HESCH HISTORY

An e-mail from Su about Schamers

2012-01-27T22:16:00.000-06:00

The first page of the 1932
Schamers Chronicle.

An interesting position in the villages and towns of Bohemia (and probably elsewhere, too) was that of the municipal chronicler. How else would the landowner (or we) know about the minutiae of village life if not for a record of it all, being written as it happened? Of course, one hopes the chronicler was fair, precise, and wrote clearly. I suspect not all of em were.
Did every village keep a chronicle? We don't know, but it would make sense. Maybe SRA Trebon just hasn't published Niedermuhl and Oberschlagles yet.

Anyway, they have published a few years' worth of Schamers' chronicles, and Su is busy trying to decipher the narrative there, from 1932-1938. The project involves transcribing an unfamiliar language from unfamiliar script (tho they begin to grow on a person), and then translate what you think you read. It's actually pretty exciting work, in an intellectual, nosy sort of way ☺. Su said, "I rather warm to Hans Schimeczek, the chronicler, who admits to an addiction to research!" Su has the unfailing help of Google Translate, as well as Herman, the translating dictionary. (What google goofs on, Herman usually knows). And I'd say Hans isn't the only one addicted to research, eh? ☺

Here's a charming story she found--it starts with the last sentence on page 11 and continues on page 12--the story of how Schamers got its name. See if you can follow in the original:

Als Beispiel, welche früchte die Sucht, jeden Namen zu erklären, reibt, sei hier noch folgende Nament deutung angeführt,

die sogar hartnäckige Verteidiger findet:

As an example, what fruits of addiction to explain every name, drives, is still following

name indicated significance, even the stubborn defender finds:

Kaiserin Maria Theresia reiste einst nach Prag und

berührte dabei auch unseren Heimatsort.

Empress Maria Theresa oncetraveled to Prague and it also touched our native place.

Als sie hier in dem damals neben der Straße liegenden Teiche Männlein und Weiblein mit einander im Adamskostüm baden sah, war sie darüber se entrüstet, daß sie den biederen Schamersern zurief:

When they here in the then along the road past ponds they saw little man and little woman bathe with each other in their birthday suits they were very angry that they were respectable and called out to the Schamersern:
"Schamers ruch!" Den umverschämtem Bewrhnern soll

davon der Name Schaminger geblieben sein.

"Schamers smell!" The name of shame still remains with the outrageous residents.

------------------------------------------

So, children were swimming nekkid in a pond on a hot day, and the Empress happened past and shamed them. It's as good a naming method as any, I suppose ☺).

Thanks, Su--and hooray!

A catch-all post ☺

2012-01-27T12:00:00.000-06:00

Hard times--other Heschs--church paintings--CHS, St Cloud

In the files of the Brainerd newspaper from February 22, 1934 comes this clipping about a Hard Times house party in Granite Ledge, Mn. at the home of Mr and Mrs John Otremba. I looked for "Granite Ledge" the town, but found only Granite Ledge township, in Benton co....which seems a bit far away from the Brainerd news area. Anyone know?

Added later: Larry and I assumed a Hard Times party was a benefit for someone maybe, but nope! He did the research today and it sounds like much more FUN than that. Evidently, people came dressed...well, let the Unbirthday article explain. The group photo is one of 4-5 that Larry found. I can imagine our relatived really getting into the spirit of this, can't you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's an article and picture from the Albert Lea paper on January 31, 1944, about another Raymond Hesch, son of "A.T. Hesch". I have no idea who that would have been, but Larry thought maybe he was a Waumandee Hesch.
I know, I know...there were other Heschs in Minnesota, in particular the Rosina and Valentine Hesch family. He was from the Canada Heschs. They lived in Long Prairie and Aitken, Minnesota, and were about the ages of our grandparents. Did they have a grandson named Raymond?

BTW, that's them--- >

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A really COOL photo Larry found online this week explains something. Evidently, the village of Dolni Zdar (Niedermuhl) had a concert on Christmas eve, in the very chapel where our ancestors were baptized and married. There were 7-8 pics posted there, and I'll link to them later....

What I noticed about it tho, was....remember the question we posed about WHY a painting was purchased for St Michaels church, cuz what church has paintings?

Well, look! This was a village chapel in Bohemia, just south of Falkenberg, Poland. The church-decorating customs would have been similar, I think. I suppose statues would take up too much room in a tiny chapel, huh? Wow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And for St Cloud historians: LOOK! It's a pic of Cathedral High school when it was ONLY what we knew as the North Building. The trees were planted where the Central building would be later, and there's Bishop Zardetti's fancy brick house, next to Holy Angels Church. What a surprising photo, huh?

(Pretty sure I found it in Mitchell's 1915 "History of Stearns County", online).

(BTW--any pic edged in red is something our favorite researcher found. However, sometimes he just sends links.

Today, the only one that's 'mine' is this Cathedral High pic--sheesh! ☺)

Wheat-weeo--Thanks, Larry!

Six degrees of separation after 123 years

2012-01-26T15:49:00.001-06:00

Larry just called to ask if I knew who the judge was in the Albert Bulow murder trial, in Little Falls, in 1889?

If you can't guess, click here to find out....☺

WOW!

Josef Hesch, born in 1869

2012-01-26T09:14:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week, Larry mentioned that the indexers at SRA Trebon had added a couple of earlier Heschs to the list there. Evidently, they're working backwards thru the years because the most recent records are easiest to read, and no doubt the transcribers are learning as they go back, too. There's a definite thrill in figuring all this out for us as well.

This is one of the children added, a baby they named Josef. We could read most of the information here, but both Larry and I were stumped by a few words, so I emailed our Austrian cousin, Heinz Binder, and here's what he sent back:

(DANKE, HEINZ ☺!)

Ok, obviously this first row is the left-hand side of the record book page, giving the date of birth and the date of baptism--27 February 1869, then the priest, Josef Melena. The baby's name, Josef, is written big enough for God to see. Josef was male, Catholic and legitimate. His parents lived at Niedermuhl #11. The midwife was Maria Hesch from Niedermuhl, tho she wasn't certified ("untested").

The second row is the right-hand side of the same record book page, explaining who Josef's parents and grandparents were. The first block gives us the baby's father: "Wenzel Hesch, shoemaker, of Niedermuhl #11, the legitimate son of Johann Hesch, mason, of Oberschlagles # and his wife Maria, daughter of Franz Binder, tailor from Radeinles".
(Cool, huh?)
The second block tells about Josef's mother: "Agnes, legitimate daughter of Josef Matauscher, shoemaker, of Oberschlagles #29 and his wife Maria, legitimate daughter of Wenzl Merth, Hausler, of Niedermuhl". (Google translates Hausler as "Cottager").
On the far right are Josefs godparents, "Bartholomaus Merth of Niedermuhl and his wife Barbara".

(BTW, the word we had a brain fart about was "Radeinlas"--we've both seen it before but usually it's preceded by "Klein". Oh, well!)

Something else I've wanted to mention is the interesting way they wrote an additional date on these records--see up there, in the column where the baby's name is? It says:
18 9/4 84
..which is September 4th, 1884, see? The date was added to the record almost 15 years later--it might have been Josef's solemn communion, or confirmation, or the date he and his family left Bohemia for good. The letters before the date look like TG to me, but what I think doesn't count...☺ The priest knew, and he assumed others would know. I'm pointing it out cuz dates are written this way throughout the books.
However, they're sometimes preceded by a + signifying a death. Evidently, Josef lived thru this event.

Dolson Bush Searle

2012-01-25T11:07:00.000-06:00

Well, we found the OTHER Searle, Olaf O Searle (two posts down), a land speculator and adventurer/promoter. I've added a bit of additional info about him there.

Of course, we found quite a bit of info about D.B.Searle, partly from the censuses, partly with help from MCHS (thanks, Ann Marie ☺), but mostly (surprise!) Larry.

Dolson B Searle was a prominent lawyer in St Cloud, Minnesota. He was established here by 1871, and eventually had a stock farm in nearby Sartell (LeSauk Township), so it's likely he was acquainted with Peter and Angelique Sand, grandma Lizzy's grandparents.

Here's a bio he probably wrote himself for a book called "Progressive Men of Minnesota" published in 1897--Page 192-193:

DOLSON BUSH SEARLE.
Mr. Searle is judge of the district court of the Seventh District of Minnesota, and resides at St. Cloud. His father was Almond D. Searle, who resided in Franklinville, Cattaraugus County, New York, and was a prosperous farmer. His mother was Jane Scott, of Scotch birth and a lineal descendant of Sir Walter Scott. On his father's side, Mr. Searle's grandfather was Elijah Searle, a man of more than ordinary ability and force of character. He took active part in public and political affairs. He was formerly a resident of Whitehall, New York, and was a soldier in the War of 1812. He also took part in the battle of Lake Champlain. He died about the year 1865, and was then about seventy years of age. Judge Searle's grandfather on his mother's side was John Scott, of Scotch descent, and a man of good ability. He was a farmer at Whitehall, New York, and was a soldier in the War of 1812.
The subject of this sketch was born June 4, 1846, at Franklinville, New York. His early education was obtained in the common schools and the academy of his native town. He graduated from the Columbian Law College of Washington, D. C., in 1868, with high honors. Three years later he came to Minnesota and began the practice of law with Hon. E. O. Hamlin, at St. Cloud, the style of the firm being Hamlin & Searle.
Mr. Searle soon obtained a prominent position as lawyer, and also took an active part in state politics as a Republican. He was elected city attorney of St. Cloud for six years; county attorney of Stearns County two years, although in a strong Democratic county, and his majority reached as high as eleven hundred. He was appointed United States district attorney in April, 1882, by President Arthur, and served with conspicuous ability until December, 1885, when he resigned on his own motion in order to give President Cleveland a chance to appoint his successor.
Mr. Searle was a member of the state central Republican committee in 1886 and 1887, and took an active part in the Republican national campaign in the fall of 1884. He was appointed district judge of the Seventh Judicial District November 12, 1887, by Governor McGill, and re-elected without opposition in the fall of 1888, and again in 1894. Judge Searle was nominated for congress from the Sixth District in 1892. There was a vigorous contest for that nomination between him and H. Z. Kendall, of Duluth. Judge Searle made a brilliant campaign and ran ahead of his state ticket and national ticket over a thousand votes, not withstanding the opposition to him in St. Louis County, where he received only a bare majority, although Governor Nelson received about fifteen hundred majority. He was defeated at the polls by Major Baldwin, but by a very small majority.
Judge Searle has an honorable war record. He enlisted as a private in Company I, Sixty-fourth New York Infantry, in August, 1861, and served for nearly two years. He was engaged in the following battles: Yorktown, Seven Pines, Fair Oaks, Savage Station, Malvern Hill, the seven days' fight before Richmond, the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam, White Oak Swamp, Lee's Mills, Williamsburg and other notable engagements.
Mr. Searle, having been discharged from active service in the army in 1863 on account of disability, was at that time appointed clerk in the war department at Washington and held that position until 1871. He was during most of this period in charge of an important bureau in the Adjutant General's office. Judge Searl has always been a Republican, and until he went on the bench was very active in political matters, and has given his influence and best judgment to the proper conduct of the municipal affairs of his own city. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, being a Master Mason, a Royal Arch Mason and a Knight Templar. He is also a member of the Knights of Pythias and of Lodge No. 59 of the Elks. He is a prominent member of the G. A. R., and on October 24, 1896, was appointed aid-de-camp, with the rank of colonel, upon the staff of the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was married in 1875 to Miss Mary Elizabeth Clarke, of Worcester, Massachusetts.

Even in 1879, endorsements from newspapers were important:

But from the Albert Lea Standard newspaper in May, 1879, there were those who cast aspersions too. When we checked what the "odious pine land ring" might have been, Larry discovered it was most likely referring to the logging and forest interests of the Pine Tree Lumber Company and Frederick Weyerhaeuser:

Charles Augustus Weyerhaeuser was born on 2 April 1866 to parents Frederick (1834-1914) and Sarah Weyerhaeuser. Charles apprenticed at various jobs within the family timber business before taking over management of the Pine Tree Lumber Company in Little Falls, Minnesota, with family friend Richard "Drew" Musser when they both were in their mid-twenties. The boys' fathers Frederick Weyerhaeuser and Peter Musser had formed the company along with seven other lumbermen on 24 June 1890. Drew Musser, whose father was company president, presided over sales and served as secretary for the organization while Charles managed the company's logging, sorting, and milling activities. Under their collective management skills, the Pine Tree Lumber Company was debt free and earning solid profits by 1899.

--From the Forest History Society website.

Was D.B. Searle involved in setting up Pine Tree Lumber in 1890? There might still be more to this story, huh?

And look, D.B. had a brother named F.E.--who evidently figures in the history of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, but that's another story that needs telling....by someone else. ☺

die unklar Auerhahnbalz

2012-01-24T12:30:00.000-06:00

This just in from Su in England, who's busy translating the village chronicles from Schamers. Between Google Translate and Herman (the German/English dictionary she bought lately), she's gaining an incredible understanding of the people and times there. For instance:

Dear Marlys,
All hail to wonderful Herman the German dictionary - it has just translated a word of quite remarkable obscurity:
die Auerhahnbalz - the mating time of the Capercaillie. The Capercaillie is a magnificent bird - the males are nearly 3ft tall, dark colour but red eyelids (like an enormous grouse) and have a loud, raucous call which may be heard rattling through remote Scottish conifer woods in spring when it indulges in spectacular display. I have never seen one and they are very rare but they seem to have been in the forests around Schamers as they are noted in the section on hunting.
Fancy that!

Of course David Attenborough has heard of the them!

YAY, WOW, and THANKS to Su, Herman and David ☺ !

The Searles in central Minnesota

2012-01-23T13:42:00.000-06:00

5th Ave South in St Cloud, 1907. The Grand Central Hotel is on the corner, and next to it is
the present-day restaurant, DBSearles, the building with the white zigzag.

Since 1978, there's been a restaurant in downtown St Cloud called D. B. Searles, named because it's in the building Dolson Bush Searle and his partner Thomas C. McClure built to house their law offices about 1883. (The restaurant might have been called McClures, except that Thomas died before the building was finished). (BTW, the link has a lot more history about the building).

So, I've been aware of the Searle name for years. Then, when Larry and I started perusing plat maps from Morrison county, I recognized the Searle name there, especially since it occurred so often.

1892 plat book--a tiny example
of what O.O.Searle owned.

In the 1892 Morrison Co plat book (from the newly remodeled website Minnesota Reflections), we found a land speculator by the name of O.O. Searle who owned over 2,800 acres in the two townships directly west of Little Falls--Pike Creek and Culdrum. However, by the next platbook, in 1902, I saw only two 40 acre plots owned by O.O. Searle.

So WHO was O.O.Searle?

