An early Elberta woman
Anna Rebecca Carver Edwards
By Mary Link
Anna Edwards dictated an autobiographical story of her family’s settlement in Benzie County to her daughter, Ruth Anna Carver Odeon, when she was 72 years old, in January 1936. It contains many interesting details of her growing up as well as details of her ancestry and life in South Frankfort (now Elberta) in the early 20th century. Her parents, Isaac and Ruth Carver, and older siblings arrived in Benzonia in 1859, and she was born a few years later — and was known as the first white child born in “Benzonia” (May 26, 1863). She was born in a one-room log cabin on the Betsie River (Carver’s Landing, Gilmore Township) that her father Isaac built after arriving in Benzie County from Ohio.
Anna Carver enjoyed a playful childhood with her seven siblings, and the family moved to and from different farmsteads in Benzie County, ending up in South Frankfort in 1872, where she started school at age 9. Anna was thrilled to look out their windows and see the neighbor’s lights after years of living in country darkness. At the time her family settled in South Frankfort, the piers, lighthouse, stores, blast furnace, Butler’s Mill, and the bridge across the Betsie River were all in existence. When she was 20 she worked as a janitor at the school for $2 a week; her duties included starting the fire in the heating stove in the morning. She also worked for the Tom Pettitt family in Benzonia as a nanny.
She married George W. Edwards on June 24, 1885, at her parents’ home in South Frankfort. They first lived on the Frankfort foundry property and then moved into town after their first child, Ray, was born. Her husband opened Edwards Hardware in 1898 (in the Crane building). She kept the books and sometimes clerked in the store. It was renamed Edwards Brothers when George’s brother Dave came over from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and they were in partnership until the fall of 1924.
Anna and George had four children. She was a lifelong member of the Elberta Methodist Church, and when she was 80 years old she wrote a history of the church. She died in March 1963 in Frankfort at the age of 99.
Mary Link volunteers as an archivist and genealogist at the Benzie Area Historical Society & Museum. She is working on a history of Benzie County women from 1850–1950 for the museum. Photo of Anna Rebecca Carver Edwards courtesy of the Benzie Area Historical Society Archives. The frame around the photo is currently for sale at Elberta Mercantile Co. for $40.