Family Migrations: La Crosse, WI to Stillwater, MN to St. Paul, MN

Odessa DeWitt Boardman, 1866-1944 (Third of three parts: Part one Part two)

Odessa Boardman was born February 18^th, 1866, in North La Crosse, Wisconsin, and as his father and grandfather before him, he was a lumberman. The 20-year-old Odessa married January 12^th, 1887, 22-year-old Dora Ann Congdon, the daughter of Benjamin Congdon and Cyntha (Pullen) Davis.

The first mention of Odessa as a lumberman is the 1885-1886 La Crosse City Directory. Odessa is listed as living at 1546 Avon in North La Crosse and is employed as a scaler for McDonald Brothers. He would be working at the sorting works on the Black River above the village of Onalaska, determining the usable board feet of the raw logs. He was still a scaler when in 1887 he married Dora.

When Odessa and Dora’s 1^st child, Mildred Congdon Boardman was born in 1888, he was still employed by the McDonald Brothers, now as a laborer. With the logging industry rapidly declining in La Crosse, they moved (about 1889) 170 miles north to Stillwater, Minnesota on the St. Croix River. Odessa obtained employment as a laborer with the St. Croix Lumber Co. He remained employed there until 1894, when the family moved to Charleston, South Carolina. They returned to La Crosse, Wisconsin before December 1895, where their 2^nd child Harry Miles Boardman was born.

By 1897 they moved back to Stillwater, where they remained until about 1911. Their last four children were born there, Lawrence Benjamin (1898), William Arthur (my father, b. 1899), Florence Merle (1905) and Neil Servis (1907). Hershey Lumber Co. and G. H. Atwood Co. employed Odessa as a sawyer and if the 1900 census (5 months unemployed) and 1910 census (8 weeks umnemployed) are any indication, he was out of work for extended periods each year.

The lumber industry in Stillwater was in decline after 1900, and by 1914 when the great log boom on the river just north of Stillwater closed, the industry was for all practical purposes dead. Sawyers would work from the arrival at the boom of the first log rafts after the spring thaw, until the logs were all milled to lumber, shingles and pulp for paper. On a good year the work could last well into the fall and early winter. As the harvest declined, so too would the employment, fewer jobs for shorter periods of time.

About 1911 they made the daylong twenty-mile trek west to St. Paul and settled on the city’s “East Side” at 283 Bates Avenue and later at 1775 Reaney Avenue. Odessa was employed as a sawyer and in 1916 he was a sawmill foreman, and continued to experience seasonal unemployment.

The insecurity of the lumber industry, at least in part, took its toll on Odessa and Dora, they did not divorce, but separated permanently about 1916. Odessa, no longer able to find work in Minnesota, went to East Texas where lumbering was still thriving. Although he continued to remain in contact with his children until his death in 1944, he did not again live with the family. Dora and the family remained in St. Paul. They would remain married in name only until Dora’s death in 1936. Interestingly, Dora referred to herself as “Widow of Odessa D.” in the St. Paul City Directories of 1925, 1926 & 1931.

Odessa lived the remainder of his life in Chester, Tyler County, and Camden, Polk County, neighboring communities in East Texas. There was a number of flourishing logging and lumber operations (1920-1940) in that part of Texas. In 1920, living in Chester, he was employed as a sawmill foreman, and living in a boarding house operated by Felix A. Brazziel and his wife, Annie. In 1930, he lived in Camden Township with Elmer E. and Gertrude Leggett, and their three children. He worked in a general store owned by Elmer.

When Odessa went to Texas, Dora was left to manage the household with little income. She maintained the family homes from 1887 until about 1920, when she lived with one or another of her children until after suffering from Dementia (probably Alzheimer’s) for some years she died of a cerebral hemorrhage, September 1, 1936, at St. Peter State Hospital, St. Peter, Nicollet County, Minnesota. Dora was buried next to her mother, Cynthia Congdon, in Valley Cemetery, Shakopee, Scott County, Minnesota.

At the time of his death, at 78 years, of a coronary thrombosis in Camden, Texas, March 12, 1944, Odessa was working as a “sawmill mechanic.” He was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery, Chester, Tyler County, Texas.

Summary:

Great-Great-Grandfather Timothy migrated twice:

There can be little doubt the first move was for religious expression. He married into a family of “Primitive Baptists” and removed from Westerlo NY west to Burdett NY, where they found a like-minded congregation.

Timothy’s longest migration was made for financial opportunity. After the death of his wife Sally in 1847, he remarried in 1850 into the Dutch Whitbeck family. At about the same time, there was a huge call for people to come to La Crosse Wisconsin, a brand new village on the Mississippi.

The Whitbecks, including Timothy and his new young wife, Clarissa Whitbeck Boardman, answered the call and made long journey to the towns (townships) of Onalaska and Campbell, just north of La Crosse. Timothy soon thereafter began three-generations of Boardman loggers & lumbermen that would have a dramatic impact on the families of the two subsequent generations.

Great-Grandfather Silas did not migrate, spending the remainder of his life in and around North La Crosse Wisconsin. As the lumbering industry in La Crosse, began its decline in the late 1800s, it became difficult for those laboring to maintain employment and this took a toll on the families. His marriage to his first wife Jane ended before 1888, when Jane remarried and moved to Ohio.

Of the ten children born to Silas & Jane, four would divorce and one would become permanently separated from his wife: Louella Boardman divorced from William Allen before 1892, Edith M. Boardman divorced from Chas. Masterson before 1902, Arthur Thomas Boardman divorced from Mabel Goyette before January 1920 and Bessie Florilla Boardman divorced from Benjamin Welday before April 1930. A fifth child, my grandfather Odessa, did not divorce but was permanently separated from my grandmother from about 1916, until her death in 1936.

Although there are many factors involved, it is clear from the evidence that economic factors played a big role in the marriage difficulties of this family.

It is interesting to note that none of the children of Odessa & Dora Boardman divorced.