52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 8 "I Can Identify"

This photo features Ed Washburn, my great-great grandpa, in the 1930s. 

Ed was hired by the city to plow the sidewalks. This photo was taken in front of the Ellshoff home on Maple St in Marshall; if you look closely you can see the Elshoff children looking out the front window of the home.

The large building on the left hand side was a woolen mill. Eldridge S. Janney, an attorney with failing eyesight, came to Marshall from Palestine, Illinois, in 1853, built a mill, and started business with Mr. Alexander. Their newspaper advertisements urged the public to bring their wool to the mill in exchange for woven blankets and garments. By 1856 the mill was “going full blast”, but it burned in 1858 and was replaced with a brick building. From 1869 to 1875 the mill was advertised as belonging to Janney and Son. Thomas Janney was selling knitting machines. E. L. Janney died in 1875, and in 1876 Lyman Booth and Co. had possession of the mill and was putting it in “tip top order”. The new mill must not have been successful, because articles in 1883 and 1899 by the editor of the newspaper were urging the public to bring a woolen mill back to Marshall to help the economy. In 1908 John Rademaker came to Marshall and started his first bottling works in the old woolen mill building. In 1911 it was the home of the Judd Harlan stock barn. The building was sold in 1914 to Robert Thompson, and in 1915 a new vending machine factory was starting business there. In 1919 it was used as a warehouse for supplies used in paving the National Road. A “Dinky Railroad” was built to carry the materials to the building sites along the road. Eventually the woolen mill building fell into disrepair, and it collapsed in a “cloud of dust” in the 1940s.

I have a few photos of Ed that I’ve collected over the years and they almost all show him with one of his horses. I wish I had known him - I'd love to hear all about the horses that he knew over the course of his life. I have a feeling he might just be the one who passed the love of horses down to his grandson, Dwight, who passed it down to his son, Robert . . . my dad, who passed it down to me.