Cedar Poles build church, school

This is an excerpt from “Faith and Family,” 150 Years of History and Tales of the Ed & Irene (Lamie) Fleis Family in Leelanau County, by Ruth Ann Smith. Continued from March 27.

My great-grandparents were resourceful, living on land that had rolling hills and valley, mostly thick with hardwood trees.

“The first home Tomasz built was a log cabin near a spring with clean water. They had to have water to survive,” my father wrote in a letter.