Ancestor Soup

Military Monday–Hoping for a Homecoming, Part 2

2012-01-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 of this story, I was left with the possibility that the remains of my great uncle Raymond Christensen, killed in World War II, were not necessarily lost at sea, but might instead be buried somewhere, unidentified.

In one of his very informative emails, David sent the link to the Defense Prisoner of War * Missing Personnel Office’s website. This office is actively working to identify remains, and it’s never too late, as this very recent press release regarding Staff Sgt. John J. Bono demonstrates. Staff Sgt. Bono was on a plane that crashed on September 13, 1944 in Germany. It took a very, very long time, but this soldier has finally come home.

One of the methods used for identifying remains involves mitochondrial DNA. Unlike Y-DNA used for genealogical purposes, mitochrondria DNA (mtDNA) cannot prove relationship to any high degree, but it can exclude relationship, or can provide supporting evidence of a relationship. Furthermore, rather than requiring a sample from the direct-line males in the family, mitochondrial DNA may be supplied from other near relatives. In the case of an unaccounted-for male soldier, either a brother, a sister, or the sister’s descendants to the third generation may supply DNA for testing.

The Central Identification Laboratory does the work of putting together the evidence with the goal of making an identification. Using data surrounding the recovery of the remains, race, age, height, medical and dental records, fingerprints, and DNA, sometimes a presumptive identification can be made.

Without delay, I contacted the Central Identification Laboratory (CIL), and settled down for what I was expecting to be a long wait. Within the week, I received a phone call from an agent at the CIL requesting more information, and explaining the process to me. He sent, by Federal Express, two mtDNA collection kits, one for myself, and one for my mother, direct descendants of Ray’s sister Lillian. The kits consisted of swabs that we used on the insides of our cheeks to collect cells. We packaged these swabs for return to the lab. In addition, we were asked if we had envelopes from any of Ray’s letters home; the process of licking the envelopes to seal them would be his contribution to the process. We had two, which we sent. We were assured that they would be returned. The process was very quick, and very simple, and return Fed-Ex fees were paid by the laboratory.

Collection kits for cheek swabs

And now, we wait. We understand that this process will not be a quick one, and no results can be guaranteed, but we’re grateful for the opportunity to at least try, thanks to David. I’m hoping that 2012 will be the year Raymond Christensen finally comes home.

Wordless Wednesday–Bateman Cem, Fillmore co., MN

2012-01-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

Military Monday–Hoping for a Homecoming, Part I

2012-01-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

“I am trying not to openly speculate about the circumstances and events surrounding the missing crew of KW 161. Even though your uncle has been declared KIA, he is still missing.” Those words, emailed to me by a correspondent regarding Raymond Christensen, ran through the back of my mind for most of the next few days. In any idle moment I had, this sentence would resurface as I tried to put together everything I’d learned over the past few weeks and make sense of it.

My correspondent, David, who is a collector of military items and a veteran himself, had read my blog post regarding my uncle Raymond, who, along with his pilot Joseph Leonard, were lost when their plane went crashing down into the Tyrrhenian Sea near Montecristo late on the night of May 13, 1944. David had found a soldier’s cap with the name Lt. Joseph E. Leonard on it, and was doing some internet research to learn more about this fallen hero. We exchanged information – I had information on Ray, including a Missing Air Crew Report, and he had expertise on all things military, and so our conversations began.

Since our family was notified of Raymond’s status back in 1944, little has changed. The last we heard, the crew of the Bristol Beaufighter KW 161 was missing and unaccounted for. All that remained at the site of the wreckage was “much debris, an oil slick, and two life rafts.” End of story.

It was during these exchanges when David told me that Lt. Joseph Leonard was buried at the Sicily Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy: Plot H, Row 9, Grave 40. What? Raymond Christensen was not buried there, nor was he listed among any of the other identified soldiers in overseas cemeteries. Both men went down in the same location at the same time. One was recovered. One was not?

David’s words eventually sunk in: He was telling me there may be a possibility that Raymond’s remains were not lost, but unidentified. Dog tags, David explained to me, were typically the only means of identifying remains, and if Raymond had lost his dog tags in the events of that night, he may have been recovered but not identified.

More to come.

2011–The Year in Review

2011-12-31T05:10:00.000-08:00

As I sit here pondering the end of another year, sometimes it’s the hard times that seem to rise to the surface of my consciousness more quickly than anything else. The low point of the year was losing a good friend and genealogy partner, John Melton, quite unexpectedly. I had the blessing of working with John on various projects off and on for the last ten years, and will miss his unending energy and his sense of humor. Rest in peace, friend.

I also had to say goodbye to one of those rare places on earth that, when you look at it, fills you with abundant history and happy memories. Voorhees Hall, the main building of long-defunct Huron College, was torn down after 100+ years of service. I loved the beautiful architecture of every part of it, and enjoyed my years there, especially sitting on the north steps smoking a cigarette between classes with all of the other slaves to the habit, and met some wonderful people while doing so. It will be hard to drive past that site and not see it there.

On a more positive note -

I started what hopefully will be the most fruitful thing I’ve ever done, at least in genealogy terms. I’ve blogged about my great-uncle, Flight Officer Raymond Christensen, whose Beaufighter plunged into the sea near Corsica while tangling with the Nazis. I’ll be blogging more about this, but to make a long story short, through one of those Genealogy Angels, I’ve discovered that the body of Ray’s pilot, Joseph Leonard, HAD been recovered and identified. This certainly increases the chances that Ray’s body was recovered as well, perhaps just not identified. Our family has begun the process of looking for a match, aided by mitochonrial DNA. Perhaps 2012 will be the year we can bring Ray home to rest.

I’ve been able to scale of couple of other genealogy mountains in 2011 as well. After years of trying to positively identify the parents of Charlotte DeBolt, it looks likely that her father was Patrick Burnside(s) of Ohio. A book of will abstracts was published years ago listed among Patrick’s heirs a Charlotte DeBolt and her husband William DeBolt. Hmmm… my Charlotte’s husband was Daniel DeBolt. I got the entire probate packet and later in the probate, Charlotte is again mentioned with her correct husband, Daniel. The initial mention of William was perhaps an error, as her brother, another heir, was also named William and listed next after Charlotte. I’d like to find at least one more solid indication of a relationship between Charlotte and Patrick Burnside before I’m ready to call this mystery “solved”, but this is a wonderful piece of evidence.

Another big breakthrough was finding the grave site of Roland and Elizabeth Sisson. I’ve tried for two years to visit their graves, but due to a comedy of errors online, including a mis-naming of the cemetery and a grossly incorrect mapping of it, I hunted in vain. It was thanks to Find-a-grave and another Genealogy Angel that the name was corrected and an accurate map was provided. I also learned of another small cemetery a couple of miles away, in the middle of a cornfield, where Roland and Elizabeth’s two young daughters are buried. I was able to find their graves as well.

One of the things that warms my heart the most concerns my granddaughters’ Robinson and Stevens families. I’ve been working on these lines for several years and have amassed a fair amount of information, but not one photo of anyone in this family. Thanks to my tree on Ancestry.com (which is private, but shows up in the index), I was contacted by a distant cousin of theirs who is also working on these families and had photos that she most graciously shared. I feel so good about being able to show these little girls who these ancestors were, and what they looked like. It’s especially fun seeing some strong family resemblances. I truly did not think we’d ever have photos to put into the family history. Cousins truly are the most wonderful genealogy resource available, and can oftentimes turn into great friends in the process.

In addition to continuing with my ProGen Study Group, I also took on another county site for Genealogy Trails – Peoria County, Illinois. This is a special county for me, as my ancestors hail from there, and I used to have a Peoria county website that operated independently, but after nine years, had to take it off-line. I’m glad to be “back in the saddle” and involved with Peoria County’s rich history and pioneer families, and grateful to the site’s former host for all of her hard work in making this a fantastic resource for Illinois researchers. I look forward to adding a ton of data to the site in 2012. In addition to the Peoria County site, I’m still hosting the South Dakota state site, as well as Beadle and Hand County sites.

I’m looking forward to an exciting, even exhilarating, 2012, and wish the same for all of you!

Scrapbook Saturday–A Working Gal

2011-12-03T05:07:00.000-08:00

Another page from the scrapbook of my mother-in-law, who was a fixture at the Hand County (South Dakota) Courthouse for 50 years, working for the Highway Department.

The National Youth Association’s representative recommended Louise for a job after her high school graduation in 1937. Her first assignment was bookwork on easements for Highway 14 through Hand County. Later, she did bookwork for the WPA Road projects in the county for 20 cents an hour. Her bookkeeping methods became perfected over the years, and used as a model for other departments. A copy of a letter from another Highway Department bookkeeper, written in 1963, was used on this page. It reads in part as follows:

“I am the Hwy. Bkpr. for Potter County, and the State Auditing Department has criticized me to a crisp for being to [sic] slow in getting out my yearly report.
“They recommend your books and your system as the peak of perfection, and suggested that I ask you for an appointment and do it as you do it.
“I have worked a great deal and I understand that time is a precious commodity for the gal that works, if you are able to find time to take me on for a bookwork discussion, I will be most glad to reimburse you for your kindness.”

In 1977, South Dakota Governor Dick Kneip proclaimed “Louise Ulmer Day” in recognition of her numerous contributions over the years. Hand County was always a very important part of her life.

Scrapbook Saturday–Photo Pedigree

2011-11-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Another page from my mother-in-law’s scrapbook. I love the photo pedigrees, although this one spans only three generations. I love looking at their faces, noting resemblances, etc.
Louise starts – followed by her parents, Casper J. Kluthe and Jennie Schlechter. Casper’s parents were Casper Kluthe and Maria Katherina “Katie” Kleine, both German immigrants. Jennie’s parents, also German immigrants, were Conrad Schlechter and Johanna “Jennie” Grewe.

Scrapbook Saturday - "House of Used-To-Be"

2011-11-19T05:07:00.000-08:00

A page from the scrapbook of my mother-in-law, describing the early farm home of her family, now gone.

Genealogy, Family History, and Censorship

2011-10-23T11:07:00.001-07:00

As a volunteer for Genealogy Trails, and as a person trying to be a “good neighbor” in the genealogy world, I spend a fair amount of time transcribing public domain materials that might be of help to someone else researching their family history. While traveling, I oftentimes make unexpected stops at small rural cemeteries and snap a few headstone shots for Find-a-grave. I’ve been helped immensely by others doing the same thing, and want to pay back as much as I can. One never knows when some little nugget they’ve put online might be just the thing to put a chip in someone else’s brick wall.

I started a blog, Sharing Genealogy, for making available oddball items I run across, or find sitting on my office bookshelves. Awhile back, I found a book on the history of St. Paul, Minnesota, which I picked up at a library book sale. I personally have no ties to St. Paul, but someone, somewhere does, and thumbing through it, I found some interesting stories, and some old photos. So I decided to start scanning and transcribing it – all 222 pages. All was going well, until September 30, when Chapter XIII was posted – “Chippewas and Sioux.” The next thing you know, I have an ugly, anonymous comment posted questioning my motives and calling this post “bigoted and ethocentric white man crap.”

I answered as politely as I could, but that wasn’t the end of it. Thanks to comment moderation, no more hateful venom is online. But it does bring up the point of censorship – is it right? Should we, as sharers of the past, be held responsible for editing another’s work? If yes, whose standards do we use? Our own? Or the standards of the most sensitive persons that might read our blogs? If the latter, will we offend someone who resents our editing? Is there a “happy medium”, and if so, how do we define it? Only one thing is clear – this is muddy water.

Voorhees Hall–There and Gone

2011-10-09T16:06:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure of the exact date on the above postcard of Huron College (Huron, South Dakota), but would guess it to be ~1910. I grew up looking at this wonderful old building, Voorhees Hall, and during a few times in my childhood, had occasion to enter this grand structure, always captivated by the beautiful architecture. Eventually, I went to school there myself. Within those old walls you could almost feel the history, and going up to the huge lecture room on the third floor you could feel the presence of one hundred years’ worth of scholars, filling their minds with worldly knowledge.

So this was a particularly sad time for me when a friend sent the photo below. Voorhees Hall is no more – razed to make way for a swimming pool.

It’s going to take a very long time before seeing this sight doesn’t hurt…

Photo courtesy of Michael Bonnes

Wordless Wednesday–A Warm Reunion in Kjøllefjord

2011-10-05T11:14:00.001-07:00

She Banged the Banker

2011-10-04T21:10:00.001-07:00

A newspaper article too good not to share. If only they wrote articles like this these days…

This article appears to be from the Peoria Star, Peoria, Illinois, and is in a scrapbook created by the Princeville Heritage Museum, Princeville, Illinois.

Susannah was the younger sister of my ancestress Rebecca DeBolt Lair, and Peter Auten was a local banker referred to by Rebecca in her will as “my good friend.”

SHE BANGED THE BANKER

Old Maid of 85 Years Vigorously Demands Her Rights
Sunday, May 24, 1903

Unwedded and unloved Miss Susannah Debolt has lived in this vale of tears for 85 long years, but not for (---) is this vale a tearful one. Far from it, good Gonzago.

This antique spinster is still a woman with a vigorous constitution and a strong mind, although it runs on an eccentric. Fourscore and five years have not debilitated her spirit though they may have somewhat warped her mentality. She lives alone in Princeville, chiefly in communion with the spirits of those whom she knew in her youth and mature womanhood, and so intimately has she become associated with them that she has very little respect for those who still inhabit this tenement of clay.

In the exercise of his judicial duties, it devolved upon Judge Slemmons to journey to Princeville yesterday and formally adjudge her incapable of caring for her estate, which is valued at about $4,000. The judge found her another Meg Merrilies, her eyes, undimmed with the rime of years, still flashing in anger and her tongue fluent in invective. She has a particular aversion to Banker Auten, the Princeville capitalist and by a peculiar circumstance he was appointed her conservator. During the judicial proceedings she created a dramatic scene by rising suddenly in her seat and after overwhelming the luckless banker with a torrent of abuse she seized a yardstick and brought it down on his venerable head with a resounding whack. It was a yardstick made in the good old days when articles of that sort were substantial and a ridge immediate arose on the banker's bald head to indicate the point of contact and to render its interior works incapable of striking a balance for the remainder of the day.

Through the rest of the examination the old lady sat erect in her chair and with the yardstick by her side, as a queen might sit upon her throne grasping her imperial sceptre. From that time on the judge and examiners were studiously respectful in their demeanor toward her and felt relieved when the ordeal was over.

The old lady has outlived all her near relatives and the proceedings of yesterday were taken in order to give her proper care and attention for the remnant of her days.

Miss Birks

2011-09-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

I don’t think about junior high without thinking of Miss Birks. The big old school building, pictured above, was referred to in postcards as the “new high school” but by the time I worked my way up the educational ladder, a newer “new high school” had been built, and the large, historic old building had been turned over to the junior high crowd. Even back then, I loved the old architecture of the building, although the sheer size of it scared me half to death, as did Miss Birks.

I passed Miss Birks in the hallways many more times than I could count. She always seemed to have a stern look about her, but then, after years of dealing with youngsters of that age and hormonal status, you’d better be tough. At one particular point in time, I recall going through a bit of a crisis, and although I don’t recollect exactly what the problem was, it was serious enough that I considered talking to Miss Birks, who was by then the guidance counselor. However, about that time I’d pass her in the hall again, and her aura of authoritarianism quickly changed my mind.

Over the years, when I’d see old photos of that beautiful school building, I’d think briefly of Miss Birks, but I hadn’t given her much in depth consideration until tonight, while browsing through an old 1926 Huron High School Tiger yearbook, and, much to my surprise, there she was in the graduating class! Next to her photo, the question was asked, “Will her voice resound thru the ages as it has the halls of H. H. S.?” What? Miss Birks was noisy in the halls? Really!? I wish I’d known that 40 years ago! And what a prophetic question! Yes, as it turned out, her voice would resound through those halls for a very long time to come.

Miss Marie Birks, 1926

I was hoping to find a quick obituary online for Miss Birks to fill in the years. Well, I didn’t find one. I did, however, find that her name was mentioned in the local newspaper more times than I could count – and like the young girl who was involved in so many high school activities, as a grown woman her level of community involvement was high. She had spent the bulk of her life living in the family home on Montana street, from before she was 10 months old until at least 1992, the last year for which I have a city directory. Her mother passed away sometime between 1940 and 1953, which was the year her father died. After that Miss Birks continued on in the home alone.

She was first-generation American born – her father came from England in 1883, and her mother a few years later, from Denmark. Her father was most noted for his work as Beadle County Treasurer as well as a long-time real estate agent.

She retired from the Huron Public School district with 39 years to her credit, according to the local newspaper.

Miss Birks was 96 years old when she passed away at the Huron Nursing Home in May of 2005. As the children were closing another year of school, she closed the book of her life.

And yes, I eventually did get desperate enough to talk to her about my catastrophic situation, whatever it was. She was one of the nicest, most empathetic and caring teachers I’ve known. She helped me resolve my situation, encouraged me, and afterward remembered me with a smile every time we passed in the hall. While Miss Birks is gone, as is the old school building, I won’t forget either one of them.

A few sources -

Social Security Death Index
1926 HHS Tiger Yearbook
1910, 1920, 1930 Federal Census
Numerous Huron City Directories
Numerous old Huron Daily Plainsman, Dakota Huronite, and other local newspaper articles

© Karen Seeman, 2011

Graphics courtesy of JOD

Driving Me Crazy

2011-09-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

One fun by-product of taking a genealogy “road trip” is all of the interesting, out-of-the-ordinary things you see. Lately, it’s been cars.

We saw this beauty recently in Waverly, Iowa. Wow. My brother used to have an old green Chevy from the 1950s, but it sure didn’t look like this!

Is this a monster truck? Or a monster van? Also seen in Waverly.

Hadn’t seen an El Camino in years! I wonder how many young ‘uns today would have any idea what an El Camino is? We saw this fine example in Mason City, Iowa.

Definitely one of my favorites – a pristine General Lee. Wow. It’s hard not to love this car! Spotted in Rochester, Minnesota.

On our way home from our last road trip, we got behind this little gem in traffic in Rochester. It’s not every day you see a Lamborghini, especially around here! I wonder how that thing would do in the snow?

And last, but not least -

My all-time favorite. It’s hard to beat this for a “noteworthy ride.” I believe I snapped this photo in Missouri, heading for Illinois.

White Bronze Beauties

2011-09-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

While on a recent cemetery outing in Harlington Cemetery (Waverly, Iowa) I noticed several stones that were in remarkably good shape for their age. Actually, they were in remarkably good shape for any age! My husband, upon touching one of them, realized this was a metal “stone,” with a soft matte finish that mimicked the real thing. In the short time we were in the cemetery, we found three examples, all stamped inconspicuously with “Western White Bronze Company” of Des Moines, Iowa.

