Grandma Anna Hartung Black’s Christmas Fruitcake
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 cup raisins
1 cup dates
1 cup nutmeats
2 cups cold water
1 cup lard
Boil all together for 1/2 minute.
When cool add:
2 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups flour
Bake at 350.
Put paper in bottom of pans to keep from sticking.
My Mother said that Grandma Anna Black made this fruitcake for Christmas every year and then my Mother made it and now the fruitcake has become my tradition. So off to the kitchen! Merry Christmas and Happy Baking!

Martha, Catherine, Walt, Ruth & Laura Black

This is a picture of Martha Black, her Mother Catherine Meehan Black, Walt Black, son of Charlie and Laura Black, Ruth Black sister to Martha and Laura Hartung Black, a sister-in-law. Laura married Charles Black. Catherine Meehan died in Feb. 1917, and Walt was born in 1909, so I am going to date this picture as taken in 1916. Martha would have been 30 years old, Catherine 64, Ruth 21 and Laura 33 years old. Walt was born in August, 1909, so this might have been his eighth birthday. Family history says Grandma Catherine died of the Spanish flu, which was an epidemic in that year.

Letter from George Black to Fred Black in 1939

Big Oak Flat, Calif. Nov. 27, 1939 (almost 70 years ago)

Fred Black Arkansaw, Wis

Dear Fred and family,

Got a letter from Mart (their sister Martha) the other day and among other things she mentioned that on Nov 30 you would have a birthday (Fred was born Nov. 30, 1879) and that it is your sixtieth. So according to my own I know it is.
Well this will have to go as a birthday letter.
I was up at Pittsburg last week where Bernard and Ralph work and had turkey with them Thurs 23rd. Came home via Stockton Friday.
Ralph is master mechanic at the ___________? Cannery and Barney has charge of all the, what they call cutting machines, and 50 to 60 Philipinos.
He gets 85 cents per hour and Ralph gets 1.00 but Barney makes more money due to overtime. He has to be there all the time the machines are working, as he is the only man in the plant that can master them. His check for two weeks earns as high as $150.00. He or both of them get time and half for over time.
Jim is making airplanes at Lockheed aircraft.
They live in Glendale. The plant is near Burbank. They all expect to congregate at Madera for Xmas. That is where Elsie and Florence’s folks live and I had to promise Jimmie that I would be there too.
The boys also have a truck on road hauling cans from American Can Co., Monterey, to plant at Pittsburg. An international truck semi and trailer-22 wheels. The vehicle is 8 ft. wide 13’6” high and 60 ft long with cab. Cans are bulky so they can only get on fourteen ton. But they travel fast, high-speed tires on it. They have two drivers, one stays in San Jose, and one in Pittsburg. I am running the “used machinery and mine equipment” sales and doing a little mining.

Since getting my bum hip I haven’t been able to work for three years, but can still drive car and trade around, buy and sell. Sam and I are working on a sale of a ball mill now. They run into several thousand dollars. I may go down there to Kingman (Arizona) next week. If not Sam said he would be up to see us around Xmas. I am in the act of selling out here and so is he at Kingman, then we are going to pool the spoils and take on a place property up N. E. of Grass Valley, Calif. Cant get in until next July on account of high water and the snow. Gets 20 ft. deep in winter. Not much snow there now, but passes between here and there are closed until late in May. So much for that.

Had my hip x rayed three weeks ago. A loose piece of bone that keeps it sore and raises hell, is working away from the joint. So Dr. thinks by spring they can cut that out and not affect the joint. So I believe we will try it. Sit down and write a letter, tell me a lot about the country you live in and its people. We’ll have to get back there soon or I will lose track of everything. Wishing you a good birthday and many more.

And another thing-Say hello to every one and I would like a copy of the family record from the old bible. Seems Ruth had that. I know, Martha’s, Charley’s and my own birthday and am not so sure about yours. I never remember celebrating your birthday on Thanksgiving. I would like to know John’s birthday. Haven’t wrote him for a long time. Mart has a pretty tough time. Boys and I helped her on her fuel this winter.
Write, Geo

FYI: The Jimmie, Bernard (Barny) and Ralph are sons of George. Sam, Ruth, Martha, Charley and Fred are brothers and sisters of George.

