Here's a U.P. shot which floated into our photo inbox this week, along with a note:

This is a picture of my great-great grandparents, John and Emma (Hendrickson) Anderson. He was born in 1869 in Pajala, Sweden. They came here, to Tamarack Location up behind Calumet in 1898, according to his Naturalization papers. The information on the back of the picture says that they were fishing in Lac La Belle but it doesn't give any date. Any guesses? See what Grandpa is using for a fishing rod? Quite a weed catch!

Kelly Wenberg
Dollar Bay

Great picture of Gram and Gramps!!!. Reminds me of when my dad and his brother, my uncle, took all us kids (11 when you counted the neighbors) out to drown worms at the marina in Baraga about 40 years ago. I was about 6 and the only one who caught anything. A little chub smaller than the goldfish I had in a bowl at home below the bridge, near Detroit. Oh, the summers were great in the Keweenaw. Now I'm craving the winters up there. Truthfully, Florida is not so nice anymore, but we need to keep telling folks it is so the U.P. doesn't get too crowded.

Hey Charlie, How about a pic of the two folks in the portraits hanging in the parlor room at the historical museum in Lake Linden? They are my great-great-great grandparents, Richard and Jane.
thanks

Fishermen today do not dress like they used to.
It must have been a Sunday outing with the wife.

behind every good photo there is a story. wish i was there to know that story.

Whatever the story, Ashley, it has to include the pick-axe on the dock. Why would you have a pick-axe on a dock?

Where is the pickaxe?

Looks like a womans leg & shoe to me.

Ditto-- looks like she has her ankles crossed.

By the amount of ankle exposed, it would put the time somewhere around the late teens or the roaring '20's. Pre WWI, proper women would not allow that much to be seen, much less photographed.

Great picture. I also agree with EM in MI about the shoe. It is definetly a women's leg with a shoe. Her legs are crossed over each other. She is sitting on the edge of the dock for some reason.

Fishing poles look like the kind I had to fashion when I was a kid. If you were lucky, someone gave you a length of bamboo. If not, you looked for the longest,staightest sapling from the bush. Simpler days. Now kids have to have expensive gadgets to keep busy.

They were called "Government Poles"....anyone know the origin or reason for that?

My guess is that the term "government pole" means that it was cut from a tree that was on state land.

The road commission would cut similar poles to mark the guard rails, posts, etc... on the edge of the roads in the winter, so the plows would not hit them when the snow piled up. Every spring a fresh supply of fishing poles would be available courtesy of the "government".