A family historian could only hope to find a 120 year old stone in such wonderful, clearly readable condition. The stone at right, belonging to members of the Jenkins and Calkins family, marks burials from 1887-1890.

According to an article written by Mark Culver, these “White Bronze” tombstones are not bronze at all, but zinc, which is resistant to rust. The process of producing these “stones”, Culver says, was perfected in 1873. The metal pieces were produced and then fused together with hot zinc. The Monumental Bronze Company produced these stones until 1914, and during World War I, the government commandeered the plant for munitions. The production of grave markers stopped in 1939.

The Western White Bronze Company of Des Moines was a subsidiary of the Monumental Bronze Company, where finishing work was done after casting in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This plant closed in 1909.

Culver states that the prices of these grave markers ranged from under $10 to upwards of $5,000.
None of the stones we saw showed signs of damage, despite their age. The price seems right. The looks is crisp and clean. They don’t rust. They apparently don't age. Vandals cannot break pieces from them. So why did demand for the White Bronze stones cease?

The problem, says Culver, is that people never really warmed up to metal markers, and some cemeteries went so far as to ban them. Many people probably did not believe the claims of the salesmen, which, decades down the road, have proven true after all. Would they fare well in today’s market? I’ll bet they would.

Interesting Stones in Harlington Cemetery

2011-09-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

I took a recent jaunt through Harlington Cemetery in Waverly, Iowa, and while the cemetery was too large to cover all of it, I did note a few unique stones that I just had to capture.

To the left is the monument of Capt. Orrin F. Avery, Company I 34 Regiment 10 Volunteers. I was struck by the unusual ornate carvings on the front of the stone. Two crossed spears, draperies, and a five-pointed star are situated above what could be a shield. The area on the shield, below Capt. Avery’s inscription, reads, “Our Darling Baby Boy, Born and died Sept. 30, 1869.”

On the side of the stone, engraved on another of the “shields”, it reads, “My Beloved Husband, Orrin E. Avery”. He was born in 1831 and died on May 24, 1870 – just 8 months after this dear woman lost her baby boy. This ornate stone still exudes the sadness and loss of 110 years past.

The Clarke monument, pictured below, featured two very large stone vaults. I am assuming the caskets were placed inside. I had never seen anything like this before.

Above, a simple variation on the “log” theme. Below, more ornate…

The plant carvings were very ornate, and the way the logs are laid out is unlike anything I’ve seen. Three individual stones are modeled after stumps.

This small house was sitting on a hill at the entrance to the cemetery. There did not appear to be any burials nearby. I’m not sure why it’s there, or if it’s supposed to represent anything in particular, but it was an unusual and unexpected sight.

And lastly, we ran across this stone near the gate as we were leaving the cemetery. I wondered if it had been strategically placed by the owners, as a way of bringing a smile to the faces of visitors…

A Parochial Tradition

2011-08-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

In the heart of tiny Polo, South Dakota sits a complex of Spanish mission style buildings known as St. Liborius Catholic church. These buildings, erected in 1904, were central to the lives of the German Catholics of the area, offering everything except formal education for their children.

In 1923, that would change. Casper Kluthe, along with his brother-in-law, George Lechtenberg, and William Froning, took the lead in establishing a parochial boarding school. The parish hall building was converted into a three-room school, with the building between them used as a dormitory for the young scholars.

Casper Kluthe may have been influenced by his own parents’ deep involvement in the church at Olean, Nebraska, where they were charter members of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. The parochial school there was erected in 1893, when Casper was five years old.

School opened at St. Liborius on September 13, 1923, with an enrollment of 68. The school was administered by eighty-eight Benedictine sisters from Yankton, South Dakota, and after 1960, from Watertown, South Dakota. The school population peaked in the 1970s, and the school eventually became a public district in 1988.

St. Liborius in recent times

********************************

Sources:

Bring on the Pioneers! History of Hand County, Scott Heidepriem. 1978.

Polo Schools: Where Memories Were Made (All-School reunion booklet)

Undated newspaper clipping on Sacred Heart church history, from the scrapbook of Jennie Schlechter Kluthe

Ugly – In the Eyes of the Beholder?

2011-08-20T07:12:00.001-07:00

In Part One of the Ugly Baby Doll story, I wished I knew more about this piece of my history. Using Google, I searched for Ugly Baby Doll and got one hit. Apparently, when you substitute “squalling” for “ugly”, you actually get useful information.

One site about old dolls suggested that most have inscriptions on the backs of their necks. I have to warn you – if you thought the Ugly Face pictures were “Yoogly” (thanks, Greta) just wait till you see the neck pictures. Without further adieu -

Yeah, I know. Sorry.

Hidden among the cracks and discoloration were some letters. All I could make out was “COPR LASTIC PLASTIC 49”. Turns out “COPR LASTIC PLASTIC 49” was stamped on dolls manufactured by the Fleischaker Novelty Company. It was unclear to me if this company also sold the dolls, or if they were sold by Horsman Company. Several companies produced these “squalling” baby dolls, but the Lastic Plastic ones were the earliest, dating back to 1948-49. And speaking of the Horsman company, while they apparently made some attractive dolls, someone there had a mean streak, as is evident by their Bilikin doll of 1909, or the Carnivale Kid of 1915-1918. My doll is looking more attractive by the minute.

The Doll Reference website showed a picture of what Grandma’s garage sale find looked like originally. There were molded tufts of hair, blue eyes, rosy little cheeks, and red lips. While any signs of rosiness on the cheeks or lips have long since worn away on my doll, its eyes are still a faded blue, and there are faint mounds of “hair” on its otherwise bald little noggin.

According to the Doll Reference website, two models of this doll were made: a 16” version, and a 19” version. My doll measures 16”, and at one time allegedly had the ability to make a “squeak” or “cry”, perhaps by one of those irritating squeakers implanted in its little belly. If that’s true, it would explain why Grandma quickly sewed it a new fabric body. I assumed the original body was ripped or rotten; however, Grandma was smart. We didn’t have squeaky toys over at her house. Ever.

Plush Memories even has a post from a lady who use to have a pair of these dolls as a child, and would love to be able to find one now. She says, “My favorite dolls when I was little were two of the ugliest little life size twin babies I had ever seen.” See Grandma? I’m not the only one to use the “U” word.

While I’d still have to say this is an Ugly Baby Doll, I have a new respect for it and its origins - 63 years is a long time to hang around being disrespected, especially ~55 years by the same family. Grandma, it took a long time, but I finally have an appreciation for this doll, and dare I say, it’s as precious to me now as you’d hoped for then. Thank you.

Sources:
http://www.antiquedolls-collectors-onlineadvisors.com/Vinyl-Head-Dolls.html
http://plushmemories.com/8728/1948-lastic-plastic-fleischaker-squalling-babies.html
http://www.dollreference.com/horsman_dolls1910-1940s.html

The Ugly Baby (Ugly! Ugly!)

2011-08-13T13:02:00.001-07:00

I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on it (him? her? We checked, but back in the 1960s, they didn’t have Him or Her baby dolls). Grandma had procured it from a garage sale, and set us up with a little crib and all the fixins’, but nobody played with it. One day, she asked me why. I replied, simply, “It’s ugly.” She said, “That’s exactly what newborn babies look like.” I replied, “Then I’m not interested in having kids.”

Despite the fact that no one ever played with it, Grandma kept it anyway. After she died twenty years ago, I felt strangely drawn to ask for it. Before she left us, Grandma made it a new cloth body, but she couldn’t do anything about the rubbery, discoloring face. Oh well. It’s not like it’s going to get any uglier…

I found it a new blue outfit at a rummage sale this morning, so I dug it out and cleaned it up a little, and then got curious about where this doll originally came from, and if it had any ugly twins out there in the world. A quick Google search turned up this:

Yes, I ruthlessly swiped this from a blog post of the World’s Strongest Librarian, but judging by the eBay icon in the bottom corner, it may not be his photo either. Manners and ethics aside, I know there’s at least one more Ugly Baby out there somewhere, and its body didn’t hold up well either. There are no markings on the head, arms or legs that I could find, so at this point, I’m out of luck. If anyone knows anything about these dolls, or has any suggestions for finding out more, please let me know. As ugly as my doll is, it’s about as dear to my heart as anything I own. Grandma would be pleased.

Memories Past… Then and Now

2011-08-06T19:06:00.001-07:00

Myself, with my grandmother, Lillian Knutz (left) and great-grandmother, Virta Knutz, sitting on the steps of a house that once was so filled with life and love. Though the house is empty, a part of so many of us will always be there in spirit.

Forebear Friday – Dr. Fred Seemann

2011-07-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Frederick August Seemann, son of Hans and Maria Seemann of Clinton county, Iowa, was born 01 Apr 1866. He left the farm to pursue his dream of becoming a physician. He spent a number of years practicing in Dubuque, Iowa, and later Sioux City. He married Alta Shepherd, a Kansas native, in Wisconsin, and they were the parents of four children: Ember, Frederick, Howard and Helen.

During his years of professional practice, he worked with brothers Carl, Henry and Will as they also became physicians.

The following advertisement, from The Dubuque Herald issue of Saturday, September 22, 1900, refers to him as “The Renowned German Doctor.” The advertisement also mentions that he “has had years of training in the great hospitals of the east.”

Between 1903 and 1906, he moved his family and his practice from Dubuque to Sioux City, Iowa, specializing in diseases of the eyes, ears, nose and throat. His wife, Alta, died in 1908, at the age of 37, probably from consumption; he married Ruth Trumhauer, a nurse, about 1910. By 1930, they had moved to National City, California, where Ruth died in 1937. She was buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in San Diego. Dr. Fred died in California in 1939 from cancer of the esophagus. His body was returned to Sioux City for burial at Logan Park Cemetery, with his first wife, Alta.

Finally–The Burial Site of Roland Sisson

2011-06-16T21:19:00.001-07:00

We spent much of last summer trying to find the burial site of Roland and Elizabeth Wright Sisson, so it was especially gratifying to find ourselves standing at their graves this evening. Trying to find the abandoned “Duxx” Cemetery (as it was erroneously listed in an online database) was my first hurdle (it’s actually “Duff” Cemetery), USGS had it mapped to the east side of Forestville State Park – an area of winding dirt roads for the most part, with many dead-ends, like a maze. We located the alleged site of the cemetery, only to find plowed field on one side of the road, and thick forest on the other side.

Ancestry.com has a database of Civil War veteran headstones, and Roland was listed. However, the cemetery he was supposedly buried in was “Spring Grove Cemetery” at Spring Grove, Minnesota, in the same county as Duff Cemetery. However, to my knowledge, there is no “Spring Grove Cemetery,” although there are cemeteries very nearby. We canvassed them last summer, to no avail. With no additional leads, we gave up.

Over the winter, I noticed Duff Cemetery listed on Find-A-Grave, complete with a map, and an overview picture of the cemetery! What a long, long winter it was! Tonight, we took a drive to Fillmore county, and easily found the cemetery, which is about 3-4 miles SE of Spring Grove. What a welcome sight.

The cemetery was very nicely kept, as is evident by the photo, with a handful of burials. It didn’t take long to find what we’d been looking for:

Roland and Elizabeth were both natives of New York, perhaps coming to Minnesota by way of Iowa. Roland served in the Civil War for nearly three years. They were the parents of ten children.

Using OneNote as a Research Tool

2011-06-04T13:59:00.001-07:00

In a recent ProGen discussion group I attended, someone mentioned the usefulness of a “notebook” program for doing research, specifically taking notes or abstracting documents. This piqued my curiosity, and already having OneNote*, a notebook program in the Microsoft Office collection installed on my computer, I decided to investigate it further.

There are many tutorials for OneNote on the internet, so I’ll skip the “how-tos,” except to say it was a very intuitive program, and I needed very little formal help to get my first notebook up and running.

I do a fair amount of internet genealogy research, so my bookmarks are of considerable importance to me. I also use different browsers, and oftentimes run them in a sandbox when I’m unsure of the trustworthiness of any particular website. Of course, when you bookmark a website in one browser, you have to bookmark it in any other browsers you use; also, bookmarking a site in a sandboxed browser doesn’t bookmark it in an un-sandboxed version of the same browser, as I learned the hard way. As a result, it was difficult to keep track of which websites I might need for research. To complicate the matter further, I recently got a new computer, and in the process of transferring files, my research bookmarks disappeared.

Enter OneNote… for those unfamiliar with it, it is the digital version of those handy 3 or 5 subject notebooks we all used in high school, except it’s not limited to 5 tabbed sections. The notebook can be stored locally, on your network, or on the internet, making it available from your laptop, if you’re traveling, as long as you have internet access. Your notebook can also be exported as a .pdf file.

After opening the program, I created a notebook which I named “Genealogy Research”, and started making tabbed sections for each area of research I might need to do – General Research, Military, Newspapers, Books, Resources, Miscellaneous, Community (message boards, etc.), Death, Burial, Land Records, Maps, Photos, Immigration, Families, etc. Each of these tabbed sections holds links for the websites I might need while doing my research.

So far, I’ve found it extremely handy to have my Research Notebook open while I’m working. When discovering I need a particular piece of information, clicking on the appropriate tab to see what databases are available, and then having the link right there is making the most of my research time. In addition, when I stumble upon a new link, I can easily add it to the appropriate section or sections.

I have not fully explored all that OneNote can do, but looking at a few of its capabilities, I can see this being a useful tool for more than organizing bookmarks. One of the next applications I’ll be looking at is its usefulness for organizing data on the families I’m researching. Besides adding hyperlinks to the pages, you can add photos, freehand draw or write, etc. Perhaps a “Brickwalls” notebook is next? I am envisioning a section for each of my “brickwalls” with notations about where I’ve looked, what I’ve found, what I know, copies of documents I have, etc.; this is data I’d love to have all in one place, with my thoughts recorded there as well.

As I mentioned, OneNote was included in my software package on my new computer, but there are numerous other Notebook applications available for download, either for a fee, or free. If you haven’t investigated using a notebook program for genealogy work, it might be worth looking into.

*I have no connection to Microsoft, except being an end-user.

Forebear Friday – Hans Seemann

2011-06-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Hans Seemann, along with his brother Detleff, were the first of their family to leave Germany bound for the United States. Hans was the son of John Henry and Maria Seemann, and born 23 Jan 1825 in Schleswig-Holstein.
The brothers settled in Clinton county, Iowa, sending for their parents, siblings, and fiancées, who were sisters, the following year. They all lived together for several years, until each of the brothers obtained his own farm and set out on their own.

Hans and Maria raised a family of nine, seven of whom lived to adulthood: John, Anna Maria, Andrew, Henry, Fred, Carl, and Will. Four of their sons became physicians, and practiced medicine throughout the upper midwest.

In 1884, Hans and Maria sold their farm in Clinton county, and purchased another in Union county, South Dakota. On 05 Sep 1893, while visiting his son Fred in Dubuque, Iowa, Hans became ill, and died at Finley Hospital of pleurisy, complicated by lung cancer. After his death, Maria made her home among her children, passing away while at the home of her son Carl in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Both Hans and Maria are buried at Riverside Cemetery, rural Akron, Plymouth co., Iowa, which was just across the state line from their South Dakota farm.

Above: The family of Hans and Maria Seemann, taken at the farm in South Dakota, when all of the kids came home for their father’s funeral.

Bathing Beauties

2011-05-25T11:34:00.001-07:00

My grandfather, Bill Knutz, found himself a couple of special “hood ornaments” on one hot and sunny summer day in eastern South Dakota – his future wife, Lillian Christensen (right), and her cousin Ruth. This photo, taken in 1935, depicts a common scene at the farm of his parents, Will and Virta Knutz, where their teenage children would stop up the creek to make a “swimming hole,” which was popular with all of the young people in the area.

Forebear Friday – Marx Seemann

2011-05-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Marx Christian Seemann was born 15 Nov 1868 in Jackson county, Iowa, the son of Detlef and Elizabeth (Petersen) Seemann, and among the first generation of the family born in the United States.
Marx operated a tourist bus on the route between Seattle and Vancouver, but had the misfortune to drop a tire jack on his foot, an accident that eventually resulted in gangrene and amputation of his leg in 1923. He then moved back to Jackson county, Iowa, to the home of his brother Henry. Henry died five years later, and Marx then went to Green Island, also in Jackson county, where he purchased a small farm. After his retirement, he moved to Bellevue, Iowa. He had “arteriosclerosis of the brain”, and became violent to the point of having to be sent to the State Hospital for the Insane at Independence, Iowa. He died there, just a few weeks after his arrival.
His obituary, from the Sabula (Iowa) Gazette of Thursday, May 31, 1951:
FUNERAL SERVICES HELD FOR GREEN ISLAND MAN
Funeral services were held at a Bellevue funeral home Monday afternoon for Marx C. Seeman, 81, who passed away at 6:15 p.m. Friday at Independence. The Rev. Laurence Nelson officiated and burial took place in the Reeseville cemetery.
Mr. Seeman was a son of the late Detlef and Elizabeth Petersen Seeman and was born in Jackson county Nov. 15, 1869. He had lived in the Green Island community for many years. He is survived by one sister. Preceding him in death were his parents; a brother, Carl, and a sister, Mrs. William Roe.

Forebear Friday – Detlef Seemann

2011-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Detlef Seemann and his brother Hans left their native Germany in 1853, looking for a place to relocate their family. The brothers settled in Clinton county, Iowa, and the following year, their parents and siblings followed, as well as Detlef and Hans’ fiancees, sisters Maria and Elizabeth Petersen. The extended family lived together for a few years, with Detlef and Elizabeth eventually buying land in Jackson county, just to the north, in Washington township.

Detlef died of “heart trouble” in 1899, and Elizabeth lived another 9 years, passing away in 1908 in Haileyville, Oklahoma. She was initially buried there, but was moved to Reeseville cemetery in Jackson county, Iowa to be buried with her husband and other family members. I do not know, at this time, why she was in Oklahoma. Thomas B. Schultz, a descendant, wrote an excellent history of this family in 1990, entitled, “The American Descendants of Gottfried and Maria Schultz of Schleswig-Holstein Germany”.
Detlef and Elizabeth were the parents of nine children: John Henry, Anna Maria, Mary “Lena”, Peter, Louisa, Marx, Carl G. “Charlie”, Sarah Elizabeth, and Roseltha.

On a trip to Jackson and Clinton counties of Iowa, we located Reeseville cemetery, which sits on top of a hill, with a beautiful view of the surrounding country. Except for the occasional sound of a passing vehicle on the road below, it’s an exceptionally peaceful and serene location. Detlef and Elizabeth’s son Marx is also buried here, as well as other Seemanns whose connection is not yet certain.

Wordless Wednesday – Halloween, 1958

2011-03-30T19:25:00.001-07:00

Genealogy Societies – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

2011-03-30T13:43:00.001-07:00

I don’t know about most people, but I have a limited amount of money to spend on society memberships, so I’m constantly having to evaluate benefit vs. cost. I’d love to join many more, but I need to be selective.

