The village in Bohemia that Heschs left

I've posted this site before, I think, but Larry found they've added new panoramas from September, this year.  Be sure to click on the map as well, to see where the mill was from the main road, and DO view it full screen.  It's fascinating!


Mill Race in Czech Republic

Here, you can scroll around the Mill in the little village of Dolni Zdar, Czech Republic.  When Paul, Mathias and Anton Hesch left Bohemia with their parents around 1860, this mill would have been very familiar to them.

Uncle Eddie Janish is 85!

On November 8th, 1924, in North Prairie, Minnesota, Henry Janish and his wife Anna Popp had a baby boy they named Edmund.  He was their 7th kid, of an eventual 9.  When Eddie grew up, he was lucky enough to marry a Hesch, my dad's sister Rose.

This pic was probably taken before they were married (thats Rosie and Eddie on the right, with Irene Janish and Tony Hesch on the left).  The picture below was probably their wedding day, June 19th, 1948.  That's Eddie in the middle, between his new brothers-in-law, Henry and Mike Hesch.

Pretty soon, Uncle Eddie and Aunt Rosie had 5 kids--Jerry, Judy, Timmy, Patty and Danny.  They were our "Cities" cousins and our cohorts in mischief at gramma and grandpa's farm in Royalton.

Another obvious highlight of Uncle Eddie's life was being asked to be my godfather, and Aunt Rosie, my godmother.  Mostly, that meant being there for occassions, like my first communion in 1956. 

We always looked foreward to visits with them.  When I worked in the floral in Sauk Rapids and they were retired 'by the river' in Royalton, they regularly stopped in to say hi, which I loved.  Usually, I'd see Uncle Eddies smile first, among the displays and customers, and then I'd look for Aunt Rosie, poking him to quit laughing.  Good times.  Precious times.

Aunt Rosie died in 2004, and Uncle Eddie still lives by the river in the house they built...and tomorrow, we'll celebrate his 85th birthday there. 

Happy Birthday, Uncle Eddie, and thanks for being my godfather, one of my favorite uncles, and my friend.

Ode to my parents

I work taking care of older people so they can stay in their own homes.  Most of them grew up around here, and of my current clients, one was a store-keeper, one a life-long gardener, two were homemakers, and two were German farmers. 
I realize that I get along with all of them because of how I was raised.  It was dad's example of how to use just the right amount of "schputt" without assuming too much...lol  From him, I have just enough understanding of farming to talk about it with them, and little enough to need questions answered.  (I've even printed family photos and taken them along to a clients house for an explaination, which pleases both of us).  Dad gave me his sense of humor.
Mom fine-tuned my "appropriateness", and added the softness I need now.  There's always a little apprehension when I go to meet a new client (I feel a bit like a kid wondering about how I'll fit with them), but then, the empathetic "mom" part of me kicks in...the nurturer, the carer, the hugger, and the "dad" part of me makes it fun.
The startling part with my clients, tho, is that at 60, they see me as a contemporary, not a kid.  Oh, my...!  But that works, too...lol 
I feel really blessed.

Rockwell knew it, too...

Census enumerators are just ordinary people writing down names and dates of ordinary people.  Conditions and memory would be different at every house!  We usually check the enumerator's signature at the top of the page--i.e., the 1880 census of a German-speaking population by J. D. Lachance promised lots of goofs.  There, Johann Hesch was recorded as Charles, and his 'kids' were 40, 30 and 10...lol

MORE Bohemia

Wow!  We've been furiously researching lately, and not only for Heschs.  A family related to my mom's side came from Bohemia too:  my Janson grandfather had two sisters who married BRANDL men (Frances married John, and Rose married Joe).   Larry found a passport application online from 1907...oh heck, if you're interested I'll explain it all HERE...lol

Q--WHAT is this thing?

It's made of copper, stands about 30" high...the various boxes fit in the tray at the top, and there's a shelf inside at the level of the bottom of the windows.  It was intended to be portable as it has a handle on top and wheels underneath.  Any ideas?

No, I don't know either--that's why I'm asking.

Cathedral High School Girls Drum & Bugle Corps, St Cloud

They say a Drum Corps girl is hard to beat,

Shes's just a hundred per from head to feet,

She's got that style, that smile, that winning way..

No matter where you go you'll recognize her and you'll say,

"Now there's a girl I'd like to know

She's got that good ol' Drum Corps pep and go, and

Just to look at her is quite a treat, It's hard to beat

a Drum Corps Girl"!

I was trying to find pictures online of the CHS Drum Corps that Marion and I belonged to in the 60s.  There's almost no mention of them, and that really makes me sad. 

We won Aquatennial Flags year after year, never realizing we were the ONLY "Ladied Drum and Bugle Corps" in the five state area.  Still, we were good, and deserved to win if for nothing else than we marched with straight ranks and excellent diagonals in 98º heat, wearing wool long sleeved uniforms with panty hose, majorette boots, dorky hats, and white gloves...lol

Oh, man.  We need more info about the Corps online--I believe the Drum Corps was organized in the 1920s at Cathedral and disbanded in the 1970s? If you find this and have more facts or memories, let me know, or leave a comment!
(Yes, this qualifies as history!)
Addendum:
Larry FOUND this photo online, altho he didn't specify from where.  He said the Drum Corps participated in a Brainerd Butter Days Parade in 1951 or 52.  Ok, I'll take his word for it.

(See the bass drum there, in the middle?  I'm sure it's the same drum I carried right before we invested in new sparkly blue drums in...1966?  Gawd, we were GOOD!)

