Family History – Shirley DicKard

I received an intriguing email from a “Brian” in Michigan last August:

I have a 13 x 10 inch framed picture of the Charles Hoppin house that I purchased from a yard sale in Michigan. I did a Google search based on the photo and found your website. On the back of the photo it tells who is on the porch and in the yard.

The homestead photo just had a certain vibration about it that sparked curiosity and imagination; and that is one of the reasons that drew me to it and why I searched the Internet to identify it. I just thought I would let you know that I appreciated knowing where the house was located and stories behind it.

*This unknown homestead photo just had a certain vibration about it that sparked curiosity and imagination*

I wrote him back:
Hello Brian, What a surprise to hear that you found the family’s old California farmhouse at a Michigan yard sale! The Hoppin family was originally from Niles Michigan, and one great-granddaughter still lives in Muskegon, Michigan. You may have read on my website that this farmhouse plays a big part in my novel, “Heart Wood- Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future.” That was a fictional account inspired by family stories. Now I’m going back and writing the actual biography of my great-grandmother Emily Hoppin who was a successful farmer and women’s activist in Yolo in the Northern California Sacramento Valley in the late1800s. She is standing to the right in the photograph.

Nearly everyone in my family has a treasured copy of this historic photograph, thanks to my sister Emily and her then-husband Chris who made copies of the originals back in the late 1970s. But how in the world did this one end up in a yard sale across the country in Michigan? I wrote to my cousin Nancy who lives in Muskegon, figuring she would probably have an answer.

Nancy replied:

We have two framed photos of Emily and Charles Hoppin that my parents had hanging next to the framed photo of the Hoppin Farmhouse for years and years in California. When Mom moved to Michigan, she had them reframed and hung them together. Sometime during her many moves and downsizing, the photo of the farmhouse came up missing. We figure it must have mistakenly gotten in with the give-away stuff (many grandkids and friends trying to be helpful). I’m sure it’s the same framed photo because the label of the picture framing shop is on the back of all three framed photos .

Feeling just a tad possessive about our family’s farmhouse picture, and curious about what Brian planned to do with the photograph, I wrote him back.

His answer surprised me:

The reason that the photo came into my possession is that I bought it to use in my business. I own an Escape Room in Muskegon (Lakeshore Quest) and I purchase unique items that add a richness to my room’s design and story. This particular photo is the foundation to one of the themes I am working on.

Well, well, the old farmhouse photo is in an Escape Room – I hope it’s having fun!

Escape Rooms, for those who don’t know, are group experiences where you’re immersed in a themed room to search for and uncover hidden clues, codes, puzzles that will help you escape, usually within an hour. I could just envision Brian’s customers scouring the farmhouse picture for clues.

I asked Brian to tell me more.

The objects must fit the theme of the room and if it can be used as a puzzle, that’s even better. The best objects come from antique stores, auctions and estate sales. We especially love objects that have a history, tell a story, or just work well as “eye candy”. We want our guests to be as fully immersed in the background story of the room as possible.

The theme of this Escape Room called “Mortimer’s Mansion” was an old Victorian style house that was due to be torn down; it was rumored that the previous owner had a treasure hidden inside the house that no one had ever found. Therefore, the goal of the room is to find the treasure before the home is torn down.

“Mortimer’s Mansion” (Lakeshore Quest Escape Room)

The photo had a great deal of mystery behind it that made us both wonder who these folks were and what their lives were like; there was a little information on the back side of the photo but most of it was left to our imaginations. Over time that made me more curious, and I didn’t want to just toss it into a storage box; this mystery deserved a little more investigation.

Knowing that technology is so powerful, I took the chance that doing a Google photo search may turn up something. And Bingo, it did!! I found your website with the identical photo and a great deal more information. I contacted you and let you know that we found the Hoppin Farmhouse photo.

Hello again from California, I replied.

That farmhouse picture has been around! Nearly every family descendant has a copy; it’s posted on my website (shirleydickard.com), and included in the University of California Davis Archives and Special Collections. In fact, I’m just getting ready to post a blog about “Setting Foot on my Ancestor’s Soil” – about finding the original farmhouse property and walking it with the current almond farmer there.

I then suggested to Brian that if he’s ever finished using the photograph and would consider donating it the Yolo County Historical Archives, they would be very interested in having it.