I recently discovered the website for an historical society in an area of genealogical interest – close enough geographically that I could utilize their library and even attend meetings from time to time. I liked that their website had a detailed listing of resources. They had a current events widget. Looked great – I just needed to know about their membership fees, journals published, publications for sale, benefits for members, etc. But none of this information was on their website.

They did have a link to email them, which I did. I received an automated reply stating that if I didn’t hear from anyone in 2 weeks, to call them. Really??

I checked their blog, hoping for more information, but it had only one entry and had not been updated in 7 weeks, except by spammers publishing links to questionable websites. Apparently no one at the society reads the comments of their visitors, legitimate or not. It was a disappointment, and needless to say, that particular society has been crossed off my list for membership. The porch light appears to be on, but nobody’s home.

This experience got me thinking about what I, as both a potential new member and a former society volunteer, value in a genealogical or historical society.

1) I love to see an informative, attractive, easily navigated website. Especially one that’s kept up-to-date with current happenings – it shows me that the society is alive and well. Things are happening there.

2) Current members should have easy online access to the information they need. Potential new members should be given good reasons to join – membership fees and benefits are important; contact information and queries that are attended to promptly is imperative. Show me why joining your society would be a great decision. If I didn’t already have an interest, I wouldn’t be at your website.

3) Societies should publish the best journal possible, and publish it regularly. I appreciate getting what I paid for.

4) On a society’s website, I enjoy a short narrative on the history of the area, or some articles on historical local topics – I want to see how interested and excited a society is about their mission. An anemic society isn’t going to excite potential or existing members much either.

5) Are there volunteer opportunities – proofreading, formatting, transcribing, etc. - that can be done from a distance. I’d like to get involved despite the fact that I don’t live in the area. Is there some way that I can help you help us?

6) I love indexes! I’m elated to find an index with an easy way to get the original. For a small fee, payable quickly and easily by PayPal, the society will print and mail a photocopy of the record I need. I can order it, and get it in the mail a few days later. Awesome! And very forward-thinking!

7) A big bonus is a “Members Only” section of the website, where I can access selected library materials or search more detailed indexes. What a boon to members who live a great distance away, and a great reason to join the society, even if I can’t get to the research library in person.

These are just a handful of things that are most important to me. How do *you* feel about it?

Forebear Friday - Marrying the Enemy? Thomas Nickerson & Mary Bangs

2011-03-25T20:38:00.001-07:00

Perhaps it was a bit of a Romeo and Juliet story. But at the least it might have made for some interesting family reunions. The union of Thomas Nickerson and Mary Bangs (my 8th great-grandparents) in 1696 had the potential to cause quite a stir among their families. Thomas was the grandson of immigrant William Nickerson, and Mary was the granddaughter of Plymouth colonist Edward Bangs.

The problem goes back to land, and their grandfathers. As a member of Plymouth colony, Edward Bangs was among those who had the first rights, given by the Court, for purchasing reserved land from the Indians. William Nickerson, who sought to acquire land and create a settlement, purchased a great deal of this reserved land himself, illegally, a move said to have greatly angered the colonists. Nickerson claimed ignorance of the law, and the matter was in court for many years. While the land was granted to others, Nickerson eventually re-purchased much of it from the grantees, and so started the settlement of Monomoit (Chatham, Massachusetts) as he wished.

I wonder what the reaction of Edward Bangs and William Nickerson might have been to their grandchildren marrying, had they lived to see it...

Forebear Friday – Henry O. Van Brocklin

2011-03-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

Stephenson county, Illinois was in Henry Orville Van Brocklin’s blood. The last child of Florence township pioneers Conrad and Harriet (Searle) Van Brocklin, he was born on 24 Feb 1846 in Freeport.

As a young man, he taught several terms of school, and joined his father in farming the 375 acre home farm. And like his father before him, he held Florence township offices. He took over the farm entirely when his father died in 1877.
He married Mary D. Woolheiser, daughter of Emanuel and Amanda (Crosby) Woolheiser, a native of New York, in 1871. They had five children – a son and a daughter who died in infancy; Inez (born 1875); Iva (b. 1879); and Arthur (born 1881). Inez married Horatio Stevens; Arthur married Mabel Rampenthal; and Iva married Ellis Goodsell, and their sons Wilber and Lowell appear to have ownership of the farm in the late 1950s.
Henry Orville Van Brocklin left this world in the same place he entered it – the city of Freeport – on 6 December 1915, at the age of 69. His wife died some 30 years later. Like so many others of Henry’s family, they was buried in Ellis-Van Brocklin cemetery, immediately across the creek from the family farm.

Sources:

Van Brocklin, H. O. & Mary (Woolheiser). Photograph. ca. 1910. Digital image. Privately held by Christine Martin [address for private use]. 2008.

Van Brocklin, H. O. & Mary (Woolheiser) headstone. Photograph, Ellis-Van Brocklin cemetery, Section 17, Florence township, Stephenson county, Illinois. Digital image. Privately held by Gary and Karen Seeman [address for private use]. 2006.

Portrait & Biographical Album of Stephenson County, Illinois. Chicago: Chapman Brothers. 1888

Forebear Friday – John Q. Adams

2011-03-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

John Quincy Adams had a successful and adventurous life, but then, his family had already established a culture of adventure. His great- grandfather was a founder of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, he and wife Submit being the first settlers. John’s grandfather, Martin Adams with his brother, were among the founders of Newport (then Duncansborough), Vermont, and Martin was a Revolutionary War patriot.
John Q., the son of Abial Adams and Irene Gray, was born 12 Jul 1831 in Newport, Vermont, the sixth of sixteen children. At the age of 16, he moved himself to Burlington, Vermont, to attend college, supporting himself and paying tuition by teaching school. He did this for two years, and then returned to the house of his father. The following year, in 1851, he made his way to Stephenson County, Illinois, and decided to try his luck in the California Gold Rush, heading west in 1853. He spent five years there, after which he returned to Stephenson county with $1,000 and purchased a 240 acre farm in Florence township. He married Julia Van Brocklin, daughter of Florence township pioneers Conrad and Harriet Van Brocklin. About 1900, he was engaged as a store keeper, but otherwise farmed and worked as a carpenter.
He sold his farm in 1901, and relocated to Sutherland, O’Brien County, Iowa. His wife died in 1905, and he in 1907. They were both buried at Waterman Cemetery, just outside of Sutherland.

Adventures in Gardena

2011-03-10T13:55:00.000-08:00

While transcribing old letters written by my great-grandparents, Peter C. and Ella Christensen, I came across the following story, related by Pete to their daughter Lillian in a letter dated Dec. 20, 1946. Pete and Ella had just moved to Gardena, California from Huron, South Dakota, where their daughter and her family still lived.

“I suppose Mother told you about our bad luck with the car, but I know she really didn’t know how it happened so I’ll tell you, ha ha. We went out to Silver Lake, that is where my sister Katrine is living. We stayed there all night as we didn’t have our gas and electricity turned on. So in the morning we went out to our car, it was parked on a hillside, almost a mountain. The brake alone would stop it from going down hill so I left it in low gear. You know it was foggy in the evening so the windshield was clouded over. I got a rag and started to clean it off. Mother climbed in the car. And first thing I knew the car started down hill, very slowly at first. She tried to get out but was afraid to let go of the car. There she was half out and half in, and I had to pull hard on her to make her let go. It’s a wonder she did not get hurt. You know when she got in the car she pushed the lever with her legs and got it out of gear. Next time I’m going to leave it in reverse. The car went across the street and dropped about 10 ft then over another garage and a drop almost straight down of about 20 ft and landed up against a house. It made a big dent in the wall of the house. I’m glad it was not a brick wall. The car never even turned over. A Ford can really take it. Estimated damage to car $180.00 The man who owns the house claims damage to house and lot $3000. A darn good thing I had insurance, don’t you think? It cost $25 to get the car hoisted up to the street again with a crane and 2 trucks. I was able to run the car after it was pulled up. It had one crumpled fender, two damaged running boards, 3 broken windows, broken grill and bent bumper. I’m sure it could never do that again, and be able to run.”

He went on to describe “city driving”:

“You should try to drive a car in San Diego or Los Angeles. They pass you on both sides and if you have to make a right or left turn, and aren’t in the right place it’s just too bad. They are smashing cars every day. I don’t want a new car for awhile. “

Forebear Friday - John Henry Seemann

2011-03-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

John Henry Seemann was born in 1800 in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, the son of Hans Seemann and Christina Petersen Moldt. He married Maria, and they were the parents of 8 children.
In 1853, sons Hans and Detlef left Germany for the United States, in particular, eastern Iowa. The following year, John and Mary boarded with Germania, traveling from Bremen to New York, with sons Johan and Henry. Most, if not all, of their children ended up coming to Iowa. John and Maria purchased land in Jackson county, Iowa later that year, but by 1856 had moved in with their son Hans in Clinton county, just to the south. By 1870, they were back in Jackson county, this time with their son Henry and his family.
John died on 09 April 1873, and Maria went back to Clinton county to son Hans’ home; however, in 1884, Hans’ family sold the farm and moved to South Dakota, and Maria apparently went back to Jackson County, where she died on 26 Sep 1889.
On a trip to this area a few years back, we decided to visit Evergreen cemetery in Jackson County. It’s a beautiful cemetery located next to the backwaters of the Mississippi River, and true to its name, lots of fragrant evergreens dot the landscape. We located the graves of John and Maria, in a family section which included the graves of their son Henry, Henry’s wife Catharina; their daughter Mary Blossfeld and her husband William and daughter Lotta. In another part of the cemetery, John and Maria’s son Peter is buried.

Mountain View Cemetery, Part Two

2011-02-24T04:55:00.000-08:00

Again, many thanks to my dad and stepmother for sharing these wonderful photos of this cemetery near Casa Grande, Arizona.

A grassier section ~

A few more graves ~

The very simple, but touching marker of Rena

Forebear Friday – Abel Parlin Adams

2011-02-18T15:55:00.001-08:00

‘ Abel Adams and his wife, Eliza Hudson

Abel Parlin Adams was the son of Abial and Irena (Gray) Adams, born in Vermont. He left his home in Orleans county, and headed for Massachusetts, there marrying Eliza Hudson, a native of Canada, in 1853 in Lowell, Middlesex county.

Two daughters, Nettie and Jennie, were born about 1857, and in 1859. During these years, Abel worked as a pattern maker, first in Lowell, and later in Fitchburg (Worcester county). He served during the Civil War, spending 4 months and 8 days in Company A, 7th Regiment of the Massachusetts Light Artillery.

He and his family settled in Springfield, Massachusetts, between 1870 and 1880, and after his wife died in 1901, he moved in with his youngest daughter Jennie and her husband, Charles Martensen. There he lived for the next twenty years.

There is a death certificate for Abel in his hometown of Newport, Vermont; I have no doubt that this is his death. However, it states his “usual residence” is in Newport, which is somewhat confusing. He died August 4, 1920, in Newport. But in January of 1920, when the census was taken, he was still living with his daughter Jennie in Springfield, at the age of 87 years. Did he moved back to Newport? If so, why? And with whom did he live? His oldest daughter was in Chicago, so it wasn’t her. Was he visiting there when he died? Was the “usual residence” an error on the part of the city clerk?

Abel was buried with his wife in Oak Grove cemetery in Springfield.

Mountain View Cemetery

2011-02-17T05:30:00.000-08:00

Recently my father and stepmother decided to pay a visit to Mountain View Cemetery, near Casa Grande, Arizona. They have shared photos they took of a few of the incredible memorials they found there. I was awestruck by how personalized some of these burial sites are, and how strikingly different they are from the cemeteries I’ve visited. I would love to see this cemetery personally.

Above: An overview of one section of the cemetery – the mounds are interesting, and quite a contrast to another section, below:

And still another section:

In looking at the cemetery photos, the incredible personalization of the burial sites was very touching.

More photos of some of the other unique graves to come ~

And we lived to tell about it...

2011-02-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

I was just transcribing one of my great-grandmother’s diaries, telling of their trip to the Oahe Dam in South Dakota. The year was 1956; they all piled into my Uncle Ray’s station wagon: Grandma and Grandpa, their two daughters and sons-in-law, and 6 kids on a mattress in the back of the wagon.

Reading this, I could almost feel my brother’s elbows in my ribs, and getting squashed by a gaggle of cousins on any of the road trips we took under similar conditions. Sometimes there were so many kids piled in the backseat that we really weren’t sure whose foot that was... and to make things even more exciting, there were oftentimes a dog or two in the mix.

Sometimes we’d pile into the back of my dad’s yellow pickup truck for a ride; I can still feel the wind whipping my hair around violently like it was just yesterday. It was so exhilarating...

Awhile back in our local paper, there was an article about winter safety, and they mentioned that pulling sleds with vehicles wasn’t safe. Even with a long rope, out in the middle of a field? No!! I felt a pain through my very heart! Again, another portion of my beloved childhood memories were relegated to the Hall of Shame.

I’m not saying any of this is good, or bad, just that it’s different. Times change. The world changes. Are we better off? I don’t know. Did the parents of the 1950s look back at past generations and think them nonchalant where safety was concerned? I wonder. I know only one thing ... that I won’t be telling my grandchildren about the time we ... never mind.

Image courtesy of office.com

Future Friday – Photo Albums with a Twist, Part II

2011-02-04T05:30:00.000-08:00

Last month I began a project to bring life to our family photos, and to make them meaningful to future generations. At the time of my previous post, my mother and I had sat down with a photo album, a digital audio recorder, and, of course, her memories and stories. We now have completed the project for this album, and I wanted to share our experience.

TRANSCRIBING

After recording our conversation, I transcribed it as closely as possible. This was probably the most difficult part of the project, but I discovered some simple tactics that made it easier. After transferring the audio file from the recorder to my computer, I used a media player to play it back, and transcribed it into a template I’d made in my word processing program. I used different colored text for each person, to make the conversation easier to follow. I could transcribe one person’s sentence, pause the recording, then simply move my cursor to the next line, and the text would automatically change color.

One of the helpful features of the media player I used was the timeclock feature. Since this was a labor-intensive job, I did it in small bits, and by noting the clock reading (in green) I could easily pick up where I left off, or find this place in the recording if I needed to in the future.

SCANNING

After the transcribing was done, I scanned the pages of the photo album, in order, using numeric filenames (01, 02, etc). I scanned at 400 dpi, and saved the files as .tif.

PROCESSING

When the scanning was complete, I went back to the first scan and worked page by page. I first re-read the transcription pertaining to that page to “refamiliarize” myself with the details. Using Irfanview to process the photos (I have no connection to this company, just like their software), I cropped each one and resized it to a manageable size, but still large enough to show detail clearly, and saved a copy as a .jpg. These smaller versions would be incorporated into an online photo album, while keeping the original, larger scans as they were.

Again using Irfanview, I added extra “canvas” to the bottom of each photo, where I could add text. I added the year (or an estimation), identified the people in the photo, and added any stories or pertinent details.

ORGANIZING

When I saved these .jpg copies, I used a particular formula for the filename:

1950_museum_93.jpg

1950 represents the year (if I didn’t know it, I’d estimate and use “1950Abt”) to keep the files in somewhat of a chronological order. The middle part pertains to the subject. If I had several photos of the same subject, I used, for instance, “museum1”, “museum2”, etc. to keep similar photos together when sorted by filename. The last number refers to the original scan number, in case I wanted to locate the high-resolution version of this picture in the future.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT

Once I had this completed, I created a PhotoBucket account and uploaded the .jpgs. Again, I have no connection to this particular company. I use it because their free account offers a lot of space, the ability to set up multiple photo albums in one account, and offers a “guest” password so other family members can access the photos while still keeping them private from the general public. One of the options I could chose was to sort the photos by filename, and because of the particular nomenclature I described above, the photos are in reasonable chronological order, with photos of similar occasions together, with very little effort.

All in all, this is a big project, but priceless for our descendants. I want to bring life, interest and, in a sense, immortality to the people in these photos, who might otherwise have ended up as a bunch of smiling strangers on the page of an album. We have many more albums to “enhance”, but I believe this is one of the best investments we’ll ever make.

Forebear Friday – Herb Ulmer

2011-02-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

Herb Ulmer was both the quintessential cowboy and a dapper gentleman. Born in 1915 along the rolling hills of the Missouri River valley in South Dakota, he moved with his family to the middle of the state at a very early age. His parents, Christian and Katherina Ulmer, settled in Ree Heights, among the gently rolling hills, where they farmed. Herb was ninth in a family of ten children. His father died when Herb was just six, and three years later, his mother married Christian Rosenau.
Herb earned his high school diploma in 1932 at Ree Heights and married Jessie Ball seven years later. In the following years he owned a dance hall at St. Peter, Minnesota, and after coming back to Ree Heights, owned a billiards establishment. But horses were his passion.

Herb traveled the rodeo circuit throughout the United States, riding in roping events, bringing home numerous trophies and buckles. In 1964, he won the South Dakota State Barrel Racing Championship with “Rusty Habit”, pictured at right with Herb’s wife Jessie. After retiring from the rodeo circuit, he started a horse breeding operation at Ree Heights, and raced his horses throughout the midwest. He continued the remainder of his career as a winner, both at the horse races and as a breeder, turning out many future champions.
His wife Jessie was killed in a car accident in 1971, and Herb continued alone at their ranch for the next two years, until he married my widowed mother-in-law, Louise, and became a vital part of the family. While he had no biological children, he took on the role of father, and eventually grandfather, with a tremendous amount of patience and enthusiasm. Everyone loved him, and with good reason. Herb passed away in 1996. We’ll see him again someday. Until then, we’ll treasure the memories.

Forebear Friday – Ella Monsen Christensen

2011-01-27T23:09:00.001-08:00

Gabriella Alfhilde Monsen looks like just a wisp of a girl, but she must have been tough. Born in Bergen, Norway in 1884, Ella was the daughter of Gabriel Monsen and his wife Alvilda Marie Olsen. Her father, a fisherman by trade, was caught in a violent storm off the coast of Norway when Ella was about 7, and vanished. After the death of her father, the family lived in a small apartment in Bergen, her mother taking in washing to put food on the table. By the time Ella was 16, she was helping to support her family by working as a domestic servant.

In April of 1904, at the age of 20, Ella boarded a ship destined for the United States, to the home of her paternal uncle Rasmus “Rob” Sandene in Miner County, South Dakota. She would never return to her home country again. “Uncle Rob”, who had himself left Norway in 1887, helped the new immigrants of the family, one by one, to acclimate to their new culture. It was there that Ella learned English, and then again forged out on her own, taking a job as a domestic servant in Huron, about 60 miles away. In the next five years, her brother and sister also left Norway. Alvilda did not join her children here until 1915.