Fascinating OLD news

I've been perusing the old newspapers online at CHRONICLING AMERICA from the Library of Congress, in particular, the St Paul (Daily) Globe, published  from 1884 to 1905 (it was a daily for only part of that time).  There was also a Minneapolis paper at the time, and certainly Der Nordstern would have been subscribed to by the Hesch family, but the Globe was American, and provided a view of the broader non-German world.  I suspect some issues trickled to Buckman. 

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What's so mesmerizing to me tho, is the background--what was humorous to them, what was newsworthy (even as a filler), and what other facts we can glean from those articles.  For instance:

1905-- For years, loggers went to the northwoods, cut logs, and sent them floating downstream to the saw mills.  This photo shows the advent of logs-by-rail, and also, the use of photographs in newspapers rather than drawings.

1890, May--We've debated HOW Paul Hesch arrived in Minnesota since we can't find him on ships lists from American ports.  (They're probably not all online, right, and the chances of his ship being omitted are...?)  Still, here's one possibility, through Canada.

1898--By now, the Globe did a 'humor' page--most of which doesn't seem clever or funny now, but it must have appealed then...lol  It seems to be the precursor to our funnies.

1898--I hope their artists were paid well, but I doubt it.  The header on a December 4 page, one of 32 that day.

1886, April--The cyclone devastation in Sauk Rapids.  It's a pretty close copy of a photograph we found elsewhere, except there was a rotund man and a boy in the foreground there.

Rice's Station, 14 April, 1886

From the St Paul GLOBE newspaper, 16 April 1886, this account of a wedding party in the path of the cyclone at Rice's Station (now Rice, Mn).

As I wandered around the public cemetery in Rice today, I was looking for names from the above list.  Two were tucked into the sod, almost invisible, and the third is a monument with the actual date on it.

                       John Souer, died 1886

Martin Souer, died 1886

"Mary A., daughter of John D and G?

Trabent

Died

April 14, 1886

Aged

10 Years, 11 Months and 2 Days"

..............

 John D Trabent's father was injured that day, and his mother was killed, but they're not buried at Rice, tho John is. He died in 1890, as inscribed on the front of the stone.

Peter Sand 1823-1894

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Monday, I stopped at the Benton County History Museum in Sauk Rapids to ask about a conundrum we've been researching: Where are Peter and Angelique (Stoltz) Sand buried? (These are Michael Sand's parents, and my grandmother Elizabeth's grandparents. They emmigrated from Schoenfels, Luxemburgh in  1857).

We knew they first settled in Iowa, then moved to Le Sauk township, Stearns Co, Minnesota three years later.
Le Sauk township is the west side of Sartell roughly at the blue square on the map, above. Larry found the census from 1870, below, and subsequent censuses show they were neighbors of the Sartell family. (Peter's daughter Kate later married Linton Sartell).
So, I went to the Sartell Public Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery next to it. The middle of the public cemetery is the Sartell family plot, but I couldn't find Linton or Kate, tho they must be there. I thought, too, that her parents would be there, or nearby. They're not.
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Now, THIS is SO cool: Larry was looking at the Globe Newspaper online at the Chronicling America website, Library of Congress.
In April of 1886, a really horrible cyclone swept thru St Cloud, Sauk Rapids, Rice and Buckman. If you click the link, you'll see the reports and descriptions of the devastation. But look--the middle column on the front page on April 16th has a list of people who lost property in St Cloud. Ninth from the bottom is "Peter Sand, house....$300".
Incredible! In 1886, Peter was 63--did they retire to St Cloud? We know Angelique died in 1886, but not necessarily from the storm.
Then, wow, in the St Cloud city directory of 1894-95, Larry found this:
Ok, so, 8 years after the storm, Peter Sand lived near the pro-cathedral, Holy Angels, and what would later be Cathedral High School. I'll need to go see if there's a very old house on that corner one day soon!
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Back to what I found at the Benton County Museum....on a microfilm of the Sauk Rapids Free Press newspaper published 4 January 1895: Peter died at the home of a daughter in St Cloud. Maybe 414 8th Ave N was the home of his daughter?
Then, from a family tree Larry discovered online, we found that Angelique (aka Angeline) was buried at Calvary Cemetery in St Cloud. A quick call to the Stearns History Museum gave me the info I needed to go find the graves: Block 6, lot 82, space 1.

Another family mystery solved, and a truly interesting bit of our history is no longer forgotten. Yay!

Dimey and Queenie

             (Just a picture of a team--it's nobody we know....)

In the 1930's, if you owned your own team of work-horses, you were set. If you had your own farm, you had the necessary horse-power, and if you didn't, you could make money by hiring-out with the team.

Before WWII, my dad owned a team he was proud of. When he enlisted in the army, tho, he had to find a "temporary" home for them, because he knew he'd want them back once he got home.

A farmer west of Little Rock, Minnesota--Paulie Gangl?--agreed to take care of them till dad got back. I suppose it was unspoken that Paulie could use them for work, and if dad didn't come home, then the team was his.

I imagine that once he was discharged, he went home to see his family, and then directly to see Dimey and Queenie, the horses.

On Sundays when we were little girls, the family would pile in the car and 'go for a ride' pretty often. I remember going to see Dimey and Queenie regularly (probably once a year). By then, dad was working at the VA, in St Cloud, and he knew he'd never need the team again.

The last time I remember going to see them, Queenie had had a colt! We stood at the fence watching them run in the pasture, and dad had tears in his eyes.

(Hmm. Would foaling have been possible? The youngest Queenie could have been then (1955-56) was 11 or 12, if dad bought them in 1943 or '44).

What brought them to mind, you ask? I was reading THIS ARTICLE and recognized where dad probably got the name "Dimey"...lol