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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Saturday, August 8, 2015

Going to the Minnesota State Fair?

Here's a 1909 ad from the Little Falls Herald, and look--our familiar grandstand was brand new that year. Funny, I've never seen this view of the building, have you?
BTW, check the bottom of the ad--incredibly, the Civil War ended only 44 years earlier, so a "historical spectacle" of Minnesota at Gettysburg would have been seen by actual veterans.  I hope they got in free.

2 comments:

  1. To put things into a sort of modern perspective as to the time, this past April 2015 marked the 40th anniversary of the official close of the Vietnam War and how vivid those memories are to us still.
    Larry

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    1. Wow, I hadn't thought of it that way. I was trying to imagine a "pretentious and thrilling" re-enactment of Gettysburg fighting,. What did the ex-soldiers who actually witnessed it and attended the spectacle at the fair think of the show? And how realistic could it possibly have been? Maybe people were used to filling-in the action with their imaginations. But then, we would never re-enact a battle from Vietnam because there, the enemy was NOT us.

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