“The long harangues of the grass in the wind are our histories. We tell our freedom backward by the land. We tell our past by the gravestones and the apple trees.” -- by Archibald MacLeish, from his 1938 book, Land of the Free.
 

The people who built this community gave historians, families, and all of us many stories from the Old Days. They had difficult lives: no electricity or running water and long winter battles against snowdrifts. Then there was the tragic 1918 Forest Fire and family stories of those terrible days that could still bring tears. Talk about the earliest schools brought out mention of a favorite teacher, or the roads they walked to school – sometimes waiting for a logging train to pass.
 

School meant old friends and a welcome relief from the isolation and chores of farm life - cold walks in the early morning to the outhouse, cleaning the kerosene lamp glass chimney with crushed up newspapers, keeping out of the way of the fly strip hanging from the ceiling near the screen door, refilling the wood box near the iron cook stove, and warming themselves and dressing in front of the parlor stove with the isinglass window on the door.
 

Now, in the year 2007, it has been 119 years since this township was formed. Descendents of the early settlers still have stories to tell and they are all worth telling to the next generation. Would you like to tell yours in our newsletter? If so, please contact the Canosia Historical Society by calling Millicent O’Connell or leave a message at 729-8126.
 

Canosia Township Historical Society

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