Trachofsky Family from Bohmen

Lessee, my great grandfathers' brothers' wife would be my great great aunt, or my great grand aunt? I'm talking about Agnes Trachofsky (or Trachowsky) who married Mathias Hesch, in Waumandee, Wisconsin in 1879.

Here, the Thomas & Elizabeth Trachowsky family arrived in Baltimore from Bohemia on the S S Ohio on June 4, 1869, when Agnes was 16. Her sibs were Franz, Maria, Theresia and Elise.
The wonders of web searching: put in a name, especially an odd one, and amazing things show up! This article from September 1899 was published in the Globe, St Pauls sensational rag...lol Franz, now Frank, would have been 39 here, and had evidently moved to Iowa/Illinois:

(So, when Frank eventually DID die, was there a second, real, grave marker for him? Genealogy is so un-exact! lol)

Another fascinating thing about searching for relatives who might have lived in Iowa was the amazing census of 1925. Each person was listed on two wide pages--first with current info, then with who their parents were, including mom's maiden name. Here, we see that Marie (Mary) Trachofsky married Isador Richlen (a Frenchman) and lived in Buffalo, Scott Co, Iowa.

(This also gives credence to her brother Frank living in Iowa, and to "Austria" as place of origin, even if it was really Bohemia).

Gotta check the map, huh?

So, siblings Mary Trachofsky (Richlen) and Frank Trachofsky lived near each other around Muscatine, Iowa, and their sister Agnes was 'just up the river' in Waumandee.
MORE thanks to Larry!

Raymond Hesch 1931-1974

Whoa, it's tough to figure out, sometimes, HOW relatives fit...especially if his father was a Paul. But certainly, this young man was one of "ours".

His father was Paul, son of grandpa Anton's brother John Hesch & Ket Mueller. Paul, remember, was the boy pictured in the Hesch General Store, in 1914, as a 7 year old.
Paul married Anna Valentine in 1928 and they had six children, Ray being the third.
Raymond married and had 4 children with his wife Joyce. They lived in Concord, California, so most likely, there's a Hesch branch out there!

Added much later: this was a tragedy in a young life, for sure.

German words in Math's Diary

Thanks to the excellent translation skills of Michael Hortsch, we have some new info! There were three pages of German written by Helena Wiciak and Math, but that'll be a different post.

THIS post deals with what he wrote down on the second part of the page, above. It was something he saw posted in Opole, probably in the White Wall Theater. Michael translates:

"Wer hier larmt oder
hetzt wird an die
Frische luft gesetzt"

(In German these lines rhyme.)

"Those who make noise or cause trouble will be thrown out".

LOL!
BTW, Math probably thought the rhyme was cute, and I'm sure he used it in the Buckman News once he got home....probably saying some local farmer had it posted in his chicken coop...lol

(And, if you missed the post about the first bit highlighted above, here's the translation, also courtesy of Michael Hortsch:

"Blessing in the Hortsch Inn in Susslau:

Wo Glaube da Liebe
Wo Liebe da Frieden
Wo Freiden da Gott
Wo Gott keine Not

Where there is Faith there is Love.
Where there is love there is peace.
Where there is peace there is God.
Where is God there is no adversity".)

Thank you, Michael! You made this a LOT easier for Larry and me.

Sand women c.1920

Here's one of the pictures Judy found among Aunt Rosies photos....its obviously Grandma (Lizzy Sand Hesch) third one, standing, but the woman top left looks SO familiar. Larry brought it up--how old did I think Grandma was in this pic? I guessed aproximately 40...? Grandma was born in 1883, and we think this was a picture of the women who cooked for a threshing crew (their husbands and brothers). If she was 40, this was 1923...but wait!
Louisa (Rausch) SAND (Grandma's mother) died in 1921, but I think she's in this picture too. The formal pic isn't as convincing as the Sand family pic, but this HAS to be her, top left. So the year was 1919 or 1920, and Grandma was 37. These would have been women from the west side of Buckman, since there are at least three Sands in it...and possibly four, if the lower right woman is Lena (Sand) Block (inset pic is from Grandma's wedding in 1910).
I think grandma's sister Veronica is there too, sitting on the grass next to the nectar pourer. Around this time, she married John Wintermeyer and moved to St Cloud. The inset pic of her is from 1946.
Note added almost a year later:  First, the lower right woman is not Lena Block, according to Uncle Tony Hesch.  He said she was always "sorta skinny" until her old age, so cancel that one.
Added November 2012:  The front row right woman was probably Elizabeth, Charlie Sand's wife, from Wenachee, Washington!  We know they came home to visit at least once--and she matches the other photos we have of her.  Cool, huh?