(Ball mills are used extensively in the Mechanical alloying process in which they are not only used for grinding but for cold welding as well, with the purpose of producing alloys from powders.)

The "Dog-goned Blacks"

“The Dog-goned Blacks”

An interview with Eva Black by Janet Black-Yznaga and Bernadine Black in August 1974 when Eva was 92.Eva Black was born July the 29th, 1882. Eva died in 1975.

Grandpa James Black came from Ireland. He was 17 at the time and the only member of his family to immigrate.
There were 3 Meehan men that Eva knew, Bill Meehan, James Meehan and Andy Meehan. Ed Meehan was Bill Meehan’s son. That is how Eva came to get acquainted with the “dog-goned” blacks, to get mixed up with them. Old Andy and Ed were bachelors. They lived together near Eau Galle not to far from Eva's grandmother. She used to work for her Grandmother so she knew of them. Eva also had a sister Nellie. Her sister Clara kept house for the Meehan’s and when Clara got married to Percy Persons, they needed a housekeeper and Clara referred them to Eva. She was 15 at the time and always helped her dad (Harrison was the only boy in the family and the youngest) so she didn’t know much about housekeeping. She knew how to make bread because she had to do it when she stayed with her Grandmother, so she told her mother to write down recipes for cake, pie and cookies She had little experience with cooking and that is how she started working out. She worked there for over two years and got $1.50 a week. She stumped them for a raise and she got 25 cents so she got $1.75 a week. That the best wages they paid. “SAKES ALIVE”. Now this old Ed, Andy’s brother, (Eva didn’t know what was wrong with him) but he was in bed. He died after Eva came-she went there in Feb. and he died the first day of April, so that just left old Andy there. “That's how I come to get acquainted with these Blacks. They were uncles, brother of Grandma Black. They used to be out there and of course I got acquainted with him (Jim) and we went together for two years and then got married.”


Where were you living then? Down on the old place. When we started we lived up here but when Grandpa Black died why a, we moved down there (where Cole lives). Grandma Black come up one day-Sam came back, he was out in California and he came back when his Dad died and he run the farm one year and that was enough for him. He wanted to keep saloon. He was sheriff in Durand. He lived and died in AZ. Anyway she comes up. Sam said, “you can do what you damn please with it”, he says. He went over town and bought a tavern or saloon they called them then and moved her over there. So we lived on the old place. That's how it all happened. She’d come back every Sunday for Sunday dinner. After church, they would go to church and back they’d come. I had company every Sunday. I had an old wood stove and big iron kittles. I'd put on one iron kittle full of meat and the other one full of potatoes and vegetables. She’d say, “I want to go back on the farm and git a farmer’s dinner. And she did. Every doggone Sunday! And she always give the Christmas too you know. So I took that over. I give a Christmas dinner for the “whole Black tribe” There’d been as high as 40. They all come with their kids, and I used to set three tables. Once, I set 3 tables the rest of the time it was always 2 big tables. Grandma Black left her big extension table. And I had one, and I had them full.

“Another thing I want to tell you before I forget it. I was 92 on my birthday this year and my birthday is on the 29th of July and it happened this year if you just reverse the date of my birthday you’d have my age. The 29th, you see, of July you reverse it to 92 and that will never happen again, I don’t think”!!

I was born in 1882. Were you born around here? I was born up on what they call Chase Hill up around (where Ray Black’s live), right in the same school district-school house was right across the road from us. The old school house was an old log school house that was down beyond there aways, but when they built the new school house, it was right across the road and I was always mad about that, I had to go home for dinner and the rest of them could always bring their dinner and then they could play, you know. And usually when I went home for dinner there was always some little thing I’d have to do. They had an old box heater for heat the schoolhouse. It was settin up on-they laid brick under it to set it on and it had legs about that high, a big long stove it would take I guess 3 or 4 ft. wood. A big, long box stove. And say, in the wintertime they would fetch their dinner pails and put them all around it so they wouldn’t freeze, you know. If they had them out in the entry they would freeze.

