New History Books

I was in Little Falls this week and stopped by the Weyerhauser Museum, home of the Morrison County Historical Society.  I'd reserved a copy of this book, and I had some research to do.  As I was chatting with Mary, I saw another book that I didn't know existed--its called "Aitkinsville to Zerf" by Maurice Faust.  It's a book about each of the mail-drop locations in early Morrison Co (which might be a farm house or a store--just someplace other settlers could go to pick up their mail).

What caught my eye was the mention of Zerf because of something I found back in April:

Pierz Journal December 30, 1909:

"Theo Billmeier informs us that the petition to the Soo RR Co for a station to be located six miles east of Pierz at a place formerly called Zerf has been granted, and will be called Center Valley".

Turns out Theodore W. Billmeyer was appointed postmaster in 1910, and it seems he was the main/only promoter of the proposed village.  According to Mr Faust, there was a switching spur, cattle pens and a platform weigh-scale at the small depot in Center Valley, and that Hillman Creek was dammed to create a holding pond for timber on it's way to the Platte and Mississippi.  

He mentioned the sort of things you could buy at the Center Valley Store:"kerosene, oil, gas, salt blocks, flour, overalls, shoes, groceries, small hardware items,and snuff--3 boxes for 25 cents".

The co-op creamery there was called Clover Belt Creamery.  The store building that John Hesch ran for awhile was moved in 1948 to the black-top highway north of CV, seven years before the creamery burned down.  The town never developed in spite of its position on the Soo line.  

I haven't started reading Big Hearted Pale Faced Man, but I expect I'll enjoy it as much as Aitkinsville to Zerf.  The really neat part of this book is the little tidbits that he included just for color, but that have significance for our family.  In the PIERZ chapter, he mentioned the funeral of (our great great grandfather) Anton Otremba in March of 1883.  It was the largest funeral ever held in Rich Prairie, and "47 teams followed him to his final rest".

Mr Faust also talks about the rivalry between Upper Town Pierz and Lower Town Pierz, and how that division caused the railroad to skip Pierz altogether. When Soo officials met with Pierz leaders about where the tracks should go, upper and lower town had conflicting, irreconcilable, opinions, so Genola got the depot.

The John Hesch Store in Buckman

 Grandpa's brother John Hesch died 23 years before I was born.  I didn't know he existed before we started doing Hesch History, and I certainly wasn't aware that a Hesch ever owned a store in Buckman.  BUT, he did X2.

Larry and I have looked at these pictures often.  They're so full of detail, beyond the family...I'm especially fascinated by the stock on the shelves, but the labels are mostly too small to read.  Still, we could figure out a few things, like the date, and who their wholesaler was.
(This kind of investigation is exactly what Larry and I were born to do, by the way).

In this second store pic, there are wooden crates being used for display, see?  The label on the side is enlarged and rotated, below.  

                          

"STONE-something-Wells Co

Wholesale Grocers

Duluth"

 Hooray!  Ancestry has a few of Duluth's directories, so I tried 1901--there:

Stone-Ordean-Wells Co

 Cool, huh?  But then, looking at the cans and jars on the shelves behind Ket, the labels are almost within memory; they might have been brands that were still around when we were kids, or are still around.  But damn, WHERE would you look for foods that were available in Minnesota before 1920?

I went looking on Internet Archives for possible catalogs from wholesale grocers.  Nope.  There are fascinating order books for five-and-dime type stores there, but not grocery catalogs.

Of course, the Amazing Mind of Larry tried other things: how about people who COLLECT VINTAGE LABELS?

Oh, and did I know there was such a thing as

( Click to go to The American Food Journal )

...?  And that they published a chart of the retail prices of some standard food items every month?  (See why he's such a gift?? ☺)

  I've boxed the prices from St Paul Minnesota, and Vermillion, South Dakota and  

Des Moines, Iowa.

  All this, and we haven't identified any of the labels on those cans and jars behind Ket, but damn, look at all we HAVE learned.

Reddy was Ready

It's interesting to remember that our history books made it seem like America was totally blind-sided by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in November 1941.

This ad ◄ was in the same newspaper in Kansas as the Pierz kids photo (August 1940) 15 months earlier...but of course THAT was war related prep, too.