According to Jeannie Marshik tho (see post on June 30th, 2010) the woman top right is probably Lena Dengel Mueller....(thanks Jeannie!)


AND, Larry and I were perusing this photo again tonight, and realize it could easily have been a wedding, where Louisa, Anna and Lizzy did the cooking, and the others were servers.  Whew--remember when being asked to serve at a wedding was considered an HONOR??  LOL...I do, and I useta have the sheer aprons to show for it, too!

Isn't this about as COOL as it gets?? WOW.

THANKS again to Judy and LARRY...and Jeannie ☺

More about Math's Diary!

Wow. I spent a good part of Saturday with Louise, Math Hesch's daughter (Math was my grandpa Anton's brother). It was a totally fun day, and I wonder how two people can talk that MUCH without collapsing...lol

I still can't believe it, but she allowed me to take Math's diary home with me so I could scan every page. It's truly a sacred trust. To hold that notebook in my hands...to know it went with him on the Olympic, and on the trains, in London and Berlin and Guschwitz where his mom was born, to realize it spent time in his breast pocket at the Wintergarten, and in the parks with the girls he met...that he reached for it when he saw the zeppelin overhead, and when he visited Franz Hortsch, and when they put their feet in Russia.... Wow.

If you recall, Math's grandaughter Joanie transcribed what he wrote (see the pdf file on the sidebar--scroll down) but she left out the German parts. Now, I see why: some parts were written by new friends they met, and they're often written in the old script, Suetterlin, which Michael Hortsch says hasn't been taught in German schools for over 80 years.

BUT, Suetterlin is exactly what Larry and I have been "reading" in those Bohemian church books for over a year, so we can mostly figure out what it says.

Sometimes, ya just gotta be grateful for the way stuff works out.


Here's the 10th image from the diary (approximately pages 12-13) where Math mentions something he read in the Hortsch saloon , and something else he read in Oppeln:

Larry, the MASTER of web-searching, realized the words from the tavern were somewhat repetitive, and just like that, he found this, c. 1900. This picture, or something very like it, was what Math saw:
Ah. You want to know what it SAYS, huh?

"Wo Glaube da Liebe-Where there is Faith, there is Love
Wo Liebe da Friede-Where there is Love, there is Peace
Wo Friede da Segen-Where there is Peace, there is Blessing
Wo Segen da Gott-Where there is Blessing, there is God
Wo Gott keine Noth-Where there is God, there is no adversity".

(Edit: Since that poster/saying was fairly common in Prussia then, we found the translation online, when someone else asked for a translation. I copied the translated verse, without checking line for line..

Michael Hortsch wrote: "The Blessing you found on-line is the one Math found in the Hortsch inn. However the version you printed has one additional line. Math's transcribed version goes directly from peace to God, no blessing in between". LOL

(No, we haven't figured out what the Oppeln quote says yet...lol)

Thanks, Michael!!

12 days

How things have changed!

