Person Page - 4001

[Elizabeth Sackett] was raised on the family farm near Gobles, Michigan. She attended the community school where she was a very good student and demonstrated outstanding musical ability, playing the violin and the accordion. She also was an expert horsewoman. In later years she continued to ride and participated in the women's relay races in the Calgary Stampede, for example.
She married Alva Adina Coldsnow on December 24, 1906. He was the son of Frank Elmer Coldsnow and his wife, Eliza Jane Gilbert Coldsnow. He was born in Williams County, N.W. Township, Ohio. He was a steam engineer and also farmed. 'Lizzy" Pearl and Alva settled on a homestead in Western Canada about 1910 near the town of Coutts. Between 1910 and 1918 this was their home. Due to drought conditions they prospered only intermittently. They built a house and outbuildings and they proved up on the homestead. Alva's trade as a steam engineer made it possible for him to obtain work on neighboring farms that used large steam units for power. He also worked in the smelter at Trail and in lumber mills in the Nelson area. Thus his family had a good standard of living even through the worst drought in memory. However, he did have to spend long periods away from home and worried about leaving his family on the prairie even though they had good neighbors, and Pearl was fretful and lonely at times. So from time to time Alva sent the family back to Michigan where they could visit the Sacketts and the Coldsnows. Their daughter Mildred really did not like leaving the farm on those occasions and remembers crying every time they boarded the train. In 1914, the whole family came south to visit the Earl Sacketts near the town of Orient, Washington. Earl, at that time, had a sawmill, a grain threshing outfit and a dairy farm so Alva found plenty to do there. Mildred attended local school with the Sackett children. Twins, Stanley and Stella, were born to Pearl during that 1914, winter. The next spring they returned to their home at Coutts, Canada, where their affairs moved on as usual.
In the spring of 1918, the family was on the farm and Alva was working away from home. There were four children in the family now. Pearl was pregnant again and was not feeling well. She wrote to Alva to come home. They were preparing to meet him at the train depot when Pearl became desperately ill. She died in July, 1918. After the funeral Frank Sackett had her body sent to Michigan where it was buried in the Earl Cemetery in Pine Grove Township. Logan Sackett, who had homesteaded near Wolfpoint, Montana, drove to Coutts and took the children home with him where they remained for nearly a year. Later, because of the severe Montana winters, they were sent to Alva's parents in Michigan.
Alva, of course, was discouraged and decided to leave Canada. He found another steam engineering job at the lumber mill in Elk, Washington. In 1920, Alva married a Gusta Muehier. With a home established in Elk, Alva brought his children west to live with them. Alva and Gusta had five children: Orville, Ethel, Yvonne, Millicent and Jack Coldsnow.
Alva died on January 31, 1935, of a long-standing lung ailment and was buried in the Riverside Cemetery, Spokane, Washington.

—Ancestors and Descendants of Frederick Plummer Sackett

[Frank Sackett] grew up on the family farm four miles north and east of Gobles. He lived there until he was twenty-four years of age. He started working for his mother when he was twenty-one for a yearly salary of $100.00 and expenses. He worked for her for three years. During this time his expenses were less than $25.00. In March, 1906, he started work in the bank at Gobles, then known as the Goblesville Exchange Bank, at a weekly salary of $4.00, and he paid $3.00 per week for his board and room. After working seven years, by which time his wages had advanced to $11.00 per week, he lost his job. Two months later he was hired back in a new bank that was organized known as Bush and Company Bankers, a private bank, at $9.00 per week. After three years and a half this bank was incorporated into a state bank. The second year after thishis salary was up to $12.00 a week. The third year it was $18.00 and then he was raised to $1,100.00 a year. He resigned in June, 1918, and was hired by the Lee Brothers State Bank, Dowagiac, Michigan at an annual salary of $1,500.00. After two years he resigned and moved to Mattawan, Michigan. He organized in Mattawan a new bank known as the Mattawan State Bank and opened up for business on November 1, 1920. At that time grapes were the main crop and sold at $125.00 a ton. It was believed that a bank in that locality would prosper. It did for a while but then came the depression and the price of grapes fell to $15.00 a ton. It soon became clear that there was not enough money in the community to support a bank and on the last day of December, 1932, the Directors voted to close the bank and liquidate it. This job was done by Frank Sackett who had been the Cashier.
Having completed the job, he took a position with the Litchfield State Savings Bank on December 14, 1935, as President. After having been successful, the assets of the bank having risen from $150,000.00 to $1,500,000.00, in the fifteen years of his management, but with failing health he sold out his interest in this bank on August 11, 1951. His business competence was sorely missed at the bank and the Directors soon hired him back as President.

—Ancestors and Descendants of Frederick Plummer Sackett

At the age of five as [Fred Sackett] was playing with the other children he ran into the barn. At that moment the hay rope broke and the hay rack fell on him crushing his head. His mother reshaped his head, bound it with gauze and massaged his body continuously for two days. As a result of the injury Fred was like an infant again and had to learn to eat, walk and talk all over again. The injury caused ridges the size of a little finger around the sides of his head.