I think there must have been a sense in the US that we hadn't been really prepared for World War One...or that we could have been much better prepared.  According to Wikipedia, so many men were killed in WWI "due largely to great technological advances in firepower without corresponding ones in mobility".  America was intent on preparation this time, since  WWI hadn't solved the problems that caused it, either.

(Besides, I still think wars are the "legal" way to test new weapons.  Think of the officers' reactions at the beginning of the first Gulf War--"Wow, it worked better than we ever expected it to!")

So, by 1940, the wording in this ad is belligerent without saying why--"our freedom" was being threatened, so Reddy Kilowatt was gearing up to provide more consistent power to Americans?  People understood even if it didn't actually make sense.

Christmas, 2010

Christmas Eve

Mackintosh's Toffee really has no connection to Christmas except that Marion sent boxes of it when she lived in Canada.  It's wonderful buttery stuff that came in a red plaid box.  We hoarded it, tho I don't remember "getting up in the night for it".  I do remember buying it at Glacier National Park when I worked there in the late 60s, and that it was 25¢ a bar.
Anyway, it reminds me of Christmas, and that's gut genug.  Hope yours is a delightful one...!

Charlie Documents

(A quick story I heard lately:
Uncle Tony said he never met gramma's brother Charlie Sand, but that he heard about him from his mom, in particular about the trip to visit Charlie in 1941.

Turns out Marie Wintermeyer had a brand new 1941 Chevy, and they decided to break it in by taking a long trip.  Wenatchee, Washington qualified ☺.  So, Marie and her cousin Fronie Hesch, and their moms Vernie and Lizzie, drove to the west coast to visit and pick fruit in Charlie's orchard.  See THIS post).

Earlier this month, Charlie's grandaughter Kathryn was moving, and found that her dad had saved more of Charlie's stuff than she knew (see Larry?  It's not just me...lol).  But as usual, cool new documents create more question.

For instance, why would Charlie have sent to Little Falls for a certified copy of his birth certificate in 1954--when he was 68?  And look--he was born in December 1886, but his birth wasn't registered till January, 1887, which probably accounts for the discrepancies in his birth date on various records...

 And this affidavit from 1918: we know Charlie and Elizabeth moved to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada right after they married in 1911, but here they are in Bear Lake, St Louis County, MN, (about 70 miles north of  Duluth), 7 years later.  This was when Minnesota was doubting the loyalty of German-speaking Americans, but what an odd bit of proof he was required to show.  Also, it proves that even his parents forgot exactly when he was born!

Now THIS photo (above) is interesting because it was taken on the same day as THIS photo, but what was the occasion?  Was it their wedding photo?  Probably not, as Charlie was 25 in 1911, and Elizabeth Caldwell was 19.  (Besides, their wedding witnesses were Agnas Ryan and Elizabeth Buhl, not Charlie's  brother and sister).  We know they were running a boarding house in an Idaho mining camp in 1920, but I doubt Vernie and Frank would have gone to see them there.  We don't know the answers yet, but stay tuned!

THANKS for these Kathryn!


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The comment from my sister (below) got me to find the 1940 family photo of dad's parents, brothers and sisters to compare Charlie's 'look' with them.  Matt and Ted are in the middle, back.  She's RIGHT!


(Just so you have it straight, Lizzy Hesch and Charlie were siblings, so it makes sense that her kids might look a bit like him, as well as sibs Vernie and Frank (standing) in◄ that photo). Cool, huh?

A Christmas Concert in Schamers, Bohemia

I found a card in my mailbox yesterday saying I had a package at the post office--oh YAY!!  But WHO sent me something for Christmas?

It was a DVD from Heinz and Melitta Binder, our kind and fairly close relatives in Austria. It's a video of the concert last December (2009) commemorating 650 years of the church or the village of Cimer, Czech Republic (what was Schamers, Bohemia).

It's especially wonderful because the very first Hesch that Larry found in the digital church records online was Johannes Hesch who was marrying Agnes Proll in her parish church there in Schamers in 1839.  The church books in that little village church encouraged us to keep looking...and the rest is history...lol

I tried again to do screen captures from the video and again they didn't work--the best I can do is show you the photos from the cover of the DVD case.
The concert was in December last year, as I said.  The church has no heat, so the musicians wore winter coats and created clouds of breath...lol  I was struck by the beauty of their voices and the talent of the other musicians, as part of a flowing river of people worshiping in that spot on the earth for more than 650 years.  I looked at faces to see if I recognized any features, but no, these modern parishioners are all ethnic Czechs.  (The German people had to leave after WWII).  Still, they share the Catholic faith, ceremonies and holiday traditions with our ancestors.

