page_title: IXL Historical Museum
section_title: George Washington Earle
hierarchical_section_title: IXL Historical Museum / History / George Washington Earle
caption_attribution_description: English: George Washington Earle, head of the Wisconsin Land and Lumber Company
context_page_description: The IXL Historical Museum is a historic office building, residence, and museum complex in Hermansville, Michigan, United States. The main building was constructed as the headquarters for the Wisconsin Land & Lumber Company before it became a museum. The museum was organized in 1982, and the main building, also known as the Wisconsin Land and Lumber Company Office, was deignated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1973 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
context_section_description: George Washington Earle was born in Truxton, New York in 1849.  In 1851, his family moved to Huntley, Illinois, and when he was only ten years old Gerge left home on his own.  He hired out on a Wisconsin farm owned by Dr. Rollin S. Wooster in 1860, and in 1863 moved with Wooster to Iowa.  Earle attended school, and eventually acquired enough education that he became a schoolteacher.  However, he was unsatisfied, and in 1868 returned to New York and began doing piecework in a sash and door factory, continuing until he had saved enough money to attend medical college.
  In 1872, Earle gradualted from Buffalo Medical College, receiving his diploma from Millard Fillmore. He moved to Tully, New York, and began a medical practice, which over the next 17 years he built into a large and prosperous business.  In 1886, Earle took a months-long trip to Europe, where he met Emma Meyer, Charles Meyer's daughter.  They were married in 1888, and in 1889 Earle decided to retire from the rigors of practicing medicine, and moved with his wife to Michigan.  Earle invested a considerable amount of his savings in his father-in-law's business, and was made a vice-president of Wisconsin Land & Lumber only months before the 1890 financial crash.  With the other directors unable or unwilling to steer the company, the crash and Meyer's incapacitation forced Earle to take over the company's operations.
caption: George Washington Earle, c. 1911
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