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Dickinson Gallery of Empire, a working studio/gallery, is, simply put, magnificent. The gallery is owned by Grace Dickinson Johnson, who has taken over the helm from her father. Once you step inside, the very essence of Sleeping Bear Country jumps right out at you. Scores of breathtaking photographs are displayed there, proof of Fred and Grace’s years of photographic excellence capturing Leelanau’s beauty for all who venture inside. Dickinson Gallery is situated in a lovely wooded glen right across the road from her great-grandparents’ home, writes Sandy Bradshaw in our August 11 edition of the Glen Arbor Sun.

This is the story of six female photographers who fell in love with the Leelanau Peninsula and found a way to share that love through their photos. In our July 11 issue we profiled Jane Fortune of Leland for her work discovering female artists of the Italian Renaissance, many of whom are described in her book, Invisible Women. Fortune’s work, for which she just received an Emmy, inspired our effort to showcase the work of female photographers on the Leelanau Peninsula.

In this article I will continue to examine life during the Civil War through the first-hand accounts found in the fascinating Boizard letters, written between 1855-1888, and found in an old house in Glen Arbor. My focus here is on the letters written to and from Mr. John Oliver Boizard, who lived in Chicago from 1864 until his death in 1870, while his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Marietta, lived in the woods across from the northern shore of Fisher Lake.