I wish I could show you even part of the video, especially the views of the manger scene and the altar area.  I expect the statues have been there for many years, maybe long enough that Johannes and Agnes would recognize them, huh?
What a wonderful holiday surprise!!

THANKS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO 
HEINZ & MELITTA!

Remember this?

(It's snowing here.  The roads aren't too bad yet, but the prob with driving is keeping the windshield clear.  It's warm enough (16º) that the snow melts on the glass but the wipers smear it back into ice. Awk!   But I saw my Monday afternoon client early, so now I'm safely home and blogging ☺)......



Remember the AP wire service photo from THIS post  a few days ago?  I sent it to Mary at the Weyerhauser Museum in Little Falls to see if anyone knew who the local boys were.  In the meantime, Larry saw that the Library of Congress website has added more newspapers to its digitized collection.  Was that photo published in other cities around the country? Sure, it was, and the actual photographer was from the Minneapolis Journal.  Turns out the "candid" photo was nicely posed, while moms stood in the doorway of Hartmann's.  Isn't this COOL?  I see at least four adults on the left, and two more by the door, one holding a baby.  Even the reflection of the car in the window is interesting.  Is that a little sis between boys 2 and 3?

Good thing the photographer got them all to aim at the same thing.

(Above--from Minnesota Historical Society website).

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Additional info:  Here's Hartmanns store today, as seen on Google Earth.  Looks like the white house next door was there in 1940 as well.  

Below, Larry did a cutout of the boys and soldiers and put them on the sidewalk in 2010.  Kinda freaky, but kinda cool, too!

(If you check the Morrison County Historical Society blog, you'll see that Mary posted the photo as it appeared in the Little Falls Transcript in August 1940 too. Maybe we'll find out who the kids were after all!)

Minneapolis Moline, Camp Ripley and the Jeep

It's amazing to follow a tangent that strikes us as interesting and to find even MORE:

Last week, the story about war games in Pierz in 1940 brought us to Camp Ripley.  It's a "background" place for Morrison County--we all know a few men who trained there over the years. It's "always" been there, along the river, home of the National Guard in Minnesota.

With that, Larry asked how far Pierz was from Camp Ripley...did I know the name Minneapolis Moline and did I know there was a connection between it, Camp Ripley, and the Jeep military vehicle?  (He's always a few pages ahead of me in the research book ☺).

 Well, I knew Minneapolis Moline (MM) made farm tractors...and ya know,  farm stuff.  Turns out that before the U.S. got into WWII, there was a sort of competition among manufacturers to build the newest kinds of military equipment.  One 'need' was a sort of all purpose vehicle.  That summer of 1940, MM had a prototype ready, and displayed it at Camp Ripley.  (No, you're right--it doesn't look anything like a Jeep.  More like a.... manure spreader?)

