’s Division, which was now designated as the Sixth Division of the Seventeenth Army Corps, commanded by Major General James B. McPherson. On that day the Ninety-fifth embarked upon the steamer Marie Denning… they participated in the march to Grand Gulf, and all the battles between that place and the rear of Vicksburg. Was in the charges of May 19, before Vicksburg, A charge was ordered along our whole lines upon the enemy’s works to take place at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and at the appointed hour the furious onset commenced. General Sherman’s Fifteenth Army Corps occupied the right of the federal line resting on the river above Vicksburg, General McPherson’s Seventeenth Army Corp held the center and the Thirteenth Corps. under General McClernand, held the left, extending nearly to the river on the south side of the city. The ground in front of General Ransom’s Brigade and over which it charged at the time was located near the Jackson road on the right of the celebrated “White House” and near Fort Hill. The Ninety-fifth held an important position in the Brigade during this charge. While maintaining this position Colonel Humphrey received a congratulatory dispatch from General Ransom. In this assault Colonel Humphrey received, early in the action, a wound in the foot, but remained with his command cheering on his men until he received orders to withdraw his Regiment, under the cover of darkness, from this attack. The Ninety-fifth lost in this engagement 7 killed and 54 wounded.

General Grant ordered the assault to be renewed on the 22d of May, and at 10 o’clock A, M., a furious charge began. The Ninety-fifth gained an advance position on the crest of the ridge near the enemy’s works encountering one of the most sweeping and destructive fires to which troops were ever exposed. Captain Manzer, of Company C, and Captain Cornwell, of Company K, were killed; Major William Avery, Captain Cook, of Company D, Lieutenant Smith, of Company C, Lieutenant Sponable, of Company A, and Lieutenant Pierce, of Company I, were severely wounded, The total killed, wounded and missing in these two charges was 25 killed, 124 wounded and 10 missing.

After the unsuccessful charges of the 19th and 22d of May, the great siege began and was prosecuted vigorously all through the sultry days of May and June, and on the 4th of July, the Ninety-fifth was among the first regiments to enter the city.

On the 12th of July, General Ransom’s Brigade was ordered to proceed to Natchez for the purpose of occupying that point. It arrived there on the following day and affected a landing without opposition. The Brigade remained at Natchez until the middle of October. While the Ninety-fifth was in camp at this place General McArthur commanding the Division, paid the troops a visit and on invitation of Colonel Humphrey attended a dress parade of the Ninety-fifth. The General expressed himself greatly pleased with the appearance of the Regiment and he and his staff joined in the opinion that they had never witnessed a more perfect dress parade during the service.

The Ninety-fifth stayed in Vicksburg, Virginia, under the command of Brigadier General Thomas K. Smith through the fall and winter of 1863 to build and reinforce the garrison. Ezra Knapp mustered out in November after seeing more than his share of the battles. By spring of 1864, the 95th Illinois Infantry men were almost wiped out with few survivors after furious battles across the south.

According to records from the Montgomery, Alabama, headquarters in August 1865, the remaining enlisted men of the 95th Illinois Volunteer Infantry were transferred to the 47th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, which included Ezra’s brother, Justus, who had stayed in through the worst of the battles after Ezra mustered out.

The 1877 McHenry County Directory recognizes Ezra O. Knapp as an honored veteran for his service in the Civil War.

After the horrors of war, it appears as if Ezra O. Knapp stayed close to his birthplace and family roots working as a butcher and farmer. He raised his four children, of which three survived, in Riley Township and Marengo, Illinois, with his wife, Elizabeth Wise.

If you have any photographs or more information on Ezra O. Knapp, we’d love to hear from you.

The following historical data regarding the Knapp family is provided here by Wayne P. Knapp, and is based on what fragmented records that are available.

My grandparents on my father’s side were James Knapp and Elizabeth Brau. They bore eight children as follows: James Asa (who later became my father), Henry, Theron, Florence, Edward, Edgar, and May.

While still a baby, May was accidentally killed by an Indian at Sweetwater Divide in Wyoming. Edgar died while young.

When James Knapp died, Elizabeth remarried Charles Cunningham. Of this marriage six children were born: Ollie, Nora, Edson, Eva, Walter, and Blanche. When Charles Cunningham died, Elizabeth married the brother of her first husband, James, Charles Knapp. They were past child bearing ages and bore no children from this marriage.