Lets face it, ok? It hasn't been that many years since this lawn-mowing foolishness started. I mean, really, I just scrolled thru almost ALL the photos I have from Sue, Irene, Roger, Aunt Jeanette, and Judy, plus those I had already, and practically every outside photo had people standing on gravel or patchy grass. They rarely posed in front of the house, because the
GRASS WAS NEVER CUT.
This is the way it actually looked:
Have I mentioned how much I detest mowing the lawn? (Larry says "cutting the grass" but Hesch vernacular is "mowing"...as in HAY).
One day, I was whining (again) about it to him online, and he replied, "..but you feel GOOD about it when it's done, right?"
Well OK, yes, I do, but in a Catholic, "absolved of my sins" sorta way. As tho I've publically confessed to how bad weeds look when they bloom among 6" grass....and how nice the willow looks with a smooth carpet underneath....then mowing is a purification rite. I feel like I've re-joined the Saints and left my evil ways behind me...at least for now.
I suspect the short-grass fad started like the cell-phone fad did--one or two people in town had one of those fancy new rotary mowers and a kid who needed occupying on a Saturday afternoon. Everyone else thought it was silly or pretentious (remember the first cell phone users?) and thought it'd NEVER catch on....

And here we are, relatively FEW years later. EVERYone has a cell, and EVERY yard is trimmed.
But, is it truly BETTER this way?

--end of whine--lol

Erwin Suess

Ok, this guy may not even be related, but it's his music that I'm using on the Hesch Family video.

Here's a bit about him and here's some of his marvelous music !!

Thanks to Ervin Suess and the Hoolerie Dutchmen!
LOL...he look "familiar" tho, doesn't he!

YOU are someone else's HISTORY

From a daily column called Bulletin Board in the St Paul Pioneer Press this morning, July 25th, 2009:

Writes The Farm Boy of St. Paul: "Subject: Time and tide on the Sea of Tranquility.

"Walter Cronkite and the Apollo 11 moon landing are forever joined in my mind, thanks to a record I played over and over when I was just 6 years old. I dug out that little record last night and played it again, for the first time in decades. The two-sided, 7-inch, 33 1/3-RPM record is titled simply 'Man on the Moon.' It says it was put out by CBS News, but there isn't much other information. I don't know where my parents got it or how much it cost.

"The record tells the story of the moon landing, narrated by Cronkite, with audio excerpts from newscasts and sound bites (back before we knew what 'sound bites' were) from the astronauts and presidents Kennedy and Nixon. That such an event resulted in the production of a phonograph record — that means no pictures, kids — for posterity shows just how long ago it really was.
"The first moon landing was a BIG DEAL, even to someone who had just turned 6 years of age. Astronauts were heroes. I knew all about the space program (the way kids today know all about dinosaurs and polar bears, I suppose) and had even built a plastic model kit of the Saturn V rocket. The moon landing is one of my oldest historical memories.
"But time is a strange thing. My younger brother was born just months after that first moon landing, so he has no memory of it. To him, it's always been 'ancient history,' so to speak. That's the way it is for me when it comes to another 'Where were you when ... ?' event. I was just months old when President Kennedy was assassinated. I have no memory of it. By the time I learned of it as a historical event, about eight years had gone by — a lifetime. It was 'ancient history' to me; why were people still obsessed with it?

"Now it's been how long since 9/11? Eight years?

"I tend to think of as 'old' anything that was already in the past when I first learned of it. But anything that I became aware of at the time it was happening, my mind considers 'new.' That leads to some strange mental mathematics. For instance, if I hear a Rolling Stones song, my brain identifies it as either an 'oldie' or a 'new one.' Funny thing is, based on the age I started becoming aware of popular music, my brain thinks the Stones have only about 10 years of 'old' songs but 35 years of 'new ones.'

"Growing up, I thought of my own age as 'normal,' and everyone else was either 'old' or 'young,' in comparison to me as the standard. That point of view was challenged a few years after high school, when I ran into a teacher who didn't remember what year my friends and I had graduated. How could that be? Didn't he remember that we were the Class of '81? The best class ever? The culmination of years of education? The end of one era, and the beginning of another?

"No, he didn't remember that. Because it wasn't true. Not for anyone but us. To my teacher, we were just another class in a long career.

"Time doesn't stand still. People are born every day. There is no 'normal' age. As much as we like to talk about the past, the present and the future, it's all relative. Whose past? Whose present? Whose future? Eventually, we all become someone else's history."

Woohoo!

There are fifteen days left till the reunion, and things are coming together nicely.
One of my clients listened to me chattering about hoping Shirley would bring her mom's beans (and was tired of hearing me go on and on about it, I suspect) that she volunteered to make a gallon of baked beans for me to bring that day. So what if we have two crock pots of beans??