Ella married Peter C. Christensen, a Danish immigrant who owned Bell Bakery, in May of 1911. They also spent time farming in rural Beadle County. She was a farm wife who raised five children – Lillian, Raymond, Clarence, Edna and Sylvia, and later helped to raise Lillian’s children, who lived on a farm just down the road. Her granddaughter Betty has some very fond memories of her, and what a fun grandmother she was. She was nice to everyone, but she was also stern.

In 1947, they sold their farm in Beadle county and left behind the hard work and brutal winters. They retired to a lovely home with a park-like corner lot in Gardena, California, where they enjoyed fruit trees and a koi pond. Their children Clarence and Sylvia married and raised families there as well. She was just 67 when she died at her home of heart failure five years later. She is buried at Roosevelt Memorial Park Cemetery.

Forebear Friday – Abial Adams

2011-01-20T20:15:00.001-08:00

Above: Abial Abbott Adams and his wife, Irene Gray

My first post for Forebear Friday highlights Abial Abbott Adams. How can you not love facial hair like this?

Abial Adams was born about 1802 in Newport, Orleans co., Vermont, said by some to be the first white child born within the present limits of that town. He was the son of Revolutionary War patriot Martin Adams and his wife, Mercy Ryder Adams.

He married Irene Gray about 1825, and they appear to have spent their lives in Newport, appearing there in each census from 1830 through 1870. He supported his family by farming, and he also owned a sawmill.

Abial and Irene were the parents of 15 children: Ira, David, Daniel, Lucretia, James, John, Abel, Oscar, Mercy, Newell, Orin, Harriet, Donald, Ransom, and Frank.

It is unclear exactly when Abial died, some time between 1879 and 1881. I could locate neither Abial nor his wife in the 1880 census. She died 01 Apr 1885 in Newport. Both are buried in Lake Road Cemetery in Newport.

Future Friday – Photo Albums with a Twist

2011-01-20T20:14:00.001-08:00

Thanks go out to Jenn at Your Growing Tree for the idea of Future Friday. The idea is to get us thinking about helping future generations to know *us*. A few weeks ago I set a goal for 2011: to create biographies and record family stories of the more “recent” generations of our family.

My first project will be to “enhance” our family’s photo albums. As a finished product, I envision scanned photos of ample size for easy viewing of details. Each photo will have all persons and places identified, as completely as possible, with any background stories or interesting tidbits included.

I planned to attack this project by sitting down with my mother, a photo album, and a digital voice recorder. Together, we will go through the albums and reminisce, capturing our conversation on the recorder. Thanks to the recorder, we should be able to concentrate more on telling the stories and less on the business of preserving the stories.

To prepare, I dug out my RCA Digital Voice Recorder, which I had not used in 2 years, and re-familiarized myself with its operation. I then gave it fresh batteries, and started testing various settings and recorder placement to ensure a good finished product, easy to hear and understand, since we have only one shot at this with any sort of spontaneity.

We got comfortable at the dining room table, with the recorder, a photo album, and a notebook and pen, just in case we needed to write something down, although the idea was to be less structured and more conversational. It took very little time to forget that the recorder was on, although I did try to note every time we turned the page, and give a quick, descriptive comment on the first photo on the page, as a “landmark” I can use when matching the conversation to the correct photos.

It took us about an hour and a half to go through the album, and we had a great time. I learned more about our family’s activities and chronology than I could have hoped for. These were all things that my mom had not thought to mention, and I never knew to ask. And best of all, I wasn’t desperately trying to write all of this down, or remember it correctly; the recorder was taking care of that for me.

The next step will be scanning the album pages, in order, and in a large enough size to make the faces and details easily seen. I am still considering how to organize these photos. Currently, I have my old digitized photos organized into folders by year, and within the folders, by file name – not exactly ideal for my purposes now. I had considered looking for photo album software, but would prefer something in a more universal format for sharing and backing up. I am looking into the various online photo storage sites.

I will then transcribe our recorded conversation and comments verbatim. I’m still working on exactly how I’m going to put the comments and stories together with the photos, but will likely extract facts from the transcription, and enhance the pages of photos with them.

I’ll keep you posted!

The Diary Project

2011-01-10T18:53:00.001-08:00

Tonight I finished transcribing one of the two existing diaries of my great-grandmother, Elvirta Graves Knutz; she started this particular journal in 1956 at the age of 66. I have 221 typed pages representing eleven years of her life.

When I started this project, I had hoped for two things: 1) to glean genealogical information, and 2) to get to know my great grandmother in a deeper, more personal way.

I did indeed fill in a lot of dates and family happenings, but was a little disappointed when it came to getting her perspective on life. She was very good at reporting events, both major events and daily activities, but she didn’t share much of her feelings about those events. Once, she did let a little anger show regarding her husband’s unwillingness to sell the farm and move to town; and another time, a bit of smug satisfaction at having shown him she wasn’t quite as dumb as he seemed to think. It was fun to see these emotions in an otherwise quiet and dutiful wife and mother.

Not everyone has the opportunity to go back in time and spend 11 years with family members they love and miss; I have been extremely blessed to get to do just that. Over these years, I not only “spent time” with my great grandparents, but my beloved grandparents, and even my own parents, as teenagers and then newlyweds. In many ways, I felt like Marty McFly in “Back to the Future,” watching as my parents courted, married, and began to raise a family. I found this becoming less and less of a transcription project, and more and more of a chance to spend time with people I hadn’t seen in a very, very long while.

I didn’t realize just how deeply I had been absorbed into this until the last few months of my great-grandfather’s life, “listening” as my great grandmother told the difficult story of his death, and the days after. Like her, there were times I didn’t think I wanted to keep going. But at the same time, I couldn’t stop.

The diary ends abruptly the following year. Elvirta had gone to Arizona to visit her daughter, and had been there 7 months, and suddenly, there are no more pages. She lived another five years, so I assume there was another notebook somewhere. I hope the rest of it turns up some day, and I can resume our visit and finish her story.

“K” is for Karen

2010-12-29T15:29:00.001-08:00

Although not a man to be obsessed with material things, my grandfather’s 1952 Kaiser Deluxe was one of his most treasured possessions. In the last 30 years he owned it, it typically sat in one half of the garage, covered with a soft blanket, taken out once a year to be cleaned and waxed. It had been retired from active service about 1965 or so, but from the time he bought the car in 1952 until then, it was used daily.

The Kaiser-Frazer company churned out its first model with the Kaiser Special, a 4-door sedan, in 1947, and continued to produce automobiles in the United States until 1955. Midway through 1952, Bill Knutz, in Huron, South Dakota, purchased what would be his only brand-new car, at the age of 41. Typically a thrifty man by necessity, this seemed to be a very uncharacteristic thing for him to do, but he was moving his family from the farm to Gardena, California, had just sold his entire herd of cattle, and needed reliable transportation. Knowing these facts, It seems like a sensible and practical thing to do. But knowing his lifelong love of cars, I’m sure he was secretly and thoroughly thrilled about it.

Grandpa and I spent much time in that car, as it was his job to entertain me while my Grandma was shopping or getting groceries. He told me many stories during those hours, and he had me convinced that the “K” in the center of the steering wheel was for “Karen.” I bought it, hook, line and sinker, well past the point that I should have known better. There’s still a part of me that loves to think that if Grandpa had his way, that K would truly stand for “Karen.”

An uncle inherited the Kaiser after Grandpa’s death in 1996, and sold it, as I understand, to a collector. I’d love to know where it ended up, or even some day to see it again. Wherever it is, I just hope that its new owner knows what very special memories are embedded in that vehicle.

Up In Flames

2010-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

In the early morning hours on May 8, 1957, a bolt of lightening changed the lives of the Bill and Lillian Knutz family of Beadle county, South Dakota. They were my grandparents.

Below, left: the newspaper account, as it appeared in the May 8, 1957 edition of the Huronite and Daily Plainsman (Huron, South Dakota). Right, the incident as related by Bill’s mother, Elvirta Knutz, in her diary:

“Tuesday night an electrical storm came up and a bolt of lightening struck Bill’s house; they knew it struck but didn’t know it set a fire so they went to bed. It struck about 12 and about 1:30 they all woke up smelling smoke. Bill went out for a look, Betty did too they saw the kitchen-roof was a blaze; Betty opened the stair door, it was full of smoke and 1 wall was on fire. It just happened the kids and all slept down stairs because of the storm which was a good thing; for they would have been trapped up stairs. Bill was going to phone for the fire department but the phone was burnt out also the electricity. Lillian and the kids carried out things; Bill did too when he got back. Mrs. Ted Walters phoned to us about a quarter till 2 so we went over. They run out of water and so they couldn’t save the house, they broke out windows and carried out things. Everything up-stairs burnt, so did everything in the kitchen and bathroom; some things were saved in the (living) room, some burned. The kids’ clothing all burned except what they had on; Betty was without shoes and Donny had his pajamas on, no shoes. Before we left the scene of the fire some neighbors came with clothing. Every one were helping with donations of clothing, canned goods, cooking utencils [sic], towels, and wash-cloths.”

My mother, who was a teenager at the time of the fire, said the house was actually struck by lightening twice; the first bolt took out the electricity, and the second started the fire. She also related that her father ran to the neighbor’s house rather than drove, a distance of over a mile away, to use their phone. When it became apparent that the house could not be saved, the firemen broke out windows and threw whatever of the family’s belongings they could grab, out into the yard.

The two older girls stayed with Bill’s sister in Huron, and the rest of the family stayed with Bill’s parents. In the meantime, they began looking for a house that they could move to the farm:

(from the Thursday, May16 edition of the Huronite and Daily Plainsman, Huron, South Dakota)

However, the plans changed when they found a house in town, pictured at right, and purchased it on May 20. Bill made daily trips to the farm to do his chores. The new house was just a half block from the home of Maurice and Loretta Sloan, their farm friends who had recently moved to town. My grandmother and Mrs. Sloan maintained their close friendship for the rest of their lives. My grandfather continued making daily trips to the farm until he sold it about 1972.

Terror and Glory

2010-12-18T19:20:00.001-08:00

Our cold, South Dakota Christmases were always warmed up by the excitement of gathering with our large family of cousins at my grandmother’s house on Christmas eve. Besides a multitude of squirrely children of all ages, there were wonderful Norwegian treats such as krumkake and lefse, and a dinner consisting of lutefisk smothered with melted butter. And every year, after dinner and before opening presents, one of the granddaughters would be selected to read the story of Christ’s birth from Luke, Chapter 2.

There was a cluster of granddaughters within four of five years of age of each other, of which I was the youngest, and then a few more younger than I. And every year I watched as one of the older ones was hand-picked by Grandma to read the Bible story. What an honor! I watched in awe as Sheila flawlessly read the verses; and the following year it was Julie’s turn, and again, I was so struck by what a beautiful job she did, and how “grown up” they both were. Then, it was Cheryl’s turn; Cheryl was a little closer to my own age. Cheryl did a wonderful job too, but I was a little miffed that I hadn’t been selected myself. The following year, Cindy was the chosen one. Of all my cousins, I was closest to Cheryl and Cindy. So I was mad. Really mad. I’m sure they both managed to shine beautifully in their moments of glory, but I never noticed, because I Was Mad. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that Grandma had started this tradition with the oldest granddaughter, and was working her way down. But I suspect I would have been mad anyway.

After Cindy finished her reading, Grandma approached me and gave me the honor for the following year. I went from mad to terrified almost instantly! I fretted for a few weeks, then put it out of my mind until the following Thanksgiving, when my anxiety began anew. And, a few weeks before Christmas, when I took a look at the passage in the Bible, and saw words like Cyrenius, Judea, and a lot of others I couldn’t pronounce, I was ready to leave the country and come back after the holidays were over!

But my moment of honor came, and I did fine. I really don’t remember who got The Nod for the following year, or the year after that. Once my feelings of adoration, anger, terror, and glory came and went, who did the reading didn’t seem all that important anymore.

Despite the mix of emotions I had over this tradition, two years ago I decided to revive it within my own granddaughters. I’m up to three of them now, although only two can read. And I sincerely hope that as the years go on, none of them get jealous or angry or stressed about it. Because this is the unparalleled story of hope and redemption for all people, and that, after all, is something to celebrate.

Have a Blessed Christmas!

Graphic courtesy of Atlantic Fish

Future Friday

2010-12-17T15:19:00.001-08:00

First, I’d like to thank Jenn at Your Growing Tree for the idea of Future Friday. The idea is to get us thinking about helping future generations to know *us*. I’ve taken some time to evaluate all of my current genealogical “goodies” and have picked one particular area of focus: family stories and biographies.

More and more, genealogy-related documents and transcriptions are making their way online. Twenty years from now, finding facts about individuals in our family trees will probably be easier than ever. But finding personal information about these people – likes, dislikes, habits, hobbies, personality traits, life experiences, etc. – will be equally as hard without someone recording this information now. To address this in my own family, I have set a few of goals for 2011:

1) Take the time to jot down a few notes about my more “recent” ancestors, those whom I knew personally, or knew through family stories. To keep this goal a realistic one, I am not going to write formal biographies, but instead will concentrate on recording as much as I can about as many people as possible. I (or someone else) can always take the time to write a more “polished” biography in the future.

2) Complete a personal biography. No amount of documents can help you get to know an ancestor like an autobiography. I had resisted doing this for my own life, primarily because I don’t think I’m that interesting. However, several of the personal biographies I have begin with, “I’m only writing this because my daughter insists,” or “I don’t understand why anyone would ever want to read this, but...” so perhaps it will be the same with my story and my descendants. I was inspired by OurStory.com, a free site that allows collaboration among people in getting stories and timelines recorded. (I have no affiliation whatsoever with this site, nor its creators.) While I don’t feel compelled to put my stories online, they do offer a number of “question sets” that were easy to use and were very effective in reviving old memories. I started writing my story several years ago, and set it aside when life got busy. This coming year, I’m going to attempt to get it up to date, or at least make some significant progress.

This would also be a great “group activity” if you’re getting together with siblings, cousins, etc., for the holidays. What great fun it would be to get a bunch of them together, with a pot of coffee, a digital recorder, and one of these question sets! The result would be a priceless gift for our descendants.

There are many other ways in which a family historian could assist future generations, but with a limited amount of time available, this is what I will be tackling. Did I just make a New Year’s Resolution??

Wedding Wednesday – 47 years later

2010-12-15T20:55:00.001-08:00

In her diary entry of Saturday, March 30, 1957, my great grandmother Virta Knutz recalled the day she married her husband Will:

“47 years ago today we were married and such a day as it was; it rained, hailed, wind blew hard and it blizzarded all before noon but that did not stop me; Delbert [her brother] took me to the depot and waited with me till the train came; I had to go to Huron (from Esmond) to meet Will. Henry Thompson and his girl Stella were there to be married at the same time we were; we were witnesses for each other. We ate our dinner in a hotel which is now torn down and there is a gas station and truck parking lot there now. After dinner we were married and did some shopping and drove home; we used horse and buggy those days, had to drive about 7 miles; got home I got my first meal for us; which was (as I remember) bacon and eggs and potatoes.”

Above: Their marriage certificate

They would celebrate eight more anniversaries together before Will’s death in 1966.

The End of an Era, Rapidly Approaching

2010-12-11T20:30:00.001-08:00

Tonight I’m feeling a bit wistful at the thought of finally completing my grandmother’s quilt. It’s been a project that on one hand, I have treasured, but on the other hand, has had me terrified – terrified that the finished product would not be something that my grandmother would have liked, or that I would not be up to completing the task correctly.

There have been some major hurdles – trying to decipher the pattern for the blocks by trial and error - coming up with a design that incorporated both my grandmother’s blocks, and my aunt’s dark gold border around them - finding era-appropriate fabric - and making that fabric look “old” so that it would blend in with the 1940s feed sacks my grandmother used. These problems solved, I was making good progress reproducing the blocks until I figured out a way to “improve” them, and ultimately rendering most of them unusable in the process. Frustrated, I set the project aside for more than two months. I finally got inspired again last night and salvaged four of the blocks, to complete the corners. I was able to keep the dark gold border done by my aunt, thereby making this a “three generation quilt.”

This evening, as I pin-basted the quilt to the batting and backing, listening to the howling wind and snow outside, I thought of the first quilt I ever made – a Dresden plate made from another grandmother’s blouses. It, too, was basted on what was (up until tonight) the worst blizzard we’ve had since moving here, twenty-some years ago. It seems I do my most significant work while the snow piles up outside.

Basting completed, it will next be hand-quilted, once I come up with a design. I’ve jumped the most difficult hurdles with the quilt and it should be easy enough from this point on, which almost makes me a little sad. After 70 years, and three generations, the quilt is nearly complete. It will be the end of an era.

100th COG Edition - There's One In Every Family: The Upbuilding of a School District

2010-11-24T20:03:00.001-08:00

On the northern coast of the Land of the Midnight Sun, in the village of Kjøllefjord, a school system was built up from nothing to a thriving environment for learning, by a woman I’m proud to call my grandmother.

Kjøllefjord, Finnmark

The year was 1925, and 23 year old Lise Klungseth had just graduated from teacher’s college in Oslo, and like every other graduate, was looking for a job. The market was flooded, and teaching positions were generally hard to come by. However, Lise had read about Finnmark, and the work of Pastor Otterbeck, who was trying to bring Christianity to the laplanders and Finlanders in the area, many of whom did not speak Norwegian. There weren’t many teachers willing to go there because, as Lise put it, there were times “when the sun does not shine for two months,” and the area was nowhere near as cultured as southern Norway. She described Kjøllefjord as “about as far away from home as you can get.”

map courtesy of Google Maps. The pin marks the location of Kjøllefjord

Lise soon found herself employed in one of the poorest districts in Finnmark. Her teaching position was split between three different schools, one month at each place, traveling between them by boat. Her schoolhouses consisted of single rooms in private houses, with no books, pencils or papers. Lise provide what they needed out of her own pocket. Eventually, she was “promoted” to only having two schools.

When World War II broke out, the people of Kjøllefjord had to run for their lives. Lise went back home to her parents’ home, and the following spring, to her sister’s home in Trondheim, where she was offered a very good teaching job. While there, she received a telegram from the director of schools in Finnmark, asking her to return to Kjøllefjord. Recalling what little she had to work with there, she asked: Do you have a schoolhouse? No. Do you have desks for the children to sit on? No. Do you have books? No. What do you have? Children.

Something inexplicable led her to say yes, quit her job in Trondheim, and head north. She said, “I was the happiest person in the world, just like everybody else who was coming back because the Germans were gone, the country was ours and we were able to build it up again.”
Once there, they were able to arrange for a log cabin, which had served as a hospital during the war, to use as their schoolhouse. The mayor of the village asked Lise what she needed – she asked for carpenters, and was given them. She worked alongside them, finishing the rooms and commencing her classes. She taught from 8:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. She was able to get three students from Oslo to come and help with the teaching duties. They made do with whatever supplies they could find, until one day a mysterious box, sent from Canada, arrived at the school, filled with paper and pencils. More boxes followed – with books! They never did find out who sent those badly needed supplies, but they were grateful beyond words.

