The Sunday porch: Usborne, Ontario

John Cottel's house, via Huron County Museum

John Cottel‘s Home, Usborne Township, Ontario, ca. 1910, via Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol Commons on flickr.

John Cottel, presumably to the right of the door, was born in England in 1836.  His wife was Margaret Turnbull, and they had four daughters, three of whom may be in the photo. There is a much wider view of the house and farm here.

The Sunday porch: the Berry’s

The Berry house“Berry’s house,” between 1910 and 1925,* probably near Selma, California, by National Photo Company, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all photos here).

I think this is the farm that Ethel and Clarence Berry bought near her parents’ home in Selma after they became millionaires in the Klondike gold rush.

Ethel was one of the first women miners to go to Alaska, leaving right after her wedding in 1896. The next spring, the couple struck it amazingly rich on the Eldorado and Bonanza Creeks.

When she arrived in Seattle that summer — headed to the bank alone with $100,000 in gold that she’d kept hidden in her bedroll — she was immediately embraced by the popular press as the “Bride of the Klondike.”

The Berrys invested their money in more Alaskan mines (and in oil) and stayed rich.  They moved between the farm in Selma and a home in Alaska until Clarence’s death in 1930. Ethel then moved to Beverly Hills.  She died there in 1948.


*I suspect the photos were taken closer to the earlier year given, judging from the photo of Ethel and her sister (after ‘Continue reading’). Ethel would have been 37 years old in 1910.

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