At the age of eighteen he worked one season for a farmer, George Haight, for $18.00 a month. From that time on he was never at home for any length of time. He worked for J.G. Clark in a grocery store, also for Orley Graham in the hardware store. While Fred was working for the grocery firm a customer came in for a can of oil. Fred inadvertently ran the can over and made a mess of it. When he haded[sic] it to the customer he said, "Mr. Miller, our measure runs everybody's can over". The storekeeper liked to tell about this incident as illustrating the fact that Fred had a way about him that kept anyone from getting irritated with him.

He married Bessie Maud Olmstead on May 9, 1906. She was born August 8, 1886. For a time Fred ran a general store in Bradley, Michigan and then they went on to a farm. The year 1912 found Bessie and Fred with three children on a homestead near Wolf Point, Montana in a house twenty foot square where they lived comfortably while the family grew to include eight children during eleven years while the farm prospered. However, there were two successive years of extreme drought. In 1924, Fred borrowed money to buy hay for his livestock and hauled it twenty miles on a sleigh but found it impossible to keep up. He and Bessie became discouraged and were forced to leave the homestead in the fall of 1925. With the heIp of the Gorton family who were their neighbors, Wayne, Beatrice, Kenneth, Frank, Ida and Vivian stayed in Montana to dispose of the remaining livestock and other possessions. They used the money to get back to Michigan.

With the family together again they lived on Alama Avenue in Kalamazoo. Bessie, with the help of the children, took in laundry and cleaned apartments to pay for dental care for her family which had grown to include eleven children. In 1940, they moved to a farm seventeen miles west of Kalamazoo. At the time of this move there were nine children living at home. He paid $5,000.00 for the farm and borrowed $500.00 on his note to make the first payment. With a farm of two hundred and forty acres and with about one hundred acres of work land badly run, with no farm livestock except two cows and no money, he started to work to make himself and his family a home. The house was a large two-story farm house, with a finished apartment on the east side where Frank and Wanda lived. This arrangement gave the family transportation to and from Kalamazoo for work and to shop. Herbert and Polly moved into the apartment in 1943. Jean moved into the apartment in 1962. When Herbert or Frank would take Fred to work in Kalamazoo he would work from 7:00 to 4:30 and then he would walk to the corner of Portage Street and Main Street where he would wait for Frank or Herbert whomever came first for a ride home and he would then start on his chores. At the age of sixty-five he decided to have a sale and with this he was able to pay the mortgage down to $2,200.00.

Fred bought his first and only vehicle in 1948, a Studebaker pick-up truck. He worked for the City of Kalamazoo until 1951, when he retired at the age of sixty-nine. He then had twelve cows and twenty-four head of young stock, plenty of feed, a good home and enough money to get along. It goes without saying that he was a hard worker, honest, and that his home was always a good place to have a good time. Fred died on January 3, 1956. His wife, Bessie, died March 2, 1972. Both are buried in Covey Hill Cemetery south of Gobles, Michigan.

— Andrew P Sackett, Ancestors and Descendants of Frederick Plummer Sackett.

[Frederick Plummer Sackett] grew up in pioneer times and, having availed himself of every opportunity to acquire knowledge, he became a teacher in the public schools of the county. He was a musician, a fife player, in Company H, 20th. Indiana Volunteer Infantry in which he had enlisted at the outbreak of the Civil War according to a document obtained from the General Services Administration, Washington, D.C. (File No. WC 606 205). According to family legend he was captured early in the war and was confined in Libby prison and at Andersonville for seven months. The family account of his capture has it that his Company was camped in southern Ohio and was eating lunch when a scout galloped into camp with a warning of the approach of Southern Raiders. Everyone mounted and rode off as fast as possible excepting Frederick who said he wasn't going to miss his beans for anyone. He continued with his lunch and was captured. While in prison he, like everyone else there, was fed very poorly—on the entrails of animals butchered for the Southern garrison and mostly on raw squash. He developed scurvy and lost all of his teeth. When released he was honorably discharged. When his health improved he again enlisted, according to "A History of Van Buren County, Michigan" by Captain O.W. Rowland, Vol. 11, in an Iowa regiment for 100 days but stayed in until the close when he was again honorably discharged.

He attended Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan for a time, probably after the war, and later taught school at the "Brown School", a country school near Kalamazoo, from the fall of 1866 until the spring of 1867. (The building was still standing when I last checked, about twenty years ago). Susan Earl was one of his pupils, an eighth grade student. He married Susan Earl on June 11, 1867, in Pine Grove, Michigan. He then turned to farming for a livelihood, and his farm was located at Gobles, Michigan.

He was six foot tall, rather lean and "rawboned"; "a man of good disposition, honest and never was involved in serious difficulties with anyone" according to his son, Frank Sackett. He was blue eyed and had dark brown hair. During his later years he lived on a Civil War Veteran's pension. He died October 16, 1905, at Gobles, Michigan and was buried at the Earl Family Cemetery, Pine Grove, Michigan.

— Andrew P Sackett, Ancestors and Descendants of Frederick Plummer Sackett.