The MM-UTX Jeep

"The next version of the Jeep takes us to Camp Ripley, Minnesota, home of the 109th Ordnance Company, Minnesota National Guard. Captain Martin Schiska commanded the 109th, as well as being an employee of the Minneapolis Moline Power Implement Company, builder of farm tractors. In the mid 1930s, the Army was still using ancient, hulking 1917 Holt 5- ton tractors to pull its larger field pieces. Schiska, a World War I veteran, realized the need for new equipment and impressed this upon Minneapolis Moline. As early as 1938 (some sources say 1937) MM was building and testing prototype prime movers, and in August of 1940, during testing at Camp Ripley, Sergeant James T. O'Brien is quoted by several sources to have applied the name "Jeep" to the MM prime mover. In a letter to Minneapolis Moline dated March 31,1943, O'Brien explained how the name came about. "One evening," he wrote, "in a gathering of enlisted men, it was suggested that a short descriptive name be found for these vehicles, such names as 'alligator' and 'swamp rabbit.' I brought forth the name 'Jeep' as a result of reading Popeye in which Eugene the Jeep appears as a character, and the fact that these vehicles would go where you would least expect them to go. The name was unanimously accepted and subsequently painted on the vehicles, which have since become familiarly known." The MM Model UTX was a real piece of hardware. Basically a converted farm tractor, the MM Jeep featured four wheel drive and a 425cid, 70hp (at 1,275 rpm) six cylinder gasoline engine. It could pull a 5-ton 155mm howitzer at 28 mph, with occasional spurts up to 40 mph, and had a fording depth of over three feet. The MM Jeep prototypes came in open and closed cab models. Two of the four tested at Camp Ripley mounted .30 cal machine guns. All models featured a roller device in place of a front bumper, enabling it to cross large obstacles. Some also mounted winches. During testing at the Fourth Army maneuvers in August 1940, the MM Jeep was photographed climbing six feet up an oak tree. (The tree gave up at that point, and the tractor crushed it into matchsticks. So much for Treading Lightly!) The tractor was also said to have "walked" through a forest of 5inch trees. These photos appeared in the Army Times (Sept. 14, 1940) in an article entitled "Army Likes Jeep." The MM Jeep performed well in a succession of tests, but the Army's requirements seemed to change by the day. Before the UTX ever went into production, the evolution towards larger and larger field pieces and the requirement for a relatively high road speed ultimately overwhelmed the UTX's capacities. A total of six were built, and one survives in a private collection". 

Source

There's a lot more history of the actual Jeep at the link, but isn't it cool to know Minnesota played a part in it's development?

Oh, by the way, the cartoon Jeep ate only orchids--watch:

Adeline's Wake

(Pierz is interesting for a lot of reasons, and one is that there is/was an Upper town and a Lower town, or North and South, with the church as the divide.  In a small town of a thousand people, there are two funeral homes, one on either end of town.  Shelley Virnig is on the south end, and grandpa Janson's wake was there in 1955, but it must be that the Hesch side prefers Emblom Brenny on the north end).

It seems like there's almost a sense of urgency among relatives at a wake.  It's such a short time to catch up on who's moved, who has new grandkids, who's ill or divorcing or getting married...and definitely time to talk family history.  And really, when does this mix of family and friends come together otherwise?   We were a Venn diagram with Adeline at the center ☺.  It was good to see two of Adeline's three remaining sisters, to reconnect with Joanie, Karen and Renee,  and to meet a few of Adeline's beautiful grandkids.

Oh dear--I'm at the age where I enjoy wakes.  But is it age, or just that family means a lot?  Probably a bit of both...the sadness of loosing a dear person who knew my dad and grandparents' generation personally is tempered by renewed connections in mine.  It's the way the world works, huh?

Adeline Hesch Dion 1921-2010

I wanted to post this sad news right away so you can make plans to be there if possible.  

Adeline was dad's first cousin, the oldest of his Uncle Math's seven kids.  All seven had nicknames (see below), and Dad knew her best as 'Mate'.  He had to stop and think a sec if we asked about real names...lol

Adeline had the most infectious smile, and she was the one who remembered the name of Paul Hesch's horse....Rowdy.  We'll miss you, Adeline!

Here's the link to the obit on the Emblom Brenny funeral home page if you'd like to leave a message for the family...

Another mystery solved?

Remember this photo from 1925?  We're so proud of the fact that we identified most of the people, with only  a few unknowns.  We figured out last month that the Schmolkes were most likely there, but the last prominent unknown is the biggest DUH.  

It's really likely that the kid kneeling behind John Pratt is Mike Hesch, my dad.  See what you think--

        

Same person?  I think so!

THANKS, Kath for SEEING this~YAY!

A chat with Uncle Tony

It's always interesting to visit with Uncle Tony (dad's youngest brother) cuz we always manage to surprise each other with something about family that the other didn't know. (I LOVE that!)

This time, I was telling him about his dads' challenge of the original Anton's will in 1912, and what our theory was about it (that perhaps young Anton, newly fatherless, might have spent time with his uncle in the 10 years between 1900 and 1910, when he married Lizzie Sand).

Uncle Tony didn't know his dad ever took someone to court, but he said his dad wasn't around in those years.   Evidently, when Paul Hesch died in 1900, his son Anton (our future grandpa) left home and didn't return till 1910.  Like a lot of young men in Minnesota in those years, AA went north.  UT said his dad was a cook in lumber camps for 10 years!

