From Grandma, with love: Message in the bottle delivered 100 years later

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

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Eric Schiebold was reading about a note that was found in Lake St. Clair when he realized it was written by Tillie Esper when she was just 22 on June 30, 1915.

Courtesy Eric Schiebold

Tillie Esper was one of the women who wrote a message in a bottle that was found on the bed of the St.Clair River.

A Michigan man was fascinated by a newspaper story about a near-century old message in a bottle found in a nearby river. Then his interest exploded when he realized the note was written by his grandmother when she was only 22.
"At first I didn't believe it," Eric Schiebold told the Daily News. "I saw the name and thought, 'ah that can't be grandma.' But at the end of the story was a little biography and sure enough it was. I was in stunned amazement."
Schiebold made the discovery while reading the Detroit Free Press over breakfast and immediately called his cousin Janet Baccanari at 7:30.
"I got Goosebumps. It was just like the past coming back to the present. It was truly like my grandma coming back," Baccanari said.

Courtesy Dave Leander

Dave Leander found the message that Tillie Esper and her friend wrote nearly a century ago.

Almost exactly 98 years ago, Selina Pramstaller and Tillie Esper (Schiebold's grandmother) were at Tashmoo Park, a once-popular amusement park that closed in 1951. Its rides, beaches and dance hall on Harsens Island in Lake St. Clair made it a popular getaway for turn-of-the-century Detroiters.
The young women wrote a message dated June 30, 1915, on a deposit slip from the Tashmoo steamboat.
"Having a good time at Tashmoo," the message reads in neat cursive. It also includes their addresses in Detroit.
Then they stuffed it into a bottle, which they corked and tossed into the St. Clair River, where it sank to the bottom for 97 years.

Library of Congress

Tashmoo Park was a popular vacation destination for Detroiters a century ago.

Last June, diver Dave Leander found the long-lost bottle beneath a few inches of dirt under 30 feet of water.
"We go looking for old Coke bottles form the 1900s and things like that. It's something to do," Leander said.
He did not realize what the message said until he reached the surface. Then he put it on display along with other finds in his local dive center.
"It's pretty incredible that we have this note from 100 years ago and it's completely legible. I thought, 'gee whiz that could have been my grandmother!'" Bernard Licata, president of the Harsens Island St. Clair Flats Historical Society.

Library of Congress

The Harsens Island St. Clair Flats Historical Society will throw a celebration of the bygone Tashmoo Park.

That historical society decided to put the message on display at a one-day celebration of Tashmoo Park next month. He invited Schiebold and Baccanari after they heard of the bottle.
“I have to go to that. We've contacted the rest of the family so it looks like there's going to be quite a good turnout," Schiebold said.
Esper died in 1984. The message took nearly a century to be read. But news of it traveled across the globe just this week.
Now her grandchildren wonder what Esper was like as a young woman.
"She was always a very kind and happy person," Schiebold said. "But what was she like back in those days?"
"How different you are at 22 than you are at 70!" Baccanari said. "This is something that they must have thought was silly and devious back in 1915."