AND, another client is moving to assisted living, so we were cleaning out her house, and THERE, in her cupboard, was a Whoopee John 'forty greatest hits' tape! WOW --she insisted I take it--LOL!

And, I found a reunion outfit at Fleet Farm --life is GOOD!

We know there are folks coming from Chicago, Minneapolis, North Dakota, and Wisconsin (besides Minnesota), and hopefully from Nebraska, Washington and Oregon, and that some of those people have never met relatives from the Hesch side....

Oh, man--this calls for good behavior--can we do it??
LOL

They wanted a better life...

Larry and I were talking yesterday about how we look at our ancestors' lives. That Paul Hesch was a "well-to-do" farmer sounds like he didn't have to work at it...but when you think about it, most of his 54 years was NOT well-to-do. It was simply the condition when he died. Still, we think of him as a successful farmer.

The lives of the people we've researched for Hesch History are done. We rely on obituaries for chronological info about them: "...grew up in Agram, married, farmed for 40 years, retired to Buckman"...and we imagine blocks of time spent working towards each new milestone.

It's never that way, though, is it?

We all do what's needed at the time, and we live with our new conditions. Nobody plans a death in the family, or the need to emmigrate, or a divorce, or a lost farm, or kids who leave for Minneapolis or Portland. These things simply happen, you deal with it, and life goes on.

Still, we here in 2009 look back and judge what happened through our current filters. We can't help it. But almost everything about our daily lives now is different than theirs was: meals, clothing, education, parenting, transportation, provisions, the water supply, child labor...

So, a major line of our research is about HOW they lived, especially in Europe--what were conditions like? Did wars or revolutions affect them? Were there famines or epidemics? Were they able to move up the economic ladder there?

Heschs didn't own homes or farms in Bohemia. They were hired labor and moved to where there was work. (That's why 'Niedermuhl' and 'Oberschlagles' are interchangeable when we refer the village they left). Were they allowed enough land to grow their own food? Could they own animals? What DID they own? Where did they get firewood? Was there a doctor nearby? Did they go to school? What was FUN for them?

Great grandfather Paul was 28 when he married Mary Otremba in Buckman in 1874. We think he arrived here around 1870. He knew plenty of hardships in his young life: he was born during a cholera epidemic shortly before a revolution, he probably grew up working the fields with his dad, and his future in Bohemia was bleak (either military, or as a hired farmer). He told his kids later that he was a stowaway to escape military service in the Austrian Army. The system there was a lottery, but if your number wasn't called this year, you were obliged to participate each year till you were 35, a tough time to 'start' your life.

Still, leaving Europe for a man of draft age wasn't as hard as that sounds--America needed settlers right after the Civil War here, and Europe was trying to get rid of the "riff-raff"--the thousands of unemployed laborers who had nothing to inherit because their parents had nothing....
Knowing some of Pauls' background should explain alot--our senses of humor, all their making-do, why we don't put on airs, even why grandpa Anton rarely smiled. To study them is to discover our birthright and heritage.
And that's pretty cool.

Aunt Ket--The Later Years

These pictures were probably from the late 40s or early 50s--Katherina Mueller Hesch Suess died in 1956 at 75.

I wonder what became of that quilt? Was it for family, or to be auctioned at the church bazaar? It looks pretty intricate, and you KNOW it was all hand-done.

LOL...that must have been HER chair, huh?

Note added later:
Sue visited a Suess relative of hers, and he said that Ket was the local midwife--that she attended most all the births around Buckman. Also, "..she spoke High German while Andrew spoke Austrian German. Katherine could speak both but when she got visiting with her sister(s) Andrew would just scoff that he could not understand a word of it…."

Check it out!

Scroll down to that "settlers" post...Larry had an inspiration and a new theory about it.

Later: WOW--another theory..go, LOOK~

Also, I added Cecilia Schmolke's funeral card to her post from June 5th, 2009.
(Thanks to Aggie Suess' card collection, by way of Sue!)

18 days !

Buckman FUN back then...

