Who we are

A Brief History

Michelle Robinson

Edla Matilda Hallgren lived in Visbi, Sweden. Her Father sold her to a man in Boston (a mail order bride). She arrived and the man who bought her never showed up. She was allowed to stay because she was purchased. The minister of a Swedish church in Boston hired her as a cleaner and cook for their church. She worked there for three years and learned to speak English.

There was a man named Ephraim Wells Calderwood who delivered goods to Boston from a farm and the church was one of his stops. They met there and apparently fell in love. They got married and moved to Maine.

Out of this union came Winzola Jeannette Calderwood, my great grandmother and the subject of many of my writings and a current book. She was born in 1900.

During my childhood Winzola lived in the woods behind the family farmhouse. Many of my memories and fictional work as an adult draw on the eccentric nature of my great grandmother. The memory of her provides a framework for the broad spectrum through which I work.

The work of Winzola has grown and become a larger entity in her memory:

Winzola is a living active process of sharing information.

Winzola is the spirit of home remedies, of knowing our own selves well enough to trust our own choice.

Winzola is the grandmother lost, the tradition, the passing on of information that happened through generations of women.

Winzola is the movement of remembering ancient traditions to improve our modern lives.

Winzola is the understanding that our ancestors really did know what they were doing and the best way to solve our current environmental and economic problems is to look behind us at the past.

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