BLANCHE (McDONALD) HISLER

1902-2002

Parents:   Thomas ‘Tom’ McDonald and Susan ‘Susie’ Ferris

Grandparents: Louisa B. Avery and Charles Ferris

Click photos to enlarge.

Branch 3  /  Generation 3

As the Avery Family historian, the name Blanche Louise McDonald was added to my genealogy records over 25 years ago and like hundreds of other similar entries all I had was a name, a date and I so often wondered who that person was, what sort of life did she live and did she have family that continues the Avery heritage and bloodline.  But some 25 years later in 2002, and unlike so many other entries in my research, Blanche would come to life.   First in an exchange of letters, and then later in person at the Avery Family Reunion in Michigan.  By then she was 97, blind and nearly deaf.  But we did meet and I got to know a great deal about her with the help of her family, and so it is a real pleasure to present her Profile.

Perhaps the best way to begin Blanche’s story is to go back to her grandparents  -  Louisa B. Avery and Charles Ferris.  Louisa was the 3rd child born to William W. Avery and Susannah Gilbert and I believe she was the first of the Avery children to move to Michigan to homestead land in about 1866.  In 1868, Louisa and Charles had a daughter, Susan “Susie” J. Mc Donald (Blanche’s mother).   Susie was born in the family’s log cabin and Blanche remembers her mother telling about sleeping in the cabin’s loft as a young child and often during the winter months there would be a sprinkling of snow that would sift through the cracks in the roof covering her bed.  

Susie was better educated than most women of that period and she also well traveled. She attended finishing school in Washing DC for a year while living with relatives.  Susie told about one trip when she was a young girl and taken to the top of the Washington Monument long before it was ever opened to the public.  She became a great seamstress and sewed most of the family clothes.   If any of the neighbors were sick, they called for Susie.  She was a midwife and much more.  Susie later met Thomas ‘Tom’ McDonald (Blanche’s father) who worked on her uncle’s farm and they married in 1893 in Eaton Rapids, Michigan.  After nearly 10 years of marriage, Susie and Thomas had a daughter, Blanche Louise  -  she was an only child.  Tom loved children and she was the apple of his eye.  She went with him many places, even to the local bar which made Susie sputter.  Blanche had many friends while growing up and once in awhile Susie had to tie Blanche to a post on the front porch so she wouldn’t wander off to a neighbor’s house.  In school, Art and Literature were her favorite classes.  Susie took Blanche to Eaton Rapids on the train for special holidays and to see relatives. 

Blanche graduated from Charlotte High School in 1922 and attended County Normal to study to be a teacher.  She received her teaching certificated needed to teach in a rural one room school where she taught 1- 8 grades at Butterfield school in Brookfield Township and then later taught at Verplank. 

On July 3, 1925, Blanche married Harry T. Hisler and they moved to a farm in Brookfield, Michigan where they had four children, Kathryn (1926), Harry ’Bud’ (1928), Charlotte (1930) and Virginia (1933).  After Kathryn was born, Blanche stopped teaching and became a farm wife and she had much to learn having been raised in town.  She managed, although it was difficult with the outdoor toilet, wood stoves to keep going and water to bring in from the outside pump.  It was also a sad time for Blanche as her father Tom died in 1930 and her mother,  Susie died in 1933.

On the farm they raised dairy cows, hogs and chickens.  Blanche was in charge of the chickens which she sold.  She was able to use the money they made from the chickens to put hardwood floors in three rooms of their farm house.  She also enjoyed giving her kids a couple of eggs that they could barter at the candy store.  After they got electricity in 1934, she bought a washing machine and a Sunbeam iron.  Later she was able to buy a refrigerator and a stove.  During the depression years they canned their own pork, beef, vegetables and fruits.  They grew 30 bushels of potatoes to eat and use as seed potatoes.  For extra money Blanche and the kids would dig worms and sell them for .25 cents per 103 worms to fishermen traveling from Narrow Lake to Duck Lake.  Silver Beach and Duck Lake were the favorite swimming holes, and in the evenings after the milking was done Harry would drive the kids to the lake where they would swim. On hot afternoons, Blanche often took the kids to the lake to cool off, but she never liked the water and never swam or even went fishing in a boat.  In later generations, many others in the family also learned to swim at Duck Lake.

Harry died in 1950 and Blanche never re-married, although she says there “were offers”.  Later she moved to a small one bedroom house that was located on the farm and her son, ‘Bud’ continued to work the 140 acre family farm until his death in 1999.

One thing that everyone in the family agrees on was Blanche’s competitive spirit.  She loved to play cards and games, and she was very good at them.  She played cribbage (an Avery family favorite), Pedro, Euchre and scrabble.  She studied the scrabble dictionary so that she could take advantage of all the odd words that would give her the most points. 

In later years she moved to a rest home which is where I met her.  Her conversation was filled with pride as she talked about her children and grandchildren.  I can only imagine that anyone that ever knew Blanche was immediately a friend of hers.  She truly seems to have been the family matriarch over the many years of her life.  When I talked to her family, they just seemed to naturally talk about Blanche and what she meant to them.  To her grandchildren she was simply known as “Gram”.  Blanche died in 2002, just 5 weeks short of her 100th birthday.  It was with great pleasure that the 2004 Avery Family Reunion in Seneca Falls, New York was dedicated to her memory.

Bill F. Avery, Family Historian
Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
November 2005

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