WOW, Sue has a load of wonderful pictures from years ago. Here are two she sent this weekend:

Her mom, Joan Suess, is in the front row of this childrens Whistle Band from 1941. It was obviously sponsored by St Michaels Church / school...don't they look proud? Those drums make me wonder about volumn: they were necessary to keep time, but the bass looks like it could overpower the music pretty easily...lol "Play a little softer, Billy, ok?"
Now THIS photo delights me! Sue sent it this morning, with the subject line:

"Things you could do barefoot..."

LOL! Second kid from the left is Agnes Hesch (Aggie Suess) at about 10 years old...so this was about 1916.
EIGHT kids and the driver--can you imagine the laughter and squealing? Hmm...wonder what was being built there, in the background?

SUE, THESE ARE TERRIFIC--THANKS!

Early settlers...in Buckman?

LOL...a bit of Americana:
We don't know who these people were, but Sue says it's a postcard, and it has lots of fingerprints on it.
Did all nine people live in that house?
Or, was the woman with the horse visiting?
Was her husband taking the picture?
Were the couple parents to the little kids?
Who was standing in the doorway then? ++++

Edit: Larry brought this to my attention just now: There are some definite anomalies in the photo that bring up lotsa questions...like, why would there be four oxen parked in the farmyard like that? It's a joke that the little kid is holding the lead rope to those huge animals--Larry pointed out that they look like buffalo/cattle crosses, and wow, they DO. See the horns and hump on the nearest beast? (We know Frank Otremba was messing with crossing buffalo with his cattle...could these be some of them?) The mans' clothing doesn't look "German" to me, either....and the oxen are tied to a low hitching post before the lead rope--why would that be there?

If this was a random "settlers" picture postcard, why did Aggie Suess keep it in her stuff?

Also, why the rows of cans IN the window of the 'house'? The relationships of the people seem odd, too...

Now, try THIS theory on:

I heard this weekend that there was another Center Valley Store, located at the T in the road north of the creamery. Is this picture of THAT store?

It would account for the cans in the windows, and the chalkboard next to the door, for the unusual mix of people outside, for the kids sitting on the ground with no kid-stuff near them, for well-to-do parents of those kids owning a horse, too; for the fancy dog-cart just to our right of those kids, for the woman and baby in the doorway (storekeeper?) and for the 'extra' woman behind the man ( possibly the storekeepers' sister or more likely, the "hired girl" who tended the children ). And, it would account for having four large farm animals in the yard. Were they for sale?

See why I think Larry's a genius? lol...this idea makes MUCH more sense of what we see here!

The man could be Frank Otremba, who was Polish.. Perhaps he was showing them that day (matching halters on 'em), and/or selling them? We know he tried to convince other farmers that they were the future. He could very well have been showing them, and he could afford a photographer to record the event.

Aggie would definitely have kept that picture--it might not have been the Center Valley store, but it WAS a store, I think. (Either Center Valley store would have been close to the Suess farm, and much closer than Buckman).
+++++

HA! Theory #2: (Thursday morning) That store could very well have been John Mueller's store, in Buckman. Larry was thinking about it, and checked John's bio in "The History of Morrison and Todd Counties, Minnesota" from 1915. John Mueller and his brother opened a store in Buckman in 1909. We know from the 1908 Schmolke house photo that most of the houses/businesses weren't there yet.

It would make even MORE sense that Frank Otremba would show his cattleo there. A brand new store, and innovative Buffalo/cattle crosses:

Aggie would have had even more reason to save THAT picture!

BTW, 20 days till the REUNION!

Glorious Fish Abundance!

Sue and I were talking about all the fish we ate as Catholic kids--how every Friday mom would take a fishy milk carton from the freezer and it would sit there, on the counter, sweating and melting in time for that weeks' at-home fish fry.

This photo (had to be 30-40 fish on that string!!) was in Sues' stack...and the third guy was mostly a glare. (THIS is what photo-editing programs were MADE for! )

Comparing this pic with another one Sue sent, we think it was taken around 1932. The man in the middle could have been Joe Suess' buddy Sitzman, because he's sitting next to Joe in another photo. Still, it's a mystery!