I assumed he was D.B.s dad, or for sure, a relative. The only O.O. Searle I could find in censuses around that time was an Olaf O Searle, in Hennepin county. He was born in Norway in 1860, and was 20 years younger than DB.

Looking in old newspapers at Chronicling America from the Library of Congress, we found an O.O. Searle buying up land in Princeton, Mn in 1894. Also, he was listed having delinquent taxes on 5-6 pieces of land in 1897, 1898, 1899 and 1900 (Princeton, Milaca, Bogus Brook and Borgholm) and he lost parcels in Mille Lacs county in 1900 cuz the taxes for 1895 remained unpaid. It was probably not worth keeping track of EVERY parcel he'd bought, huh?

We found this ad repeated many times in Seattle papers at the turn of that century.
But Larry also found this article, in a Maryland newspaper in 1897:

Larry realized Olaf O Searle was our man. Read these articles he found, and be startled by how diverse OOs interests were!

From an 1893 book called "History of the Scandinavians and
Successful Scandinavians in the United States"

Sept 1896 St Paul Globe article. The railroad was the other owner of large tracts of land "in the vicinity of Little Falls". Wow, OO was a promoter as well as a speculator.
DAMN, he was having FUN!
(Oh, and Larry says an 'encampment' was a reunion of Civil War soldiers--possibly at Camp Ripley).

1905--The area mentioned here was Lake Minnetonka, and its layers of affluence. Readers knew the relative difference between a cottage on Crystal Bay, the Big Island, the north shore or "his island place". Whew. On this page--we're talking hubris:

1905--This odd clipping could only have been submitted by one person, doncha think? ☺

1897--Oh, oh, OO! Obviously, this didn't deter his career in banking.
But who knows--maybe he and his boss were more law abiding afterwards...?

We found Olaf O. Searle in the 1885 Minnesota census, one of eight Searles, from 12 to 40 years old, maybe sibs? O.O. was 25. By the 1900 census, he's living in Hennepin co with his wife Dagmar and 10 year old son Olaf. In the 1905 Minnesota census, he's living in Orono, Mn with Dagmar and 15 year old son Ralph ☺. This would have been OOs "100 acres on Big Island", in Lake Minnetonka. But by the 1920 census, he's 60, and divorced, living in a boarding house in Hennepin co. I'd love to know the rest of his story, but so far, that's it. BTW, we're pretty sure he wasn't related to DB...

OK, I can imagine you wondering why we would bother with these characters on a blog devoted to HESCH history. What did either of the Searles have to do with our family?

Probably nothing. I expect our greats and grands stuck pretty much to low-key German businessmen when they "had dealings" in town. But the idea that there were others--far-thinking lawyers, hustlers, entrepreneurs, bankers and con-men--working the territory at the same time tickles me. I mean, the people who came to settle the area weren't all self-effacing, honest, industrious, hardworking farmers ☺. You have more of the story of settling central Minnesota when you throw them all together.

Still, what do Larry and I get out of this? We talk about it often. Partly, we're building a sort of 'atmosphere' of the times; what the ancestors had to deal with daily helps us understand them better, and still realizing they were just human, exactly like us.

There's an adage that as long as someone remembers you, you're not really dead.
Hesch History is our small attempt at remembering.

Two German Empire Maps

2012-01-20T11:43:00.000-06:00

I don't know where I found these maps, but I assume they're old. I'm posting them to give us all a reminder of what being from "Germany" meant on census records.

Paul Hesch (and probably his brother Mathias) left Europe about 1870, about when the second map was current.

They were considered "German" because they spoke it, even tho they were Austrians from Bohemia.

The Otrembas came from Silesia, which was considered Germany, too, even tho Polish people had lived there for ages.

You're welcome! ☺

A Schmolke Chronology

2012-01-19T11:35:00.003-06:00

Two thoughts:
(1) We imagine the folks who settled around Buckman as all nose-to-the-grindstone, don't-make-waves types...but NOOOO...some were scofflaws, and colorful to boot.....and (2) wow, there's so much to learn here, I don't know where to begin!

Ok, remember the genealogy message board quote from a few days ago about what happened to Eulogius Schmolke? A family member wrote

".... I have been doing some research into the family tree and it was my understanding that Eloguis was sent to Minnesota around 1918 with the purpose of buying some land, for the family to move to. The family never heard from him again"....

Well, we found him, led there by a few interesting newspaper articles from 1925--1935--1945.

These two items were picked up from the AP because of the "mother of 18" angle, no doubt. Remember, Prohibition in the United States was 1920-1933, so by 1925, rural families were...realizing their potential, you might say. (It's funny--moonshining was a real secret then. I've talked with adult kids who still think their dads had the ONLY hidden stills around Buckman, when actually, almost every farmer cooked...but no one talked about it).
So, a farm family with 18 kids to feed? Oh, yeah.
But see? Dad was incarcerated first for 3 months, then once he was out, Mom served her time...a nice arrangement that just barely kept them off the county.
When you think about it, the most probable moonshiners were hardscrabble families. If you were prosperous, you didn't need the money or the trouble. Poorer families saw a fairly easy way to make some cash, only requiring stealth and secrecy. I'd think hiding your still and besting the feds was thrilling and fun, as well. We know that, by 1930, going to prison for moonshining was considered kinda cool, and wasn't a black mark on a man's character any longer.

Montana's take on the story was more irreverent:

"MA OF 18 KIDS TO GO UP AS 'SHINER by Associated Press Duluth, Minn., Feb. 10--Mrs. Elizabeth Schmolke, 55, wife of a Morrison county farmer, and mother of 18 children, must spend three months in the county jail and pay a fine of $400 dollars for violating the liquor laws, Judge W.A.Cant ruled in sentencing the woman in federal court today"

But here we have a different ballgame. It's 1935 and Prohibition ended in 1933. What were they doing?

"AGED MATRON NEAR PINE CENTER, MOTHER OF 18 CHILDREN, GIVEN SUSPENDED TERM IN FED COURT

Mrs. Elizabeth Schmolke, a matron of the territory a few miles south of Pine Center and a mother of 18 children, was given a suspended sentence in federal court in Duluth for possession of untaxed liquor yesterday, according to advices from Duluth.

The aged matron appeared before Judge Robert C. Bell on the liquor charges, sobbing as she faced the judge.

Judge Bell told her that "because of the trying life you have lived I'm going to give you one more chance". He then placed her on probation for two years and gave her a suspended sentence of six months.

"Go home and tell your husband to quit selling liquor", said Judge Bell. "Try to make a living without violating the law".

The aged woman and her husband operate a small tourist store north of Hillman and just over the Crow Wing county line in Morrison county. Only one of their 18 children now lives with them in the small apartment at the rear of the store building. She state to federal authorities that she and her husband had not exchanged a word in the past three years, so how she was to follow the admonition of the judge remained a mystery.

For 17 years, Mr and Mrs Schmolke and their children operated an 800 acre farm in Canada, and then farmed 360 acres in the southwestern part of Crow Wing county. The husband has been arrested twice for alleged liquor law violations of a prohibition law, officials said. Mrs. Schmolke is the real mother of 14 of the children and stepmother of the other four."

The "aged matron" was only 65, and it's interesting that Frederick Schmolke was never mentioned by name.

Some facts:
Fred Schmolke and Elizabeth Jendro were married in 1896. The 1900 census in Buckman township showed Fred and Elizabeth with the first three of their mutual kids plus 4 more.

They probably left for Canada in about 1903. We know that Fred's brother John owned land in Canada, so that's probably how they got the 800 acre gig.
They reappeared in Morrison co in the 1920 census (Richardson township, NE of Hillman) with 7 kids--->

Larry found that they were Naturalized as American citizens in Illinois in 1944, but I suppose they'd become Canadian citizens when they lived there. Maybe Illinois was the nearest office...

OKAY, back to their son Eulogius and what happened to him.

"Eloguis was sent to Minnesota around 1918 with the purpose of buying some land, for the family to move to"...which meant that he was sent from the farm in Canada back to Minnesota! Evidently, he got as far as the next little town, because on his Canadian draft form he said he lived in Ryley, Alberta and his dad lived in Holden...maybe 10 miles apart.

(BTW, Larry found all this last night! WOW!)

But look how he spelled his name: EOLOGURE--no wonder. It was different enough from his birth name, but did the new spelling loose any records for him?

This morning, I thought to search Find a Grave for a Schmolke death in Canada....and there he was. There's no explanation for how he drowned in eastern Canada 17 years later, but at least we know that he didn't die in WWI, or just disappear.

A few more facts:
Frederick Schmolke was the son of Jacob Schmolke and Catherine Mischke and was a brother of Buckman's most illustrious citizen, John.
Fred died in May 1945 in Minneapolis and was buried at Bull Dog Lake, Minnesota.

Elizabeth (Jendro) Schmolke lived 13 years beyond Fred, dying in Crow Wing county in 1958 at the age of 88. She's most likely buried with Fred.

I wonder, did they ever start speaking to each other after 1935?

Eternity is a long time...lol

Grandma Lizzy's niece

2012-01-18T18:21:00.000-06:00

I found this obit in today's online version of the Morrison County Record:

Hildegard J. Hoheisel, 96

Hildegard J. Hoheisel, a resident of Pierz, formerly of Lastrup, passed away Jan 15, 2012, at the Pierz Villa in Pierz.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held Friday, Jan. 20, at St. John Nepomuk Catholic Church in Lastrup with the Rev. David Maciej and the Rev. Bernard Kahlhamer officiating. Burial will be in the parish cemetery.

Hildegard was born May 20, 1915, in Buckman Township, Morrison County, to the late Henry and Magdalena ‘Sand’ Block. The family lived in Buckman Township for a few years and then moved to Granite Township near Lastrup where Hildegard attended District #38 country school. Following her schooling, she worked in Little Falls as a house keeper and nanny. Hildegard was united in marriage to Christ Hoheisel May 9, 1933, at St. John Nepomuk Catholic Church in Lastrup. The couple dairy farmed for over 60 years in the Lastrup area until the death of her husband, Christ, in 1995. She worked as a nurse’s aide at the Pierz Villa during the1960s. Hildegard continued to live on the family farm until moving to the Pierz Villa in 2008. She enjoyed sewing, knitting, quilting and crocheting pot holders. She was a great cook. Sweet bread and her delicious cinnamon rolls were family favorites, along with her pickles. She also enjoyed playing cards and bingo. Most of all, she enjoyed spending time with all her family. Hildegard was a member of St. John’s Nepomuk Catholic Church in Lastrup, parish Christian Mothers and served on the District #62 School Board for many years.

Hildegard J. Hoheisel is survived by her son, Robert ‘Bob’ ‘Kay’ Hoheisel of Lastrup; daughter, Joanne ‘Jim’ Fischer of Lastrup; daughter-in-law, Katherine ‘Katie’ Hoheisel of Hillman; sister, Loretta ‘Betty’ Krych of Harding; sisters-in-law, Margaret ‘Peggy’ Block of Pierz and Donna Block of Little Falls; 24 grandchildren; 51 great-grandchildren and nine great-great-grandchildren.

Hildegard was preceded in death by her husband, Christ, March 27, 1995; parents, Henry and Magdalena Block; sons, Wilfred and Gerald Hoheisel; five brothers; three sisters; and two great-grandchildren, Brittany Tretter and Matthew McNamara.

Honorary casketbearers will be the 16 granddaughters. Casketbearers will be the eight grandsons.

Elizabeth Sand's younger sister Lena was her bridesmaid when she married Anton Hesch in 1910. Later, when Lena married Henry Block, this woman, Hildegard, was one of her daughters.

Just think: Hildegard was born the same year as mom, 1915.

Our Honolulu Otremba

2012-01-17T06:59:00.003-06:00

In my files are two newspaper clippings regarding Franz Otremba, the woodcarver, who lived in Hawaii at the turn of the last century. We don't know much about him, or even how closely he was related, but here they are, for posterity.

It's interesting, I think, that a Polish immigrant who was a professional woodcarver tried managing a coffee plantation. Don't you wonder how that came about?

Evidently, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was held in Seattle in 1909, and Franz loaned a carved chair but didn't get it back. (Wow, check the link!)

This article was from February, 1910. Hope he won.

More info about Moving Sr Laura's grave

2012-01-16T14:00:00.000-06:00

BTW, I've been debating with myself whether this is a worthwhile subject to include in Hesch history. If I truly don't care what they do with whatever remains of Sr Laura, then why am I even concerned? I guess it has to do with my distrust of all things Catholic church...and the apparent need for Benedictine nuns to continue to carry that line, even tho they've....aww, see? I don't like being manipulated, that's all. HERE'S the beginning of the matter, from mid December.

Skip this post if it seems pointless to you, ok? I'll go back to REAL history tomorrow, promise...

A few weeks ago, a client asked if I'd be willing to take her to the casino at Mille Lacs Lake one day. I said sure, having never been inside it, only marveling as I drove past ☺. She picked this last Saturday to go, so the poor woman heard all kinds of Sr Laura stories on the way, including my theories about WHY Sr L needs to be moved almost 40 years later.

As we drove north from Onamia, I was thinking about the last time I'd been past the mission and the casino--was it last summer or the summer before? As a Hesch, you can hardly NOT look at the church on the left, and at 65 MPH, you see the casino within seconds. I remember thinking, last time, that at least the casino complex seemed to start more to the north of the mission land. Did I miss the large building that's behind it now? I mean, right behind the cemetery.

To be clear, I'm truly delighted that the Ojibwe have found a way to recoup some of the horrifying losses our ancestors rained on them...the money flowing inside the casino Saturday was phenomenal. It's a beautiful, well thought out gambling complex, and it appeals to...well, white Minnesotan sensibilities, I guess.
Sr Laura wouldn't recognize the reservation now. It's worth a look at the band website to see some of the incredible changes there. Especially when I remember the Johnson era houses built in the 1960s across from the church, THIS reservation just shines.

But, back to Saturday. Thanks to google earth, here's the last pic they have of the casino/hotel complex. Things have changed again tho. There is no little white building south of the church now, and there IS a building where I added the yellow square. I was startled to see it rising behind the cemetery. It looked like a "mechanics" building--maybe a power plant sort of windowless square tower--but it's presence there means the complex is expanding.

I really believe the land there belongs to the Mille Lacs Band, including the church acreage. If they want a better view of the casino as you approach from the south, or if they just want less white culture on the reservation, then that's the way it should be.

With any luck, this is the end of my rant about it, except I'll try to publish a date when they do the actual move, ok? Besides, I wanna know what's left of a coffin after 40 years in the ground.

Look what Larry found on ebay!

2012-01-16T10:06:00.000-06:00

It's incredible that a business decision in the 1920s by our great uncle could show up all these years later on ebay, huh? John and Ket Hesch used these trade coins to pay farmers for butter, eggs, and produce that townies needed. It was a good workable system, and brought the farmer back to the Hesch store. Just think--this very coin most likely passed thru the pocket of YOUR grandma.

