The Virtue of Perseverance

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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.