The new school building in Kjøllefjord

Lise continued to build up the school, and was eventually promoted to Principal, with six teachers employed, a new and modern schoolhouse, complete with an intercom system, among other "luxuries.”

Her life was diverted from the children of Kjøllefjord in 1952, when she received a letter from my widowed grandfather, who was a lifelong friend, asking her to come to the United States. She did, and the rest is history. But I’m certain that leaving Kjøllefjord, where she had invested so much of herself, was probably one of the hardest things she had ever done. She left behind her permanent gift to that village – an educational system to be proud of.

Lise, on a visit back to her old school in Kjøllefjord, in the 1980s. Notice her picture on the wall, at left, a copy of which is below.

The Pink Bowl

2010-11-24T10:42:00.001-08:00

The pink Stetson Melmac bowl has been a part of our Thanksgiving tradition as far back as I can remember. It belonged to my maternal grandmother, and only on special occasions did she take it from its designated spot in the buffet. We would sit around the large oak pedestal table, all the leaves having been added to accommodate the four generations. Grandpa was seated at the head of the table, and the three kids would fight over the two chairs on either side of him. I vividly remember staring at the bowl from my place at the table, being too short to see inside, and wondering what deliciously wonderful surprise Grandma had put in it, as it was passed from person to person. Sometimes it was mashed potatoes, sometimes a vegetable dish, sometimes it was fruit salad. Didn’t matter. Anything she cooked was especially tasty, but there was something about that pink bowl... the sight of it still makes my mouth water in anticipation.

After Grandma passed away in 1991, my sister and I were sharing our precious memories of dinner around her holiday tables, when Grandpa surprised us by telling us to take the bowl home. I like to think I would have insisted my sister take it, but thankfully, it was not an issue. We were delighted to discover there were actually *two* pink bowls, as pictured in the photo above, side by side. Now, at each “pink bowl occasion”, we compare notes about what will be served in them, hundreds of miles apart.

It’s hard to imagine a Thanksgiving without the pink bowl, and the precious and comforting memories of times past.

Civilian Conservation Corps Records

2010-10-22T07:46:00.001-07:00

The Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the most popular New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, offered jobs to unemployed young men. Most of them, aged 18-24, were from families on public relief during the Great Depression, and had few other prospects for employment. Some three million of them applied, passed a physical, and made their promise of a minimum 6 months’ service, before they were sent to work constructing parks, planting trees, working on public roadways, and constructing buildings on public lands. In return, they were given room and board, plus a small wage. They were required to send money to their families back home.

I had heard that my father-in-law, Bob, had taken a job with the C.C.C. when a young man, but had no details. While we know a fair amount about his life, the years from 1930 to 1950 were somewhat fuzzy. I contacted the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis several times inquiring about records before finally receiving an answer informing me that his records were available. I filled out the paperwork required, sent in $60, and waited. Within two weeks, I had a packet of about a dozen pages of information. I was hoping what I found was worth the cost and the persistence.

Through the information found in these records, in addition to information I already had, I was able to put together a fairly good timeline. The family moved from Hand County, South Dakota to Spearfish sometime in 1937. Bob attended his first year of high school in Spearfish, but went to work at the Red Owl Grocery store in January of 1938 as a “helper”. He worked there three months, and was unable to find another job until his enrollment in the C. C. C. in July.

He was AWOL for 3 days after Christmas in 1938, and “AWOP” for five days after that, all for unknown reasons. He was “Absent With Out Pay” from 6/19/1939 (the day his step-father passed away) to 6/26/1939 (when he was discharged) for “Emergency Leave”. Before the year was out, Bob, his mother, and his siblings had relocated back to their home in Hand County.

I learned a few personal details about Bob that I had not known. He was barely 17 when he quit high school to go to work, but during his first three months with the Corps, he expressed interest in completing some high school coursework. Had he put aside his own education to help his family financially? Or had he quit school for other reasons? The interest in completing high school was apparently still there.

I learned that Bob considered himself best suited for work as a mechanic, but was hoping to work as a traveling salesman after completion of his C. C. C. enrollment. While he did work at implement and hardware stores, he never did sell his wares on the road.

I didn’t know he was small kid - 5’5” and 124 pounds – when entering the C. C. C. camp. Upon his discharge a year later, he had grown an inch, and gained 11 pounds. Later photos of him depict a slightly stocky build.

He was called “honest and reliable” by his camp adviser, and described as an “able and dependable workman.” He enjoyed reading while at the camp.

While the C. C. C. file did not reveal any surprising news, it did present a snapshot in time of Bob’s youth, his interests and abilities, and his character. Since he died young, learning these little bits of information from whatever sources we can find is especially important, as there aren’t many people left who knew him directly, particularly at this stage in his life.

Some of the more interesting pieces of information in the file, besides the basic birth date, birth place, and address, included an educational and work history. Results of the physical exam were also in the file. Work preferences, as well as the kind of work actually done, was also noted.

To find if your Great Depression era ancestor has C. C. C. records available, write to the National Personnel Records Center, Civilian Personnel Records, 111 Winnebago Street, St. Louis, Missouri, 63118-4126. Be sure to include as much information as you can about your ancestor: name, birth date and place, home address, parents’ names, specific dates of C. C. C. employment, if known, and any other applicable information.

Sources:

Bailey, Thomas A., "The American Pageant: A History of the Republic", D. C. Heath and Company, Boston.
Wikipedia
Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy (www.ccclegacy.org)

Why Seeing it With Your Own Eyes is a Good Idea

2010-10-15T21:42:00.001-07:00

There were a million reasons to skip stopping at the cemetery – we didn’t know where the grave was located. It was a huge cemetery. We had a lot of work to do at the library. We wanted to squeeze in a visit to another town. It was nearly lunch time. We already had a picture of the grave, supplied by a distant cousin. So, other than a haunting feeling (no pun intended) that we should stop and pay our respects, there really wasn’t a logical reason to bother.

Such was our “quick” day trip to New Ulm, in Brown county, Minnesota. We were actually going there to do some research on my husband’s Ulmer relatives, but his great-grandfather Conrad Schlechter and Conrad’s second wife Mary Fischer Schlechter, from another branch of his family, were buried there as well. After the death of Conrad’s first wife in South Dakota, he left his family and moved to New Ulm, where he met and eventually married Mrs. Fischer in 1922.

As I mentioned, we had a photo of their graves, and by looking at the background details, were able to zero in on its location rather quickly. I snapped a few pictures of my own, we paid our respects, and on the way back to the car it occurred to me to check the back of the stone, just in case there was a verse or something special on it. What I found befuddled me.

Melchior Hippert, 12 June 1858 – 14 May 1888

Katharine Hippert, 30 Oct 1883 – 20 July 1900

Richard Geisinger, 06 Feb 1855 – 13 May 1911

M. A. Hippert, 28 May 1888 – 17 May 1918

Otto J. Geisinger, 14 July 1890 – 14 July 1932

In addition, there was a small, flat stone on either side, one that read “Otto J. Geisinger, July 14, 1890 – July 14, 1932” and one that read “Mother.”

Mary was born in 1862, and died in 1938. Who were the Hipperts? And the Geisingers? I had not heard these surnames before. Were they friends from Germany? Perhaps Mary’s siblings? Why were they all buried together?

We went to the library, and I immediately began looking at census records while my husband looked through the surname file for these new names. In the next few hours, we learned that Mrs. Mary Fischer Schlechter was born Mary Dauer, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lorenz Dauer. She first married Melchior Hippert (1858-1888); their children were Katharine (1883-1900), Dora (1885-?), and Melchior A. (1888-1918). The year after Mr. Hippert’s death, she married Richard Geisinger (1855-1911) and had one son: Otto J. Geisinger (1890-1932). After Mr. Geisinger’s death, she married Carl Fischer. Whether this marriage ended in Mr. Fischer’s death or divorce is currently unknown. She then married Conrad Schlechter.

Besides being able to put together the pieces of this family puzzle, we learned that the Geisinger’s operated the Chicago House hotel in New Ulm, and we obtained a photo of it. In addition, we acquired a photo of Mary Dauer Hippert Geisinger Fischer Schlechter (whew!).

The Chicago House Hotel, New Ulm, Minnesota

Mary Schlechter

The new information and photos were great, but the most valuable thing I received that day was a lesson – taking the time to consult the original, whenever possible, be it a book, document, or gravestone, is crucial. It may not always pay off in a wealth of new information, but then again, it just might.

Mystery Monday – What Am I??

2010-10-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

This … umm… “item” belonged to my grandmother, Lisa Hammer, who came to the United States from Norway in the 1950s. I suspect it had something to do with making lefse, or some other Norwegian treat, but I’m not at all certain. It’s relatively heavy, and would make a great weapon!

Has anyone seen an item like this?

Zumbro Hill Cemetery

2010-10-09T19:10:00.001-07:00

I can honestly say I’ve never worked so hard to photograph a cemetery. While I was fairly sure the Sisson I was looking for was not buried in that cemetery, I thought as long as we were that close, we should check it out. From Forestville, Minnesota, it was about “6 blocks and up the hill.”

Actually, it was well over a mile from where we were able to park, and a long, dry, dusty walk in the unseasonably warm 89 degree sun. Sweating profusely, I thought then about turning around, not being prepared for anything too physical, and certainly not dressed appropriately for a hike, but since we were approaching the hill where the cemetery was located, I thought the worst was over. But the climb up the forested hill was not something that two fat, middle aged people should have attempted in the heat of the day. Had I known just how far up the hill this cemetery was located, I’m not sure I would have continued, but once there, the solitude and peace was incredible.

The photo above shows the semi-cleared area where the cemetery is located, and just to the right of the center, you can see the two still-standing stones, the remainder of them on the ground. Having climbed that long, steep hill, I have to wonder how these pioneers managed to get the caskets up there.

Lewis Adams died July 12, 1862 at the age of 27 years. He was a “cooker” by trade, born in Germany, and lived in Forestville with 17 year old Susan Adams, in 1860.

Above, Lydia Luvia Bassett and little Hokah Bassett. Lydia was born in 1839, and Hokah was born in 1855. Hokah died in 1856, and Lydia in 1858, They share a stone with Samuel Smith, 1786 – 1862. Below are individual small stones, broken, for Lydia and Hokah.

Samuel Smith was born in Stratford County, New Hampshire on July 7, 1786, and died at Carimona, Minnesota on Oct. 24, 1862.

Joseph Bisbey died Nov. 12, 1863, at the age of 49. He was a farmer, a native of New York, and the husband of Sophia Bisbey.

Riley D. Brooks, son of Hiram S. & Amanda M. Brooks, died August 10, 1869 at the age of 3 months and 27 days.

Above, Major James Foster, and his wife, Jane, who farmed in Forestville township. The former was a native of Pennsylvania, and his wife a native of Ohio. Some of their children, as listed in the 1870 census, were James (19), Catharine (17), Sarah (15), John (14), Mary (11), and Josephine (8).

Patrick O’Kane, a Forestville twp. farmer, was born about 1810 in Ireland. He was married to Ann, and in the 1870 census is living with her, his daughter Lucy (a 24 year old schoolteacher), Mary (18), and John (21).

Elizabeth (1801 – 1867), James (1789-1876), Samuel (1821-1871) Riddle.

Abner Runals, 1788 - 1860

According to a plaque at the cemetery, there are a few additional burials there, but I was not able to locate the stones.

Evidence Revisited

2010-10-05T12:16:00.001-07:00

I spent some time this morning drinking a few cups of coffee and reading the latest issue of the “Shades of the Departed” online magazine – it took several cups of coffee because the articles are so inspiring that I find myself sidetracked frequently. After reading Joe Bott’s article, “Celebrating Dead Fred,” I had to pause to re-search his site for any new family photos, and then got as far as footnoteMaven’s “Photography & Mourning” article before being motivated once again.

Her article featured photos of mourning brooches – small pins or brooches that may have originally been created for other purposes, later being a mourning/remembrance keepsake, or may have been created specifically out of the death of a loved one. I immediately thought of a lovely little pin that was the subject of a recent blog post.

To quote Elizabeth Shown Mills in her book Evidence Explained, “The case is never closed on a historical conclusion. Just as scientists revise their theories in the wake of new discoveries, so do historians. Any decision we make today could be changed tomorrow by the discovery of previously unknown information.” With that quote in mind, I dug out the tiny little keepsake box containing the pin, a baby’s hairbrush, a tiny child’s thimble, and a small glass vial that originally had a screw-top of some sort, long since gone. It reminded me of one of those necklaces filled with holy water, or a empty, to hold a remembrance item, similar to this one being sold online:

As a whole, it looks as if the items in the box are keepsakes of a specific person’s life, which I had originally assumed to be true, and still believe. However, *which* person specifically, may be up for debate.

The note reads: “The little baby’s hair brush belonged to Myrtle Lair age 1 in 1889. The photo pin is her at the age of 10 or 12.” These things very well could be Myrtle Lair’s, but Myrtle had a little sister, Allie May Lair, who died at the age of 11. Finding the article in Shades this morning made me wonder if this pin was indeed a mourning brooch, and these items the only remaining keepsakes from her short life.

As I looked through the box once again, I realized that these articles, with the exception of the vial, are specific to a child’s life. The vial could be representative of either a child or an adult. The box itself, in very old lettering, says “Birth Announcement.” Myrtle Lair lived to be 52 years old. Allie Lair died at the age of 11. And who authored the note? To answer that question, I had to imagine who possessed this box over the years. Myrtle and Allie May’s sister Nettie was my great-great grandmother, and oldest daughter in the family, and their mother died young. She had many items that belonged to her parents. She lived her last years with her daughter Lulu, who seemed to have been the recipient of most of the family heirlooms. Lulu died as a spinster in 1986. My aunt, Lulu’s niece, likely got this box from her, and then it came to me. I do not believe this is Nettie’s handwriting, but could have been Lulu’s. Allie May died 18 years before Lulu was born, and there was quite a geographical distance as well. Perhaps Lulu knew these items belonged to her mother’s sister, and Myrtle was the only one she knew of. Or perhaps she was right in stating that these things were Myrtle’s.

Myrtle, however, outlived her older sister Nettie by six years, which makes me wonder how her baby keepsakes would have ended up so far away, in Lulu’s possession, when there were nieces and nephews still in Myrtle’s area? In contrast, little Allie May, as well as their mother, died while Nettie was still in the immediate vicinity.

I have a copy of a portrait of little Allie May at the age of 3, and I also have a picture of Myrtle as a young woman. I think the photo pin resembles Allie May much more than it does Myrtle, but the girl in the photo pin has an outwardly wandering left eye, as does Myrtle. However, with the portrait of Allie May being a painting rather than a photo, I could understand if any particular imperfections might have been altered, especially if this painting was done from a photo after her death. I know of no paintings of the other children.

Above, Allie May Lair at the age of three

Above: photo pin of Myrtle?

Above: Myrtle Lair, as a young woman

Of course, all this is nowhere near sufficient to say that the girl in the photo pin is Allie May Lair, but it does cause me to wonder, and to go back and take a look at the evidence once again. Now, coming up with a plan for further research is in order, but this task might be difficult if not impossible.

So, in the meantime, it’s back to Shades of the Departed.

Sources:

Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained. Baltimore, Maryland: 2007. p. 27 Shades of the Departed, Oct. 4, 2010 issue Pendant photo (sold at): http://www.thisnext.com/topic-empty-silver-vial-pendants

More on the Loyal Americans

2010-10-05T08:36:00.001-07:00

Many thanks to Debra Wilson, who has solved the mystery of the Loyal Americans by finding the following pin:

which bears a striking resemblance to the one I found:

The top pin was associated with the Loyal Americans of the Republic in Springfield, Illinois; the name of the organization was changed to Loyal Americans in 1915. The following year, the name was changed to Loyal American Life Insurance, and then Loyal American Life Association in 1917. In 1934, the Loyal American Life Association merged with the Ben Hur Life Association.

The Loyal Americans of the Republic was incorporated and commenced business on November 7, 1896 in Springfield, Illinois, with E. J. Dunn as its president, and H. D. Cowan as secretary.

The name on the pin would then date it to about 1915. Some of the other items found in the box belonged to the Lair family (or their descendants) of Princeville, Illinois. Based on these facts, I would speculate that the pin belonged to Lawson F. Lair (1833-1923), of Princeville. I might possibly have belonged to his son, William L. Lair, but because I have never seen any of Will’s belongings in my family’s possession, I would tend to think it belonged to Lawson. However, Lawson’s probate file does not mention him having any insurance at the time of his death in 1923.

Again, thank you, Deb!

Sources (besides Debra): http://bulletin.lifeguide.com/issuer_tracing.html Fourth Annual Insurance Report of the Ninth Biennial Period by the Commissioner of Insurance of the State of North Dakota for the Year Ending December 31, 1906 (p. 464)

Mystery Monday – Loyal Americans?

2010-10-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

This “Loyal Americans” pin was found among some old items I was given. I don’t know who it belonged to, the geographic region it came from, nor a timeframe. I could not find information on similar pins on the internet.

I thought perhaps this might be a pin for the AOLA - Ancient Order of Loyal Americans, but their symbols seem to be different.

Ideas, anyone?

Treasure Chest Thursday – A Baby’s Hairbrush

2010-09-30T19:05:00.001-07:00

These items, nestled together with the note, in a small box, belonged to Myrtle Lair. The note reads, “The little baby’s hair brush belonged to Myrtle Lair age 1 in 1889. The photo pin is her at the age of 10 or 12.”

Myrtle was the youngest daughter of Lawson F. and Margaret (Nickeson) Lair. Her sister, Nettie, was my great great-grandmother. After the death of her mother, with most of the rest of the surviving children married and/or gone from the area, Myrtle stayed on and cared for her father in his old age. She never married. She died in 1941 in Princeville, Illinois, where she had spent her entire life.

Four Generations

2010-09-28T20:47:00.001-07:00

From upper left, clockwise: Hans Seemann, our immigrant ancestor, 1825 – 1893. He initially settled on a farm in Clinton co., Iowa, and later in Union County, South Dakota. He was the husband of Maria Petersen, and father of nine children, including -

Henry Seeman, 1864 – 1929. Henry met and married Eva Adams of Stephenson co., Illinois, and put himself through medical school, beginning his practice about 1900 in Iowa, and southeastern South Dakota, before settling in Rockham, South Dakota, where he would spend the remainder of his life. He was father of five children, the youngest of whom was -

Earl Seeman, 1897 – 1927. He married Mary Joyce, and farmed in Hand co., South Dakota. He died just short of his 30th birthday. They had three sons, the middle one being -

Robert Seeman, 1922 – 1966. He spent his life in Hand co., South Dakota, and worked at a variety of occupations. He married Louise Kluthe in 1951.

