This seems like a natural follow-on to yesterday’s PotD. This is the wedding photo of Willemina Aleida Hulshof and John Edwin Wright (Grandma and Grandpa to most of us). They were married 5 December 1901 in White Lake, South Dakota.

One has to admit that it was a very unlikely meeting in that age long before the Internet. John had grown up in Chicago, nearly 600 miles east of White Lake. As far as is known, the only time he left Chicago was his eight-month stint in the Army during the Spanish-American War. Evidently when he got back after his discharge (February 1899) he at some point got a job on a railroad maintenance crew for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad (the same railroad his father was a clerk for–perhaps that wasn’t an accident).

As a child, Willemina (“Minnie”) had immigrated with her family from the Netherlands (1880). After they first settled in Sioux Center, Iowa, they moved twice–a grand total of 170 miles–first to Douglas County, South Dakota, and then to White Lake. Minnie’s father, Evert Jan Hulshof, was a farmer.

Evidently John’s crew worked its way along the CMSPRR’s line that went west–ultimately to the Pacific Northwest. As it happens, this line passes through White Lake. (In fact, the name “White Lake” was originally created by the railroad for a stop on that line.)

So it was that the crew passed through White Lake doing its maintenance. Even if they spent days or weeks doing maintenance in the White Lake area, it seems as though the chances of their meeting the daughter of a farmer in the surrounding countryside are pretty small. (But, I don’t know, maybe the Hulshof’s farm was right by the railroad tracks.)

However it happened, John did meet Minnie. He was so smitten that he quit his job on the maintenance crew so he wouldn’t have to leave White Lake. He “busied himself in the area” (as my father put it in telling this story) and courted Minnie. Apparently the courtship was a success, because before long there was the wedding today’s photo shows.

Evidently some or all of the Wrights came from Chicago for the wedding–including John’s sister Charlotte (“Lottie”). At the wedding, it seems Lottie met Minnie’s younger brother, Gerrit. Somehow they managed to carry on a relationship even with Lottie back in Chicago, and they were married four and a half years later, February 14, 1906.