We Come from Good Stock

West Central Wisconsin, 1853. As soon as the ice goes out on the St. Croix River, Mildred Potter's boarding house fills with lumberjacks bringing logs down river to the mill. In the spring, one lumberjack, Levi Jefferson Oakes, notices Mildred's sister Mary and lingers after supper to talk to her. So begins We Come from Good Stock, Kay Oakes Oring's history of family, frontier, and fortitude carved out of the rugged beauty of rural Wisconsin. From marriage and children, to prosperity, loss, and reclamation, the Oakes clan represents the peril and promise of staking a claim, starting a family, and watching the things you build become eternal.