This V.D. Minnis stamp is on the north side of Prospect Street between Holmes and Jones. Unfortunately, as with Minnis and Ewer, stamps from Minnis are undated. I’m curious whether Minnis started out solo and then joined Ewer, or whether the two started out together and then split. Their stamps look quite old, as I noted in my previous entry on Minnis and Ewer, and now I have further reason to believe that they must be.

That further reason is the entry I have found for Verner D. Minnis at Find A Grave. Some helpful person has done a bit of genealogy on the Minnis family and has a photograph of Verner’s grave at Mount Hope Cemetery, unless there was some other Verner D. Minnis in Lansing during this time period. If the Verner of the gravestone had any children, they don’t know of them. Sadly, he died in 1919 at the age of 41 or 42, of “pneumonia and toxemia” if I am deciphering the somewhat blurry death certificate correctly.

Find A Grave invites visitors to leave memories of departed people there. Do you think I should share my scant knowledge of his sidewalk business? Let me know in the comments. (Comments are enabled! You do have to click on the specific post from the front page to see them, which is perhaps not ideal.)