You know what we done in recesses in the summertime, that’s where I learned to dance. We danced, and that was a hell of a lot better than fighting, wasn’t it. Eva laughs! There were kids going to school there that could play the mouth organ, you know, them Apleidingers and they could call off, we danced square dances and waltzes. We danced so much, so much that the grass couldn’t grow. Pat, pat, pat, pat you know! I’ve thought of it so many times that now the kids are fighting all the time and gull darn, we was dancin’. Eva laughs! I never got no further than the eighth grade. I was big enough to work; I had to stay to home.
Birthdays! I’ve got my family wrote down. I was forgettin’ so I wrote them all down.

Eva talks about getting Cole’s birth certificate. “He can’t get no Social Security without he has a Birth Certificate”. He was born in 1913.
Cole’s name is Andrew Coleman but they call him Cole. “You know Jim wanted to name the first one Coleman. He said I want a Cole Black. I wouldn’t listen to it, but he kept right at it, and by gull finally I give in. That’s the verdict. I had it all hunted up and I was going to take it over to the courthouse in order to get the birth certificates

Do you have a bible with any history in? I’ve got Mother’s bible. I haven’t got a bible of my own. Mother’s bible, I wanted Dad’s bible but Nellie wanted that and you have to take what you can git. Dad’s bible was bigger print. I’ve gotten so now that I can’t read the paper. The fine print all goes into a blur. I can see to thread my needle. When Hattie was born I didn’t have any Dr. I just had a midwife and I never registered her birth. She is the only one that isn’t registered in the courthouse and I've got to go and swear to it that she was born.
When I typed this I tried to keep Eva’s language as much as I could. Jean Kannel

I couldn't find where to edit the last post. I wanted to add that the history of James Black was taken from the book written by Sam Doughty, oldest son of Ruth Black Doughty.

