Village Smithy

The patriarch stands proudly in the doorway. The first of my ancestors to settle in Minnesota, great-grandfather Edward Everett ran this shop in the 1880's, near Long Prairie. His son, Ernest Eugene, is the child standing in front of the plow. There are still a few of his descendants living there, and a few more elsewhere in Minnesota, but the world is a more open place now- the family spreads out a little each year. A handful of photographs and a few tools are all that remain of Edward's legacy.

That, and the name.