Grandpa Charles Knapp was the only grandfather I ever knew. He was a small man with a large handle bar mustache. He always poured his coffee in a saucer and drank it, sucking the coffee from his mustache by protruding his lower lip and inhaling.

Of interest is the fact as given me personally by my mother, Emma Primley (married to James Asa). When Elizabeth Brau was about two years old, she was in a wagon train that was attacked by Indians. Everyone in the train was killed except her. A short time following the massacre, the famed James brothers, Jesse and Frank, came upon the scene. While surveying the area, they heard a baby crying in the underbrush nearby. Her mother, in hopes that she would not be found by Indians, probably threw the baby there. This infant was my grandmother, Elizabeth Brau. The James Brothers took the child to the farm family they knew with the identification papers they had retrieved from the carnage.

My parents, James Asa Knapp and Emma Beatrice Primley, were married at Crivitz, Wisconsin, on September 11, 1901. To them were born eight children as follows:

• Allen James at Loomis, Wisconsin, September 12, 1902
• Nora May (Nonie at Faunus, Michigan, September 28, 1904
• Melvin Edward at Wausaukee, Wisconsin, July 28, 1906 – 1943 died in railroad accident
• Lloyd Darrel at Cedarville, Wisconsin, April 30, 1908
• Clayton Leroy at Wausaukee, Wisconsin, September 29, 1910 – Died May 5, 1911 at 7 months and 22 days old
• Robert Francis at Wausaukee, Wisconsin, January 20,1913 – Died 1994, Lake Stevens, Washington
• Wayne Primley at Wausaukee, Wisconsin, December 31, 1914 – Died 1999, Seattle, Washington
• Maurice Glenn at Green Bay, Wisconsin, August 4, 1923

My mother, Emma Beatrice Primley, was born at Morgan, Wisconsin, March 19, 1886. She was fifteen years old when she married James Asa Knapp, eighteen years her senior. Her father’s name was Robert Primley. Little is known of him except that he had been a popular horse trader in his early years. He acquired a server foot ailment when my mother was a small girl and never recovered from illness as long as he lived. My mother said her father suffered unbearably before his untimely death. My mother’s mother was named Kathryn, but little else is known of her except that she was a small woman, very kind and frail.

Robert and Kathryn Primely’s family consisted of the following children: Emma, Schyler, Sherman, Sealy, Ella, Myrtle, Nora, and Arthur. All have now passed onto their rewards, as far as I know. Because of severe family hardships, brought on by my grandfather’s illness, which incapacitated him for several years before his death, Ella was adopted out while still a tiny baby. The family hardships also contributed to my mother marrying at such a young age.

The above compiled by Wayne P. Knapp
February 20, 1984

What We Really Know

Elizabeth Brau: Of Elizabeth, we really know very little. We have some records we are still trying to verify with her being born in California or elsewhere, but little in the way of fact. All we know is that she married James Asa Knapp as Elizabeth Brantt in 1866 in Dakota Territory, South Dakota, then Charles Cunningham followed by Charles Knapp, both of those marriages happening in Wisconsin, and adding confusion between two Charles and two Knapps in marriage record research. How she went from Brandt/Brandtt to Brau we are still researching.

What we do know is about Jesse James (1847-1882). If we guess that Elizabeth was at least 15 when she married James, she would have been born in 1851, making it 1853 when she was two years old. In 1853, Jesse James would have been six years old. His brother, Frank, would have been 10. Even if we fudge with the guessing game of years, Jesse and Frank teamed up in 1864 when Jesse James was 16, two years before Elizabeth was married. During their early gang years of crime, the James brothers stayed in Missouri, eventually broadening their each to Iowa and south to Texas with no evidence that the brothers were in the Dakotas or further West during their reign. Nothing adds up on this family myth.

What might be true is that Elizabeth may have traveled with her family in a wagon train through Indian territories, and maybe they were attacked, and possibly her family killed as we have no information on her parents or further back. Sometimes there is a kernel of truth in the myth, but we’re still searching.

May Knapp: We know nothing of the story of May Knapp’s death “accidentally” by an Indian.

