Road building near Stanwood, Michigan

Florence, my mom grew up on the Schrade family farm on Elizabeth Road just south of Hall Road

(M59) in Clinton township, Macomb county, Michigan. She attended Mt. Clemens high school and

then went to Western Michigan for teaching training.

After graduating around 1925, she lived at home on Elizabeth road and taught at the Card Road

school which was about a mile north of Hall road in Macomb township. Sometimes she rode a

horse to the school and other times she took her dad’s Ford.

She met my dad at a blind pig which was held in the Schrade grove. When they married she lost her

job teaching (standard practice at the time). Dad had spent a year on a great lakes freighter and

then spent some time working with his uncle Jasper Currie (Michigan Pattern) and Charles Otis

Currie (Whittmaack Engineering) in Detroit’s automotive industries. He also tried his hand at the

Burroughs Adding Machine Company.

Then in the 1920s he got a job working on the new state highway system. He worked on sections of

Grand River (M16) and later on US 31. to Stanwood, Michigan to live for a while. (dad worked on

early Michigan highways US 31 and US 16). Mom was out of a job so she joined him where he was

working.