Mary’s father, Thomas (Tom) Welsh, was a college-educated lumberman who could recite Hamlet by heart. Tom used the steamboat Northland to pull log booms across Leech Lake, and the boat ferried passengers on excursions across the lake on weekends. Mary spent her childhood summers aboard the Northland with her father.
In the evenings, when it was moored, the boat became an island of high culture in the backwoods of Minnesota. Mozart sonatas and Chopin piano concertos floated through the windows from the wind-up gramophone in the salon, while Thomas and Mary sat in wicker chairs and read from the ship’s library.
The small girl in the doorway is Mary Welsh.
Recent Comments