Ella Primley: We are also researching more about the Primley family line, including little Ella who was adopted out as a baby to an unknown family.

James and Emma Knapp: What we know of Emma and James Knapp is that they were a very unhappy married couple. By 1925, the two were estranged, and there is some question as to the parenthood of the youngest, Glenn Maurice, but he looks so much like the rest of the family, few doubt James was the father. Emma never remarried.

James Asa Knapp was a logger and spend the majority of his time in logging camps away from the family for great lengths of time. He did not actively participate in the raising of his younger children and few of the children saw him after they left Wisconsin for Washington State in 1930. He died in Michigan in 1950 and there is little known of the last 25 years of his life.

Emma left Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, with her family, save the oldest, to Oregon in 1930, settling in Snohomish County, Washington. She became a nurse and worked in a hospital in Monroe after many years struggling through the Depression with her family, working any job they could find. In 1943, her son, Melvin (1906-1943) died working the railroads. She died in September 1960 in Everett, Washington.

Seneca Primley: Emma’s brother, Seneca Primley was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and not mentioned in the list of children born of Robert and Kathryn Primley, causing more confusion as to their relationship, though Wayne and Robert Knapp mention their “cousin” Seneca and his wife, Mabel, as pastor of their local community church in Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, in the 1920s, referring to him as Cousin Sink.

Night drops down with usual clam.
The peaceful night birds cry.
The whippoorwill reiterates song,
Natures own sweet lullaby.

An owl hoots, from his lofty perch,
A hungry coyote whines,
Nocturnal animals in search,
Make chills go up one’s spine.

The Old Moon rises o’er the hill
Sends shadows every where,
Seems aid to night folks, greatly skilled,
On land an in the air.

A Pine Snake slithers towards a frog.
The lightning bugs are blinkin’,
Somewhere the baying o a dog,
The hungry coyotes slink in.

Tis night time, and it’s summer,
In Wisconsin state so fair,
Most flowers closed in slumber,
Evening breezes cool the air.

Sleepy rivers keep on travelin’
Babbling o’er rocks, big and small,
Never seems to quit unravelin’,
Causes wonder for us all.

December 9, 1964

The Little Kids

The Sumas on the hill are glowing red,
Choke Cherries with their fruit tarty and sweet.
Brite leaves are fluttering to their mossy beds.
These memories to me just can’t be beat.

I see a pair of kids along a road,
A fish pole on each shoulder rhythm keep,
The worries of the day, they each unload
As they pad along the trailer in their bare feet.

Not a care and darn few worries on their minds
One dull Jack Knife between them I suppose.
Worn overalls expose their small behinds
Tho the least of all their thoughts were of their clothes.

The fish this day just simply wouldn’t bite.
The reason no one knew or seemed to care.
The evening sun was sinkin’ out of sight,
So they return empty handed, what a pair.

The long trail from the river bank was fun,
Tho their bellies were as empty as two gourds.
Those barefoot kids when hurried sure could run
And they loved the home that furnished bread and board.

Now they didn’t mind the milking of the cows
Nor too much the packing water and the wood
Tho they weren’t big enough to hold the plow
At picking rocks and roots did best they could.

Dry clover buds they rolled for cigarettes
You must know that they were ornery little squirts
Excuses manufactured you can bet,
In their little old blue overalls and shirts.

As free as that Wisconsin wind that blows
The songs they sang were different than todays.
One was “Bring Back My Blushing Rose,”
And “Drifting Back to Dreamland” brot great praise.

They also sang “Wreck of Old Ninety Seven”
And the Poplar limbs close by just seemed to raise,
As they’d point their little mugs rite up toward Heaven
I tell you folks, some of you’d be amazed.

The crude play toys were mostly made by hand
Just anything to pass the time away
They hunted over miles of unowned land
And were happy everywhere they chanced to stray.

Oh, it warn’t so long ago that one’s forgot,
About the “Old Back House” and family pot,
Or the smell of breakfast cookin’ in the morn
Nor those long and weedy rows of that field corn.

To return again is an expectant wish
Just to try again a mess of speckled fish
With eyelid closed the visions are so plain
Of Robert Knapp, and his dear brother Wayne.

Written circa 1965