::::
Trivia, here:
Do you remember having your throat blessed at church every February? The crossed candles held to your throat while the priest made the sign of the cross over your head? That was the feast of St Blaise, patron of throat diseases...lol I always connected it with fish bones.
St Blaise was good, but boiled potatoes worked immediately, and better....

Johnny Boy at 62

This would have been 1978 or so. He looks like fun....and it's odd to think that name followed him all his life. Dad always smiled when he talked of Johnny Boy.

Thanks, Sue!

Dessau, Germany, April 1945

Remember this photo of dad (Mike Hesch)? Yesterday, Larry saw a clip on YouTube from a movie called "Band of Brothers". It's a scene where American troops first realize what German "work camps" were.

Dessau was a town near the boarder with Russia, and at the end of the war, it became a displaced persons camp from which people were sent "home".

Here's what Larry said:

"...in the town your dad was stationed in where he poses with the bike? They had a camp there.
A unique thing happen: (the Americans) brought in the local citizens who lived nearby and made them see what was going on in the camp, as if to ask "didn't you know this was going on?"
Whew...they must have known, but objecting would have jeopardized their own lives...

No wonder he/they never talked about the war.

The St Paul Daily Globe

The Library of Congress website is fascinating. It has an online division called Chronicling America, a collection of early newspapers from across the nation. Of course, it's searchable, so I tried "The Globe Newspaper, St Paul, Mn" and found that the newspaper folded in 1905.

Evidently, there was a problem as early as 1893:(NYTimes).... but by 1905, the publishers gave up.

This piece was part of an article that day chronicling reactions from other newspapers around the state:
<>:::<>:::<>:::<>:::<>:::<>:::<>
But Larry and I have formed our own opinions of the Globe over time...lol...and the other newspapers were just being 'nice' there. The Globe seemed to love sensational stories, but went out of business well before THIS story ended:

(The Daily Globe, Oct 7, 1902)

22 days

Beach and Sentinel Butte, North Dakota

The idea that immigrant families from villages in Europe settled near each other when they got here seems to be verified by the familiar names in these obituaries. While the towns are in North Dakota, the people came from Waumandee, Little Falls and Pierz.
This first one is from January, 1963....
...and this one, from 1942....

And here, a Zinsli from Waumandee, in 1937.

Checking a map of North Dakota, Golden Valley is a county, and Beach is the last town before Montana on I-94. Wow!

(Thanks to Larry, our intrepid obit finder!)

NEW old pictures

I think I saw this photo years ago, maybe in Aunt Fronie's album? I must have asked about it, but Judy explained what she knew about it when she shared the picture: Aunt Fron on the left, Grandma Hesch on the right, picking fruit in Washington state.

Huh? When did they go to Washington? And, why? Who did they know in---oh! Grandma's brother Charlie lived there with his wife Elizabeth.
Aunt Fron looks to be about 16, so this would have been 1935 or so. The child on top of the ladder was probably Charlie and Elizabeth's adopted son.

This next picture is, I think, the women who cooked for a threshing crew (their husbands). Back then, harvesting was done as a team--8 or 10 neighbors got together and did all of their fields over a few days, while their wives and daughters prepared huge and amazing meals for them. Evidently, 'nectar' was big that year...lol  A better, clearer explanation: it was a Hesch Wedding in 1920.
Grandma is third from the left, standing. This could have been the 30s or 40s, judging by their dresses. Does anyone have a clue who the others are?

(24 days)

Sometimes, it pays to write....

On mom's side of the family: Her father was named Anton, too, just like dads' father, so we took to calling them "Little Grandpa" (Janson) and "Big Grandpa" (Hesch).
Little Grandpa was one of 8 children (4 girls and 4 boys). Of the girls, Rose and Frances married, while Anna and Sophia became nuns: Sophia was born in Germany (1875), and became Sr. Lazara, and Anna was born in Minnesota (1883), and became Sr. Kunigunda.