From the Wiki page on token coins:

These were issued by merchants in payment for goods with the agreement that they will be redeemed in goods to an equivalent value at the merchants' own outlets. The transaction is therefore one of barter, with the tokens playing a role of convenience, allowing the seller to receive his goods at a rate and time convenient to himself and the merchant to tie the holder of the token coin to his shop.

This was an online sale from November 2011 for one of John's tokens.

Scroll down to see what was paid for it ☺

(I can imagine that resigned Hesch head-shake, can't you?)

THANKS, LARRY! ☺

Eulogius and Eligius

2012-01-13T21:16:00.001-06:00

As we've looked for relatives on ships lists, in church books, military records, passport and citizenship applications, censuses...anywhere they might be listed, I've frequently whined to Larry that EVERY FREAKIN GENERATION repeated the same names--John, Mary, Joseph, Agnes, Mathias, Elizabeth, Anton, Rosalia, Paul, Anna--and how hard it is to distinguish if we mean grandpa or brother, aunt or matriarch, ya know? Still, pretty much every Paul Hesch from Bohemia is ours because of German naming traditions, too. A double edged sword.

So, when Larry asked if I knew of a relative named Eligius, I thought he was teasing. As it turned out tho, we've had not one but TWO Elogii (at least) in the Polish part of the family.

Yes, there was a St Eulogius. The link'll get you more information about him than you care to know. His name means "blessing", and that's enough for parents to know, I suppose.

Larry'd found an Eligius (misspelled Elignis) Otremba in the 1920 Census from Mahnomen, Minnesota. As much as I complained about similar ancestral names, this person had to be related because of his name.

His father was Frank J Otremba and his mother was Sarah M Bellefuielle, we believe. (When she died in 1951, her death certificate says her parents were Jonas Bell...lle and Amelia Spry). (Yes, Bellefuielle was a family in Mahnomen, then. Jonas Bellefuielle was listed in the 1905 Minnesota census as Indian, born in 1871 in Becker Co. Mn).

According to People Search online,
Eligius E Otremba was born in July, 1917 and died in Wyoming, MN in December 2005, at 88 years old. I know Larry found his obit online, but for the life of me, it's not online now!

Okay, I can hear you saying that Eulogius isn't the same name as Eligius. They're close, tho, and I suspect Eligius settled on a version he liked and ran with it. A weird name needs to be tolerated, I know...☺
Oh, and Eligius' dad Frank J was the son of Joseph Otremba and Hedwig Holeva. My family tree says Frank's wife was Mathilda B Otremba...not Sarah. So hmm. We'll wait for Larry on this one, since I know we found them later, without Frank , in Royalton.

Who was the other Eulogius, then? The one named after the saint--son of Frederick Schmolke. Fred evidently married twice, since this page says they'd been married 4 years, with 3 children, but the next page shows 4 more Schmolke children.

What's particularly interesting about the name "Eulogius Schmolke" besides its challenging pronounceablity? I found a message left in 2009 on an online Schmolke genealogy message board , about a family legend and an earlier Eulogius:

".... I have been doing some research into the family tree and it was my understanding that Eloguis was sent to Minnesota around 1918 with the purpose of buying some land, for the family to move to. The family never heard from him again. My mother was Rose and my grandmother, Elizabeth Jendro lived with us until her death, in 1958. I am living in Canada now and would like any information you may have in regard to the Schmolke family and particularly any information on Elogius..."

See why the name stood out? We're talking Larry + me + a mystery. Stuff like this tickles us both WAY too much, but we've solved plenty of other conundrums here, right? Stay tuned!

Mischkes

2012-01-11T22:40:00.000-06:00

Larry and I have been researching a family, without knowing WHO they were, since May 2009. What tenacity! You might recall photos of a priests' ordination where we were mostly concerned with the kids who acted as a miniature bride and flower girls?

The post here on Hesch History was in May, 2009.

Turns out these Benedictines and Crosiers were four of eleven kids

born to John and Theresa Mischke.

They are Hermina Mischke, Fridolin Mischke,

Benno Mischke and Mary Mischke.

If the photo was taken the day of Fridolin's ordination, then it was 1937.

The woman in the hat is most likely Theresa (Peschel) Mischke, their mom.

Hermina and Mary were born in 1899 and 1900, while Benno and Fridolin were the youngest of the brood, born in 1912 and 1916.

Ok, so how does this family connect to us? The Mischke clan came to America from the same area of Poland as the Otrembas, Schmolkes, Przybillas, Jendros and Rauschs.

Did you notice the couple way at the top of the post?

They were John Mischke and his wife Theresa Peschel.

Our link is thru John's mother Mary Otremba, a sister to

Anton Otremba, our great great grandfather.

For sure, pics like this were taken on special occasions when all the kids were home. It might have been Theresa's 70th birthday maybe, in 1942.
Looks like she's wearing a corsage ☺.

I think, by their look and dress, the pic below was snapped

after Theresa's funeral, in October, 1945.

(The new old pics were found on Ancestry. Yup, by Larry!)

Who was Bernard Richter?

2012-01-11T08:30:00.000-06:00

A quote from a book by Maurice Faust of Pierz, about St Michael's church in Buckman:
"Architecture of the church is beautiful and unique in many ways. Many of the furnishings are truly from another world. A 40 X 90 foot oil painting [actually 4X9 feet] of St Michael was procured from Bernard Richter in St. Annaberg, Schleisen, Germany. The Sacred Heart statue came from the Tyrol area in Austria. The fourteen highly detailed Stations of the Cross are carved from wood and incredibly beautiful".
Last May, when we discovered that mention of the person responsible for the painting of St Michael in the church in Buckman, Minnesota, we figured 'Bernard Richter' was the artist. Sure, Bernard Richter was probably a relatively common name in German speaking parts of Europe. Richter means judge, so whenever we encountered the word in an old German book, we couldn't tell if it referred to a Herr Richter or a local judge.
Anyway, our unbelievably SKILLED researcher Larry tried seeing if this person was mentioned either here in the US or there, in Poland/Germany/Bohemia--at that time, or since.

He found Bernard Richter on Find-a-Grave.com, buried in Melrose, Minnesota in the priests section!

The following is from History of Stearns County Minnesota, written by William Bell Mitchell in 1915.

"Right Rev. Monsignor Bernard Richter, of Melrose, was born in the Province of Westphalia, Prussia, Germany, September 28, 1863, and after attending the common schools passed through the high school into the University of Muenster.

In December, 1884, he came to America, and continued his studies at St. Francis' Seminary, near Milwaukee, Wis. Here he was ordained to the priesthood, June 24, 1887. His first parish was at White Lake, South Dakota.

His pious devotion and energetic work attracted the attention of the Right Rev. Bishop Otto Zardetti who made him pastor of the Cathedral at St. Cloud.

On June 7, 1894, he came to Melrose as pastor of the Church of St. Boniface. His work here has been notable, and has resulted, by the grace of God, in the largest Catholic Church in Stearns county. The parish consists of 300 families, all Germans, and all devoted to the cause of the church.

Under the direction of Father Richter, the magnificent church edifice was erected in 1899, at a cost including fixtures, of $75,000; the rectory in 1907 at a cost of $18,000 ; the convent in 1908 at a cost of about $7,000 ; and a sightly parochial school in 1910 at a cost of $50,000.

In 1912, Father Richter was elevated by His Holiness, Pope Pius X, to the dignity of Domestic Prelate, thus investing him with the title of Right Reverend Monsignor".

Right Rev Bernard Richter, OSB, died on December 18, 1921 and is buried in St. Boniface Cemetery (now St. Mary's Cemetery) in Melrose, MN.

Larry also discovered a passport application for Rev Bernard Richter in 1905. He went to Europe and returned home after a couple months. It's entirely possible that Rev Richter was asked by Polish parishioners in Buckman to purchase a painting of St Michael for the church....tho it seems like a painting would be a poor choice for display in a church, you know?

When Larry and I discuss the painting, we always go back to the anomalies...were they in-jokes by an artist who knew the Otrembas or Mischkes or Schmolkes? Or were they a "dig" of some kind? Whoever painted it was a classically skilled artist, so why mess with the symbolism like that?

{Wow, sometimes we only need OTHER opinions: I mentioned the painting and odd object in Michael's hand to a client this morning--she suggested it might have been a scalp! By the turn of the century, America's Indian wars were mostly over, but the aura of the "wild west" was well known in Europe. Wow...We may never know for sure, but that might be IT}.

The St Michael Painting--a followup

2012-01-10T15:53:00.000-06:00

I was in Buckman on Sunday for Aunt Jeanette's 85th birthday party and took the opportunity (Hey, I was EARLY!) to get better photos of the painting of St Michael the Archangel.

If you click the link, you'll read what our tentative conclusions were last spring. Now, of course, we have new and more info, thanks to further research from Larry as well as these new angel pics.

Oops--wait, that's the grandkids on Christmas. It's ok, they qualify as my angels.

(And yes, they think I'm a hoot).

OK, the new photos are closer-ups of parts of the 4X9 foot painting--especially the figures in the "sky" above Michael. We thought (when we couldn't see them well) that they were St Ann and her daughter BVMary.

Now, however, we can see that they're Moses, with tablets, and Jesus. THAT didn't make any sense to me either, but Larry knew the biblical basis of those figures. Honest, the man's a marvel!

He said it's "the Archangel Michael contending for the body of Moses", since Moses is one of two humans in the old testament who were supposedly taken into heaven without dying (The other was Elijah, he said). Larry said there's an old Jewish writing about Satan being pissed that Moses had it so easy, so he fought Michael for the right to it. Wow.

Anyway, the whole painting works better now, EXCEPT for the majorly odd stuff.

We think the painting was commissioned from an artist in St Annasburg, Poland, very near where our Otrembas, Rauschs, Schmolkes and Mischkes came from. This might also be wrong, but we're going with it till a better answer shows up.

Now, is the thing in Michael's hand...an upside down flame? A hank of hair? Pouring red paint, or blood? Traditionally Michael holds a sword in that hand--why paint something so ambiguous? Also, Michael the Archangel is usually painted standing firmly on Satan--but this Michael's legs seem to be in a deliberately weak position. Why, when most of the painting seems directly copied from a holy card? We have no answers, just speculation.

However, there's some very INTERESTING info available on where the painting came from, and that'll be tomorrows topic!

Who was Maggie Dehler? Answered!

2012-01-05T09:38:00.001-06:00

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 left. 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...☺

Heinz & Melitta

2012-01-04T22:01:00.000-06:00

Because of the differences in language and translating, sometimes Heinz sends me something and I don't understand. However, this photo just has to be our cousin Heinz and his lovely wife Melitta on their wedding day in 1961. (I know this for sure cuz the photo was labeled ☺).

And that made 2011 their 50th wedding anniversary!

Here's the mayor of Heidenreichstein who dropped in to say "Wow!"

And here's Melitta holding 50 red carnations--to which we American relatives say

"WOW! and (belated) Congratulations!".

BTW, I'm especially grateful to Melitta for going along with Heinz to all those odd little villages we relatives are so eager to see. You're a good sport, Melitta ☺ Thank you both!

The Northern Pacific Railroad bridge at Bismarck, ND

2012-01-02T09:51:00.003-06:00

I found this interesting picture in a promotional booklet produced by Northern Pacific RR. It was a guide to what you were seeing out the train windows as you traveled across the country.

It's 10 degrees here in central Minnesota this morning, prompting thoughts about ice on the lakes and rivers nearby, and --as anybody would--wondering how strong it is, really?

The inset photo there was an ICE BRIDGE, in 1880, used in winters before the steel bridge was finished in 1890. Maybe winters were colder and longer back then, or maybe people were more trusting. Just the idea gives me the willies, tho.

Here's a little history from the Busmarck Tribune newspaper:

Posted: Saturday, August 27, 2005 7:00 pm

The chief engineer who designed and supervised construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad Bridge over the Missouri River at Bismarck later convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by digging a canal through Panama.

George S. Morison was a Harvard-educated lawyer working for a prestigious New York law firm when he decided to take up engineering.

Although receiving no formal education in this field, at the time of his death in 1903, the "Dictionary of American Biography" stated, "He was regarded as the leading bridge engineer in America, perhaps in the world."

In 1870, Morison began work under the direction of noted engineer Octave Chanute, who, in Kansas City, was constructing the first bridge to cross the Missouri River. When Chanute became chief engineer of the Erie Railroad in 1873, Morison was chosen as his principal assistant, giving him experience in railway bridge construction. In 1875, he organized the bridge contracting firm of Morison, Field, and Co. in New York.

Meanwhile, the Northern Pacific Railroad had been pushing westward from Duluth, Minn. Its goal was to link the Great Lakes seaport, by rail, to the Pacific Ocean at Tacoma, Wash. In June 1873, the tracks were laid as far as Edwinton, present-day Bismarck, where they encountered the Missouri River. It would take 11 years and the engineering genius of Morison before a railway bridge would be laid across the Missouri.

The Missouri River was considered by many as the most treacherous river in the country on which to build a bridge. Not only was the river an obstacle, but the NP also ran into financial difficulties.

In September the NP went bankrupt. Even though the trains continued to run, construction ceased. In 1878, the NP was reorganized under the leadership of Frederick Billings and track construction was begun west of Mandan. To link up the rail lines, supplies were ferried across the river. It soon became apparent that a bridge needed to be constructed.

In 1880, executives of the NP contacted George Morison, who had just resigned from his construction firm to devote full time to consulting. Morison concluded that a permanent bridge should be constructed and chose a site near the existing tracks where the bedrock cliffs would resist river erosion.

However, this site had one of the widest spans across the river. The NP accepted his recommendations and, in September, began construction of a dike to narrow the width of the river at the site. On Dec. 16, 1880, Morison was chosen by the board of directors of the NP as chief engineer and superintendent of the bridge project.

Early in 1881, the NP began awarding contracts. The project was difficult because there were few people in the area who had experience in bridge building. The experience issue was compounded because it was one of the first bridges to be made entirely of steel. The bridge was completed on Oct. 18, 1882, and three days later it was tested by moving eight locomotives over it.

At a cost of $1,079,000 it became the first million-dollar structure erected in what is now North Dakota....

(If you want to read about Morison and the Panama canal, click the link at the top for the whole article).

COOL, huh?

Odds and Ends

2011-12-31T08:59:00.000-06:00

Flipping thru my Pictures file this morning, I re-found things I've saved to show you.

The last day of the year is as good a reason as any, huh?

This is north St Cloud in 1965...the white area in the top left corner is North Junior High, ok?
What I wanted to show you, tho, is the shape of Centennial addition
--it was intended to look like a bell, see?

This is a photo Larry found when we were talking about the literal tons of equipment left over after a war (we started with the pointless war in Iraq, but soon got into WWII).
The pic is just some of the leftovers when the troops went home. Motorcycles were sold as-is, in lots of 5, I suppose to insure you'd have the parts for at least one whole bike.

