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.