This branch of the Austrian Hesch family is descended from Johann Hesch and his wife Marya (Schlinz) Hesch, who came to America from Oberschlagles, Bohemia with three sons: Paul, Mathias, and Anton. +++Johann & Marya settled in Buffalo County, Wisconsin but moved to Pierz, Mn in about 1885. .+++Mathias settled in Waumandee, Wisconsin and moved to Pierz in 1911. +++Anton never married but farmed with his dad in Agram Township, where he died in 1911.+++And Paul, my great grandfather, settled five miles away, in Buckman, Minnesota. He died there in 1900.

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Who was Maggie Dehler? Answered!




Remember this photo, left?  We've analyzed the dickens out of it here already, and certainly, we're VERY proud of identifying all those faces.  The pic is a wonderful family reference point--it had to be 1925, so there's the awareness that all these people knew each other, and their lives overlapped, ya know?
I'm re-posting it because I'm on the trail of identifying the sepia portrait below.

OK, we know she was "Maggie Dehler, Margaret Hortsch's mother"...but I'm trying to ID where she fits.  (The photo itself came from the collection of Irene Janson, who lived in Buckman when I was there.  She and her brother Robert regularly helped at the store, and when she died, her effects and photos were left with my ex-husband, Andre.  He gave them to me this fall--THANKS, ANDRE!)
So..if you enlarge the 1925 photo, you'll notice Martha Otremba and her husband Joseph Hortsch, over on the right.  Martha was a younger sister to Mary (Otremba) Hesch, so she was aunt to Anton, John, Rose and Sr Laura (all pictured that day). Mary, of course, had died 8 years earlier, in 1917.



Back to Maggie, here.  Martha and Joseph Hortsch had a son they named Joseph, born September, 1895.  That son married Margaret Dehler in July 1919.

But wait, that's backwards, right?  'Aunt Maggie' had to have married a Dehler, cuz her niece wouldn't have used her maiden name to ID the pic.  The woman in this photo had to be Irene's mothers' sister, nee Poster....Margaret (Poster) Dehler.

There's a definite empty space in my family tree regarding this side of the family.  We'll get back to ya on it, ok? ☺

OK--we've figured it out.  You can breathe again!

...We think the above photo might have been taken just before her wedding to John Dehler, in 1919....

 Maggie Poster (Dehler) (b 1861) was the daughter of Martin Poster and Anna Neuman, and she was the sister of Irene Janson's mom, Mary (b 1874). (This list is indexed from the 1870 Madison, Wisconsin census.  Mary wasn't born till 1874, so she's not listed ☺ ).

In the 1900 census, Larry found a John and Margaret Dehler in Buckman township...John was born in Pennsylvania, and Margaret was born in Wisconsin.  Exactly right...
and see?  They also had a daughter named Margaret, born 1898.  Margaret married Joseph Hortsch, so hooray! the photo caption is explained.

But look--that same census page had the Joseph and Martha Hortsch family.  See at the end of the kids there?  Katie Otremba  (Anton's widow), 73, and mother-in-law to Joseph.  Katie and Anton Otremba were Mary (Otremba) Hesch's parents, so our great great grands.  (Scroll up to the family group pic again--they're the SAME Joe & Martha I spoke of earlier!)

 In the 1920 census Larry found the right Margaret Hortsch, married to Joe 
(ahem--see the 4th paragraph, above). 
YAY, I was right for a change, and only a generation off...☺

1 comment:

  1. I have never noticed this before, but I wonder if the crutch belonged to John Hesch, my great-grandfather?

    Deborah

    ReplyDelete