(2008)
Henry Rider (1830-1866).
What was this “liberal and honest man” doing at the age of 35, more than 800 miles from home, in Grand Haven, Mich.? We may suppose that he was involved in some way in the lumber trade. The young settlement of Grand Haven, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, almost directly opposite Milwaukee, specialized in milling and shipping yellow pine from the towering forests that surrounded it. Given the danger of the work, we may further suppose that a man of Rider’s age died in an accident of some kind. Cruelly enough, his father, Capt. Henry Ryder, perished in a shipwreck off Long Island in 1849, and his brother, William W. Rider, died in 1855 “on his passage from California to Oregon.” His mother did not survive to witness any of these tragedies, as she herself died in 1847, at age 40. The sorrow of the weeping willow seems fully warranted here.
¶ Last updated on 13 October 2017.