For many years, the Henderson and Waldo families have been prominently involved in the civic and business life of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The Waldo family was established in the Green Bay area in 1873 when Morris A. Waldo, an employee of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad moved to Fort Howard. Born in Sackett's Harbor, New York, on September 20, 1829, Waldo migrated west and settled in Winneconne, Wisconsin in 1854. Not long thereafter, he was joined by his wife, Ann Eliza Appleton Waldo. In 1861 Waldo enlisted in the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry. While on detached service from his regiment in Bloomfield, Missouri, in 1862, he became ill with typhoid fever. Ann Waldo left their young daughter, Mary Adele (Della), in the care of her sister, Susan Appleton Brown, also of Winneconne, and traveled south to nurse him. There she also became ill with typhoid fever and died on October 24, 1862. After the war, Waldo returned to Wisconsin. In 1868 he married Margaret Lewis Griffith. They had one daughter, Helen Jane Waldo.
Waldo's first daughter, Della, lived most of her life in Green Bay. In 1879 she married James L. Henderson, a master painter with the Green Bay and Western Railroad, who had arrived in the area from New York in 1870. The Hendersons were the parents of four daughters: Anna Laura (1881-1957), who married J.H. Jackson; Alice Diantha (circa 1884-1973), who married Otto Straubel; Ruth Adele (1890-1980), a teacher of home economics at the University of Wisconsin and Helen Jane (1894-1971), an editor of John Martin's Book. Anna Laura Jackson's daughter, Anne Waldo Jackson (1911- ), married Winfield W. Foster. Alice Straubel's daughter, Ruth Christine, married Leo Hartman.
The Henderson family was established in the Green Bay area by Robert Henderson who engaged in trade between Buffalo and Green Bay during the years 1866 and 1868. Later he entered the paint manufacturing business in Fort Howard. In 1870 Robert Henderson was joined by his mother, his brother, James L., and his other brothers and sisters. James L. Henderson married Mary Adele (Della) Waldo in 1879.
Further biographical information about other members of the family is contained in the collection in the folder entitled “Miscellaneous correspondence and clippings.”
