3 in One Field Trip

 On Monday we went to Riverview Cemetery to visit the portage that French explorer, Robert LaSalle, used centuries ago. What I did not expect was to take a tour of the cemetery and learn about the early contributors to the community. It was really powerful to hear of the history behind the people while standing near their grave site. We also collected memorable items we found along the way to use with the Arts. I will post what we did with these items in a later post.

 Heading toward the portage...

Stopped to learn about the crematorium. It takes 90-60 minutes to turn a body into ashes. Anything that is not in ashes is ground up and put in an urn with the ashes. Some urns are buried in the cemetery

Heading towards the entrance of the portage..

 trek, trek, trek...

 The entrance to the portage..

 The guide shared that LaSalle got lost once while he was trying to direct his crew to the portage entrance. He said that he had gotten down and told his crew to follow them on a boat. His crew lost sight of him and La Salle was found the next day. He put X's on the trees next to the entrance so it would be more noticeable from a distance. The trees are gone now, due to flooding in the area and the uprooting of the trees. This Lake used to be part of the St. Joe River. Now, it is Pinhook Lake. The Portage from this entrance to the Kankakee was about a 5 mile walk, but is now as far as Crown Point, due to the draining of the Kankakee marsh.

 View of the entrance from above.

The Cemetery part of the field trip...

                                                                    
 J.B Birdsell invented a machine to make it easier to extract clover seeds.

 Studebaker brothers-Jacob, Peter, Henry, and Clem.
Famous for making carriages and wagons. Two of the brothers went to California to follow the gold rush. They made digging tools and wheelbarrows for those who wanted to dig for gold. Came back just in time to keep the family from going bankrupt.

The Muessel Family was from Germany and they started a brewery. They also donated a lot of money to South Bend Schools. 

Stephenson's made clothing and died wool. 

 These are only some of the many grave sites that we visited. It was interesting to make the connection between the street names, school names, and other facilities in South Bend and those of the prominent people we learned about such as The Morris Performing Arts Center.