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Note: N148 Hon. Charles-Edward Soule, born Sept. 20, 1842, near Cragin Falls, Ohio; married Nov. 20, 1867, LUCINDA SAXON HALL, daughter of Lyman Hall, of Shelburne, Vt., and is a resident of Grand Haven, Mich. When young he spread hay after the mowing of James A. Garfield, afterwards President of the United States. He prepared for college at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, later Hiram College, of Hiram, Ohio, of which Garfield was President. He was graduated A.B. at Hillsdale College, Michigan; A.M. and B.L. at the Michigan University. He has been in the practice of law for many years. Has been Judge of the Probate Court of Ottawa County, Mich. He served in the Civil War as lieutenant and adjutant in the Tenth Michigan Cavalry, entering at its organization. Was commissioned July 6, 1863. Mustered, Sept. 6, 1863. Was transferred to Company K, April, 1864. Resigned on account of disability, Dec. 24, 1864. He has acquired a handsome estate and is spending the evening of his days in comparative independence. Locally, he is familiarly known as "Judge Soule."
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Note: N149 The following is a re-typed letter, originally typed by Mr. Charles. E. Soule of Grandhaven, Michigan. The letter was addressed to Mrs. Jane Smith, apparent adopted child of Myron Soule (uncle to Charles.) Charles was also nephew to Honorary Nathan Soule, once influential resident of Clay, Onondaga County, New York. I have re-typed the letter as was originally typed, with grammatical errors in tact. Have italicized, underlined and highlighted Onondaga County references. Though much of this letter references Soule family in Ohio, there are several references to Soule activity in Onondaga County. Honorary Nathan Soule was my GGGG grandfather, and I am honored to have such a treasure from his past to share with others. Sandra M. Sharp Grand Haven, Mich Aug 13, 1914 Mrs. Jane Roberts, Boise, Idaho. My dear Jane Smith:- I today received your letter in regard to the inquiry of C.T. Ridlon of Portland, Maine inquiring about Myron Soule and his family. I will tell you about Mr. Ridlon. He is a genealogist who is getting up the history of the descendants of George Soule who was a Pilgrim of the Mayflower the first boat that brought English settlers to Plymouth in Massachusetts. I have been in correspondence with him for a couple of years and have tried to help him along with his work. I have come down to my office tonight to write you and want to tell you how glad I am to hear from you and want to say a lot to you. I can't write with a pen any more and have to write with the machine which is much more rapid than with a pen, but somehow don't seem quite so natural as pen writing. I am not young any more and my hand shakes so you could not read my letter if I wrote with a pen, and I could not say half so much in the same time. I came down because I wanted to write to you and think you will be glad to hear from me. Getting back to this Mr. Ridlon. There are a lot of people in the country of the name Soule and they all seem to be descended from this man George Soule of the Mayflower. There are some rich and prominent people of our family who are willing to pay considerable money for a family history and he got track of me somehow and I was the only one who could give information in regard to the descendants of Lattan (Latin) Soule descended from the original George and who lived in Dutchess county, N.Y. over 100 years ago. This Latin Soule was my grandfather, father of Clement, Nathan, Ambrose Latin, Myron, Ephriam Leech and Benjamin, my father and uncles most of whom you remember. There were three sisters Aunt Mary Johnson, Aunt Sally Ann Quackenbush and another aunt whose name I don't remember I wrote him all about these uncles and aunts of mine and of their children as far as I could remember them. It seems as though I was the only one left who could tell about them. Our cousins in Syracuse N.Y. the grandchildren of my uncle Leech are quite rich people and are giving some money to make up the history. He wants to know from you all about Uncle Myron and his family, but I have written him that Uncle Myron had no children but married your Mother and raised you children as his own. I note what you say about sending him uncle Myron's picture. It may be if you send the original picture he will not return it to you, but you can have a copy made by any photographer and send it to him and it will do him just as well. I shall be glad to have Uncle Myron's picture in the book which I expect to get if I live long enough. My wife and I made a trip East 13 years ago this fall and we had quite a time. We went to our old place in Ohio where I had not been since 1859 over forty years before. We found the Wilburs, son of the Wilbur who bought our farm when we moved to Michigan. They were very nice to us and had quite a crowd of the old neighbors there to meet us. We visited your brother Levant and Abe and Horace Lansing, but they and Wilbur have all died since our visit there. We also went to Plymouth, Mass. and saw my ancestors name on the Pilgrim monument there, and we visited New York City and Vermont where my wife was raised. We also made quite a visit to our rich relatives in Syracuse and were very nicely entertained by them. Our relatives there were then my cousin Oscar, whom you doubtless remember, he visited us a number of times in Ohio, he was Uncle Leech's son. He was quite rich, had a big business. You may have seen the None-such Mince Meat advertised and may have used some of it to make mince pies. His firm, the Merrill-Soule Co. make this and it is used all over the country and the world for that matter. My cousin Oscar