They belonged to the Franciscan Sisters in Campbellsport, Wisconsin, so I emailed the contact person on their website. In a few days, I received an envelope with these photos from the 1930s, and their birth, first vows, final vows, and death dates. Sr Lazara was a homemaker and died at 78 years old in 1954, while Sr Kunigunda was a teacher and died at 90 in 1973.
They're buried at the Sisters Cemetery in Campbellsport, Wisconsin.

Technical difficulties....

Wanna guess who suggested this??

But HOORAY, I have my computer back and it's working wonderfully well. TG for the guys at Call A Technician in Sauk Rapids, Mn!
(25 days)

Laptop Posting

 I've been reading a book about Waumandee, Wisconsin by LaVerne Rippley, an expat from there. It's "an affectionate portrait" of the beginnings of Waumandee to the present. And, he seems to corroborate most of our assumptions about the immigrants from Bohemia--that they followed each other to the same places in the new world, that they spoke a German dialect peppered with Czech, that they mostly left because of economic hardships and to avoid military service for a ruler they didn't believe in.
Mathias and Agnes show up in the transcripts he did of St Boniface Parish church books...it's so COOL to find children being baptized EXACTLY when we thought they were...lol
Larry and are almost experts now on what other families the Heschs knew back then...who their neighbors were, who they married, where they shopped, even where the farm was.....
G'head...ask us!

(31 days till the reunion!)

An 1870 Florist

Last night, Larry showed me a city directory from Albany NY, published in 1870-71. Listed was a Valentine Hesch, a cigarmaker and farmer, but we figure he was from the Canadian Heschs.
Anyway, I started to scroll forward and backward from that page, just to see what ads were included, and I found this:

Talk about DIRECT marketing!

They walked here

THIS is the village where Johann and Maria (Schlinz) Hesch lived, where they had kids, and it's the village they left behind. Did Paul, Mathias and Anton play in this road? Did they walk this way to bury the little boy, Bartholomeus, who died of scarlet fever? Was theirs one of THESE houses?
Oberschlagles is 4,637 miles from central Minnesota, as the crow flies.....for sure, YOU can make it to the reunion!
(33 days left)

The NEW Patron Saint of Genealogists

In Schamers (Cimer), Bohemia, in 1847, Anton and Anna Binder had another baby, whom they named Josef. This kid made it through childhood (a feat all by itself) and when he grew up, he became a priest, and eventually the "Metropolitan-Domkapitalur" of Prague (which is the MAIN Canon of the church).

That's nice, but it's not why we think he's cool.

Apparently, he was stationed for awhile in his home town of Schamers, or he simply borrowed the oldest record books from the church there. He was writing a book on the history of Schamers, and perhaps he needed the books for that, but while he had them, he recopied the odd, often messy, handwritten records into very clear, legible records.

The new pages are simply between the old, so you can compare them...but the marvel is that Josef Binder realized he was among the last to be able to read those records fluently. Plus, he could write Suetterlin, and had unprecedented access to the books.

The church in Schamers is St Michael the Archangel, so that's why Larry put Michael on the portrait, and the other saint is Wenceslaus, Patron saint of Bohemia.

The halo just appeared--his first miracle!

A lot of the children listed in the record books have saint-dedications written there too, like "Johann (Nepo.)" or "Maria (Concept.)" so in that spirit, we decided Josef Binder should be cannonized: "St. Josef (Genealog.)".

(Note to Pope--all it takes is putting ST. in front of his name, see?)

Thank you, Larry, and Thank YOU, St. Josef Binder!

Heschs in the big city

This is a page from the St Paul City Directory in 1909--a year before A A Hesch married Elizabeth Sand.

His father Paul had died in 1900, (and Paul's father Johann had died 3 years before that), so Paul's brother Anton was still on the farm west of Pierz, and Mathias was still in Waumandee, Wisconsin.

This page tho, shows Agnes Hesch, Anna Hesch, Anton Hesch and Mary Hesch working in St Paul. It's entirely possible that A A worked away from home for awhile before he married.


Of course, the cities drew farm kids from Wisconsin as well as Minnesota...so Mary, Anna and Agnes were most likely Mathias' daughters. Anna and Mary were operators at the same company (Finch Van), Agnes was a seamstress and all three lived at 131 N Smith Ave.