Here's the plat map from 1828 of one of the villages we think Larry's Bohemian folks maybe came from. That's the German word for Drahotesice. Heinz sent suggestions too, and we're checking them out. The parish was SEVETIN, in case you want to look yourself.

See how they relate? The red marker is Drahotesice, and Budweis is SW
while Jindrichuv Hradec is straight east. We're talking about the same distances as, well...say Drahotesice is Long Prairie, Mn? Then Ceske Budejovice is St Joe, and JH is Pierz. Wow!

Yes! These ARE the creameries in Central Minnesota in 1898. Good guess!

Preserving the Pierz Journals

2011-12-30T14:41:00.001-06:00

Larry's Czech Mix--honest! ☺

2011-12-24T07:24:00.002-06:00

A truly amazing genealogical development this week is that a previously unknown part of Larry's family history finally showed up. Turns out his 5th great set of grands came here from BOHEMIA! And, they were not German--his name was Franz Pasek and hers was Anna Teply. Turns out Franz accompanied the Teply family on the boat, too.

Of course we've been looking in the church books from Bohemia for both names. They'd have to be from the same village, a place we have no idea about right now. THIS is the fun of searching for links!

And, can you imagine? Larry could be FAMILY! Woohoo!

We'll keep you posted ☺

An interesting e-mail

2011-12-20T10:57:00.000-06:00

(And a follow-up post from a month later, here)

This was in my inbox yesterday. If you have an opinion one way or the other, contact S Kara, ok?

Dear Marlys,

Sister Laura Hesch is buried in the cemetery of the local parish church in Vineland, Minnesota. She has rested there since her death in 1972. Her classmates, especially Sister Theodora Nelson long for her to be buried in our Monastery cemetery. We are looking for S. Laura’s relatives and wonder if you are related to S. Laura?

Do you think that S. Laura’s family members would agree with our wish to move S. Laura back to St. Benedict’s? We are working with a funeral director to make sure that this is done correctly and respectfully. I have contacted Bishop Kinney and Elisse Aune of the Tribal leadership and both have agreed that we can move S. Laura’s remains.

Can you reply with your thoughts? Can you let me know if I am to contact other relatives too? I am happy to answer any questions or provide any additional information that you need.

Thanks you very much for giving this your consideration.

Sincerely,

Sister Kara Hennes

Treasurer/Director of Finance

(320-363-7005 direct

320-363-7130 fax

* khennes@sbm.osb.org

www.sbm.osb.org

(Whew--"Her classmates...long for her to be buried in our Monastery cemetery"? Sr Laura would have been 130 years old this coming April--class of 1910. Incredibly old classmates!)

Sounds like a done deal to me...

Next day: Ahh, here's who Sr. Theodore is--from the Fall, 1958 Stray Lamb newsletter:

My apologies: I remember Sr Mary George, but not Sr Theodore, tho I do remember two nuns there with Sr Laura. OK, now things make more sense. She wasn't a classmate, and she had Sr Laura's respect because she could take it at the Little Flower Mission.
Evidently, Sr Mary George is deceased and is buried in St Joe. Is this enough reason to unearth Sr Laura?

A school picture from Pierz, Minnesota

2011-12-16T21:41:00.000-06:00

The 1880s were immigrant years in Minnesota, part of a movement to homestead land and make a 'gut' life here. Farmers from Germany, Bohemia, Poland and Austria followed friends and neighbors to this place Fr Pierz recommended.

Schooling was as important as it was in Europe--maybe more important. The kids needed to learn English here in America. Luckily, the nuns were bi-lingual and 'took on any comers'. The kids themselves had to live with the situation ☺.

Larry found a wonderful school photo taken on the front steps of St Joseph's Church in Pierz. The caption suggests it was 1881, but the church wasn't finished till 1888, so maybe this was 1890 or so? Anyway, I'll show you the whole photo, but wanted to highlight some kids' faces first. Don't you recognize something familiar in these kids?

(BTW, we were originally drawn by the third pic, above. His face breaks my heart. What was wrong? Or, hmm, was there a reason he was placed in front of Father?)

Next night: We were talking about a kids' concept of his or her own face in those years. Were they even aware that they weren't smiling?
Our kids are told to "Smile" from little on cuz every adult has a camera, but photography itself was new to the kids pictured here. (Meeting a new adult, they were expected to greet them, and be quiet). No one exhorted them to "SMILE", not even for a photograph we'd be examining 120 years later ☺

Here's the original photo--be sure to zoom in. S'tr is watching YOU!

A star?

2011-12-16T17:50:00.000-06:00

Schallwigs from Guschwitz

2011-12-14T05:59:00.000-06:00

Whew, if you can avoid getting the stomach flu, do it.

I've had a bookmark from Falkenberg in Poland since Larry found it ages ago. If the correct village comes up when you click the link, you'll see "Goszczowice-Guschwitz" but if not, click one village down on the list on the left (makes sense, right?)

Our great-great grandmother was Catherine Schallwig. She was Anton Otremba's wife and the mother of Paul Hesch's wife, Mary. We went looking for evidence of either family in the little villages of Oberschleisen, and found a shoemaker named Otremba in Golschwitz and an oil dealer in Guschwitz by the name of Schallwig.

Google translates it from Polish like this:

Goszczowice belonged to the Catholic parish in the passes, but it also had its own little church branch. In addition to the two inns (Hilger and Greedy), worked in a bakery (Wolf), colonial goods store (Gorzawski), tailor (Bauch), cobbler (Rothkugel) , various goods store (Pankalla), horse trader (Bogon), basketball (Kischke) and three oil traders (Janaschke, Schallwig, Welz).

(I assume there was no basketball dealer, but maybe a basket-maker?)

Over in Golschwitz, there's this:

Golczowicach functioned in two taverns (Geppert and Raabe), 2 bakers (Kilian and Warzecha), 2 carpenters (Frach and Sobiray) a painter (Glombek), 2 shoemakers (Otremba and Lukossek), 2 workshops, cycling (Poguntke and Pyka), 2 wicker baskets wholesale (Stampka) and a seamstress (Sinschek).

Catherine would have been the legendary wife who had to make do back home while her husband Anton walked to the Holy Land.

Now, you know!

No contest at all ☺

2011-12-08T17:41:00.001-06:00

I know we're not competing over WHO discovers the best stuff here on Hesch History, but the accolades balance is just a little teeny-tiny bit skewed in one person's direction, ya know?

So of course I had to do some (almost) totally independent research...☺ You'll be THRILLED to know I found the answer to your latest burning question:

WHO WAS MARTIN HESCH?

Basically, all the villages our ancestors came from

(A little background on the Martin mystery, HERE and some interesting info on villages in "our" part of south Bohmen back then: our two villages--Oberschlagles and Neidermuhl--were both on the Nežárka river. Obviously, one means Upper- and the other means Lower-(and according to Herman, Schlagles means bends or twists, in a river).
Ok, they weren't really trying for poetry.
Anyway, we've been concentrating on Heschs from Oberschlagles in the Jindrichuv Hradec parish books, but this week our Austrian relative, Heinz Binder, emailed. He wanted to show Su where some of her Waneks were born in Bohemia, and he cc to me. Since we know Waneks and Heschs were neighbors over the years, I looked there too.

My comes the dawn moment was here, in a village called Niederschlagles or Dolni Lhota, in the next parish, Straz nad Nezarkou. The parish borders had changed; I found 4 Hesch babies born there between 1854 and 1859...our Heschs!

Here, on the 10th of November 1859, a priest named Johann Bargt (?) baptized MARTIN HESCH (Catholic, male, legitimate). The baby's father was BARTHOLOMAUS HESCH, farmer, from Oberschlagles #24. ___ ___ ___ ___, son of MARTIN HESCH, Citizen (?) of Oberschlagles #24 and Elizabeth born Wolf from Diabling #44.

Now I realize you're a little confused--how do they all fit again?

My dad was the son of Anton Hesch (*1883)

who was the son of Paul Hesch (*1846)

who was the son of Johann Hesch (*1818)

who was the son of Martin Hesch (*1790)

who was the son of Paul Hesch (*c 1760)

So baby Martin's grandpa Martin had a son named Bartholomaus, and one named Johann. The baby grew up, came to Minnesota in 1883, and showed up in the
Little Falls township census of 1885.
He was Johann's nephew, and great grandpa Paul's cousin.

YAY, ME!!

BTW, this was Heinz' message ☺

"Niederschlagles ist Dolni Lhota. Pfarre Stratz nad Nezarkou. Read Geburtsbuch 1852-1891 Buch 19,

Index: Wanek bei Page 2,5,9,12,15,36,89 bei Aufnagme 120 Index W. Plato ist Glatz. LG Heinz"

Thanks AGAIN, Heinz! ☺

THE REST OF THE STORY, with Larrys help, of course:

Ok, cousin Martin Hesch married Mathilda Nelles in Pierz in about 1896, and they soon had a daughter they named Mary Mathilda Hesch. Evidently, Martin died about 1908, and Mathilda (Nellis) Hesch married a man named Mathias Schuckweiler. In the 1930 census from Aitkin, Minnesota, Larry found Math (65) and Mathilda (63) with a grandson, James K Hesch (9). Evidently, Mary had a baby but didn't marry...or, in those years, maybe she fought for suffrage and being a feminist, kept her own name?

Anyway, that son, James Kenneth, must have named his own son James Kenneth Hesch, too. According to other tidbits found on Facebook's Hesch Club, James II lives in Canada, and is about my age ☺.

1910-Daughter Mary Hash lives with Math & Mathilda Schuckweiler in Maywood,
Benton Co, Mn.

1920-Math & Mathilda Schuckweiler, and daughter Mary in Maywood, Benton Co, Mn.

1930- Math & Mathilda (Nellis-Hesch) Schuckweiler, and grandson James live in Aitkin, Mn.

THANKS, Larry--really! How COOL is this?

California or Minnesota?

2011-12-07T12:46:00.001-06:00

There are stories you hear as a kid that you totally believe--like that Paul Hesch fell out of a wagon, broke his neck, and died 3 days later, or that Mike Sand named the church in Buckman. The basic facts were there, and correct, but with a bit more info, they're 'righter', now.
When I first discovered the desk drawers where family photos were kept, I dived right in, of course. We were told to Stay Out Of The Desk, but it was ok as long as we didn't hurt anything, and we put it all back.

One photo in particular intrigued me because Mom said it was taken in California, by her Uncle Wendelin. How exotic! I imagined the ocean just beyond those people, who somehow looked way too ordinary to be living in the SAME STATE as Hollywood. But then, what did I know?

Eventually, I inherited most of those pics, and really never thought about that one till Larry and I started looking into my family history. Frankly, this photo still didn't resurface till we'd analyzed most of the others. Duh, you say--how would we EVER figure out who/where/when, and sheesh, does it matter at all??!

snort! Evidently, you don't KNOW Larry and me very well....

We zoomed in and examined parts of the pic--see the rocks along the driveway? Why are the men holding tires? ARE they tires? How come some of the people look involved, and the others look--skeptical? What was the man in the foreground selling from his blanket? What buildings were in the background? Are those gas pumps? Where in California would this have been, and what year, approximately? WHAT was on the blanket?

Well, I did a post about it on our Janson blog, but we really had few conclusions. Luckily, mysteries tend to fester, especially in Larry's head ☺. Last night, he popped the pic up for another look. And WOW! I think we've (ok, LARRY) figured it out!

There was something distinctive about the items on the blanket that bugged him...where had he seen them before? And, didn't the men on the ground look sorta Native American? Were those items for sale, or there for another reason entirely? So, he started looking for Native rituals or games, like this: see the pads on the blanket? And wow, those were drums! The men in our picture were playing a game, not listening to a sales pitch!

"The moccasin game was played by men, and wagers were invariably placed by those watching the game. Four men (some tribes used five, others eight) sat on opposite sides of a blanket. Nearby was a drummer (for the Menominee) or a drummer for each player (among the Ojibwa). There were special songs for the moccasin game and the drummer sang and played a tambourine drum. The equipment consisted of four tokens, one of which was marked, four moccasins or small pieces of decorated cloth, and sticks for counters. The object was to hide the tokens under the moccasins, in full sight of the opponents, who then had to guess which moccasin concealed the marked token. There were many pretenses of hiding and removing them, so that one's opponent found it difficult to accurately guess where the marked token was hidden. Four attempts were allowed, and then the next player had a turn....The Ojibwa, Ho-chunk, and Menominee used a "striking stick" to turn over the moccasin thought to hide the token. When neighboring tribes visited each other, the players were usually chosen from opposing tribes. Early White settlers, who also enjoyed gambling, adopted the game so zealously that in Indiana a statute expressly forbade gambling at the moccasin game and other gambling games and stiff fines were set". VIA
.................
"One team takes those balls and hides them under the moccasins. The one that's hiding them will be sitting there shaking those balls with his hands together. When he stops shaking them his hands open a little, close to his body, close to his stomach, and he takes a peek down to see where the marked ball is. Then he hides it wherever he's going to hide them".
.................
Here's how it's played. No wonder the men on the ground in the pic are so animated!

Well, now! Here's the pic again--since a whole lot of our assumptions about it were wrong, maybe it wasn't taken in California, either?

We started to talk about where it could have been, instead. When Larry suggested "somewhere near Sr Laura's mission?", the whole picture warped in front of my eyes...

Incredible! Sure, see the dark space on the horizon, on the right? That was Mille Lacs Lake, and this would have been maybe one of those small gas station businesses up along the lake, right? The kids have ice cream cones, so it was more than just gas. It was one of the places we never, ever stopped.

But then, this morning, Larry went even farther: overnight, he'd developed A THEORY.
Could this have been taken at the Indian Trading Post there on Mille Lacs? The very Trading Post that's across highway 169 from the Little Flower Mission?

O.M.G. Here are a few photos borrowed from among 30 others on the outstanding Minnesota Reflections site, where you can purchase copies if you want, but just LOOK--weren't the people in the "California" photo actually right near where the car is in this second pic? Playing a game of moccasin, drumming and singing, while MINNESOTA tourists watched....COOL!!

Wow, Larry!! ☺

A quick St Cloud quiz

2011-12-06T19:09:00.001-06:00

I KNOW how much you love quizzes! (And yes, prizes for correct answers will be dispersed at the usual generous rate, promise).

1. Where was this building located originally (way before we were born)?

2. What was it used for when we were kids?

3. The photographer was standing in the parking lot of ______ _____ _____ ____.

4. What famous event happened to this building in 1938? (See Q #1)

5. It was built in 1902 as the ______ _____.

6. How thick were its granite walls?

7. What family story happened exactly where the car in the photo is?

8. What was this building called?

9. Did you ever attend an event there? If so, what?

10. What was it used for mostly, by the 1960s?

BTW, the pic was taken in 1936. You can see the side of it in Pic #1, so yes, both buildings existed when we were kids ☺.