Flabbergasted Friday – How Did Our Ancestors Survive Lunch??

2010-09-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

I’m having a ball transcribing the journals of my great grandmother, Elvirta Knutz. The “current” year is 1956. They loved to take “day trips”, and pack their own lunches rather than eating at restaurants, in order to economize.

Each year they would visit the South Dakota State Fair at Huron. They’d make an incredibly fun day of it. My Aunt Mabel, the fourth of five children, told of how her mother would spend the whole day beforehand frying chicken and preparing potato salad, and then on the day of the trip, they’d get up early and pack everything they’d need into the trunk of the car, including the food, and drive to Huron. They’d spend all morning at the livestock barns and seeing all the machinery and other attractions, then take a break and head back to the car, where they’d sit in the hot early September sun, in the treeless parking lot, but oh, how that fried chicken and potato salad tasted so good!

Another time they took a “day trip” to Pierre, South Dakota, to watch the Oahe Dam being built. From their farm, it was close to a four-hour drive. After seeing the dam, and touring the general area, they found a lovely riverside park, where they… you guessed it… pulled their lunch from the trunk and ate it. Afterwards, they toured the Capital building, made several stops on their way home, and once there, pulled the remainder of the lunch from the car and finished it off.

Having my formal education in the field of microbiology, I was appalled, but apparently, this was not an uncommon practice. The New England Journal of Medicine, in the November 19, 1953 issue, published a report by Dr. K. F. Meyer stating that contamination with E. coli, Clostridium perfringens (the bug you get from improperly canned foods), among other nasty little germs, “has been implicated in food-poisoning outbreaks.” He goes on to say that “the true etiologic significance of the bacteria incriminated has never been satisfactorily proved.” Yikes!

Many times, while going through very old death registers, I’ve seen cause of death attributed to diarrhea, or some vague stomach complaint. I wonder how many of these were caused by the family’s lunch?

(Image courtesy of http://www.public-domain-image.com)

Tombstone Tuesday – County Farm, Stark co., Illinois

2010-09-21T18:05:00.001-07:00

Along a rural roadside in Stark County, Illinois, sits the County Farm cemetery. Each stone looks like the others. There are no flowers or decorations, but the cemetery is kept respectfully neat and well-groomed. Each soul who lies here had one thing in common – a life that ended in poverty.

Jennie Barto, 1843 – 1930

Charles Bowman, 1851 – 1930

Anna Clifton, died Nov. 3, 1922, aged 84 years

Henry Fisher, died Mar. 15, 1915, aged 45 years

William L. Hartman, 1848 – 1927

Charles E. Headley, 1859 – 1925

C. W. Pate, died May 28, 1911, aged 66 years

Miles Sturms

Ruphas Yates, died May 11, 1923

Of course, these are not all of the deaths that occurred at the County Farm over the years. Some residents are buried elsewhere, some of the stones here are illegible, and sadly, some are identified only by numbers.

Wedding Wednesday – 55 years

2010-09-15T09:09:00.001-07:00

On March 30, 1910, Will Knutz and Elvirta Graves made a life-long commitment to each other. They met while Will was working on a threshing crew, and Virta was helping to serve the hungry men.

50 years later, they celebrated a milestone anniversary. Their marriage would last nearly 56 years, until Will passed away in 1966.

The Needle in the Haystack – Finding Elsie in the Census

2010-09-08T20:52:00.001-07:00

Just last night, burning a little “midnight oil,” I finally came upon the document that has knocked down half of my Christensen brick wall: the 1920 census of Omaha, Nebraska.

I’ve been looking for the family of my great-grandfather, Peter Christensen of Denmark, for some time. I’ve looked for them in the census before, but when you’re working with “heresay” information, and names as common as Christensen and Ericksen, in an area thick with Danish immigrants, it gets overwhelming quickly. I knew the first names of his brothers and sisters, knew his mother’s name was Elsie, and many of the men in his family were bakers. I had heard his father died in Denmark, and Elsie remarried a Mr. Erickson/Ericksen/Eriksen/Erikson etc., and probably lived in Omaha or Council Bluffs, Iowa, or Onawa, Iowa.

It started with an address for “Aunt Agnes” in my grandmother’s old 1930s address book, and clue by clue, I ended up with my great-great grandmother in the 1920 census. New information gained from this document:

1) A definitive place for them – Omaha. Plus, I got a street address!

2) “Mr. Ericksen” now has a name – Gents Ericksen.

3) Gents was 11 years younger than his wife – probably not a terribly important piece of news, but kind of interesting nonetheless. I may never find out, but I’d love to know their story.

4) I have a location and birth years for Elsie’s children Soren and Martin. Another thing I discovered on the path to the 1920 census was a married name for Elsie’s daughter Mary, an address in Omaha, a date of death, and a relocation to California.

Elsie and Gents Ericksen

Now it’s really time to get busy – I have an obituary for son Soren coming, and will get one for daughter Mary; I need to find a date of death for son Martin, as well as Elsie and Gents, and try to get obituaries for them as well in hopes of going back another generation. Now that I know Gents’ name, and their birth years, I can attack the censuses once again, and differentiate them from all of the other Ericksens. Gents and Elsie, as well as Soren, are listed in the census as being naturalized – I need to get those papers. Soren and Martin were bakers, and I’d like to go through the city directories and get more information on where, specifically, they worked. Did they own their own bakery, as their brother Pete (my great-grandfather) did in South Dakota? If so, what was the name, and where was it located? I feel a trip to Omaha coming on!

One very important piece of information has eluded me so far – I’d like to know the name of Elsie’s first husband, my great-great grandfather. I am hoping it will show up in one of the obituaries. If so, I’ll be learning how to do Danish research – a task I thought I’d never need to know. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the crumbling of a brick wall, and it sounds wonderful!

Everything New is Old Again – Producing “Vintage” Fabric

2010-09-07T07:41:00.001-07:00

One of my ongoing projects is trying to finish a quilt started by my grandmother in the 1940s. After her death her oldest daughter took the unfinished quilt home with her, intending to complete it herself. She attached a bright gold border, matching the gold inset between the blocks, and set it aside. Years and years later, she gave it to me to finish, and I’ve had it about 10 years. It’s a very humbling situation I find myself in – having the honor of working on a three-generation quilt spanning some 70 years, while at the same time, stretching my meager quilting abilities to their limits.

I was finally able to locate some 1940s reproduction fabric locally. The problem is, it looks new. I decided to tea-dye the fabric to give it a more “vintage” look, and hope that it will help the fabric, with its different patterns, blend in better with what’s already there. I was a little leery of using tea to color the fabric, as the tannins in the tea will shorten the life of the fabric, but all things considered, I felt it would give me a better effect than using regular fabric dye. I did a little research on the internet, got a general idea of what I needed to do, took a deep breath, and got busy.

For anyone considering doing something similar, I learned a few things this morning:
1) When brewing the tea, most of the “recipes” on the internet assume you want dramatic results. If you want something more subtle, dilute your brew. I used 16 bags of tea to 8 cups of water. Still, it took only one minute of exposure to the tea to get obvious results.
2) Use a BIG container if you have one-yard pieces. Don’t try to do it in a stockpot on the stove top. Use something that will allow the fabric easy movement. And get the fabric wet before putting it in the tea.
3) Test a small piece of fabric before doing the whole thing. The first little swatch I tossed in the tea came out way darker than I wanted after 3 minutes.
4) The wet fabric will look darker than it really is. Dry before you make any adjustments to your times.
5) Immediately rinse in a sink of cold water, and be sure you rinse it thoroughly. While most of the sources I consulted on the internet suggested drying and using the fabric after rinsing, I’m going to wash mine first. I don’t want any unnecessary tannins eating away at my fabric, and I also don’t want any nasty surprises when the finished quilt is washed.

Hopefully the scariest part of this process is over. The next challenge will be coming up with a design that “works” with what is there already, and with the fabric I have (yes, I bought fabric without having a plan). Having a long, narrow quilt to work with, and no pattern, does present some obstacles. I’m hoping Grandma Agnes and Aunt Mary can give me a little loving “coaching” from above.

Treasure Chest Thursday – Collars from Long Ago

2010-09-02T12:49:00.001-07:00

This note, written by my great-grandmother, Elvirta Knutz Graves, explains the significance of these collars she had tucked away. The lace collar belonged to her mother, Nettie Lair Graves (1861 – 1935), and the fabric collar belong to Nettie’s grandmother, Margaret Coble Nickeson (ca 1803 – 1854).

Margaret Coble Nickeson, owner of the fabric collar, married her husband, Joseph Nickeson, in Franklin county, Ohio in 1819, and in the 1840s they relocated to Peoria county, Illinois with their children. She died in 1854 at the age of 56 in Princeville. Her daughter Margaret Nickeson married Lawson Lair in 1858. They spent the rest of their lives in Princeville, Margaret passing away in 1900 at the age of 59. Their second child was Nettie Lair, owner of the lace collar. Nettie married Tom Graves in 1883 in Princeville, and they remained in that area until 1906, when they moved to Esmond, South Dakota. Their daughter Elivrta married Will Knutz in 1910, in Huron, South Dakota. The collars were eventually given to Virta’s daughter Mabel, who passed away last year. I would like to thank my cousins for sending me these, and other, remarkable treasures that their mother had so carefully saved. I am truly blessed and honored to have them.

Open Thread Thursday – Free or Fee?

2010-09-02T12:48:00.001-07:00

Whoever said There’s No Free Lunch wasn’t kidding. Someone had to go “kill it and drag it home” (to borrow the words of Dave Ramsey), cook it, and serve it up. It cost someone something to provide that lunch. If they’re willing to give it away to us, great. If not, they are as entitled to compensation - as I feel I am after a long day at work.

Such is the case with Ancestry vs. FamilySearch. I personally think it’s wonderful that volunteers at FamilySearch are willing to digitize family history records and make them available at no charge to researchers. But, and I say this with no firm data to back me up, Ancestry, using a paid staff, is able to provide a larger quantity of information. And for me, right now, it’s more about quantity of information than whether or not I have to pay for access.

If documents are in the public domain, and Ancestry digitizes and sells access, more power to them. Objectors are always free to go get the document themselves, the old fashioned way. Ancestry, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t selling me access as much as they are selling me EASY access. I’m quite willing to pay to have a document I want delivered to my desktop, while I sit here drinking coffee and listening to a ballgame, as opposed to having to drive somewhere (probably at some distance, as most of my research is not local) and go fetch it myself, particularly if I don’t have enough research to do in that area to justify a trip.

Free indexes are fabulous - even if access to the original document is on a pay-basis. For those who aren’t willing to pay, knowing exactly where to look for the document, and knowing that the document DOES exist, saves a lot of time, leg-work, and money. A great example is provided by the Olmsted County History Center. Their indexes are online. If you don’t want to pay for an item, go get it yourself. At least you know exactly where to look for it.

The down side of all this is that the online resources are going to close down many local genealogy societies, unless the societies can re-invent themselves to fit with how genealogy is done today. They need to offer something that the fee-based companies, or the free sites, can’t. And most of all, LOCAL SOCIETIES NEED A STRONG ONLINE PRESENCE. As a consumer, I have been more than willing to send a society $3 in return for an obituary. I’d be willing to pay for a scan of an ancestral photo as well, or a newspaper article. Online subscriptions aren’t cheap, but spending a few dollars here and there through a local society is much more affordable.

As people get busier, more and more will be using online resources to help with their family histories. Many of these researchers will be willing to pay to get online access to the documents they need, either via memberships/subscriptions or doing business with local societies, but I believe what researchers will want more and more is quick and easy access to what they need.

Wordless Wednesday – The Secret Summer

2010-09-01T08:56:00.001-07:00

The diary my Grandmother kept as a young woman

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

2010-08-28T20:41:00.001-07:00

This is the first time I’ve been able to participate in SNGF – and it IS fun! Thanks to Randy Seaver (and Sheri Fenley) for the terrific prompt.

Randy’s instructions:

1) Go to the www.ImageChef.com website and explore their FREE offerings. Click on the "Create" button, or choose to make a slideshow or posters from their main page

2) Make one or more posters or other creation - perhaps they relate to genealogy or your own family history. Save them to your computer

3) Show your creations to us...

So here’s mine! Hopefully this will be a reality some day, and Peter Christensen’s ancestors will be found!

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy – the DAR Database

2010-08-27T20:12:00.001-07:00

The last time I visited the DAR database was years ago. Tonight, as part of the 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy challenge, I took another look at it, and I’m really glad I did.

I thought I had no direct line ancestor with any military service during the Revolutionary War. I knew some of my Lair ancestors had brothers who served, but when I discovered that my immigrant ancestor, Matthias Lehrer/Lair, played a part during the war, I was thrilled. At this time, I don’t know how significant his role was, only that he was paid for the loss of a gun.

Also, more significantly, I discovered that another direct-line ancestor, Issacher Nicke(r)son, apparently had some service, under Capt. David Waterbury. I will need to find more information on this, and joining the DAR based on this ancestor’s service will be difficult. His son, Aaron, is said to be the father of my ancestor Joseph Nickeson, and even working with the Nickerson Family Association, I have not been able to find proof of that relationship. But there’s hope!

She Might Have Been a Blogger

2010-08-26T19:20:00.001-07:00

Slowly, but steadily, I’ve been transcribing my great-grandmother Virta Knutz’s journals – over 500 sheets of notebook paper spanning nine years. Next will be a file folder with another hundred pages or so, titled “Our Trips.” After that, another pile of pages called “Memories.”

Transcribing her journals has given me an idea of what her life was like on the farm. Her children lived nearby, so her days will often filled with grandchildren, as well as the household chores, made lengthier and a bit more mundane by the lack of modern appliances. At the end of her day, she would write. I suspect it was probably the only thing she did just for herself. What was her motivation? Was she lonely out on the farm? Wanting to share her day with someone, after everyone else was in bed? Or did she just feel an inexplicable need to put the pen to the paper? I think many bloggers would know something of how she felt.

If Virta were alive today, I suspect she would be one of us…

Tombstone Tuesday – Tweed Cemetery

2010-08-16T18:04:00.001-07:00

In the quiet landscape of southeastern Ross county, Ohio, sits Tweed cemetery. Just outside of Vigo, it is nestled inside a grove of trees at the top of a hill, hard to find, I'm told, unless you know what you're looking for.

I've never been to the cemetery, despite the significant number of my family that lay there. The miles are too great for now. But my “granny”, Elizabeth Freeman Graves, left such a large part of herself behind in the soil of the shady green hill.

The year 1832 began with the burial of her nearly 6 year old boy, Tavenor, in January. Before the year was out, they would gather again in the cold December frost to bid goodbye to her mother, Sarah Toone Freeman. Her 4 year old daughter, Martha, would be next, in May of 1841, and just 3 months later, seventeen year old son John Jr. would be laid to rest there.

Did Elizabeth and her husband John pay one more sad visit to the cemetery together before packing their trunks and loading their wagon for a new beginning in Illinois?

How sad for Elizabeth to have to stand one very last time in the cemetery, this time at the fresh grave of her husband, who took ill once the packing and loading was done. And how excruciating it must have been for her to turn and leave, and pursue this new life without him.

Some day, I'd like to go to Tweed cemetery, stand where she stood, see what she saw, and touch the part of her soul that she left behind there.

Costume Dances

2010-08-05T11:49:00.001-07:00

Subtitled: “Excuse me, Miss, could you put down your pipe and dance with me?”

For as long as I knew her, my mother-in-law, Louise, loved to dance. Her father, Casper Kluthe, taught her to kick up her heels at his barn dances in the 1930s, when he wasn’t busy on stage playing his accordion. The smell of the hay, the noise of the crowd as they whooped and hollered, the thundering stomp of feet and the clapping of hands got her hooked for life. She grew up to be one of the founders of the Tri-County Dance Club in her small town, and as seen in the photo at left (that’s her in the dress), she never missed the opportunity to show someone a new dance step.

Some of her best stories came, in between bouts of laughter, the day after a costume dance. You never knew who would turn up as your dance partner…

A witch, a hairy old guy, a strange pipe-smoking lady, a dirty bum, a ghoul, or perhaps… is that Michael Jackson on the right end??

Even Abe Lincoln might show up…

While his wife was on the dance floor, donning long-johns and a rubber chicken-head mask, her husband Herb was listening to the sad tales of this poor depressed snowman…or is that a snow-woman? Who knows!

Wordless Wednesday - Destruction at Stephan Mission

2010-08-04T14:32:00.001-07:00

Below are photos from the devastation caused by a tornado in 1938. The twister tore through Stephan Mission, in Hyde county, South Dakota, on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation.

What’s left of the barn

Another photo of the barn

The milk shed, with pieces from the barn on top of it

Day Three of the Genealogy Road Trip

2010-07-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Genealogy Road Trip culminated with the primary purpose for the trip: a visit to Princeville, Illinois, to the Heritage Harvest celebration at the Princeville Heritage Museum. What a great day!

In 2004, the Akron Townhouse School was was moved to the grounds of the PHM's grounds. It had closed its doors as a school in 1958, and was the last of Peoria County's one-room schools. It has been taken from a state of disrepair, to a wonderfully restored piece of Peoria County history.

We also got to witness a sawmill demonstration - this may not be new to anyone else, but I've never really thought about how boards were made, starting with a tree.

Next was an incredible demonstration by T. C. Gill, "The StumpCarver". His creations are incredible!

The master stump-carver at work

One example of what you can do with a chainsaw and a steady hand...

Check out his website for more info, at http://www.stumpcarver.com/

The above photo depicts a typical one-room cabin of the early settlers. Incredible - from the wonderful paint job on the walls, which look like logs, to all of the materials on display. I wanted to jump the barricade and go see that old quilt on the bed behind the table, but I kept myself under control.

I enjoyed the demo of the 1920's knitting machine - she had a pair of socks in progress. Much neater than any knitting I've ever produced, and even *I* could turn a crank without messing it up! The rest of it, though, I'm not so sure about.

I learned alot from the threshing machine demonstration. Being a city kid, I had no real clue about what this machine did, but thanks to this demo and my husband's patient explanations, I have a handle on it now. :) I can also have a much greater appreciation for my great-great grandfather's steam thresher.

This short post doesn't even begin to cover everything that we saw and enjoyed today. There were numerous historical photos, tons of genealogical scrapbooks filled with old newspaper articles, obituaries, etc., a rope-making demo, crafts, a dulcimer artist, and so much more. It was well worth the trip.

Also, we have another Neat Sight of the Day -

We spied this pair of handsome roosters grazing in the ditch outside of the Dollar General store in Wyoming, Illinois. All in all, a fun day.

But wait - there's more - our day also included an awesome Bonus Event, which will be another post.

