For the past 11 months I have been going through photos and ephemera that my mom and dad had. It seemed like at least once every few years my sisters and I would go through the boxes with my dad. We would read the Civil War letters, study the daguerreotypes, and just generally listen and learn. In the last few years of my dad’s life, he remembered less about the items and who owned them or where they came from, especially when asked directly. He was still very interested in them, but the details of who these photos was just out of reach.

I have been working to preserve and catalog the items in order to share them with the greater family.

One such person is Albert Henry (A.H.) Marsland. We have a photo of him in what appears to be a uniform. A handsome man with a luxuriant mustache, hat, double breasted jacket, with his right hand in his jacket and his left clutching what might be gloves. He has what is likely a canvas cross-body bag. On the back is “Minett Photos…J. A. Glendenning, Madison SD.” The date is August 4, 1898. His name and the name of my great-aunt [Sarah] Maud [Nelings] is on the back.

I decided to do a little digging, as I knew nothing about him. In fact, I thought he might have been a beau of Maud.

A.H. Marsland was born June 11, 1855 in Burlington WI to Thomas H (T.H.) and Sarah Marsland and died on November 28, 1933 in Green Bay WI. As a child, his family moved to Missouri. He married Mary Nelson in 1879 in Kansas in front of a probate judge and by 1880 was living in South Dakota with his uncle, William Metcalf. The 1900 US Census reports that he could not read or write but was doing well enough to have a servant.

In 1883, A.H. traveled back to Burlington WI, lauding the economic and agricultural opportunity in Lake County. According to the Lake County Leader (reported in the Burlington (WI) Free Press on April 24, “Mr. Marsland is a reliable man, and a rustler, and has done as much as any one man in this section toward settling Lake county with first-class citizens.” His father, Thomas, was not as enamored with Dakota Territory. That same year, he visited his son and returned with him to Wisconsin. Thomas said “those who have good homes in the States had better remain” (Burlington (WI) Free Press, April 24, 1883, p. 1).

A.H. was a member of the International Order of Odd Fellows, Madison lodge 20. in 1890.

In the 1890s, A.H. worked as a janitor and engineer at the Madison Normal School (the teacher’s college, now known as Dakota State University). He was responsible for plumbing the school for hot and cold water, as well as repiping the steam heat and radiators (Madison Daily Leader, Aug 29, 1893, p. 3). The South Dakota Report of the Auditor (1894) shows he was paid $866.69 for his work as a janitor/engineer. The Madison paper lauds him as “conscientiously devoted to the comfort of the students and the interest of the state.”

A.H. traveled with several people from Madison S.D. to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He may have tried the Ferris Wheel, Juicy Fruit gum, and Cracker Jacks, which all debuted at the Fair.

Marsland had moved back to Wisconsin by 1913, although he made frequent trips back to South Dakota, including the Black Hills.

I wonder if Marsland’s family has a photo of Sarah Maud Nelings among their family papers and wonder who she was.