died at his winter home in California the next winter and it seems to cut me off from a good to have him die. His son Frank C. Soule is now running the business, and with him happened a singular thing, a few years ago. One of my sons is secretary of a great bridge building company in Chicago which builds bridges all over the world nearly. He was going to Europe to build bridges in St. Petersburg, Russia, In Stockholm, Sweden and in England and Ireland, when he inquired for his mail on the steamer and had a lot of mail to Frank Soule given him. His name is Fay and he knew something was wrong so he looked up the other Soule and found it was his cousin Frank of Syracuse, and they chummed together in great shape. This young man had met and known me when I visited his father some years before. It seems to me that this sort of thing would not occur once in a million times. These boys had never met and knew nothing of one another and they were cousins meeting on the ocean. I must tell you something of what occurred when I was at Russell. As I told you the Wilburs got in a lot of folks from the neighborhood to meet my wife and me at our old house. I talked considerable and told stories that I remembered of when I was a little boy and of those with whom I went to school. Among my stories were several of Joel Warren, You remember him very well. They were about the way he would read in the old Porter's Rhetorical Reader. I remember reading very well as quotation of Shakespeare as I learned after I grew up but did not know it then. It is in the talk between Hamlet and Horatio where Horatio tells of meeting the ghost of Hamlet's father on the castle ramperts. Hamlet says: Armed, say you? Horatio replies: Armed my Lord; Hamlet says From head to foot; Horatio replies: my Lord from top to toe. Joel read this: Adam, say you, Adam my Lord. Another story from the same reader was about a lady who visited a poor family and found a kind neighbor woman making a little gruel over a poor fire. Joel read this: as she entered the house she found a kind neighbor woman making a little girl over the poor fire. There was good laughing about my stories by the people who knew Joel who had been dead some years, but the tuck was taken out of me when I learned next morning that three of Joel's grandchildren were in that company. I found our old house much changed on the outside. The south wing that father built for uncle Ben when he was thought to be a hopeless invalid, had bben (sic) torn away, and the balustrade around the upright that prevented seeing the roof was gone and the house looked quite different, but inside it was quite as of old. My memory now goes to your family. My recollections does not go back to the time when your mother and you children came from the south to live at Uncle Myrons (sic). My earliest recollections is of you children living there like cousins to our children. I have the remotest recollections of Aunt Sophia, your mother's sister. I remember going to her funeral and she was buried somewhere south in Bainbridge, as I remember. It was in the winter and the snow was deep. I want you to excuse me now for something I say in regard to Uncle Myron marrying your mother quite soon after Aunt Sophia's death. He was over to our house and I was a very small boy. I remember my mother holding Uncle Myron up for marrying so soon in great shape. She said: Myron it isn't decent, you ought to have waited longer. This seems to have been quite the New England Puritan custom, and it came in our house soon enough. Sophia Everest was keeping our summer school and I remember her inquiring very carefully how my ma was, and my mother had not been dead three months when father married this same school ma'am. I remember your family. Annette married Josh Burnett, Susan married Henry Boynton, Garfield's cousin, who kept our winterschool, you married Robert Roberts, and Levant married (Lydia) Elizabeth Roberts, his sister. I remember what admiration I had for Levant who liked horses and who drove good horses that pulled on the bits and held their heads high. But your sister Cissy was quite the flower of your family. It was a great pleasure to me to have her visit my sister Julia and me some eight or ten years ago. I think she was a lovely character, one of the fine and lovely characters I enjoy thinking of whom I have known. I was greatly grieved to have a letter from her daughter at Hiram, Ohio a couple years ago that she was dead. When I was at Russell I was glad to note that your mother was brought from her home down state somewhere and buried beside Uncle Myron in the old cemetery towards the Falls opposite Josh Burnett's place. I visited my mother's grave there, and those of so many others of our family buried there. I climbed a rail fence along the woods on our old farm near the little Falls that Wilbur told me was made of rails that were on the farm were then much over 50 years old. I would not think they would last so long. I am trying to place you. I can't do it very well. As I remember, Annette and you had sort of light hair, not so redd (sic), Susan had very black hair, and dear Cissy's hair was red, real, real red hair sure enough. God bless her, I think a thousand fins (sic) things of her. Levant had fairly red hair also. There is something more of your family that you (sic) mother told me when I spent the long vacation of 1859 at her home when I was at school at Hiram. I was 17 years old then and able to understand things. She told me that your father was a graduate of Yale College, was a doctor and went south, Alabama, as I remember, and died there leaving her with a large family of children and no money, and Uncle Myron sent for her and all you children to come and live with him. Your mother gave me a Latin