Genealogy Road Trip, Mission #2

2010-07-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

First on today's agenda is West Liberty, Iowa, to find the graves of Frank and Retta (Gladfelter) Lair. Frank was the much younger brother of my gr-gr grandmother, Nettie Belle Lair of Princeville, Peoria county, Illinois, being 16 years younger than Nettie. Frank and Nettie were two of the nine children of Lawson Fuller Lair and his wife, Margaret Nickeson, who farmed just outside of Princeville. As a young man, Frank spent some time living with Nettie and her husband, Tom Graves, before marrying Retta Gladfelter in 1901. Frank and Retta moved to a Muscatine county, Iowa, in 1907, and there lived on several different farms before moving into West Liberty about 1919. His bride, Retta, was the daughter of Frederick and Julia (Bane) Gladfelter, and born in 1882, also in Princeville. They lived out the remainder of their lives in West Liberty, having no children. Frank died in 1945, at the age of 67, and Retta in 1959 at the age of 77.

We learn our lessons fairly easily - this time we called ahead and checked with the city clerk, who told us exactly where the graves were located, and exactly where Oakridge cemetery could be found -

and we located their former home...

Misson #2 Complete. On to Mission #3, and The Land of Lincoln!

Genealogy Road Trip, Mission #1

2010-07-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

Perhaps a better title would have been "MISSION IMPOSSIBLE." There's something particularly satisfying about getting out of town when all day long, nature and fate have conspired to keep it from happening. The day started at 4:30 a.m., with a drip coming from the ceiling, landing on the floor next to the bed. Actually, it was a *bunch* of drips, landing in the *puddle* on the floor next to the bed. The rest of the day followed suit, but by 6 p.m., all the days' fires had been extinguished, and we were on the road, only a half hour behind our hoped-for schedule.

First stop: Clarksville, Butler county, Iowa, to locate and photograph the graves of Andrew and Flora (Wells) Stevens. Andrew, a New York native and son of Lemuel Stevens and Celinda Sharp, was a blacksmith in the area for 59 years. His wife, Flora, was a native of Stephenson county, Illinois, the daughter of Philip Wells and Matilda Miner. They raised twelve children in Clarksville and Northwood, Flora passing away in Northwood, Worth county, Iowa in 1924, and Andrew at the home of his son in Longmont, Colorado, in 1936.

I wasn't completely expecting to find Andrew and Flora's graves, since this cemetery was not specifically mentioned by name in their obits, but was hoping to find a small cemetery that we could walk easily. What we found, however, was a pretty sizeable grounds, with a LOT of burials. We walked the older sections, probably close to a third of the cemetery, but the heat, humidity, rain sprinkles, bugs, and darkness finally forced us to give up. We are expecting some return calls from some potentially helpful local resources who might help us locate their graves more specifically, and maybe we'll be able to find them on our way back home.

A small section of the cemetery

When walking cemeteries like this, seeing the same surnames over and over, spanning several generations, I'm always a bit envious of those who lay forever in "their" land with "their" people, and the sense of continuity and belonging it provokes.

Clarksville was a great little town. Everyone we talked to was so friendly, and the town was full of beautiful historic old homes, many of the ones we saw being in some state of refurbishment. I wish we would have had more time to "poke around" - this antique store in the old corner bank building looks particularly interesting -- love the architecture ---

Hopefully we'll be able to stop again on our way back home. Meanwhile - the Neat Sight of the Day, observed along the road somewhere in Iowa, on a van we passed on the interstate:

Wordless Wednesday – The New Coupe

2010-07-21T12:40:00.001-07:00

My grandfather’s new coupe – Beadle County, South Dakota. Date unknown.

I Write Like...

2010-07-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

I've been a little bit Out Of The Loop the last month or so, and as it turns out, I've missed a lot of fun with the "I Write Like..." application at http://iwl.me/

For fun, I pasted my blog post "Thought on an Old Farmhouse" and found out I write (at least that post) like

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I did not know he wrote "Fight Club." I've seen the movie...Not sure what to make of that comparison.

Thought I'd try again with "Adventures in Iowa", a little different post, and here's the result:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Reading up on Wikipedia, I find that the Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." Hmmm! Good! However, reading on, I see that Wallace committed suicide 2 years ago. Hmmm.... not so good.

Well, if nothing else, it was fun.

An Historical, and Personally Memorable, Site in Huron, South Dakota

2010-07-18T12:41:00.001-07:00

No place in the world says “home” to me like the Third Street Bridge area over the James River, in Huron, South Dakota. Over my years in Huron, it became a place I frequented. As a high school art student, I’d go there to sketch. I’d go fishing with friends there in the summers, and snowmobiling in the winter. I considered a dare to walk across the spillway one summer when the water was low, and numerous dares to zip across the trestle and hope a train didn’t have the same idea at the same time. I took my kids to eat our McDonald’s lunch there, and watch the trains go by. And sometimes, I’d go there just to peacefully contemplate life, and ponder the mystery and the tragedy of the lives lost in those waters over the years.

One of the earlier versions of the bridge is shown in the above postcard. Unfortunately, years ago when I scanned it, I did not scan the back, and do not know the date this photo was taken. However, the book “Huron Revisited” has a similar photo, dated at 1922, and notes that the river was at flood stage. Note the adventurous souls in the rowboat. Perhaps that was their version of crossing the spillway or trestle…

Above: A more recent photo of the railroad bridge, and the automobile bridge in the background.

On my increasingly rare trips home, driving into town and seeing the river, the bridge, and the trestle, and all of the familiar sights that follow, warms my heart and soul like nothing else.

Time to Say Goodbye

2010-07-09T18:25:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you just know that someone has come into your life for a reason, and such is the case with Warren Throndson. We are distant cousins, both of us obsessed with family history, and we lived in the same town for 8 years before accidentally discovering each other. It could have easily gone the other way, both of us living out our lives and never knowing the other existed, but thank goodness it didn’t happen like that.

I was just starting my Graves research, actually beating my head against a brick wall, when I realized that the Graves men, typically named Thomas, John, and William, all lived in the same area and all had sons named Thomas, John and William. The patriarch of the family, William Graves, himself a family historian, was said to have left a Bible with the family records behind when he passed on into eternity back in 1908, in Stark county, Illinois. Desperate to find that Bible, and any help it might give me in sorting out these Graves men, I wrote the genealogy society there and inquired if anyone might know anything about it, thinking perhaps he left it to them after his death. I got a letter back saying no, they knew nothing about any Bible. A wasted stamp, I assumed, but it turned out to be the best 32 cents I ever spent.

As it turned out, another descendant had inquired about the William Graves family a few weeks earlier, a fellow named Larry from nearby Peoria county. When the Society received my letter, they contacted Larry and gave him my address, in case he wanted to follow up. He saw the town, and immediately thought of his uncle, Warren, who also lived here, and had done extensive research on the Graves family, with said William Graves being his great grandfather. Before the day was out, Warren and I had the first of our many phone conversations.

Now, I have to say, in the last 15 years or so, Warren and I have only met face-to-face a handful of times, but we’ve logged hundreds of hours on the phone. Usually, our conversations would be seasonal, as he wintered in Texas, and had a full social calendar there, but occasionally he’d make an exception - when our weather here would be especially frigid, he’d call to tell me how much he enjoyed the freshly picked fruit, from his yard, that he’d had for breakfast that morning. Or he’d call on a Sunday night, to tell me to “have a good Monday” and keep paying into the retirement system so people like him could enjoy life! He had a great sense of humor, and loved to tease.

But mostly, we talked about family – those currently in our lives, and those we researched. While our official relationship was “second cousin twice removed,” I think it’s probably more accurate to say he was a treasured friend with whom I had history in common. Plus, he was the only person I knew whose eyes would not glaze over when I got started talking about genealogy, and vice versa.

Warren passed into the land of ancestors himself last weekend. I was blessed to have been able to see him three weeks’ prior, when I found myself at his home, and I knew it would be the last time I saw him. I can still feel his hand squeezing mine as we said goodbye. His contact information is still in my phone, and I think I’ll leave it there awhile. I just wish I could see his name flash on the screen just once more while the phone was ringing.

Goodbye, Dear Friend, until we talk again…

The Bible of Catharine Nickeson

2010-06-14T22:14:00.001-07:00

When I bought this Bible from an historical society years and years ago, I assumed it was probably not the Bible of my ancestor Catharine Nickeson Smith, but I thought I’d take a chance. It was from 1860, about the right time frame, but sure enough, it wasn’t hers. But there was something about it that immediately drew me to an obsession to know who this Catharine Nickeson was.

This book was not a display piece, or a table-top book. The old, worn brown Bible had obviously seen a lot of use in the 150 years since Catharine obtained it. While the spine was strong, the pages were delicate, and the handwriting faded. A poem or verse of some sort was written in pencil, only partially readable, but in dark pen was written “Catharine Nickeson’s Book, April 14, 1860”.

Thumbing through it, I discovered several pages with old, dried leaves between them, some very intricate and unusual looking, like no plant I had seen before, all nestled in their hiding places. But there, on the unprinted pages between the Old Testament and the New Testament was, in many different pens, over many different years, names and dates, births and deaths of those whom Catharine had held dear. Her children, their spouses, her grandchildren – all the events of their lives had taken on immortality between the pages of Catharine’s Book. Seeing her handwriting, shakier as the years went on, I could almost feel the pain as she recorded the births, and then deaths, of several of her children, some young, some older. It was as if all of the emotion at these events had been locked within the fragile pages of her dear book.

I set about the work of getting to know Catharine Nickeson. As her Bible told me, she was born April 2, 1833, and her husband, Lambert, or “Lam” as she referred to him, was born November 20, 1821. They lived in Washington county, Maryland, and in 1850, their household was as follows:

Lambert “Nichoson”, 26, laborer
    Catharine, 28
    Mary E., 7
    Margaret A., 5
    Susan H., 2
    James A., 6/12
    Nancy Daynatt, 18 (Catharine later named one of her daughters Nancy – is this perhaps her sister?)

In 1880, I found them again, in Clear Spring, of Washington county:

Lambert NICKERSON, 58, Farm Laborer
     Catharine, Wife, 58
     Nancy, Daughter, 21
     Mattie, Daughter, 12

And I found them again, for the final time, in 1900, also in Clear Spring:

Clear Spring, Washington, Maryland, Image 28/42
Nickison, Lambert, 78
Catherine, wife, 78

Interestingly, this last census notes that neither Lambert nor Catherine can read or write. Error? Or is there more to the story?

The birth and death entries in the Bible are -

Isaih Denton Hull was born October 4, 1869
George Lewis Hughs 1847 was born January the 7
Elizabeth Nickeson was born June 28, 1854
Nancy Nickeson June 11, 1858
Rebecca Nickeson born April 13, 1861
Infant daughter of Lam and Catherine Nickeson born May 4, 1865
Rebecca Mills departed this life February 24, 1876
Lizzie Kelley baby was born September the 25 1890
Catherine Nickeson born April 2, 1822
Lambert Nickeson born November 20, 1821
Roseanna Hughs was born January the 27 1851
Elizabeth Host departed this life April the 14 1847
Roseanna Hughs departed this life January 20 1873
Marget Annie Kelley departed this life September the 18 1892
William Kelley was born July 16 17 A.D. 1878
Annie Rebecca Kelley was born March 15th A.D. 1880
Annie Rebecca Kelley departed this life March 20th 1880
Effie Kelley was born September the 5 188(6?)
Bessie May Kelley was born October the 10 188(5?)

I’m still trying to sort everyone out, but what I’d like to know most is what happened to Lam and Catharine? I have been trying to find obituaries for them, and hopefully will be able to learn more about them and their lives.

The Strawberry Blanket

2010-06-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

Sharing a Slice of Life

There are no finer memories than spending the night at Grandma’s house. She had things we didn’t at home… like trundle beds! And when she pulled out the bottom bed, she always pulled the Strawberry Blanket out of the back of the closet as well.

I loved that Strawberry Blanket for as long as I remember. There was nothing particularly special about it, at that time, except that it had strawberries on it and I loved strawberries. Now, of course, it also has all the memories associated with it, particularly being tucked in so warm and safe by the most wonderful Grandma that God ever created.

When my mom cleaned out Grandma and Grandpa’s house after their passing, she gifted me with the Strawberry Blanket – which by then had become the Strawberry Blankets. For some unknown reason, Grandma had cut it into two, and whatever backing the blanket used to have was gone. So I bought some fabric and put backs on each of them. They spend most of their time in the back of MY closet now, but it’s surprising how comforting these blankets still are, like a hug from far, far away. I think it’s time to move them to the front of the closet, and get them ready for the next generation of kids who need a warm, snuggly hug.

Adventures in Iowa

2010-06-05T20:08:00.001-07:00

Finally, the long-awaited Road Trip. Even though it was just a day trip, it felt so good to get out of town and go tromping through the cemeteries.

The first stop was Spring Valley, in southern Minnesota, looking for a needle in a haystack, essentially. We walked the entire cemetery looking for the resting place of one particular ancestor, which we did not find. We’re back to Square One with him, but we did come upon this -

which was a tree trunk. The top had the look of polished stone, but it wasn’t. There appeared to be a very thick clear coating on the top of the trunk, with the lettering within the layers -

This unusual marker belonged to Cora N. May, 1870 – 1895, and was probably the neatest headstone I’ve ever seen.

We resumed the trip to Plainfield, Iowa, hot and tired, stomachs growling, ready for lunch. We passed by numerous restaurants, even a Dairy Queen (oh my, did a Blizzard sound good then!), but we decided to eat at New Hampton, Iowa, instead. While not a huge town, it seemed, on the map, big enough to have a restaurant or two. After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at New Hampton, and started looking for the business district, and the restaurants. We drove forever looking for some place to eat, and finally concluded that there were no restaurants in New Hampton. We decided on a gas station/convenience store, just to hold off The Hungries until we could find a restaurant. Halfway through the store, one of my well-worn black tennies fell apart – the sole just fell off, almost all the way, as I walked. It would have been better, at least in the short-run, if it had just come off all the way, but no - I was forced to lift my foot high off the ground with each step, to keep from doing a face-plant, as I made my way toward the checkout, other patrons looking at me with a mixture of confusion and pity. I paid for the pathetic piece of ham pizza, which had no doubt been under the heat lamp since the day before, and high-stepped out to the car. I was never so glad to leave anyplace as I was then!

We got back on the road, and very shortly thereafter, passed another exit to New Hampton. As I choked down the last bite of my Rubber Pizza, I looked at the assortment of eating establishments we were passing, and wondered if we should turn around and go back home…

Rather than high-step my way through the next cemetery, we found a convenience store along the way that carried heavy-duty tape, so I was able to put my shoe, and my dignity, back together.

I was glad we had not turned around and gone back home. The cemetery at Plainfield, Iowa, was worth the trip. I not only found the stones I was looking for, but a number of others that I did not know existed. Once we got home, I went about the work of “connecting the dots” with all of the burials we’d found. The Rotten Luck Fairy, who had plagued the first part of the trip, had one more surprise for me to end the day – the discovery that there was another whole branch of the family buried a less than 5 miles down the road from Plainfield! Oh well… another trip…

Ralph and Avis and Harold – A War Story

2010-05-30T23:10:00.001-07:00

It started out seeming like a bit of a sad story - but I had no idea just how sad it would turn out to be.

I was transcribing a pile of newspaper clippings, and happened upon the story of a Korean War soldier, Ralph, who was missing in action. I will only refer to the people involved by their first names, as it is entirely possible, no, probable, that at least some of them are still living. Ralph had married Avis, a 15 year old girl, before enlisting and being sent to Korea. Just a few months later, Avis received a telegram from the Defense Department saying that her husband was missing after a skirmish. In that days’ mail she would also receive a letter that her husband had written the day before his disappearance.

How sad – but it wasn’t the end of the story, by any means.

Several weeks later, Avis received another bit of a surprise. Her husband, who was captured by the Chinese, had scribbled a note on a piece of war propaganda, and was able to send it to his friend in the same squad. It read, in part -

"Dear Jack,
I'll write you a few lines to let you know I am safe and okay. I was captured by the Chinese the 30th of Dec. They treat me very good. They also give me plenty to eat. They try to feed me according to what I am used to eating. I would appreciate it if you would write to my wife and let her know I am okay as I know she is worried."

I needed to know the rest of the story – was the note really from Ralph? Was he ever released, or was he killed by his captors? I checked an online database, and his name appeared in a list of Korean War casualties. A sucker for happy endings, it was a bit disheartening for me to see his name there, but there was also a note that he was returned to the military in 1953. What - his body? Him? What??? I had to know more.

The next article I found detailed Ralph’s return to the United States, being met by a drove of reporters as his boat docked. An excerpt follows, edited by me to remove identifying information:

“The young army corporal back from 20 months in red captivity stared glumly into space Sunday when he was told his wife had remarried in the belief he was dead. ’I had never heard that until you told me,’ Ralph said after a newsman informed him of the marital mixup. Veins stood out on the young soldier’s forehead and his blue eyes glistened as a news story was read to him saying his wife, Avis, had married Harold last March. Then, the brown-haired corporal, wearing an almost dazed look, joined several of his buddies who were taking pictures of each other. It appeared a desperate but futile attempt to be nonchalant about a world turned upside down.”

Oh my. I don’t know which of my emotions was stronger – the heartache on behalf of the young soldier, or the disdain for the reporter who apparently valued the shock of the story over any sort of decency and empathy for Ralph. I had to find out what happened – regardless of the late hour, there would be no sleep until I knew. Did Harold step aside? What did Avis want? Would Ralph be able to pick up with Avis where he left off?

The next article I could find was a month later, stating that Ralph had been granted a divorce. It was also disclosed during the hearing that Avis was “expectant”, and of course, it was not Ralph’s child. The grounds for the divorce, the newspaper said, was Mental Cruelty. It sounds to me like a case of Mental Cruelty for everyone concerned, doled out by life itself. This is where the newspaper articles appear to end, but, of course, not where the story ends. There’s more, lots more, no doubt, but it’s out of the public eye, as it should be. I can only hope that Ralph, Avis, and Harold all found some semblance of peace with the situation, and were able to get on with their lives.

From Pedestrian to Motor Vehicle Operator: My First Car

2010-05-25T21:08:00.001-07:00

Subtitled: “If you don’t like my driving, stay off the sidewalk.”

I guess no matter what generation you belong to, as teenagers, we all felt the same as we gawked with pride at our first cars. No matter what the old pile of nuts and bolts really looked like, what the eyes saw was filtered by the heart, with a touch of hormones, and the end product was a sleek, mean, speed demon that would be the envy of all those pimply-faced pedestrians as it zipped past.

