When I first started researching the early land transactions of the unincorporated village of Glen Arbor, I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but I certainly didn’t expect to discover that a woman would play a dominate role in the land market and that other women did most of the buying. Harriet Fisher, the wife of John Fisher, one of the early settlers of Glen Arbor, owned most of the land that was to become the village of Glen Arbor that we know today.
Reading Mrs. Boizard’s mail served as a window through which I could look for glimpses of the thoughts, activities, relationships, commerce and struggles of people living in Glen Arbor just as the town became established in 1856. What we are shown when reading the Boizard letters is how some families lived and loved and partied and struggled 150 years ago in the very town we all love and visit or live in now. We also get a sense of how some things haven’t changed all that much in 150 years.