Long story short, Brian recently contacted me that they were finished using the photo; my cousin Nancy picked it up at the Lakeshore Quest Escape Room in Muskegon Michigan, and mailed it back to its original home in Yolo County, California.

Heather Lanctot, Coordinator of the Yolo County Archives and Historical Collection now has it documented and safely stored in its vast collection of historical documents for family genealogists and future researchers to enjoy finding.

If you have family artifacts that the next generation isn’t interested in, consider donating them to an appropriate Historical Archives collection.

Heather Lanctot, Coordinator of the Yolo County Archives and Historical Collection with a photo of the historic Hoppin farmhouse, Yolo California 1885.

I am currently working on the Biography of Emily Hoppin, the Life and Times of a Yolo Pioneer and Women’s Activist (and also the inspiration for the fictional Eliza in Heart Wood). You’re welcome to sign up for my Blog and Newsletter to follow my progress on this and other topics I care about.

Heart Wood – Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future can be purchased at your local bookstore and Online.

“In used book stores it truly is Ask and you shall receive. Even if you don’t ask, the old books know, not just the words within, but so many of the thoughts of those who have read before you.” (Robert Mumm)

Thanks to those who’ve sent me their own tales of being called by used books. I’m starting with stories by Mark Jokerst and Robert Mumm. Hope to hear more stories from the rest of you!

“My favorite book finding me story came from reading a Wendell Berry piece where he mentioned Sir Albert Howard as one of the sources of today’s organic gardening. Soon after, poking around at Bay Books in Concord, an old but crisp edition of “An Agricultural Testament” caught my eye. Thanks. It never dawned on me the book was reaching out for me; I thought I had found the book!” . . . Mark Jokerst

And from Robert Mumm . . .

“In a used book store in Maryland, a book was waiting for me. I didn’t know it, but it was and it took but a very short time for it to catch my attention. It wasn’t a bright new book in great condition; rather it seemed a bit tired and dowdy. It was a well-used old book and the only book I really looked at. My son and daughter-in-law had wanted to show me their favorite book store, and there was just time for a brief stop on our way to the airport for my return flight back to California.

I have been working to put together some family background for my kids and found there is really a lot I don’t know about my father and almost nothing about the family before that. My father came to this country from the district of Schleswig in Northern Germany on his own when he was fifteen, so in a way the chain back beyond was broken. He did tell many fascinating stories about his childhood, but there was just too much detail for me to understand then, because it was so beyond my own experience. Later on there never seemed to be time to go back over some of those old things, and they faded and became confused.

Pieter and Katie never knew their paternal Grandfather at all, so I wished to get inside and reconstruct the person he was so that they can know him a little. I soon realized that religion played a big part in his life, although when I knew him he had no religious affiliation at all. To understand him I needed information on that part of his childhood.

So I had begun to work on this facet of his life when I walked into that used book store and reached for the first book that caught my eye. This book was between others, so I couldn’t read its title, but when I pulled it out and saw what it was, I knew why I had come there. It was The History of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, published in 1847 and written by J.H. Merle D’ Aubigne. I subsequently looked him up and found that he is a very well regarded source in religious history and fun to read because of the writing style of the time. This book has become a source that not only illuminated religion, but also many attitudes pertaining to the raising of children at that time.

I’ve also been able to learn something of the physical setting, for instance, the Elbe River where he played is about five miles across. Far different than the river I envisioned as a child, for all the river I knew was our little Middle Fork of the Yuba. Dad had an extensive knowledge of the rigging of sailing ships, those old Windjammers of an age when the bulk of cargo still moved under sail. He made a wonderful model ship for each of his sons, with all the stays and rigging of those great old Windjammers, and his love of tall ships has come to me as a sort of nostalgic undercurrent.

In my father’s telling of his early life there came to me a subliminal dread of the North Sea. From what I have researched so far, I now know why, for my father was close to it – very close. My grandfather was a Pilot Boat Captain and many times must have gone out to meet ships when he was not at all sure of coming back. Even today the transfer of a Pilot and Helmsman from pilot boat to an incoming ship in the turbulent mix of river flow and storm driven waves where the Elbe meets the North Sea is a hazardous undertaking.

In used book stores it truly is ask and you shall receive. Even if you don’t ask, the old books know, not just the words within but so many of the thoughts of those who have read before you.”

. . . Robert Mumm

Tag: Family History

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