Mary Beth Munn Yntema

The Story of Old Leland Mary Beth Munn Yntema

Leland was a Post Office, an elementary school, a telephone central, a lake and a bridge. All are gone except the lake. Mary Beth Munn Yntema became the keeper of data of the pioneers, their homes and farms, their children and their school. She writes down her memories so Leland would not be forgotten. Lake Leland with a post office at the end of its bridge is the focus of a community of families that arrived from many places. They carved farms out of the virgin timber and shared a simple life of fishing and swimming in the summer, cattle care and timber tasks the rest of the time. The main stories occur from 1890 to 1940. A railroad logging company, two sawmill operations and family dairy farms were the economic base. A unique society centered on the one-room school that built life-long friendships and an extended social family. The children were welcome in neighbor homes as if they were relatives. Everyone cooperated in the farm and timber tasks. Everyone rejoiced in successes of the children and shared the sorrows of the many untimely deaths or loss of house or barn to fires. The virgin timber cut was over. The Great Depression came. The story closes with the Second World War, its draft, internment camp and casualties. The school and post office closed as families moved to new jobs. Mary Beth's own coming of age experiences play out against this framework of houses and people of Leland.