From one patriarch, an only child, has sprung a healthy family tree boasting four children, 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren (and counting.)
Four generations of the family of the late William E. Moon Jr. gathered last Saturday for a reunion, celebrating family roots that stretched back to 1880. Clara Moon, William's widow, presided over the high-spirited gathering of three generations of her offspring, who assembled at adjoining family cottages along East Bay.
The property is part of the original 80 acres settled by pioneers Adolph and Mary Brosche, who came to the area from Longenbruke, Bohemia, 127 years ago. Early fruit farmers, the family grew a mix of fruit trees, apples, cherries — both sweet and sour — pears, peaches and plums.
A family story relates that the first cash crop was two crates of strawberries taken to town for sale; one version has him carrying them on his back while a typewritten summary from a 1964 reunion has him paddling them there.
The Brosches' daughter, Marie, married Dr. William E. Moon Sr. of Traverse City to launch this branch of the family. The William E. Moon Jr. family has held seven reunions sporadically over the years, with this year's event drawing descendants from Traverse City, other cities around the state, Indiana, Florida and Chicago for games, a boat-building contest, card playing, eating and visiting.
"My husband was their only chick. He'd be really proud of this gathering here,” reflected Clara, who hails from the Fromholz family and was raised south of town.
In the old country, the Brosches had been weavers with a cottage business that transformed wool raised by Hungarians on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains into cloth sold in Vienna and Prague.
"It was all hand-woven and then, when more sophisticated equipment was invented in England, it put them out of business,” said Clara of the debt and poverty that drove Adolph and his family to emigrate.
In 1880, Adolph Brosche left Bohemia and headed to Traverse City, where his brother had found success as a butcher. Six months later, his wife and children, at that time including two daughters and a son all under the age of 5, and another family member followed. His first job was at the Oval Dish Co. Adolph eventually built up a prosperous holding raising a variety of crops and livestock. Five more children were born in the United States, four surviving to adulthood.
Marie, the oldest child, was the first to leave home and became a teacher at the Sabin School in 1898 when she was 17. She married into the Moon family four years later and settled in Traverse City.
The Moon genealogy stretches back to Quaker settlements in Pennsylvania, and provides a common denominator for all Moons in the country.
"All the Moons are related, one main family settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,” said Ralph Moon.
The land along the bay that Adolph considered unfit for farming is all that remains today of his farm, which was sold in the early 1940s. When he died in 1924, Adolph willed the farm to Adolph Jr., who struggled through the Depression and with changes in agriculture.
Marie Brosche Moon's determination, and that of her sister, Emily, plus stewardship by William E. Moon Sr., kept the "worthless” four parcels in the family. It is to this land that his descendants gathered to celebrate their ties with history.
"We married and moved into a cottage,” said Clara Moon of her newlywed days, who retired to Traverse City with her husband. "But we made our living downstate and raised our three sons and one daughter downstate.”