Answers in the comments ☺

Herman, the German/English Dictionary

2011-12-05T11:39:00.001-06:00

We Heschs have unwittingly found a delightfully goofy new friend. Her name's Su, and she lives in and researches from Gloucester, England. You'll recall her account of finding the blog/realizing the link/living happily ever after, right?

Having found her husband's relatives in the same villages Heschs came from, she's looking into who they were. We know an early Wanek was the miller, for sure, but we're debating whether he owned it or just worked, as everyone else did, for the landowner.

Su found this notarized birth certificate in her husband's family attic. It was copied out of the church book from 1892 by the priest in Schamers in 1921...and there's an odd phrase used:
it says that Karl Wanek's father Matthias was the "Muellermeister im Neiderschlagles #1, Pfarre Plate..."
So, what's a Pfarre Plate? We determined that "Pfarre" means Parish, but "Plate" didn't translate, so here's what our Su did...

I decided that what I really need is a good German-English dictionary so when I went to Tewkesbury on Wednesday I had a good rummage around in the junk/antique and second-hand bookshops...... Most of these shops are narrow and piled high with just about anything you can think of and quite a few you can't, so getting in among the tottering piles with my stick and rucksack is not that easy. I was deep in the bowels of a particularly interesting shop when I espied a pile of science and technical books. In amongst them was an old physics book written by an old physicist, which Rob was particularly delighted to acquire. This looked hopeful, so we explored further and began to feel that a pick and a miner's lamp might be useful aids but under a pile of mixed trashy novels and foxed piano scores I found a gem. It was a book of the sort even junk shop owners use as a doorstop: a huge German-English dictionary with the German bits printed in Blackletter Gothic! This star find was mine for the noble sum of one English pound and we bore it away in well-disguised triumph for fear the owner might suddenly increase the price.

It was printed in the Second World War and since GCHQ (our equivalent of your National Security Agency) is at Cheltenham, not far from here, we rather like to think it might have been used for deciphering codes and message. It was written by a german Professor of German at Cambridge University and contains all sorts of useful things like lists of abbreviations etc. and has now become my favourite bed-time reading but woe betide if you nod off while reading it as it is heavy enough to do serious damage if you drop it. Herman, as it is now called, has proved invaluable. I looked up Pfarre and still came up with Parish but things became more interesting when I looked up Platte. With an umlaut over the 'a' I found ironing, flat iron and as Platten I got flatten, level, or one who flattens and levels iron - a Smith! I know that the usual word for a smith is Schmit but that's in Standard German. We may have a local variation here- after all modern Austrian is slightly different to Standard German both in use of tenses and in vocabulary see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_German ...............

So, I think it possible that Pfarre Platte may mean Parish Smith. I'll have to check by looking at the baptisms of other of his children to see if the same thing is written in a different way or with different words. I don't think this is incompatible with being a landowner - he may have owned a Smithing business rather than wielding a hammer himself.

We know that Ober means Upper and Nieder means Lower but have you wondered what a schlagel was? Well I did so I looked it up. Schlängel is something that twists or winds or meanders. Oberschlagles is on a bend in the river and is north of Neiderschlagles, which is also on a bend in the river! All power to Herman and if I can only find a Czech equivalent I shall be a Happy Bunny indeed. He is ready and willing to provide the answer to any puzzling word you may have.

Love, Su

YAY, and thank you, Su! I think having Herman around will be a HUGE help. The connection from Bohemia to WWII is there in Herman, and

1940's definitions are easier for us, certainly.

Oh, and maybe Herman's definition of "ironing, flat iron" might mean, alternately, that

Herr Wanek's household did the laundry and ironed linens for the parish? Certainly, the miller had easiest access to lots of water. Either's possible, huh?

THANK YOU, SU & HERMAN!! ☺

Revisiting Bohemia

2011-12-04T10:37:00.001-06:00

I'm home sick today (can't be helpful if the nose drips and the voice doesn't work), so I figured I'd search the church books for Martin's birth. We know he arrived in America in January 1883, claiming Neuhaus, Bohemia as his place of origin. He must have gone fairly directly to Pierz, where we found him in the 1885 census in Little Falls township (later Agram). I found him in the Pierz St Joseph church book marrying Mathilda Nelles in 1887.

Evidently, he was born in October, 1859. I've checked the Jindrichuv Hradec parish books from 1854 thru 1862, with no luck so far, but he could have been born in any village nearby, right?
However, I found the Wanek entries, below......and then tried the Schamers book.

Oh, sure, I got sidetracked, but that only proves that the journey can be as

useful and interesting as the destination ☺

Once we discover a name to be looked for--like Wanek--well, I can't just pass by without doing a screen capture. This is 24/25 January, 1856. Anton Wanek (son of Josef Wanek of #1 Platz Mueller (the mill)) and his wife Marie Schindler had a baby named Josef who, sadly, only lived to February 2, 1856. I don't recognize Anton's occupation, but they lived at #81.

Below is another entry, from September 1859. Looks like Maria Wanek lived. But see the tiny numbers written at the bottom? That may be her death date, 77 years later, in 1936. There are still mysteries in these pages. Any idea, Su?

I was enjoying the Schamers books cuz there are twice as many entries on each page as there were in the JH books. I started earlier (one record book covers 1842 to 1874, so I started near the beginning. It was a time of less babies born per year, it seemed, and suddenly, I noticed all the little death crosses among the entries. Oh my, this was 1846, 1847 and the first entries in the revolution year of 1848. I remember reading that the revolution was preceded by crop failure years and famine, but this illustrates it really graphically.

I was struck by the other names I recognize in those books, too. Some are familiar from the many times we've perused them, but others are familiar from here in central Minnesota. And, some married a Hesch there in Bohemia, so their names are picked out specifically too.

I found Mathias, Johann and Josef MARZINI and Anton, Josef, Franz and Prokog BINDER, Franz and Martin BLASCHKO; Johann, Josef and Bartel FIEDLER (so far) and lots of NOVOTNYs. Kind of amazing that some our families have known each other for centuries!

Now here's a treat from 1847--see the middle entry there? The child was Josef BINDER, born to Anton and Anna Binder at #42. See the notation there on his birth record? THIS child eventually became the new Patron Saint of Obsessed South Bohemian Genealogists. Funny to come back around and re-discover his birth record when we originally found it in 2009. That's when he became a saint, too ☺

Boosterism, WPA style

2011-11-30T18:10:00.001-06:00

From a booklet we've visited before on HH comes accounts of a few businesses you'll recognize if you grew up in the St Cloud area. The whole book is fun to read--it was a tourist guide written by the WPA writers project, and published in 1937.
Here's the history of the car shops in Waite Park, and surprisingly, the grain elevator near the Fire Station south of Cathedral HS, and the "Watab Paper& Pulp Mill" in Sartell:

This was 1937, remember. The VA had been open for 13 years and had 47 buildings. Patients there were vets from WWI, I suppose, but look at the staff enumeration. Pretty interesting:

A whole dune of Sands

2011-11-28T20:18:00.001-06:00

Some more evidence for or against WHO J P Sand was...and isn't THAT nebulous? These are Morrison Co. censuses from 1885, 1900 and 1905 (yes, Minnesota took a count halfway thru the ten-year interval in Federal censuses. Larry says it was because they wanted a count of eligible men). This first one has John P and Magdalena Sand with three kids--Peter, Margaret and Frank. They lived in Buckman.

Wow, here's John P. Sand, divorced, and living in a boarding house at 181 Broadway in Little Falls, in 1900. We're almost sure this guy was the deputy sheriff 15 years earlier, but was he ours? He most likely wasn't the same guy as above.

...and 20 years later, this one says John Sand's dad was born in Ireland and his mom in Germany. SOMEONE was goofing off. This was Buckman, for heavens sake.

OK, this was grandma's brother John M Sand, son of Louisa and Mike Sand. Born in 1879 and died in 1946. Gotta remember which ones ARE ours!

St Cloud, Minnesota in 1951

2011-11-24T10:17:00.001-06:00

I have this (possibly wrong) idea that obsessive record-keeping is a German trait. After all, when we've found German village websites, they include a listing of the burgermeisters for the last 500 years no matter how short their tenure, and population numbers by Catholic, Jew and Protestant.
I suppose you'd care if your great X10 grandpa was mayor in 1590-91, but otherwise...?
Sorry! I'm actually leading up to something here--and that's how grateful I am that the state of Minnesota shared this trait, even tho it wasn't nearly obsessive enough for (Austrian/German/Polish) me. (And yes, we have featured it before on Hesch History).
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has a website with photos of outstate Mn taken from the air. It's called LANDVIEW and there are parts of the state pictured as early as the 1930s. It takes a bit of putzing to figure out how to use it, but DAMN, it's fun.
Do you recognize the St Cloud VA campus pictured above? By 1951 it was 25-30 years old already, and it was often part of Sunday rides when we were kids. Remember the stone walls and flower gardens along the Sauk River, the chickens and the herd of Holsteins in that big barn, the greenhouse, and the huge vegetable gardens, all maintained by patients? Not much of that's left, and the entrance lane is just trees now, no coleus and marigolds spelling out VETERANS ADMIN or GOD BLESS USA. That was always impressive, and I look for traces of those things when I have a client there. Anyway, it's cool to see it again here, the way I remember it.

Here's the photo I took it from--St Cloud as we first knew it when we moved there in 1952:
(BTW, if clicking a picture doesn't enlarge it, try right-clicking on the pic and choose "open in new tab". Then, when it's loaded, go to that new tab and click the map again--it should enlarge beautifully)....

If you still have the Paint program on your computer, try opening it there. The resolution is excellent in these old black and white photos. You can get close enough to find the broom factory and the round house, and--wow--I didn't realize that Cooper Avenue originally extended past the VA, did you? And, see little Whitney Airport, at the top?

Extra points if you can find the Car Shops in Waite Park, where Crossroads would eventually be, or the courthouse downtown..

Ok, here's downtown--quick, where was Tschumperlin-Williams Funeral Home? Gambles? Herbergers? Petters??

See? I KNEW you'd love this!! ☺

Clouds of Sand

2011-11-22T09:38:00.001-06:00

A charming, albeit irritating, tradition among our ancestors was the naming of succeeding generations. Especially among the Sand family boys, we find Peter, Paul, John, Nicholas, Michael and Joseph used over and over, in all combinations. THEY knew who they meant, but WE sure don't.
Right now, Larry and I are trying to distinguish between a few John Sands.
The first John we noticed was a deputy sheriff in Little Falls during the Bulow murder and hanging in 1888-89. Known as JP, we assume it meant John Peter or John Paul. Was he ours?

Another John Sand owned a general store in New Munich, Mn. We found his photo, c 1909, on the Minnesota Reflections website :

We figure this John was definitely related, especially because, when the photo is enlarged, you can see he also had light colored eyes. And, we know our Mike Sand's uncle Paul settled in Stearns county, near St Joseph, only a couple towns away from New Munich.

A third John Sand showed up in Graham township in Benton County, east of Rice. We found him when I went to the Benton Co History Museum and found Peter Sand's obit. Peter was Mike Sand's father, too, so this John had to be Mike's brother, or our great grand uncle. Ok, we know THIS ONE was ours, right?

But then, we know there was a John P Sand who lived west of Buckman, not far from Mike and Louisa, or from the Jansons. John P. Sand was one of the character wittnesses (along with Ignatz Ronellenfitsch) when Joseph Janson became an American citizen. This JP married Gertrude Ronellenfitsch, so Ignatz was his father-in-law. Was this man Mike's eldest brother, John Peter? He and Gertrude are buried in the Buckman cemetery. But look, Gert's husband was John M...?

OK, then who was this John Sand, in 1885 Buckman?....argh.

Larry also found a divorced John Sand near Rice in..damn! I need to go to work. I'll add what he found later, when I find it again...lol

If you can shed light on any of these characters, let me know, or leave a comment, ok? Thanks ☺

A wedding in Dolni Zdar (Neidermuhl)

2011-11-19T13:37:00.001-06:00

We're in the middle of the season's first snowfall. The roads are decidedly slippery so it's a sign stay home and update YOU, right?

This week, we were re-tuned to Bohemia because of a DVD recorded in Shamers historic chapel that I forwarded to Su. That made Larry investigate if there was anything new added online re: our villages of Neidermuhl or Oberschlagles...and wow! There's a Youtube video of a wedding that took place in DZ, this fall ☺ (31 August 2011)!

I hope this lovely young couple wouldn't mind if we watch--the ceremony itself isn't recorded--just some kissing, and a little of the crowd. The chapel and river are shown at the beginning, tho--places Johann and Marya Hesch and their sons Paul, Mathias and Anton would recognize instantly.

LOL...I've watched it often enough now that I think the bride and/or groom could be family.

And wow, there's a second video, showing their reception, in the rain. Looks like some great food and a terrific band and some traditional bride/groom activities. We think Johann and Marya probably fed each other soup and sawed wood together, just like this sweet couple.

We wish them a long happy life together, even if we're not related ☺.

He's maybe our great great great uncle Johann, 4X removed...

2011-11-17T18:16:00.001-06:00

I bought sweet potatoes today, and while they're cooking, I have time to show you another relative in the church record books from Bohemia! I've never made anything with sweet potatoes before, but found lots of recipes online. 'Course, that's where we've found these books, too. (Clever segue!)
If you're new here and want to check em out, there's a link on the left sidebar--scroll down and click "Czech Church Books".
I've begun looking at the books again because of our new English relative, Su. They're still fascinating, and we realize we can still "read" the script there. YAY!

Now, WHO is this person, and how does he fit? Well, remember Paul Hesch's parents--Johann Hesch married a woman named Marya Schlinz, and this is a Schlinz birth (4th one down). However, this page records births in September 1874, in particular, the grandson of Mathias Schlinz. I'll translate this on the fly--these are the parents of baby Johann, born male, Catholic and legitimate on the 21st of September 1874:

"Martin Schlinz, citizen, from Niedermuhl, son of deceased Mathias Schlinz, citizen of Lasinice, and his wife Agnes, daughter of Mathias Novak, citizen of Lasinice"
---------------------------------------
Maria, daughter of Maria, daughter of Wenzel Glaser, citizen of Obermuhl #22, and his wife Maria, daughter of Thomas Prinz, ____ ____ ___ ___"

Note that by 1874, handwriting was transitioning into words and letters that we can recognize easier, since it's more recent. Still, I can't read the last few words about Thomas Prinz....its maybe that he was from (Deutsch) Maliken. Also, the little + indicated Mathias Schlinz, Martin's dad, was deceased.
So, probably, Marya was a great-aunt to little Johann. Too bad he never met her. But look, this may be where the name MATHIAS came from in the Hesch family. Marya father was Lawrenz, but her son was Mathias...maybe after grandpa?

A little more Lake George

2011-11-15T17:47:00.001-06:00

This post is definitely for readers who know St Cloud, Minnesota.

