Morrison men in the War Between the States

Just as Larry and I were thinking that we'd maybe hit all the Hesch Highlights from the last 140 years of Hesch History, Family Search publishes the 1890 Census of Union Veterans and Widows of the Civil War.

Some of the familiar names from Stearns and Morrison Co in those pages were 
Faust, Rausch, Stumpf, Sand, Estey and Mueller, among others.
(Click the link, then find Minnesota, then select the county.  Morrison has 33 pages, 
and Stearns 68--wow).


One of our Unsolved Genealogical Mysteries has to do with why my other
 grandpa's family (the Jansons) pulled up stakes in 1900 and moved to a farm
in the state of Virginia.  They'd been in Buckman for 17 years by then, and 
great grandfather Josef was ill--NOT an opportune time to start over.
Larry and I have been watching for hints in newspapers of the time and in stories
and histories--what could have possessed them?  If they'd wanted a milder climate
more like southern Germany, how come they waited so long?


Well, looking at the census of Civil War Veterans and Widows, we found people 
that Jansons had to know (see names above) as well as 
Mr Dockken, who lived west of Paul Hesch  
(the Freddie Block farm).  We figure there was
 plenty of talk about how idyllic were 
the hills and lush were the crops in the Virginia 
mountains, especially if Josef asked about them.  This
page is from a book digitized online called 
Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars 1861 to 1865. 


The top half of the page describes the 
Minnesota Fourth Regiment on their way home after the war.  
Yup, they marched thru Virginia on the way to Washington DC.  


It's entirely possible that  now, 35 years after the war, 
great grandpa Janson had one dream left--already cleared land 
in a warmer climate.
BTW, they came back to Minnesota in 1902...