The Big Marsh by Cheri Register

Author:Cheri Register
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-87351-996-0
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2016-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

Mary Meighen and an unidentified child at the Meighen home in LeRoy, Minnesota, about 1890. Minnesota Historical Society Collections.

Meighen’s promise not to marry before he could afford a respectable home points to another constant theme in his personal papers. As busy as he was and as wealthy as his clients were, he had difficulty amassing enough money to support the life he aspired to. Every penny was tended, every unexpected expense rued.

One glaring omission in Meighen’s personal papers is his impression of the natural world. On his leisure travels, he attended to culture more than nature. As he chugged back and forth to the Twin Cities and Chicago on business and to family in LeRoy, he probably worked on legal briefs rather than gaze out the railcar window at the passing landscape. His frequent walks around Fountain Lake were spent in conversation, not reverie. A rare observation of the Big Marsh appears in a letter to his parents: “We have been having a great amount of rain here, but no cloud bursts. The flat lands up in the north-eastern part of the county look like one vast lake now. I have never seen quite as much water on the surface of the ground before in any place that I have been.”

Meighen’s relationship to the marsh was practical, untainted by sentiment. His responsibility in the drainage effort was to serve his clients to the best of his ability and, in the process, to achieve a reputation that allowed him to keep perfecting his skill. He stated the obligation plainly in a letter to his parents: “Our client very promptly paid us $200.00 and expenses for our trips to Minneapolis and Chicago, so that we will naturally attend to his interests with care.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.