This picture of Casper and Mary and their farm came, if memory serves, from my father:


These two pictures show the Dute farm buildings as they appeared not long before they were torn down in about 2002. Courtesy of Hartley J. Smith, 6/15/01. Valerie, 5/30/08: "I drove past the Dute farm yesterday. The deluxe Ranch style condos are well on their way to completion. They are deluxe all right. Anything reminiscent of the farm has been obliterated."




Now, Valerie doesn't have too much confidence in the farm as depicted in the picture at the top of this page. From her e-mail of 5/14/2008: "None of those buildings were there in my time. My mother never said anything about them. Also, the barn didn't look like that nor did any of the trees. Artists do strange things. An artist did my house . The shrubs and trees are nothing like I have. I also have a photo taken by a photagrapher at a reunion --summer of 1890. It was taken in front of some building--the barn for sure--the other, I can't tell what i is--nowindows strange siding." A comparison of that picture with the photograph above does reveal some discrepencies. Assuming the house at right-center in the photograph is the one at the right side of the drawing, you'll notice that the one in the drawing has two chimneys, both positioned in a bit from the outside walls; while the one in the photograph only has one chimney, and it's right up against the outside wall. Also, in the drawing there's a main entrance on the side of the house facing the viewer, and no such entrance in the photograph. Go figure.