An Immigrant Story - Eliza Harvey Rodi

Hermanus Karel and Eliza Harvey Rodi are buried at Calumet Lakeview Cemetery.

NPS Photo

Eliza Harvey was born in 1823 in Halesworth, Suffolk, England and taught with her siblings at their father's Castle Academy. A linguist like her father, Eliza traveled to the Netherlands for a teaching position in the 1840s. There, she met and married Hermanus Karel “Charles” Rodi, a carpenter by trade.

The couple embarked upon an immigrant story together, first heading to Montreal where their son Charles Harvey was born. After several years of "adventure" on Michipicoten Island, Ontario, Herman got a job at the Quincy Mine near Hancock.

 

The Queen-Anne style Tamarack Hospital in Tamarack Location near Calumet where Dr. Rodi spent much of his career.

Keweenaw NHP Archives Curto--Album 11--#148--Tamarack Hospital--1906

Son Charles followed in his mother's footsteps by continuing his education, attending Oberlin College in Ohio and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to become a physician. His own son, Charles Merwyn, also graduated from U of M. For more than thirty years, Charles Harvey Rodi worked at the Tamarack Hospital, residing for much of that time at 17 Second Street in Tamarack Location.