I wonder if they knew each other? And, was A A any kind of company back then??

(34 days!)

Why I'm not at the fireworks...lol

Well, partly cuz my little town had fireworks last night that I saw from my own front yard, and partly cuz we just got home from seeing GK and A Prairie Home Companion 35th anniversary show in Avon, Mn. Here, he's talking to "the historian" of Avon, and right behind him is John McCutcheon getting ready for his set. Gawd, it was FUN...
...but the thought of more crowds right now is NOT appealing!

ANOTHER Mischke priest

Larry found this clipping from the Sauk Centre paper, 7 June 1951. This was Bernard, the nephew of Benno and Fridolin Mischke.

Oddly, I'd found a 2007 photo of him, when he was 81 and retired in Phoenix. We just had no explanation of who he was, then....
(BTW, 35 days!)

Nun so fair

It's too bad that becoming a nun detached a person from her birth family and attached her to a convent family. She was given a new unrelated name, and her family name seemed to be re-attached only when she died.
In my parents' families, we have Sr Laura OSB, Sr Teresita OSB, Sr Severine OSB, Sr Kunigunda OSF, and Sr Lazara OSF.

Just so it's recorded somewhere:

Sr Teresita was Anna Sand (daughter of Mike Sand & Louisa Rausch)...she was the skinny, small one, with a great sense of humor and most often a coif that was askew (left in picture)...lol

Sr Severine (middle in picture)was originally Mary Sand (daughter of Mike Sand & Louisa Rausch)...she was built more like Grandma, and looked like her too.

Sr Laura (on right in the picture) started life as Theresa Hesch (daughter of Paul Hesch & Mary Otremba)...lots about her elsewhere on Hesch History.

Sr Kunigunda was mom's aunt Anna Janson (daughter of Joseph Janson and Franziska Fuchs)...did we kids ever meet these two sisters? The Franciscan order took the "poverty" vow seriously, so when mom sent them pictures of us, they weren't allowed to keep them. In a few days, a letter would arrive full of holy cards...and the pictures.

Sr Lazara was another aunt, Sophia Janson (daughter of Joseph Janson & Franziska Fuchs)...Sr Lazara was wheelchair bound in later life. I think this photo was from c 1935-40.

Click SISTERS for a link to other pictures from the Milwaukee Convent.

Evidently, there was no standard way to record teaching nuns on censuses--a school convent with a few nuns would sometimes be just their religious names, not even "Sr.", and other years, it might be "Severine Sand", so it's impossible to trace them unless you know where they were stationed, in what years. And now, even their own mother houses don't list them, at least not online....but how hard would that be?

(36 days)

DEEP snow in 1926?

Sue sent this picture some time ago, but we weren't sure of the time frame or which kids they were (obviously Ket in the middle, tho)....

So, what year had a record-setting snowfall?
Turns out the fall and winter of 1925-1926 did!

This chart from the SCSU Meteorology Department shows the fall of 1925 was very wet--12 inches of rain in September/October, and on another site, I found mention of RECORD SNOWFALL OF 59.4 INCHES THAT FELL FROM OCT 1925 TO MAY 1926...in Minnesota. I think the picture is Laura, Ket and Girlie next to their house, the winter that John died. (Remember that Laura was 17 when she entered the convent in 1927, so here, she was 16, and still a kid).
I LOVE figuring out stuff like this!! It doesn't matter to a single soul, but damn, it's fun.

Agnes and Ket Mueller in 1929

Remember the picture from last week that was taken just before the Black Veil ceremony for Laura Hesch?
The family named Braun had to be Agnes (Mueller) Braun and Pete, her husband, obscured by their daughter Adella (at 17). Would you say there's a family resemblance?

Niedermuhl and Oberschlagles Today

I can hear you thinking, "Now WHERE were the villages Heschs came from again??" Well, thanks to GoogleEarth, we have this:

They're still there. See why you could claim either village as home, and still be right?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BTW, happy July first--we have 38 days till the REUNION!!