Today, a client wanted to go visit Lake George--HONEST, with almost no prompting from me. Really.
(Besides, as Larry mentioned, photos taken in the fall are especially lovely--I couldn't pass that up, could I?).

The area's been revamped again in the last year, to make the Tech HS area (west of Lake George) and the 9th Ave underpass (east of the lake) more efficient.

Neither of us had really looked at the improvements around Lake George--we've just driven past. But wow! Remember the road all the way around the lake? September 1888 - The City Council orders the street commissioner to construct a boulevard around Lake George. After numerous delays, the project is completed in the early 1900s. Well, that's pretty much gone in favor of walking paths, observation decks, and natural habitat. The area is actually beautiful, especially on the west shore, where we found this lovely sculpture in honor of the swans that used to grace Lake George. It stands about where their shelter used to be, when we were kids.

The Pierz Journal recorded our history, week by week

2011-11-11T20:48:00.001-06:00

....and now, it needs our help...

When mom and dad moved to St Cloud in about 1953, they subscribed to the Pierz Journal. It was really the best way to find out what was happening "up home".
Starting in 1909, before they were born, the Journal started publishing the Buckman News column, and graciously used news and ads from the Pierz area as filler. Nice of them, huh?
Every single page is a font of information about life back then, but right now, we have access to only a few precious issues that were microfilmed years ago...and you need to go to the history museum in St Paul to read them. The Morrison County History Society in Little Falls has the most complete set, but they're too fragile to handle. Mary tells it best.

Now, more than 100 years later, the bound volumes of the Journal have been almost loved to pieces--they are, after all, printed on paper that was never intended to last. But we have a chance to be able to read them again, online:

"MCHS is working with the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) to have the first 15 volumes of the Pierz Journals digitized and made available to the public online. MDL will digitize the first volume at no cost to MCHS, but due to the fragility of the volumes, the cost to digitize the other 14 will be $30,000.

Please help MCHS save the Pierz Journals. Your donation will be appreciated now and well into the future".

See the new button on the top of the left sidebar there? If you click it, you'll find a short synopsis about the Journals and an easy way to donate whatever amount you can give. Please do. You'll eventually be able to read Math Hesch's tease about my sister who was supposed to be James Michael.

How can you RESIST? ☺

Too Little, Too Late and WAY Too Far Away

2011-11-10T17:38:00.001-06:00

Ahh, once you get the history bug, you'll find stuff to research EVERYWHERE ☺.
The other night, Larry and I were chatting about my great-greats and the land they claimed in the wilderness of Minnesota. How they needed to clear land and build a house and barn for themselves plus building a school and church and deal with the occasional Indian.. As always, when we have this conversation, he very considerately mentions my claiming that my house is on land that was awarded by Abe Lincoln to a local Indian for his service in the war. Ha! It was finally time to go get the deed. I've kept it in a zip-lock bag in my freezer for more than 25 years. A little warmth was over due...lol

But look--beginning with the 120 acres that my lot is part of...in June 1861 Abraham Lincoln signed the order that opened western territories for settlers.
If you recall your Civil War era history, Lincoln was desperately trying to populate the middle of the country with NON-slave holders, so legislation was enacted in 1861 to help attract European farmers. BTW, Minnesota had only become a state 3 years earlier, in 1858.
But, that first entry didn't mean Martin Fiedler cleared or settled this land, it simply explains how he got it, right?
"Whereas, in pursuance of the Act of Congress, approved March 3, 1885, entitled "An Act in addition to certain Acts granting Bounty Land to certain Officers and Soldiers who have been engaged in the Military Service of the United States", there has been deposited in the General Land office, Warrant No. 95855 for 120 acres in favor of Istar-Lojar, widow of Sater-kar-kee-, Warrior, Captain Kayley's Company, Creek Volunteers Seminole War, said Warrant having been assigned to Martin Fiedler, Senior".

Wait, aren't the Seminole Indians from the south somewhere--like Florida? WHEN was this "Seminole War", and where was it fought?
Geesh, there was a series of Seminole Wars, all efforts to remove natives from land in Florida that we wanted, of course.

But DAMN, to "grant" land as a reward to the widow of a Creek man...land that was about 2,000 miles north in a place she'd certainly never go, forty three years later, in 1885...do you even wonder what "assigning it to" meant?

An amazing gift

2011-11-09T19:10:00.000-06:00

This email arrived over the weekend, and tickled us to our toes ☺ YAY!!
Dear Marlys Hesch,

You don't know me and we are unlikely ever to meet as I live across the pond in England but I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude for your wonderful Hesch History Website, which has given me hours of pleasure and a whole new insight into a branch of my family that I thought forever closed to me. It is even possible that we are very distantly related.

I will explain but it will take a little time so get yourself a cup of coffee, put your feet up and read on as I have a story to tell.

Thirty-five years ago this year I married my husband, taking a new surname, Wanek, that is a very unusual name in England. My own family had always been very interested in its origins and naturally I was keen to know more about my new family. I learned that my husband's grandfather (already dead) had originally come from Bohemia, later part of Czechoslovakia, but that he 'could not go back', that he had been interned on the Isle of Man as an 'enemy alien' in the First World War, that he'd worked variously as a waiter in the big hotels in London, on the trans-Atlantic liners and on the Island of Guernsey. I was puzzled that apart from his Mum and Dad and sibling my husband seemed to have no family at all. This outwardly very English family had a taste for Apple Strudel, Potato Noodles, Sauerkraut, served with Sunday roast dinner as well Frankfurters and a particularly thick Chicken soup, strongly enriched with that most un-English of flavours; garlic! No one seemed interested in their origins and direct enquiries were regarded with bafflement and suspicion and were discouraged. Books on researching your ancestors always exhort you to talk to your relatives and I was bursting with curiosity but it's bad manners to press too hard and not a good idea to upset your in-laws. The reason for the lack of relations seemed to be because my Mum-in-law had been orphaned at the tender age of three and there had been a serious falling-out between my Dad-in-law and his two brothers, the reasons for which are irretrievably buried in the past. So I just listened and mentally noted the little snippets of information that gradually leaked out but could do no more until their deaths, whereupon I was able to look among the family papers. The one great thing about family history is that you can't upset the dead!

Among the papers I found something worth more to me than a whole wheelbarrow full of garnet pectoral crosses: Granddad's baptismal certificate. Compared with English equivalents they are a treasure trove of family information. Curiously, it was printed in Latin and German and filled out in German. I was puzzled about this but grateful it wasn't Czech, as although I can't speak German the language is not totally unfamiliar to me. The biggest stumbling block was the handwriting and that I didn't understand how the addresses worked. So I did my best with the transcription and the translation and continued the hunt finding letters and photos and oddments but the more I found the more puzzled I became. Why, if he was Czech, were all the letters and postcards written in German? I had assumed that Granddad could not return to the place of his birth because in the time that he was alive Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain, yet after his death Gran did go back to see relatives who did not seem to be in Czechoslovakia yet no one seemed very sure exactly where they lived or what language they spoke. She is known to have gone to Vienna (that may just have been holiday excursions) and there is a photograph album of her with people who have very obvious family features and are in places around Mannheim in Germany but, frustratingly, there are no names noted. I began to suspect that things were not quite as straight-forward as they had initially seemed.

Time passed, the Internet arrived and I tried a bit of on-line research in the English records, gradually pieced together his life. He was baptized as Ludwig Waněk. He seems to have gone to Prague as a teenager and studied at a school for waiters, and then about 100 years ago he came to England and worked at the Waldorf Hotel in London. Next, using the forename Ludi, he married an English girl and had a son (actually it was the other way round but we'll brush over that - it was by no means uncommon). On the out-break of war in August 1914, along with hundreds of Germans, Hungarians, Russians and others, many of whom had been here for years, he would have been instantly dismissed from his job as a waiter. Bohemians were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and therefore the enemy. Many of these people lived in the hotels in which they were employed and so lost their homes as well. The weather was warm and they lived in the London parks but autumn progressed and it was one of the wettest winters for years so they suffered badly. A Relief Committee was organized by the Quakers to help them and soup kitchens were set up. Shortly after that all enemy aliens were rounded up and shipped off to the Isle of Man, a beautiful but cold and windswept island between England and Ireland, where several camps were set up, one holding as many as 20,000 people by the end of the war. It was a hard life but presumably not quite as bad as having to serve in the trenches.

Granddad left a wife with a little son, a baby girl and another child on the way. This is hardly equivalent to the suffering of the Jews in Europe but what a worrying time it must have been. Gran did the only thing she could and went home to her Mum and Dad in Swindon in the west of England. The baby girl died and a new son was born and there she stayed, presumably until Granddad was released. She was still there in February 1919 when her Dad died. It is possible, but unproven, that she was able to get work to help support her children, in the huge railway manufactory that was turned over to war work, although if she did she would have been deprived of the pitifully small living allowance granted to her by the local Poor Law Guardians. That's a name to send shivers down the spine of anyone who was alive then and they were not usually disposed to be very generous to anyone, let alone a woman with a foreign name and an enemy husband.

Alas, things did not really improve at the end of the war as enemy aliens were deported and not allowed to return for 5 years even if they had British wives and children. At that time, when a woman married a foreigner she lost her British citizenship (but didn't necessarily acquire his nationality) unless she made a declaration to the contrary but this wasn't widely publicised. There were questions in Parliament about it, requesting that the police be obliged to disclose the information but the proposal was rejected. Granddad managed to obtain employment in a highly reputable hotel on the island of Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands that lie close to the French coast; Queen Elisabeth II is their queen too, but they have their own legislature and are largely independent of the UK. The climate is relatively warm and pleasant and a lot better than the Isle of Man. He was now known as Louis - which doesn't sound German. As an alien he was not allowed to change his surname so that the authorities could keep track of his movements. I should explain that in UK English Wanek is perilously close to a rather rude word - my children suffered a lot of teasing about it at school - but we've always stuck with it, although one of Granddad's sons made a small change to the spelling in later life. I think they were very happy in Guernsey; a third son was born there and Granddad was a very highly valued employee but he was restless. They went to Prague for a time; the youngest boy settled in well but the oldest son, then about 14, had already left school and couldn't cope with the language. They returned to England where Gran opened a boarding-house on the south coast of England close to the port of Southampton and for most of the rest of the 1930s Granddad worked as a steward on the liners doing the run to New York and back. Later, presumably when he'd attained some sort of right to remain, took a job at the Savoy Hotel on The Strand and the family moved to London.

In the Second World War, as a Czech, he was from an oppressed nation and no longer considered an enemy so was allowed to continue working, which he did, all through the Blitz. All three of Granddad's sons served in the Second World War. The oldest, already married by the outbreak of WWII, had a similar experience to your Dad -he was an artillery man in the North African campaign then landed at Salerno and fought his way doggedly up the length of Italy including the assault on Monte Cassino and just like him said nothing about it. He had a very tough time and returned physically whole but mentally scarred, a withdrawn and silent man who suffered from depression at a time when there was no effective medication. The second son went into the RAF and was a rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber. He was in terrible crash where the aircraft broke in two and the half with the bomb load exploded and killed the rest of the crew. He survived but with head injuries that left him a little unstable. The youngest served in Greece in the dying days of the war and probably had a rather better time than his brothers. After all that was it any wonder that they were thankful to return to Blighty more or less whole and live a quiet safe life, becoming as English as possible and put all the tumult behind them? In August 1946, only a month before the birth of his grandson (my husband) Granddad became a naturalised citizen of the UK. Eventually Gran and Granddad bought a small piece of land about 30 miles west of London and had a little bungalow build among the pines and silver birches that must have reminded him somewhat of his long lost birth place. He died after falling off his bike and was buried in a quiet and pretty English country churchyard. This story is so quickly told but it has taken me 35 years to get this much information together.

Of his Czech family I learned nothing and I left the problem for some years, then earlier this year decided it was time to have another search. I put Granddad's mother's maiden name and the village where he was born into the search box and up popped your website. The names? Binder and Schamers!

I immediately had fellow feeling for you as someone who 'thought her family wasn't proud of their origins'. All your carefully added links and information have been so valuable and I have learned so much. Czech/Bohemian immigrants into this country have, until very recently, been so few in number that there is no cultural history to absorb in the same way that there is in the US. With the information from your site added to what I have gleaned I am now as certain as I can be that Granddad's family were ethnic Germans/Austrians who had lived in the Czech lands and were forcibly evicted from their land and home in the ethnic cleansing at the end of World War 2. I knew nothing of this and was shocked both at my ignorance and that such a dreadful thing had been allowed to happen. It also explains why, in a letter to Gran in hospital, in March 1946 he complains about the paperwork he has to do to get his naturalization papers and says that 'since Joseph and the old home in Schamers seem vamoosed I shall probably end my days somewhere in England after all. ' He would have been deprived of his Czech citizenship and so 'could not go back' and his family - Joseph -possibly a brother, would have been sent to Germany in the past year where they would have had a very hard time. Food and fuel were very short in Germany for some years after the end of the war and despite speaking the same language they would have had to live among people they had probably regarded as enemies. I hope they had a better life than they would have done under the Russians and I assume, and indeed hope, that his Dad and Mum were dead by then as it would be bad for anyone but a tragedy for the elderly to be torn from their roots.

And so it is because of you that I am up till the wee small hours poring over unreadable handwriting in the Czech archives until my eyes feel like red-hot organ stops. It is because of you that I that I nearly cried when I first saw the picture of the church where Granddad was baptised and that I know a lot more about European history. Unfortunately, since Granddad was born in 1892, the on-line records for Schamers don't cover that time period so I haven't been able to find out the names of any siblings and there don't seem to be Waneks in Schamers although there are Binders by the dozen. I am hot on the tracks of his older relatives although I may well be a very old woman by the time I've learned how to read them. The priest had a steel nibbed pen and used it to make the most impressive and unreadable flourishes in his handwriting. I went further back in time and to my relief found a change of incumbent but he used a goose quill - or was it a piece of burnt stick- and the writing is just as unreadable but in a different way and I'm going to have to learn to read all over again. Argghh! I take my hat off and bow low to your friend Larry who seems to pass with ease through these archives! It is because of you that I now understand how Czech addresses work and found that No 40, where Granddad was born, was home to his mother's family for at least 50 years before that and his father Karl was still living there in 1912. I've used Google earth to find the house but I haven't yet worked how to access those amazing Plat maps of the village -I'm not very computer savvy. There is more. I noticed on that wonderful baptismal certificate that Granddad's grandfather, one Mathias Waněk, lived at Niederschlagels (now Dolní Lhota) No 1 and that he was a Master Miller. I plugged this into Google Earth and it pinpointed a mill on the River Nezarka. Niederschlagels (Dolní Lhota) is only about 3 miles from Oberschlagles (Horní Lhota) and on the same river. What would our ancestors think that we are able to 'fly' above their homelands, read (or at least attempt to read!) books that recorded the important happenings in their lives and converse across the world, all from the comfort of our own homes?

