Lovely Agnes

"Lovely Agnes", can be found on Sally Rogers' wonderful recording "The Unclaimed Pint" recorded by DGA Productions in 1979 (still available on CD from Sally's website). She wrote on the liner notes:
"I wrote this song for my grandmother as a present on her 92nd birthday. She was raised Agnnes Challoner in Oshkosh Wisconsin, and received her Master's degree in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1910. She then married my grandfather, Augustus James Rogers II who wanted to move to Michigan to grow cherries. After they were wed, they came to Michigan on a ferry boat in search of prime cherry growing country They settled in Benzie County, locating their farm five miles west of the county seat, Beulah, just over the hill from Crystal Lake. Four children, eighteen grandchildren and twenty five greatgrandchildren later, she still lives on the farm. As a young woman, her relatives couldn't understand how she could spend so much time in college and then bury herself on a farm. But today, sitting in her armchair overlooking the orchards, she says, 'You know, I've never felt buried.'"

Sally's grandmater is long dead, but the cherry trees still thrive on the original farm near Crystal Lake in the upper left corner of the "mitten" of the southern peninsula of the State of Michigan.