I was a mere fourteen years old when my father found a car in the classified ads of the local newspaper. I wasn’t sure why he decided I needed a car at that tender age, but wasn’t about to argue. We went over to see it, and my heart stopped. There it was. A 1967 Ford Galaxy 500 hard-top convertible, in Robin’s Egg Blue, with black interior. It instantly became the car of my dreams, and after discovering it currently belonged to one of the most popular older girls in school, I was certain it was not my destiny.

I spent the next four months behind the driver’s wheel of that incredible piece of machinery, savoring every blissful moment, even if it was locked in the garage the whole time. I had a countdown going until my 15th birthday, when I would get the keys and permission to drive back and forth to my friend’s house, six blocks away.

I spent the next two years practically living in that car – I bought an 8-track tape player, my friends sewed Robin’s Egg Blue and Black pillows for the back seat, and the car even had a name, which I won’t share. Ok, it was “Growler”. We spent our Saturday afternoons driving around our little town seeing who else was driving around our little town. Everyone pitched in a buck or two for gas as they got in the car, and oftentimes I made enough money for gas for the whole week, plus a Diet Coke or two, but I never told them.

I’ve had many cars in the 35 years since Growler was retired, and I’ve not been quite that excited about any of them, nor do I anticipate it ever happening. For it’s not just a First Car, it’s a rite of passage, and it’s One Per Customer.

The Virtue of Perseverance

2010-05-21T22:33:00.001-07:00

Scan the front page. Flip it. Scan the back page. Put it back in the binder and take the next page out. Repeat. I am up to Scan #245, about 2/3 of the way through the first of two binders of papers. When I have them all scanned, I’ll start reading and transcribing. I can hardly wait.

You see, these are the writings of my great grandmother, Virta, who had the beautiful lace curtains in the old farmhouse. These journal entries span from 1956 to 1967, and as I scan each page, I catch snippets of her life – all of our lives – surfacing for just a moment, to tease me about what comes after the scanning.

From a trip to town to Montgomery Ward’s, to a vacation in Oregon to see one of her sons, it’s all here. Illnesses… the destruction of my grandparents’ house by lightning… company stopping over… their retirement from the farm… it’s all come past my scanner this evening. And I know what’s coming – the birth of their first great grandchild (me) – grandsons going off to war – and the death of her husband - and so much more interspersed between the major events of her life.

I’m tempted to stop the scanning and just dive right into devouring it, but I saw what happened to my mother when she did just that – we didn’t see her for a week! And as much as I want a scanned copy of this journal as a backup, I know if I read it before I scan it, the scanning won’t happen. So I will not read it until I’m done, which will roughly be another 500 scans. Quite frankly, I’m not very enthusiastic about this part at all.

In the meantime, I’ll keep scanning, checking to see who’s signed on to chat, scan more, read some blogs, scan another page, check email, etc., and try to remember that each scan puts me one scan closer to reading.

Lefse – Breakfast of Champions

2010-05-08T10:42:00.001-07:00

I don’t usually blog about my food. But anytime lefse is made, eaten, or even passes through my mind, I think of my ancestors – I can’t help it. As I’m rolling out the paper-thin sheets of potato-based dough, I wonder if my grandmothers through the generations have felt that ache in their upper arms, before remembering that they probably did this much more frequently than I!

As I put each round sheet onto the griddle to cook, I wonder if my grandmothers were fascinated by the characteristic brown splotches created in such a haphazard pattern. My guess is, if I were able to ask them, they’d look at me like I was crazy. Making lefse, to them, was probably in the same category as doing laundry or sweeping the floor.

I wonder how they served their lefse – if it was a part of their evening meals, as we use bread; or if they enjoyed it for breakfast, as I often do, or how they prepared it. Plain? Brown sugar? Butter and cinnamon-sugar?

Whether I’m making lefse or eating it, it’s the one time that I feel very close to the Norwegian women who have come before me. No amount of genealogical research compares to doing what they did, and having made it a part of my family’s lives. It’s as if my grandmothers, Agnes, Lise, Anne Johanne, Marie, and Alfhilde, are somehow there with me as I do the work and savor the product. A little part of them lives on.

Lori, of Genealogy and Me, wrote a great post this week about interviewing the old folks – I’d like to take it a step further, and suggest you learn the customs and family traditions as well. If not for my grandmother, Lisa, who took the initiative to talk about these things, even when I was too young to really appreciate it, and my Aunt Mary, who taught me to make some of the treats she enjoyed as a child, these traditions would be nothing more than a vague memory for me, and non-existent to my children. This Mother’s Day, let’s be the women who pass down our traditions.

Harriet Van Brocklin – Doing God’s work on the Prairie

2010-05-01T09:24:00.001-07:00

Nestled between cornfields southwest of Freeport, Illinois, sits a lasting reminder that Harriet Van Brocklin was there, and that she had faith.

It takes a special kind of person to be a pioneer. Harriet’s husband, Conrad, was that kind of person, and while he stands out in his community’s history, it’s clear that Harriet was his kindred spirit in that respect. Not just any young woman would leave “civilization”, as well as her family, and take her two babies to what was at that time the western frontier, and live among Indians and wolves. But Harriet did, in the spring of 1836. She was taking herself, and her children, to an area where there were no doctors, no neighbors, and what you had was what you brought. For some time, the Van Brocklins were the only settlers in Florence township, in sparsely settled Stephenson county. It would be a year and a half before another settler moved into the area. How lonely she must have been.

But Harriet had brought faith with her. She was converted as a child in New York, and her relationship to God was vitally important. They held their own religious services, and had public services as early as 1846 in an old log school house near their home. In 1852, Harriet organized a Methodist congregation, and by 1860 it was part of a circuit of 5 churches with two ministers. In 1866, the Van Brocklin church building was completed, built on land donated at least partially by the Van Brocklins, with money raised by subscription. In more recent history, services were still held every other week, sharing a minister with another congregation. Harriet has long since gone, but her work lives on.

Van Brocklin's Day

On Yellow Creek they built a Church
And enemies said, "'twill be left in lurch,"
For the waters were high and the debt was large,
And God, they said, was against the charge.

But the day was bright and the sun shone clear,
And a pontoon bridge they crossed without fear;
And though the feet slipped the heart was true,
And they walked on ice to see the thing through.

The Elder preached well of Christ and love,
And carried our thoughts to temples above;
And when he stopped, Brother Best did write,
And soon the debt was out of sight.

Yea, more than asked, with a hearty will,
Because our God their thoughts did fill;
And thanks to friends and God we'll give --
Praise here, and then go home to live.

May angels often come and see
Repentant sinners bend the knee,
And new-born souls begin the song
They sing in heaven's assembled throng.

--J. Wardie
Freeport, Feb. 20, 1883

Thoughts on an old farmhouse

2010-04-29T19:52:00.001-07:00

Pictured here are my great grandmother, Virta Knutz, with her boys, Willie, 7, and Howard, 5, about 1918. They lived on this place, east of Virgil, South Dakota, until sometime in the 1930s, when they lost it in the Great Depression.

My great grandfather, Will Knutz, with the boys, on the front “deck”. I love the old lace curtains in the window, and wonder what the room looked like on the inside. Looking at the photos makes me wish I could step back in time, and experience what it was like to live on the old farm, and how day-to-day life felt for them.

On a trip back to South Dakota, I wanted to find the old farm. I drove past it several times, before realizing the old house was probably behind a thick patch of overgrown trees set far back from the road. The driveway, mostly filled in with weeds, was gated off, but I parked my car and climbed over the fence, and began the walk through the hip-high grasses.

Little by little, the tangible reminders of our memories grow old and fall apart, and eventually cease to exist. Such was the fate of the old farmhouse. Broken windows, doors torn off, and graffiti sprayed across the walls were stark reminders that nothing lasts. I wondered if the kids with the spray paint had any idea that my great-grandmother had lovingly made that room into a warm place for her family, with beautiful old lace curtains where there now was broken glass. Or, where they stood destroying things, that a young family had once started building a legacy. Heading back to my car, I stopped at the edge of the grove and took one last look back, and for just a moment I could see Virta peeking through the lace curtains, smiling, waving goodbye. Holding onto the tangibles forever isn’t always possible, but thank goodness what exists in our hearts is safe.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-04-27T21:04:00.001-07:00

The old farmer, my great-grandfather, Will Knutz, surveys the landscape after a hard days’ work on his farm in Clyde township, Beadle County, South Dakota.

If I get a Time Machine…

2010-04-24T11:14:00.001-07:00

I’m going a barn dance! And in the 1930s and 1940s, with dust in the fields, worries galore, rebuilding what was lost, and war, It was a time to put your worries aside. It was a time to socialize with your neighbors, tip a few, kick up your heels. There was no shortage of these dances on the prairie, and on any given weekend one could have their pick of where to go and what band to enjoy. Ladies often were admitted free, while the gentlemen might have to pay 25 to 30 cents to get in.

Among the popular local bands in and around Huron, South Dakota were such groups as the Golden Pheasants; White’s Red Jackets; the Rhythm Ramblers; Doyle and His Old-Timers; the Sod Busters, and the Bill Knutz Orchestra, in whom I have a vested interest.   While these bands did sometimes play in larger venues, such as the Band Box east of Huron, they frequently booked their jobs in the barns of their neighbors. Henry Meyer, who lived north of Wessington, Ed Langbehn, near Wolsey, Bill Schwartz, west of Huron, and Albert Baum, southeast of Huron, were frequent hosts of these weekend escapes.

I’m not sure when my grandfather, Bill Knutz, first became interested in being a band leader. As a young man, he farmed himself out (pun intended) as a hired man, and did some traveling around the midwest during harvest time. He lived frugally, and when the season was over, treated himself to a saxophone he’d found in a pawn shop in Nebraska, as well as a ring for his favorite girl. Both ended up being “keepers.” He taught himself how to play, and eventually formed his first band, “Bill Knutz and His Harmonians”, including his future brothers-in-law, Ray Christensen playing the fiddle and trumpet; Clarence Christensen playing the clarinet; and Bill’s brothers Howard playing the bass fiddle, and Richard on the drums. Bill’s mother, Virta, kept track of their bookings.

The Harmonians were rearranged to form the Bill Knutz Orchestra, when the band leader discovered his girl was also a mean piano player, and a good-looking girl in the band never hurt business… Unfortunately, it was not so easy where the drummer was concerned, and he had to settle for a fellow without much rhythm, who liked to keep a bottle by his drums for an occasional “swig”. When the drummer would speed up or lag behind with the tempo, fortunately all it took was Bill to wander back to the drum set and blow the sax into the poor man’s ear until he was back on pace.   Realistically, none of these people were professional musicians, just working folks with a day job, most of them dirt-poor farmers looking to make a few extra bucks for groceries and have a little fun in the process.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law grew up on South Dakota barn dances, and described similar situations throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Large crowds, comprised of whole families, would attend these outings, and often it was here that youngsters learned to dance.   Sonny Baum taught both his daughter and my mother a three-person dance called the Butterfly Dance; similarly, my mother-in-law, a lifelong fanatic, would dance with her father, Casper Kluthe, when he wasn’t busy on stage with his accordion. The smell of hay, the noise, the applause, the rowdy activity, with the younger children curled up and sleeping blissfully in any available corner, all while the band rocked out “Swingtime In The Rockies” and oldies like “Little Brown Jug.” “I’ll never forget those dances in our barn,” said my mother-in-law, and she never did. Alzheimer's robbed her of many of her treasured memories, but not these.

The Bill Knutz Orchestra eventually dwindled to just the two main members, Bill and his favorite pianist, and an occasional granddaughter (moi) warming the piano bench next to her grandmother, learning the chords to such favorites as “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley,” while the the more talented of the duo played the melody.   The leader of the band always tooted along on his sax. I was blessed to be a late part (although a very small part) of their orchestra. I’d love to have seen them in their heyday, and experienced the excitement of one of their dustbowl-era barn dances.

A Sad Time

2010-04-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

Burying a loved one is never easy, and I must say it’s even less easy when it’s a little child. We lost our newborn grandson on Thursday, and among many difficult decisions to make was his final resting place. Our side of the family are transplants here; we have no history or roots, which makes it all the harder. Some years ago, I began researching the family history of my daughter-in-law, whose family has been in the area for some time. Before going any further, let me clarify that burying a child never ever feels good, but sometimes you just need to make a decision that feels “right.”
Three years ago I discovered that my daughter-in-law had great-grandparents buried in a beautiful rural cemetery just outside of a tiny village about 6 blocks wide and about the same distance long. I knew these folks had a long history in the village and throughout the township. With my camera in tow, I picked a lovely early-summer day to drive the 15 miles to the cemetery, hoping to locate the graves, pay my respects, and take some nice photographs for her family history. The cemetery was well-kept and full of shady evergreen trees, and the sounds of various birds accented the hum of a tractor in the background. The weather was perfect. It felt good. I decided to photograph the entire cemetery, thinking that perhaps someone’s research might benefit from my efforts. I can tell you now, the person who benefitted the most was me.
I found the great-grandparents about a third of the way through the cemetery. I had done so much research on them, I nearly forgot this was not my family as I stood at the foot of their graves and felt a bit emotional at the thought of actually being there. When I finished, I continued on my mission. I had not gotten too far when I discovered the great-grandmother’s mother, Effie Mae, buried in the cemetery as well, with her husband, Will. I kept going. I found Will’s parents, and his grandparents there. I found Effie Mae’s parents, and her grandparents buried there as well. Eight generations back, our little newborn grandson’s ancestors rested, dotted throughout the small cemetery.
Today my son purchased the plot next to the great-grandparents, the original focus of my search, and we will lay our sweet little angel to rest there in a few days. I feel comforted that he is surround by history – HIS history – and that he will not be alone. For the last 100 years, members of his family have gathered in that cemetery, burying grandparents, parents, children, nieces, nephews and cousins. Now we will be among those to do so. I’ll think of his great-great-great-great grandmother, Jennie, as she buried her own 5 month old baby there. This still does not feel good, but it does feel right.

Tombstone Tuesday – a “What?!?!” Moment…

2010-04-11T19:31:00.001-07:00

It was the first speechless moment I’d had in a long time – and I’m rarely lost for words…
My father had a huge trunk full of loose photos that had belonged to my grandmother, Lisa, who immigrated to the US from Norway in her 50’s, to marry my grandfather. Very few of these photos were labeled, and I had sat up late for several consecutive nights going through them, and scanning the many extremely small photos that must have been quite popular back then. I had to scan and enlarge them just to get a good look at the faces and places, all of which still went unrecognized. About halfway through what was seeming like a very un-fruitful job, I picked up this tiny little photo, scanned it, and to my amazement, recognized the names on the stones as being my grandfather’s parents in Norway. I knew little about them besides their names at that point. Seeing this very tangible proof of their existence brought them to life immediately for me. I would love to have yet another speechless moment, paying my respects in person, if someday possible.

Sentimental Sunday – Grandpa Tom’s Rocking Chair

2010-04-10T21:48:00.001-07:00

I don't know how I was lucky enough to have ended up with Grandpa Tom's rocking chair - perhaps it was just a matter of having a baby at the right time. I didn't even realize exactly what I was getting when they loaded this heavy, built-to-last chair into the back of the van and drove it 300 miles to my house. All I knew is that my cheap, "some assembly required" rocking chair had broken, and I had a young child who missed it desperately.

I had seen the chair at my grandmother's house for as long as I could remember, in fact, I remember her re-upholstering the seat in the late 1960's. I never thought a thing about its origins, until I was browsing through some old pictures of my great-grandparents' home, and there it was! I assumed that after my great-grandmother, Virta, passed away, my grandparents inherited it. I asked my great aunt, Mabel, who was Virta's daughter, if she knew anything of it's origins, and she confirmed that it was Virta's father, Thomas L. Graves, who made this chair.

Tom made two rocking chairs, my mother said, and what became of the other one, we do not know. Actually, Tom was a carpenter and a farmer by trade, among other ventures, and he not only constructed these two chairs, but numerous pieces of furniture, and with his son Delbert built a number of homes, barns, and even a two-story double-wide store in Esmond, South Dakota. In his spare time, he liked to whittle, using soft stone. Truly a creative man.

I don't know when he built this rocking chair - he died in 1933, at the age of 71, and I'm not sure when he retired from his life of woodworking, or if death was what ended his avocation.
But what I do know is that many generations of his young descendants were comforted in that chair, and his daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and great-great-granddaughters have tenderly held their sleeping infants in it. Most recently, my own granddaughter, Alyssa, who represents Generation Number Seven, joins the fold, and hopefully the tradition won't end there.

Ancestor Approved Award

2010-04-04T19:27:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Evelyn Yvonne Theriault for the Ancestor Approved award! It really made my day, Evelyn!

It's my job, now, to "list ten things I've learned about any of my ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened me, and to pass the award along to ten other bloggers whom I feel are doing their ancestors proud."

1. I was definitely humbled at the story of Rebecca Lair, my ancestral grandmother. That lady is an inspiration on how to survive bad circumstances.

2. I was surprised to learn of my grandmother's experiences in Norway during World War II. And very humbled. Would I have the guts to have lived her life as well as she did??

3. I was surprised to discover my grandfather's long lost brother, in Iceland, and a whole new group of wonderful cousins. It truly is a small world, and it gave me hope of breaking down some other brick walls.

4. I was surprised to learn how many of my husband's ancestors were early pioneers in various areas, founding towns and living in some very primitive conditions.

5. I was enlightened to learn how difficult life could be for a new Irish immigrant in this country in the 1850s, and the ethnic prejudice that they had to endure.

6. I was delighted to learn more of my great-grandfather, Justin Meyer Jørgensen; not only facts about him, but stories and bits of information about him personally, and his part in family dynamics. I thought this information was unattainable, until I met my cousin, Tove, from Norway. Never stop hoping for the details you want so desperately.

7. Learning that my husband's grandparents stowed away on a train, to get where they needed to go, was a startling discovery!

8. Researching my husband's line, which includes numerous physicians, was definitely an education in early medical practices. Yikes! But also reading in old newspapers about how many times Dr. Seeman of Rockham, South Dakota, was summoned for various emergencies, makes me so proud of him. He was a dedicated country doctor.

9. I was surprised to learn that my husband's great-grandmother, Frances Stemper Joyce, delivered so many babies and tended to her sick neighbors, with her own large family to take care of.

10. I was delighted to learn my earliest ancestor "on this side of the pond" was here in 1623. It's staggering to comprehend that much elapsed time.

Now - for the blogs I would like to pass the award to. It was really tough to make a decision, as I love to read so many blogs, but here they are, in no particular order:

1. Branching Out Through the Years
2. Reflections From the Fence
3. What's Past is Prologue
4. Those Old Memories
5. Bits and Pieces
6. Lessons From My Ancestors
7. Desperately Seeking Surnames
8. The Ties That Bind
9. I Will Remember
10. Stardust 'n' Roots

Thanks again to Evelyn for the award, and thanks to all the bloggers who produce such interesting reading on our favorite topic.