So, Marlys Hesch, if you are still awake, I send you my heartfelt thanks and good wishes and say keep up the good work as there may be other people out there in the wide world who have benefited from your generosity.

Yours sincerely

Su (short for Susan) Wanek.

Su mentioned the Schamers church books don't include 1892--YET. They're projected to be online in 2012. Not to worry, we family historians absolutely ADORE waiting. Anticipation makes the payoff even better, and bestows points toward sainthood...lol

THANK YOU, SU!!

Frank Sand 1896-1979

2011-11-09T07:10:00.004-06:00

(Three photos from my files, one from Ancestry.com)

Srs. Severine and Teresita, OSB

2011-11-06T21:25:00.002-06:00

Two of Mike and Louisa's family became nuns--their eldest daughter, Mary (back row next to Joe and below, right) became Sr Severine, while the third youngest, Ann (next to her dad here) became Sr Teresita (that's her on the left, below).

Christa wrote and asked St Benedicts for more information about them and they sent a one page summary on each sister, with photos of their respective grave markers, and these short narratives:

"Sister Severine was preceded in death by her sister, Sister Teresita. Their parents had been the first couple married in the Buckman parish. Sister Severine spent many years teaching, nursing, cooking, doing housework, and doing church work in a variety of locations. She suffered from cancer and was noted for her patience and her resignation to her illness" and "Sister Severine always wanted to be a sister from little on and to dress like one. "

(Rank must mean family birth order ☺).

"Sister Teresita was at St. Cloud Hospital recovering from a broken foot when she died very suddenly. She had been a grade school teacher for more than 50 years, serving the longest at Bluffton, from 1925 to 1945. In her later years when her sight failed, she could be found praying the rosary, "that God's will be done." Her sister, Sister Severine, survived her".

Wow, a young Sr Teresita!

I really liked both these women. They were good, gentle souls who laughed easily. I wasn't aware how either of them died, or from what. I really wish I'd known them as an adult,

or better yet, now, when I understand a bit more about life.

The SS Ohio

2011-11-06T11:37:00.000-06:00

A family story we heard from Roger about Heschs in Waumandee, Wisconsin was that Mathias Hesch wasn't allowed to marry Agnes Trachowsky in Bohemia, and that they had to come here to marry. I assumed it had to do with their nationalities--she was Czech, he was Austrian--people who traditionally didn't get along over there. But now, looking closely at these two parts of the same ships list Larry found, there's a sweetly different reason evident:

On June 4th, 1869, the SS Ohio arrived in Baltimore with the Trachowsky family from Bohemia. The parents were Thomas, 45, and Elizabeth, 41. There were five children: Agnes, 16, Franz, 9, Maria, 4, Theresia, 3 months, and Elisa, 19. The disparity in ages intrigued me for some time--was Elizabeth Thomas' second wife? And, was Elisa maybe Theresia's mom? Pure speculation, except that Elisa here is certainly the one found in California in 1892.

This page was discovery enough for me, but Larry thought like a young man in love and searched every page of that ships list to find...YES...here he is ☺:

Sure, the name's wrong (Anton, not Mathias). Maybe Mathias tried to be incognito on board. Thomas would have been pretty protective of his daughters on a crowded ship, and perhaps in his mind the biggest threat was left behind in Europe. Cuz look--Agnes was only 16, and "Anton"--well, he was lying about his age--he was actually 20.
In any event, maybe Thomas found out about Aggies' suitor being onboard--because once they arrived in Wisconsin, Mathias worked for a farmer in the next town, according to the 1870 census, and the lovebirds were STILL not married until 1879.
Half the fun of genealogy is speculating about stuff like this, right?

Oberschlagles & Neidermuhl, Revisited

2011-11-06T09:50:00.000-06:00

When Larry and I were first discovering the villages my Hesch ancestors claimed, we found pictures of parts of them, like one of the main intersection, and another of the mill. A pic of the chapel showed it alone on a little hill. I never put the separate photos together in my head, to try to understand how they related to each other, ya know?

But yesterday, Larry found a website with air-photos of various villages in southern Czech Republic. THERE it is, along the river, in Dolni Zdar (formerly Neidermuhl, Bohemia). If you use Chrome, it'll translate the site automatically, but if not, the villages are arranged alphabetically by their Czech name, so Oberschlagles is Horni Lhota.
BTW, I believe Johannes Hesch and Marya Schlinz were married in that little chapel. Cool, huh?

Elizabeth (Sand) Hesch, a life

2011-11-05T22:24:00.002-05:00

Wasn't she beautiful?

Peter Lewans Family in 1947

2011-11-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

Larry found this photo at the

Grand Coteau Heritage and Cultural Centre website

at least 2 years ago. I think I've published it before here,

but it's more relevant now ☺.

Sifting Sand

2011-11-05T16:23:00.000-05:00

Wow, I intended to spend quite a bit of today reading and reporting on the Canadian Sand info that Christa sent. As it's turned out, today is one of those wonderful fall days (too soon gone) with a good wind, perfect for hanging wash outside ☺. However, it's all back inside now, so we can Sand like crazy for the rest of the afternoon.

First, some catch-up: This is Erwin Sand, the son that Joe and Antonia Sand adopted after Agnes was born. His photo was left off the post from Oct 25 cuz there wasn't a natural opening for it. Sorry, Sandy...

SAND , Erwin Henry
February 6, 1920 - April 12, 2009

Erwin "Sandy" Sand passed away peacefully on April 12, 2009, at the age of 89. Sandy grew up in Shaunavon, Sask. and served on the H.M.C.S. Vancouver during WWII. He worked in various breweries in Western Canada and later as a Commissionaire. Sandy was predeceased by his wife, Margaret "Kay" Sand, on April 30, 1998. Sandy is survived by his loving son Gordon (Vicki) Sand and his grandsons, Ben (Allison) Sand and Jon Sand. A Graveside Service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 18 at the Eden Brook Memorial Gardens at 17 Avenue S.W. and Lower Springbank Road. Please meet at the entrance gate. Refreshments will follow Service. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the charity of your choice. Special thanks to the staff at Colonel Belcher Veterans Care for six years of compassionate care and support.

Christa sent a pdf copy of seven pages of the book Sylvester Lewans wrote for his grandparents' 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration. I think you'll want to read it, so I've separated the pages to see if I can enlarge em enough right here. I can't attach the pdf.

Ok, reading fuzzy type is good for your character, trust me.

(Yes, I know you already have more than enough character, but try, ok?)

I hope the Sand family will forgive the horrible puns on your name. I've been waiting all my life to get them out of my system, and when Larry came along with 45 more of em, I was stuck.
See, there's not much you can do with Hesch.

Sand Papers

2011-11-04T09:12:00.000-05:00

"..smoothing the edges of the family tree ☺"
Yesterday, Christa sent a huge amount of pioneer information about Joseph Sand and his descendants. There are "folklore" questionnaires that older citizens were asked to fill out for "Saskatchewan's 50th anniversary in 1950. These were compiled into books in 1955, while many more were published for the 75th anniversary 1980-1981". (Saskatchewan GenWeb site).
There's also part of a history written by Fr Syl Lewans and published for an anniversary--maybe his parents' 50th?
Larry and I have only begun to read all of it--work cruelly cuts into genealogy time--but the weekend starts tonight.

HOORAY, and THANK YOU, CHRISTA!

BTW, the title of this post is directly from Larry, as a possible title for any Sand who starts a blog about that family..lol It's free, honest!

A PEI Sand descendant-yay!!

2011-11-01T19:35:00.001-05:00

I got home from work this afternoon to find an email waiting for me--this absolutely DELIGHTS me--from a new link in the Sand relationship. She lives on Prince Edward Island, on the east coast of Canada, and she's....wait, you can read it...lol

"I am the great grandaughter of Antonia Sand. I am now 55 but I still remember her and her husband a bit.

Mary Sand (christened Kunegunda after some German saint* I believe) was my Antonia's daughter and my grandmother.

Delores Lewans (_____) is Mary's eldest child and my mother. I am the eldest child of the family as well. The Sand/Lewans side of the family was very prolific. Mary had 12 children. My mother had 9 children and most of her siblings have large families as well ( as many as 10 children!)

My mother is still alive, she is 81 and lives in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan. I know that my mother and some of her siblings went to family reunion some years ago -I thought in Minnesota but I could be wrong.

I remember that it was said my grandmother Mary grew up in Minnesota**. I had the idea that her father was a kind of travelling blacksmith, but maybe these are childhood stories made up in my head.

Great grandma Antonia unfortunately developed early onset dementia, I think in her early 60s. She went to live in a nursing home in Moose Jaw, Sask. shortly after papering her neighbour's yard in toilet paper and lived to be 97!

I remember my great grandpa being a giant of a man even in old age who used to crack nuts with his teeth at Christmas time Amazingly his own teeth at that.

I knew I was in right family when you opened your blog with "galivanting", a word I never hear outside my Mom's clan. Another saying my mother, her mother and great gramma all said in response to practically everything was "Good Lord!" My sister say I use it way too much too.

Anyway, I live with my husband Dan, 2 dogs, 2 cats, no kids on the East coast of Canada on Prince Edward Island. I work at a veterinary school as a medical technologist for the past 25 years. If I could provide you with anymore truths or legends, drop me a line.

Sincerely, Linda _________

Isn't that COOL? Linda brings up many things I want to add my two cents worth to--lol--for instance, it turns out Mary's namesake *Kunegunda was a Polish queen in the 1200s, and yes, Mary was born** in Minnesota and spent a lot of time there as a child:

"Antonia Elizabeth Poser was born on April 17, 1886 on her parents' farm in what was then Pierz Township. Antonia was baptized in St. Joseph's church in Pierz.

On December 30, 1907, a marriage licence was issued between Antonia Poser and Joseph Henry Sand, the son of Michael and Louise Sand of Buckman. Antonia and Joseph were married on January 14, 1908 at St. Joseph's Church in Pierz with Rev IG Steigler officiating. Elizabeth Sand, sister of the groom, and Herman Poser, brother of the bride, served as witnesses.

Joseph owned a farm implement business in Buckman, which he sold to John Brandl in August of 1909. In November 1909, Joseph and Antonia moved to Pierz where Joseph worked for PA Hartmann.

During the winter of 1909-10, Joseph worked in a lumber camp in northern Minnesota while Antonia and son, Michael, moved in with her parents. It was during this stay with her parents in the Buh Township that Antonia and Joe's daughter, Kunigunda (Mary) was born. The first two children were named in the tradition of naming the first son after his paternal grandfather and the first daughter after the maternal grandmother.

In the fall of 1910, Joseph took a trip to Canada and decided to take a homestead there. Joseph left for Gull Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada with his brother, Charles, in March of 1911, leaving Antonia behind until he had a house ready on the claim. Antonia and Mrs. Charles Sand left for Canada in May.
In March of 1917, Joe rented out the farm and the family moved to Gull Lake so that Joe could manage the new Co-op store. Joe quit the store in November 1919 over the "exorbitant" prices which were being charged.

Antonia and the children again moved back to Minnesota to live with her parents for the winter while Joe went to Lake Lenore, Saskatchewan to do carpenter work.
In May of 1920, Antonia and the children left Pierz to return to Canada and the family lived in a log house in Lake Lenore. They then moved to Carmel, Saskatchewan in July, 1920 where Joe managed the Dotten and Wall Lumberyard.
It was in Carmel that the family adopted 11 month old Erwin in February, 1921. Antonia liked Carmel and would have stayed there. After the numerous moves, Antonia told Joe they would either settle down in Canada or she and the kids were returning to Minnesota.
The Sands returned to Gull Lake from August 1922 to March 1923 when they returned to the farm to stay. Joseph built a new home in Gull Lake in 1928, it being the first in the district to have running water and electric power".

--From the family tree Christa sent (taken from the Lewans history book that was written for an anniversary by Fr. Sylvester) listing the descendants of Joseph Henry Sand and Antonia Elizabeth Poser.

The narrative includes obits and lots of anecdotes.

THANK YOU, again, CHRISTA!

Over the weekend, someone said they thought the Sand family in the US originated in Canada. It's sorta true if you're a descendant of Joe and Antonia, but there are a whole lot MORE Sand relatives, descended from Joe's siblings, here in Minnesota and beyond. Actually, the Sand family came from Luxemburg. It's especially neat that Larry found this ships list online last night:

THANKS to LINDA, and ya know, welcome home!☺

A new Sand pic, a new Sand mystery!

2011-10-31T18:57:00.000-05:00

Woohoo!

Ok, NOW this info is correct, thanks to the 'anonymous' comment above ☺

We heard from another Sand connection, namely Frank Sand's grand daughter Carolyn. (Frank's daughter Amelia was Carolyn's mom, ferschtay?)

Frank is the baby on Louisa's lap in this WONDERFUL photo she sent:

Since Frank was born in May, 1896, then this is late summer that same year--say, September? How odd that the eldest child was front and center, overshadowing everyone else, but Joe couldn't stand in back, I suppose. He woulda looked like a telephone pole.

Here's the same photo, with names, as near as we could discern. There were 10 children in the Mike & Louisa Sand family, but look, there are 11 here (don't forget to count Joe ☺).

The girl on the right looks "Sand", and was maybe 11-12 years old...but she doesn't fit in their family; there are no gaps in the birth order. Could she have been a fraternal twin to Angie, maybe? But then, what happened to her?

We mis-interpreted the year this photo (below) was taken. Now, I realize it was later, when Frank was 3-4 years old (that's him between Pa and Ma). Let's say it was summer, 1900, ok?

(Added for comparing purposes ☺)

MANY THANKS and WELCOME to CAROLYN and her SIBS!

By the way, this post is the 800th post on Hesch History--pretty amazing for a family with "no history"...lol

A Trachowfsky Mystery

2011-10-29T11:59:00.002-05:00

When you're working on your family history online, one thing that's maybe not top-of-mind is to re-check sources you've checked before...UNLESS you're Larry. He periodically stuns me with additional info, like yesterday ☺:
(Backstory: Our great grandpa Paul had a brother named Mathias. Mathias Hesch married Agnes Trachofsky in Waumandee, Wisconsin in August 1879 and they eventually moved to Pierz, Minnesota about 1910. They're buried in Pierz).

Larry found a small article in the San Francisco Morning Call from the 12th of March, 1892 with two very familiar names mentioned--

Mrs Trachowfsky's Will
Elizabeth Trachowfsky died on the 2d inst., leaving an estate of $1683.33 in cash. By a will of the 25th ult., she left everything to the executrix, Mrs Annie E Bullis, in trust to bury her, to expend $50 for masses for the repose of her soul, to pay all debts, to retain $50 as a mark of esteem and as a small recompense for her kindness and attendance, and deliver all the rest to the testatrix's sister, Mrs. Agnes Hesch of Waumandee, Wis.