book, Virgil, which belonged to your father and which I kept until it was destroyed in the burning of my house, now over 40 years ago. It is a nice thing to think of Uncle Myron and Uncle Ben, childless themselves but who gave kind parental care to orphans in numbers. I think Aunt Rhoda and Uncle Ben raised and gave the kindest and most affectionate parental care to 14 children and orphans. Aunt Rhoda died 32 years ago at the age of 72 and Uncle Ben 14 years ago last winter and would have been 90 if he had lived till May 10. My father built the south wing on our big house the year I was born as a home for Uncle Ben thinking he would be a hopeless invalid, and he outlived all his family many years. Uncle Ben lost all his property and was poor for some years, but Aunt Rhoda never failed to have a comfortable home and a well provoded (sic) table. Later they prospered and spent their old age in comfort. I remember that Uncle Myron died in the war time. Levant visited us when Ambrose, Jim and I were going to the war and rode to Toledo with us on the army train, and told us of Uncle Myron's death. I think he must have been 56 or 57 years old. Uncle Leech died at a little past 50, and father at 56. Uncle Nate lived to be older, about 70 as I remember. Uncle Ben was much older, almost 90. I am nearly 72 and fairly lively yet, ride my bicycle every day and am in good health, hope I may live some years yet. You ask of my sister Julia, she died two years ago aged 76. Her husband Capt. Craw died a year later aged81 (sic). He was born the same year and quite a chum of Garfield at Hiram. They have five children living two married two old maid teachers and one son now past 50 an old bachelor. They live in Grand Rapids except the youngest girl married and in New York. My brother Ambrose died six years ago in a soldiers (sic) home in Tenn. I brought his remains here and buried him beside his wife and children. He had no success in life. My brother Jim lives in Detroit with his wife, he has two married daughters and some grandchildren. My half brother Will, son of my stepmother Sophia, lives in Ionia, Mich. and is a man of substance and good standing. I have lived here many years, am a lawyer by profession, have been a Judge, have money enough to live on comfottably (sic) and am a bank director and attorney for my bank. My wife is sister of Byron Robinson's second wife whom he married soon after we came to Mich. Byron has been dead many years but his widow is still living but is old and in poor health. Judge Robinson died in the War time, not long after Unclr (sic) Myron. We were in the war then. Hannah Lansing, his widow married again to a not very good man. She died years ago of cancer and was brought to Muir, our old home and buried there. She left two children a son of whom I know nothing and a daughter a very fine girl who is married and lives in New York. I have five children all grown up, two sons married and one daughter married, and two rather elderly daughters who are teachers. One of the girls is principal of the County Normal school here and is a very fine character. She lives at home with us and I love and admire her very much. My wife is living and in good health. We have been married nearly 47 years and I hope will make out the 50 together. We have nine grandchildren and it is comfortable for me to think that when I pass along in a few years my blood will still remain on the earth in some force. You remember how our family died off years ago. From the time I can remember there was some one dying in our house all the time until I was grown and our family separated. The memory of the funerals, from our house hangs over my childhood and youth like a black cloud. My children know nothing of such things. They have not in all their lives been called on to attend funerals of a near relative until their Aunt Julia died two years ago. They have been spared much that was terror to my childhood and youth. They will know nothing about it until they bury their mother and me by and by. I have no cemetery lot and don't want one, I want my children to pick me out one when I am dead. My dear Jane Smith: You don't know how glad I am to get your letter. I wonder how this man Rigdon (sic) got track of you way out so far west and how you came out there. You can't be very young. My remembrance is that you were married before we came to Mich. now 59 years ago last spring. As I remember you were living in what we used to call the woods over by Abe Lansing's. It seems to me that you lived there when I spent the summer of 1859 at your mothers. Girls married young in those days, but it seems to me that you must be past 80, but may be not. Levant and Cissy, God Bless her; were younger than you, and Cissy was some three or four years older than I. My memory goes back to your children and our sitting in the "settee" before and around the fireplace in our big sitting room cracking nuts; eating apples and telling more ghost stories than were good for anyone. I was a very little boy, but my memory is good. I have enjoyed writing this letter to you as much as I used to like to write to the girls in my youth, and I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I writing it, and as much as the girls used to tell me they liked to get my letters. I'll bet I have raised a hundred things in your mind of our childhood and youth that will come back to you as you read long letter. Good by, my Dear Jane Smith; God bless you. We are not long for this world and soon I hope we shall meet again in God's goodness where we may renew the friendships of our childhood and youth with no thought of our parting so soon as here. Good by. From your affectionate cousinand (sic) friend. Chas.E Soule.
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