James the Immigrant

James Black was born May 11, 1844, on a small farm in County Down, Ireland, near a public bar called Eden Ordinary. The nearest town the site of a bridge over the Bann River, was naturally called Banbridge. His family was descended from Scots Presbyterians, resettled into Northern Ireland by the English. In 1861, at the age of 17 he took a ferry to Liverpool and immigrated to the New World. His last touch of home was a loaf of home made bread his mother gave him to sustain him on his journey to Liverpool. He never saw his family again. The voyage from Liverpool to Ogdensberg, NY took seven weeks in a sailing ship.It reached Montreal and off loaded the passengers at the north end of lake Champlain, on the Canada-US border in Ogdensburg, NY. Landing immigrants at Lake Champlain was cheaper than sailing to New York City. The great circle route from Liverpool to New York City skirts the east coast of Canada 1000 miles before reaching New York harbor. Immigrant ships could save several days by sailing down the Saint Lawrence River to Montreal, then up the Richelieu River to the north end of the lake. The west shore of the lake was New York; the east shore was Vermont and the north end led to Quebec. The shipping agent could tell complaining passengers that they were in New York, although it was upstate New York instead of New York City. The ship could make more trips each year, bringing more profits for the ship owners. A second point was the US Civil War. Southern troops (mostly Citadel Cadets) had fired on Fort Sumter April 12, 1861. The US was involved in a civil war. England was supporting the rebels; so English ships were not welcome in US harbors.Some Burke cousins who lived about twenty miles north in the large Irish settlement in Hemingford, Quebec, met James. Possibly because the Civil War had started in the US he went to stay with the cousins in Hemingford. An Irish immigrant family named Meehan had landed in Hemingford about 20 years before. Several had taken up farming, others worked in the woods, and one ran a boarding house for new arrivals. One of the Meehan boys remarked to his family, including a little girl named Catherine (born 10-26-1851) that he had just met a “new greenhorn”. Named James Black. James worked in the area for about two years, and then decided his future was in the United States. James and a cousin went to Chicago where they became teamsters on the horse cars. Some time later the Irish lads in Chicago heard about the good wages Wisconsin lumber companies were paying to work in “the Pineries” as lumberjacks. James and some others came up the Mississippi by boat to find work. He ventured up the Chippewa and Red Cedar rivers, first to the area around Eau Galle and then found work in Cedar Falls with the Knapp-Stout lumber company, located in Menomonie, Wisconsin. James found that many of the men he had known in Hemingford had followed the ring of the axe, including several Meehan’s. The Meehan boarding house had also moved to Cedar Falls. He took lodging with them and became acquainted with their daughter Catherine Isabella who was helping her parents operate the boarding house. James was a tall well built young man, well muscled from his work as a lumberjack. She liked him even thought he was an Orangeman from Ulster. The religious differences were too great for a church wedding, so on November 9, 1869, and they were married before a Justice of the Peace. He was 26 and she had just turned 19. The newlyweds rented a small house in Cedar Falls for first year or two of the marriage. The house was still standing in 1991. With one son and another on the way the parents decided they needed a permanent home. The lumber companies logged pine trees and were selling off the “worthless” hardwood tracts in the Eau Galle and Arkansaw valley areas. James and Catherine moved to Eau Galle so he could search for a good farm site. In early 1872, he bought 80 acres of rich soil of the Big Arkansaw valley. Several Meehan’s also located in the area. The farmers cut and burned thousands of hardwood trees to clear land for planting. A furniture factory sprang up in Arkansaw to utilize choice maple, oak and other hardwoods; free for the hauling.were used to build a one-room cabin on the land, adding a second room the next year. This two room cabin served Jim and Catherine until the fifth son was born, when a loft was added to provide bunks for the older boys. Then three daughters arrived. About 1898 the loft was expanded into a full second floor. Several years later a frame extension was built to provide a new dining room and kitchen. The log structure was covered with clapboard to match the new addition. The house was resided with vinyl siding in 1996-97. The Catholic community in the Big Arkansaw and Eau Galle valleys joined to build St. Henry’s church in Eau Galle. The Meehans and the children of Catherine Meehan Black walked over the Gap Hill pass to Eau Galle for Mass, Catechism classes, shopping or dances. Grace Black Severson said that Grandpa James Black would hitch the team up every Sunday morning so Catherine and the children could go to Mass. In the 1920’s the Catholic farmers in the Big Arkansaw Valley were numerous enough to establish their own parish and built St. Joseph’s church about a mile west of the village of Arkansaw. James Black Sr. became a Catholic in 1909. He and Catherine were remarried in the church. He died February 18, 1910, at the age of 65, from cancer of the lip and cheek. He is buried in the cemetery at St. Henry’s church in Eau Galle. Catherine, 7 years younger that Jim outlived him by seven years. She died at age 65 on Feb. 21, 1917. Her obituary says she died of heart failure. Her daughter, Ruth Black Doughty said she was a victim of the great influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1917-18. She is buried beside her husband at Eau Galle.

News from the "Farm"

This past month, a granddaughter of George Black and her husband visited from California. We visited the graves of James and Catherine Meehan Black at St. Henry's cemetery in Eau Galle, WI and the grave of her grandmother Eva Herron Black, who is buried in the cemetery at Arkansaw in the George and Martha Herron family plot. We also showed them the original farm of James and Catherine Black, the "Black" school named for James Black and items pertaining to the Black family at the Old Court House Museum in Durand.

"Evergreen Farm"

If you are wondering about the name "Evergreen Farm", this is the name printed for the Fred Black Farm on the Pepin County Plat map for 1930. The James Black farm was named the "Rose Lawn Farm".

Names of the Black brothers

I should name the Black brothers in the picture. In the back starting on the left, George b. May 3, 1882, Fred b. Nov. 30, 1879, Sam, b. June 5, 1877, Charles b. Feb 16, 1884, In front on the left, John b. June 30 1870, James, b. June 6, 1875, William b. Nov 24, 1872. Three daughters were to follow, Isabella b. July 28, 1888, Martha b. March 8, 1891 and Ruth b. Oct. 26 1895.

The seven Black brothers

This blog is being created for the purpose of sharing the history of the James and Catherine Meehan Black family. James emigrated from Ireland and married Catherine Meehan on Nov. 4 1869.