Ada Mulholland Winney: Keeping the Farming Tradition Alive in Dixboro

The Irish Mulhollands initially settled in Superior Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan where they farmed, but by the early twentieth century, many moved away seeking life in the city and new professions. Ada Mulholland not only spent her life in the rural community where she was born in 1860, but married a local farmer Volney Winney, her husband of more than 50 years. Ada Mulholland is the youngest sibling of my great grandfather, Samuel J. Mulholland.

Ada Bishop Mulholland, born in Michigan at the time of the Civil War, was the youngest of ten children. Following her mother's death when she was only five, Ada was raised by her older siblings. As a teenager, she was keeping house for her brother and a nephew, and by her late teens she was working as a servant for a neighboring family, the Lauren Sanfords, whose 116 acre farm bordered her father's in Superior Township.

Ada B. Mulholland (later Winney)

Also working for the Sanfords was a local single young man just her age, Volney W. Winney. His parents had moved to Superior Township from New York after their marriage and all the children grew up on local farms as did the Mulholland children. While working together at the Sanfords allowed Ada and Volney many opportunities to spend time with each other, given the small community, the two would have known each other all through their childhoods. In fact, Volney's father Philipp had purchased land in Dixboro from the Mulhollands that would later be the home of Volney and Ada.

Just as Ada grew up without a mother, Volney's family had an equally sad story. Volney's mother was on her third marriage and, while the Winney children were still young, his parents separated. As in Ada's family, the children were scattered among older siblings or working for other local farmers. By 1880, Volney's father, Philip, was living alone in Dixboro village and his mother, Sarah, was working as a servant in Saline for an elderly gentleman, each indicating they were widowed—the polite euphemism for divorced.

Despite close quarters in the Sanford home, their love story was not an instant one. They worked in the same house for more than five years before deciding to join forces. With such unhappy examples of family life, Volney and Ada seemed at high risk for a failed marriage, but in fact, they finally wed in 1889 when Ada was almost 28 and were united until the end of their lives, spending more than 50 years together.

Their first child was born in 1889 rather quickly after the marriage, but unfortunately little Clarence Winney had severe disabilities and was labeled in the records of the time as "idiotic." He lived only nine years, with his death certificate indicating the cause of death was idiocy for which there was no medical treatment. Their second son, Phares E. Winney, born less than a year before Clarence's death when Ada was 36, would be their last and in the end, only child.

Starting with nothing, the Winneys initially continued to farm, working the estate of Lauren Sanford after his early death in 1899. Saving carefully, by 1906, they were able to purchase a farm near Dixboro. They soon sold off most of the land and kept only 1 ¾ acres with a small, country house where they lived most of their lives. Later they also bought another farm a bit farther away from the village.

A House near the Village

A rural farming life does not always leave much in the way of evidence to develop dramatic stories, but fortunately a few tales of the Winneys have survived because a local woman wrote a history, Of Dixboro: Lest We Forget, published in 1997. Many of the Mulhollands lived too far from the village to find mention in the book, but the Winneys had a home on Plymouth Road directly west of the school yard in Dixboro. Carol Willits (later Freeman) knew the Winneys when they were elderly but still working their farm, something they did until their 80s when they moved in with their son Phares Winney in Ann Arbor in 1940.

Dixboro village (sometimes called Dixborough in the older records) was founded in the 1820s by Captain John Dix, a Massachusetts native who was a veteran of the War of 1812. Purchasing some of the original land open in the Northwest Territory, he envisioned a thriving metropolis in southeastern Michigan on the southwestern edge of Superior Township (then part of the now non-existent Panama Township). 

Instead, by the later nineteenth century, Dixboro became a small rural town along the route to its much larger neighbors, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. It was also a possible place to stop between Detroit and Chicago, particularly in the months when roads were deep in mud and travel was slow. With a tavern, several mills, a general store, church, school, and blacksmith shop, Dixboro was a center for social life among the surrounding farm families. At various times the town also had a chair manufactory, a crate making business, and a small household company making wooden washing machines.

In later years Dixboro had a gasoline pump for the newly popular automobiles traveling Ann Arbor-Plymouth Road, and then an auto repair shop. Electricity came to town in 1919. Today it is mostly a small collection of homes, some of them charmingly historic, with a few small businesses bordering the road paved in 1925 just east of Ann Arbor and north of Ypsilanti, still surrounding the picturesque wooden white Methodist Church.

Dixboro School in 2004. Built in 1888 after the first school burned, the building is today a Michigan Historic Site.
The Winney's home and barn sat on a 2 acre plot just west of the schoolyard (to the left).

Winney Stories from Dixboro

In the Dixboro book, Freeman has a story about the Winney homestead, a place where any child coming from west of the school would cut through an opening in the fence and across the yard to get to the schoolhouse each day, noting the Winneys never scolded the children for doing so. Of  "Mr. Winney," Freeman said,

In the warm weather Mr. Winney, a big, plump man, often sat out in a chair under his tall trees in the front yard with his small golden-haired dog beside him. Or you might see him with his team and wagon driving to his farm on Vorhies Road or returning home, but always with his little dog sitting on the seat beside him…. 

Walking by the Winney home each day on my way to and from school, I always admired the row of poplar trees which lined the west side of his driveway. Their leaves made a pleasant rustling sound in the breeze. To the west of the yard was the small field in which Mr. Winney kept two horses and three cows, and along the path towards Gale's yard wild phlox grew in pretty pink clumps. (Freeman, 1997, Of Dixboro: Lest we Forget, p. 112)

Freeman also clears up a minor mystery about the Winneys in another story that is a classic of small-town life. The records show that the Winneys initially owned two-acres of land on the west edge of the village proper, but by 1908, their plot had been reduced to 1 ¾ acres. Seems the neighbors built a house so close to where the Winneys kept their cows and horses that "the cows could look in the window" (p. 71). The neighbors bought 20 feet of land from Volney. They jointly built a barn straddling the new line where the village's threshing machine, owned by the neighbor, could be stored in the winter while the Winneys kept their livestock in the other half. Some years later the Winneys added back the extra ¼ acre to the property.

Living near the school had its disadvantages. Freeman reports they never could figure out how the Winney's wagon ended up on the old schoolhouse roof one dark Halloween night, just one of the local pranks at that time of year (p. 135).

A Matter of Perspective

From my side of the Mulholland family, the Winneys were known as a rather straight-laced, narrow-minded country family with attitudes (perhaps reasonable) that frowned upon the behavior of Ada's less than upstanding brothers. With Sam Mulholland being an alcoholic divorced by his wife and William B. Mulholland also divorced, often remarried, and periodically indigent, Ada had little to do with them or their families. William's daughter Rhubena Mulholland Shaal wrote in a letter to cousin Edna Mulholland in 1943 after her father's memorial service, just a few years before Ada died, "Wonder if Ada has died yet? She was pretty wobbly. I never write to a lady who could treat her brother so."

The elderly Winneys spent the last years of their lives living with son Phares. Volney died in 1946 at the age of 85, and Ada at 86 in 1949. They are buried together in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Dixboro just a short walk from the homestead where they spent so many memorable years.

Link to download and view data sheet for Ada Mulholland Winney (PDF)

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By coincidence, I knew the son of Carol Willits Freeman from college at the University of Michigan although at the time I knew nothing of my family's connection to Dixboro and Superior Township. You can read more about Dixboro today and an interview with Tom Freeman at Growth without Growing in Historic Dixboro or see an interview on YouTube with Carol Freeman on Dixboro in the the Mid-20th Century. You can also download a video from 1989 with a tour of the village from the University of Michigan.