However, lumber camps only worked in the winter, when the mosquitoes and black flies were gone and snow and ice helped skid tree trunks toward the rivers.  Very possibly AA came home for the summers...to help with planting and harvesting, and to romance that cute Lizzie Sand.

Ok, that'd explain a lot, but what might have been the issue he was defending in court?  Had deceased Anton promised something to young Anton that was contradicted in the will?  We won't necessarily know even when we get a copy of the will, but it's a cool mystery, doncha think?

NEWS from the 1895 Minnesota census!

Well! It looks like Family Search is really updating it's site. Larry directed me to the 1895 Minnesota census (Buckman township) that used to be incredibly faded but is nicely legible now in their version.  YAY for them....and for us researchers.

Paging thru Buckman township, I saw "Otremba Katie" age 86 as the first entry on page 14.  Flipping back a page, a-ha! she's living with her daughter and husband, Martha and Joe Hortsch.  Anton Otremba had died in 1883, but Catherine Schalwig Otremba would live till 1902.  (Martha was 27 in 1895, and 30 years later, she and Joe were included in this photo, over on the right ☺).

Anyway, more newsy is the fact that the enumerator was a ninny that year. It took 7 pages to determine his last name was Hilborne ....Homer Hilborne didn't worry about getting their names right either.  (He might have been a nice guy, but in my book this sin is MORTAL, dammit).  Homer had my mom's Joseph JANSON family listed as Johnson...and he did the same to John Janson down the road.  He had some Otrembas written as O'Tremba (the Irish-Polish branch, evidently).  All the Muellers that year were listed as MILLER, the English spelling, but Mike Sand was MICHEL, the German spelling.  (LOL, remember the throat clearing  sound in the middle of that name?)

 Gramma Lizzie Sand was 12 that year, and was listed as living with  Henry Sand, probably as a hired girl.  I'm not sure who Henry was, but it looks like he was widowed.    Lizzie's brother Charlie isn't living at home either.

Over in Agram township, on page 3 of 7 (on the O'Tremba page), there's John (78),  Mary (76), son Anton (42) and little Katie Hesch (11) who was from Wisconsin.  Katie was Mathias's daughter, probably spending the summer with gramma and grampa in Minnesota.  (These are the immigrants mentioned on the masthead, top'o'the blog, ok?)  Yes, Homer Hilborne was the enumerator.

That year, Math was 4 years old and the baby of the Paul Hesch family.  Our future grandpa was 11, and his oldest sister Rose had recently married Louie Gottwalt, so she wasn't on the list of kids.

Oh man, if you have a little time, create an account & sign in to Family Search.  Try SAND or HESCH in 1895.  It's fun to see who lived where, and all the names you'll recognize, PLUS how well thought out the new FamSearch site is.

Just because I can...

LOL...making Christmas presents for the grands from a 30 year old pattern....aren't they CUTE?

War games in Pierz

In August 1940, the United States was not in the war in Europe, but we were certainly watching what was happening there, and we were preparing "just in case".
Sure, everybody who lives around Little Falls or spends time there knows the thuds in the distance are from Camp Ripley and the National Guard training going on there. But the training in 1940 was quite a bit different.  Read this article from the Lawrence, Kansas newspaper.  It explains better than I can....

Amazing that they were practicing maneuvers in and around local towns--"Stationed on Pierz sidewalks were 37 MN anti-tank guns and 50 caliber machine guns".  WHEW!  And, it was 1940 after all--some of the game used horses, while observation planes pretended to be bombers.

This story's fascinated Larry and me for months...lol  But since we don't know that any locals were involved, we just talk about it now and then--"Can you imagine an ARMY tearing past your farm and across your fields?"  And Larry found an account of some boys who found live ordnance in a ditch and proceeded to put it in dad's vise, and hit it with a hammer. Oops.

Anyway, the story's come back around because Larry found this wonderful photo in the Spokane (Washington) newspaper, via Google News.  It's August 15, 1940, and there are four Pierz boys "helping" three guardsmen.
The boys have their BB guns and cap pistols trained on the enemy, just like the soldiers.  It's an AP wire service photo that most likely was published around here.  But, maybe not.  Who knows?

I'm really curious to know if anyone recognizes the kids, or heard stories from relatives who were 10-12 that summer.

BTW, here's the full front page it appeared on.  Click to enlarge and see how neutral we were.