Anton Garbarek 1849-1906

Hello Kathy Franklin and Larry Garbarek,

Just back from a week of research in Calumet and Houghton. I made a visit to Lake View Cemetery and took a photo of your ancestor Anton Garbarek's headstone. I also ordered the cleaning of the stone. Ten dollars to clean a 102 yr. old stone seemed too good of a deal to pass up! I also found a small write up about his death in the newspaper.

Daily Mining Gazette 22 November 1906, p.6

Found Dead On Floor

Anton Garbarek Found Dead Yesterday Morning by Family

Anton Garbarek was found dead at his home on Isle Royale street, Laurium, by members of his family. The man had died some time during the night suddenly, apparently heart failure being

the cause of death. Coroner Fisher was summoned to the scene but decided that an inquest was unnecessary. He informed the county physician Dr. Matehette, if the case, and a post mortem will be held. Upon this will depend the decision as to the future course to be followed. It is believed that the inquest will develop nothing out of the ordinary.

Garbarek lay on a couch in his home Tuesday night in apparently good health and said he wanted to take a nap before retiring. Members of his family went to bed rather early, and expected that the father would follow. They did not notice that he had not done so, and when they awoke in the morning they saw the man laying dead on the floor, apparently having fallen from the coach.

Mr. Garbarek was an elderly man about sixty years of age, and had been for some time a milkman. He is survived by a wife and family of grown children.

Here are the notes I took from the cemetery cards:

Frank Garbarack
age 7 mths
death:Calumet
Sec J, Row 3, Grave 4
Death Jan 10, 1901, Burial Jan. 13, 1901
Director: Ryan

Baby Garbarack
Birth/Death Jan 27, 1902
No Section nor lot listed
Director: Ryan
Baby Garbarack
age 7 mths
death:Swedetown Sec K, Row 3, Grave 5
Burial Sept. 8, 1902
Director: Ryan

Anton Garbarek
age 56
Sec. A, Lot 36
Burial Nov. 23, 1906

Happy Father's Day to all our ancestors!

Ceil

Swedetown Log Cabins / Layout

My husband and I visited Calumet this summer.

I bought the Swedetown book from Tony's Copper World shop. I was VERY surprised to see the photo of the log cabin at 3025 Bridge St. It said the photo was from Mary Bratetich. Later in the book it mentions that the cabin was owned by the Garbareks in 1897-1899. Antoni Garbarek was my great uncle. I didn't even know he had came to the US!

I would like to find out more about the history of the cabin. My great grandfather worked at the mines- but came to Detroit after he recover from a mining accident.

I asked Kathy Atwood about the log cabins in Swedetown. I wonder if you could sketch the layout of the cabin interior floor plan? I can see the out houses standing in the yard:-) I read that sometimes two or three families would live in one!

Kathy wrote back:

My mother talked to her brother and others who live in Swedetown and she told me that from what they could figure, the Garbarek log house was located right next to the 'bridge'. If you walked out the front door and turned left you were going onto the overpass, so the back of the house would be facing Calumet. I tried the address on Mapquest but for some reason it comes up way on the opposite end of the street. The house is gone now, that's probably why. It put my mom uncle's house way up on Bridge St. out where there were never any houses, only a dirt road leading through a pasture!

Mom also described the typical log house layout, based on what she remembered from her uncle's house which she said would've been somewhere across the street from it. There were a couple different styles of log houses, but she said the one you want was a mirror image to her uncle's.

I sketched what he said (as best I could) and am attaching it to this message. (see sketch above)
Sometimes two or more families could live in these houses, but usually when that happened they were part of an extended family, such as siblings' families, in-law's families, etc. One family might life upstairs with 'kitchen' privileges (which was basically a stove) but the families might eat together. The downstairs 'front' room might served as a sleeping room. Parlor furniture was often a luxury so the homes basically had chairs tables and beds, and those beds may have had four to five children in them. It's amazing with such lack of privacy there were so many children? Well, I suppose "where there's a will, there's a way".

Some of the homes had narrow stairways that went up the center of the house, but Mom remember her uncle's as been on an outside wall.

Sometimes to have a little more room, a lean-to kitchen or a kitchen wing was added in later years. In my mother's house, a large kitchen was added to the side of the house. When my uncle wanted to replace a window, he remembers the wall was more than a foot and a half thick, due to the logs.

Kathy