Wow! Agnes had a sister in San Francisco. In 1892, Agnes was 39...and Elizabeth was 41. Evidently, too, she was in California by herself (no relatives):

TRACHOWFSKY--In this city, March 2, 1892, Elizabeth Trachowfsky, a native of Bohemia, Germany, aged 41 years.
Friends and acquaintances are respectfully invited to attend the funeral THIS DAY (Friday) at 8:30 o'clock A.M. from the parlors of the United Undertakers 27 and 29 Fifth Street; thence to St Boniface Church, 123 Golden Gate Avenue, where a requiem high mass will be celebrated for the repose of her soul commencing at 9 o'clock A.M. Interment Holy Cross Cemetery.

Thinking about how a single female immigrant might have found her way across the ocean and the country, it's likely she worked for another family and traveled with them to wherever they were going. Sadly, since she had no offspring, her story ended in 1892 (until now).
We couldn't find Trachowfsky or variations of it in the censuses, so we tracked the other person mentioned to see if anything seemed pertinent...and also, cuz we COULD, ya know? ☺

According to the 1900 census, Annie E Bullis was 4 years older than Elizabeth, and was the wife of Edward A Bullis. They had 4 living children, two of whom were still at home. Ed was retired from a career that had to do with the interment of deceased Ex-Union soldiers /maybe just part of his duties. We found his name and comments in a book called "San Francisco municipal reports Fiscal year 1898-99, ending June 30, 1899" where Ed was identified as "Superintendant".
...............................
New info, same afternoon:
COOL! Larry found Elizabeth listed in the San Francisco city directory in 1880, working as a domestic at 1104 Post. Of course he looked-up that address: it was the home of George O and Margaret McMullin, grocers. He found them in The Elite Directory for San Francisco and Oakland from 1879. So, we know more about Elizabeth, but
...............................

As usual, new info brings more questions. Now, when we go back to the church books in Bohemia from those years, maybe we'll find more than Thomas Trachofsky as Elizabeth's parents (Agnes's mom wasn't named in her birth account). Also, since a brother named Alfred wasn't mentioned in the obit, was the man by that name in Pierz related...or was it just that her sister was closer to her?
I'm hoping someone will google Trachowfsky/Trachowsky/Trachofsky and arrive here...and let us know.

YAY! The Canadian Sand family

2011-10-25T21:05:00.000-05:00

WOW! On Sunday, a new relative (new to us, anyway) emailed to say she's the great granddaughter of Joe Sand and Antonia Poser Sand, and she's excited to find HH online! ☺ Her name's Christa.
(Reminder: Joseph Sand was the eldest child of Mike Sand and Louisa Rausch Sand; he was grandma's brother who moved to Saskatchewan and never came back--or, Fr Lewans' grandpa, ok?).
So how, precisely, does Christa connect? Joe and Antonia's daughter, Agnes, had a daughter named Brenda, who is Christa's mom, see?

Why YES, thanks for asking. She did send pics ☺!

Here's Joe and Antonia on their 50th wedding anniversary in 1958,
with three of their four grown kids--Mary, Mike and Agnes.
The fourth, Erwin, who was adopted, evidently couldn't make it home for the shindig.

We have seen this photo b4--that's Mary and Peter Lewans, Mike and Rosa Sand and Wilfred and Agnes Grubbe with the cheery celebrants.
(Man, what a Sand trait, huh? Joe didn't smile any more than Grandma did!)

So, this is Wilfred and Agnes Grubbe family at "David's wedding" in 1963. They are David, Brenda, Anita, Rosemary, Phyllis, Lawrence and Edward behind Wilf and Agnes.
Cool, huh?

THANKS for this Christa. I'm thrilled you found us!

Die Luxemburgers in der neuen Velt

2011-10-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

(The Luxemburger in the New World)
Our family is pretty typical of the immigrants who came to America to change things--not the least of which was finding a larger selection of people to marry. Just my own great-greats represent German, Austrian, Luxemburger and Polish people. Once here, their kids got busy and rearranged the gene pool.
Obviously, this post has to do with the Luxemburg contingent.

We've mentioned "Die Luxemburgers in der neuen Velt" before. It was written by Nicholas Gonner and published in German in 1889, in Dubuque, Iowa. It was part guidebook, part documentation, and a good part bragging. The idea was that a new immigrant could come here, book in hand, and find people he knew, and land available, in this vast country.
"To us our countrymen but to make it even to other, more practical way useful, we added the counsels for emigrants. We limited ourselves not on our personal experiences, but drew from the best sources", (apologies for the machine translation). The book is online HERE, open to "our" pages.

BTW, our Luxemburgers were Peter and Angelica SAND, who begat Michael SAND, who married Louisa RAUSCH...whose daughter Elizabeth SAND married Anton HESCH, my lucky grandparents. You can find Peter's appearance in the book HERE...(as well as Mr Majerus from a couple posts ago).

Anyway, the machine translation service seems to be a bit better lately, and we wanted you to see the translated description of Stearns County:
"Almost in the center of the densely populated portion of the state lies the large Stearns County. It has 1350 engl. Square miles with a population of about 30,000 souls, including 6000 German, of which 215 families are Luxembourgers. The county is heavily forested, especially the northeastern half, fairly flat, well watered, has many beautiful lakes and good farmland. It is really a county that fits the Luxembourgers. The capital city of St. Cloud, Stearns Co. is on the Mississippi, almost entirely German, and it is the seat of the new bishopric of northern Minnesota. The Catholic population of the county, especially German, is very numerous. Have contributed much to the Benedictine Fathers, on the west 12 miles on a lake in the middle of the forest, the output docked sixties an abbey, with an educational institution for the middle class boys is connected. She now leads the title of St. John's, formerly St. Louis, on the lake.
Jn Stearns Co. are 14 parishes - without the cathedral church - all but two, one Polish and one English, German, and also includes 11 missions, also almost exclusively German. With few exceptions the entire Benedictine provided pastoral care and is responsible for the spiritual and religious needs, therefore, well taken care of.

It would take too long, we wanted to respond specifically to the various communities. Jn and around St. Cloud 16 families and 18 families live very mixed Luxembourg. The parish of St. Wendel, Luxembourg post office, in the same township, including 21 full and 12 mixed families, and the large parish of Cold Spring has 14 full and 14 mixed families Luxembourg. They can have 63, more than all other communities in Luxembourg Family St. Nicholas is. The remaining families Luxembourg are among the various other parishes of the county. The value of land in the county is different, at St. Nicholas HL5 to H20, H20 and H7 in Avon, Cold Spring at Lake Henry H10 to b15; in Luxembourg H20 to H25, H18 and H25 in St. Cloud, etc. The first Luxembourg were found in St. Cloud and elsewhere in the county. in 1856, stronger in 1857 and 1858. They came from Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and partly even from Europe. She did not hesitate long before they went on building churches' s, since 1871 the county had already 12 German municipalities".
Pretty cool, huh? Oh, and Larry found a Luxemburg immigrant listing online:
Luxembourg/American Families.org (yup, set to SAND, but you can play with it) ☺

Martin Hesch likes being mentioned here, evidently

2011-10-15T14:14:00.002-05:00

Ol' Martin/Marthin Hesch has been a perennial mystery for us...or else, we've come to a conclusion and dropped researching him, only to forget and start worrying him AGAIN.
That's probably what's happening here. We posted what we'd found, but it evidently wasn't settled in Larry's mind or mine. We're kinda like squirrels burying walnuts in the yard and forgetting where we left em...
Who was Martin Hesch?
The mystery of Martin Hesch
Now, one untouched part of this mystery is Martin's wife Mathilda. We found that her parents were Peter Nelles and Mathilda May, and that she was born in St Michael, Minnesota (halfway to the cities from here).
By 1880, this couple had seven kids:
Mathilda (11), John (9), Math (7), Edward (5), Kate (3), Anna (2) and Margret (4 months).

We found that John became a Benedictine priest at St John's in Collegeville, and took the name Felix. We found Fr Felix on the White Earth Indian Reservation in 1910 when he was 39, and as an assistant priest in Richmond, Mn in 1930, at age 59. He died in March, 1945.
As far as the others go, we haven't followed up because we figure Mathilda's husband Martin Hesch was a nephew of our great great grandfather John, so only Paul's cousin (not his brother). Martin's dad was probably Anton or Ignatz Hesch, and so his grandpa, too, was Martin...the one born in 1790.

OK, so why post about Marthin AGAIN? Because I hope someday a descendant of his and Mathilda's will end up here and recognize that Martin wasn't forgotten, and that we tried to find who he was. Maybe this winter I'll go back to the Cesky Archivs to find his birth in the church books, too.

Who was Michael Majerus?

2011-10-14T20:52:00.003-05:00

As I read Horst Hanneken's book about Buckman (see the sidebar to order), I'm amazed by all the interesting or obscure facts he's included. For instance, when the new St Michael's Church was dedicated in 1903, the list of who donated furnishings included Frank Otremba (Statue of St Raphael), Mike Sand (statue of the BVM), Mrs. Paul Hesch (the sanctuary lamp and the St Anthony statue). The statue of St Aloysius was donated by " all the boys bearing his name" ☺...and the unusual statue of St Michael, above the main altar, was donated by a Luxemburger named Michael, probably a friend of Mike Sand, who happened to live in St Cloud. That was Michael Majerus.

"So?" (I heard you!)

Well, I recognized the name partly because of trips to Calvary Cemetery in St Cloud as a Find a Grave volunteer. 95% of the headstones there are 'normal' size, like those in the Buckman cemetery, but there are a few statues on prominent graves, one of which could be our statue's sterner, buffer, more colorless brother. There he is, treading on his own dragon, over the MAJERUS family plot.

I suspect Mike Majerus heard the story of how the church was named from our Luxemburger great grandfather, Mike Sand: The naming rights were given to the highest bid, which was $65.00, contributed by Michael Osterich and Michael Sand of Buckman. How could Michael Majerus resist?

BTW, here's a bonus St Michael's fact: The large bell in the steeple was baptized Catherine, after Mrs. Anton Otremba (our great grandmothers' parents). Her husband had donated the bell for the original church in 1881, and 20 years later, she donated the second bell. They both

still ring from St Michael's belfry today. Isn't that cool?

Wow, it's "Nicht zu Laut"!

2011-10-13T21:13:00.001-05:00

The human brain is a great toy, and a most amazing storehouse to boot. Just this week, Larry was thinking about questions we've drummed up but didn't find answers for over the past 794 posts (since January 2009). One that came to mind was the odd bit of "German" that great Uncle Math Hesch recorded in his notebook in the end of May 1914, when their big trip to Poland was almost over.

"Well, we are in RHEINE now.
Just heard a tune. It sure is a nice one

Zum Lot means crap en can.
I sold my shoes for one mark. Hard times.

Bought a pair for 12.50.

Was to confession today in Rheine.

There it goes again. Some one else is playing the machine, same tune".

At the time we were posting about Math and Theo's adventures in Europe, Larry and I talked about how "Zum Lot" sounded familiar to me--it had to be an expression I'd heard, ya know? But it didn't translate. It was spelled wrong, for sure, and probably was oddly abbreviated via Hesch humor, not to mention the mix of two languages. We worried the question for awhile, then dropped it...sigh. We figure, if it really wants to be deciphered, it'll pop up again.

WELL! Evidently, the phrase "Nicht zu laut" drew Larry's attention somehow yesterday. He googled it, and a book from 1915 called "Russia and the World" came up. Page 304 relates an incident from a theater in Germany:

Ahhh...(I expect Grandpa muttered "Nicht zu laut!" in the kitchen in Royalton when we kids tore out the door). I'll BET Math wrote it down in the abbreviated version they used at home, just like we used 'ferschtay' for "Verstehen Sie?"

So, a possible interpretation of the incident with Math and music in Rheine, Germany was that he heard the song once too often there on the street, and commented that it was nice at first but now it was a can of crap...☺

When we find an audio file of Nicht zu laut, we'll post it here. You'll be honor bound to play it at least ten times in a row, full blast. Uncle Math would want it that way. Full circle, ya know.

....................

Ahh, it took the man overnight to find it! WOW, huh?

Family Pugilists? Honestly?

2011-10-10T20:40:00.002-05:00

On page 130 in Horst Hanneken's new book about Buckman (see sidebar to order), there's an account of how the Buckman Athletic Association was formed. Evidently, our great uncles were a big part of it. Who knew?

Math, Mary and Theo Hesch

It was 1913, and Math and Theo were 25 and 23. It was the year after the Titanic sank; the year before their trip to see Europe, as well as the year their nephew Mike was born ☺.
Math was already writing the Buckman News for papers in Pierz and Little Falls. I suspect he reported glowingly about winning, huh? After all, they were strapping farm boys, as were their opponents from nearby towns.
Horst's account is actually fascinating--I didn't know any of that, did you?

An amazing postcard from 1911

2011-10-02T13:00:00.003-05:00

It's incredible that of the few old photos of Buckman that're still around, some of them show up online, like this one did, on ebay. Someone saved a postcard or just never threw it away...and we get to peruse it a hundred years later...and purchase the original if we want...wow.
This is the way Buckman looked the year Dad was born-1913. Mueller Brothers Grocery Store and Saloon is there on the right, and then Mischke's Hardware, behind the man with the black hat. The next building with the cupola on the roof is the first town hall, jail and fire hall, I think. According to Horst Hanneken's authoritative book (see sidebar), it was built in 1910, so it was pretty new here. The first magnificent water tower looks pretty substantial, I'd say.
On the left is Frank & Anna Mischke's house, (the pretty gingerbread porch). Beyond that is the John Sitzman store/dance hall/saloon (as long as it was still there in 1913. If not, then it's the John Janson blacksmith shop). The trees on the left would have been on the corner, and beyond was Schmolke's store, I think, with the Schmolke house behind the white fence, see?
The rough looking dirt road was not yet called highway 25.

And here's a small gold mine--it's the back of the postcard above. It was sent by what looks like "J.M.", from Center Valley, Minnesota, to Mike Herold in Stirum, North Dakota (located in the SE quarter of ND, by the way). If anyone's trying to trace the Herold family, here's a clue!
Our next project will be to check the 1910 census in Center Valley and see who J.M. might have been--maybe a Marshik? We owe Larry for this one, too!

Later:

Ok, Center Valley was in Hillman township, just east of Pierz township. In 1910 there were only about 75 people there, some of whom WERE Marshiks, but identifying yourself as being from CV didn't necessarily mean you actually lived there, verstehen? Narrowing it to family names beginning with M who also had a Joe, John or...Julius leaves only about 10 guys in Hillman and Pierz of the right age (figuring JM wasn't under 20 or over 50...for no real reason). Our writer mighta been a Meyer, Mischke, Medek, Mohler, Miller, Macho, Mueller OR a Marshik. Whew, say that fast 2 or 3X--its fun!

A'right, I'm going outside.