Full Circle

We started HH not knowing who my great grandparents were for sure, and definitely not knowing their parents, my great greats.  We didn't know who had emigrated--was it my grandparents?  Their parents?  Did they come here alone?  Where from? I remembered a few details--one great grand had died falling from a wagon.  One had a big black beard.  Two families produced two nuns each here in the states. One batch came from Iowa.

Whew--just think how much we've discovered!  When Larry and I first determined that Bohemia was home to Paul Hesch, I doubted, because I'd never heard any stories about Oberschlagles or Neidermuhl, ever.  But there it was, in a front page obit for Paul's brother Anton (Pierz Journal, 1911). Eventually, we learned what's in the masthead up there.  Paul's parents emigrated too, settling in Waumandee, Wisconsin and later in Pierz, Minnesota.  They're buried in St Joseph's Cemetery there.

So, last week, Larry was wandering thru the 1906 issues of the Little Falls Herald and came across this announcement:

It confused me for a bit because of the misspelling and because it mentions a totally wrong town.  But if you're a reporter with a deadline, then any Wisconsin town would do.  

This was Marya Schlinz Hesch, born in Rothwurst, Jindrichuv Hradec, Bohemia, on May 3, 1821.  The daughter of Lawrenz and Elizabeth Schlinz, she married Johannes Hesch, son of Martin Hesch and Elizabeth Wolf in about 1840.  They had 5 children, all born in the old country.  Four sons survived to immigrate to the US.

Earlier, we'd found Johann's announcement:  Too bad they didn't do a better write-up for either of them, but Johann & Marya were already 'old folks' when they arrived in Pierz.  According to the censuses of 1900 and 1905, Marya stayed in Pierz on the farm with Anton, and by a blurb that Larry found,  she moved to Wisconsin less than a year before she died.  BTW, their cemetery marker in Pierz is just south of the main white statue.  It's marked "Hesh".