Our Prussians, Ourselves...

Here's an interesting side-light regarding how Prussians were viewed in Europe by 1915, when this cartoon appeared in an English magazine called The Strand.

No, our people were not "posh" like these folks, but man, some of their facial expressions DO look familiar ☺

In honor of doing my taxes....

...yes, woohoo, I'm done.  Electronic filing is lovely, a really useful innovation compared to filling out forms by hand and sending them in, praying you figured the refund right.  Whew.  And to think, I have a whole five days grace!

I know, it's a clever segue into writing about labor-saving innovations from 100 years ago:

(I mean the ice box here ☺)

 Too bad this route wasn't pursued back then....

 (Yes, John Hesch went to Hudson Wisconsin, too)

You're welcome!

Weyerhaeusers, the Luce Lines and a new Hearse--Woohoo ☺

(Sitting here with closed curtains and most lights off.  I know, I know...but there are only a few kids in the neighborhood and they're probably at the school party.  Yeah, I bought a little candy, just in case: honest to gawd rice krispie bars, but as small as the fun size candy bars.  Just right, I'd say ☺ )
Ok, what does a person do when she's avoiding trick-or-treaters?  Post, of course!
First, an interesting clip about the Weyerhaeuser wedding (Charles Weyerhaeuser and Frances Maud Moon--such familiar names here in Minnesota because of the endowments they left, such as the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio at MPR).
Also, an item about an elegant hearse for Pierz and vicinity..

 No, this isn't the hearse...it's just one I found on google ☺.

And HERE's evidence of a controversy we've touched on before--the wonderful promise of a railroad coming to Buckman.  There were meetings and investments, and no one seemed to figure out the zig zag route it would have had to take to connect all the little towns that were hoping for it. 

Finally, the last two articles below must have been hard to swallow for our relatives, huh?

A Belle Prairie fund raiser, 1915 style

An account from 1915 about a fund raiser by the Knights of Columbus to benefit Our Lady of Angels Academy at Belle Prairie.  It's worth the read since it describes how something like that was done, then.  People who owned cars shuttled people out there from downtown Little Falls...sounds like a terrific success.

 

The article's particularly neat cuz Shari and I went to Belle Prairie's Holy Family Cemetery on Monday to take pics of gravestones.  

We found most of the people who're mentioned, or their families, ya know?

I love that kind of symmetry ☺. 

Juice in Pierz

 Wow, look, this is a who's who of Pierz businesses in 1914 (and a few homes).  Such familiar names....the progressive citizens who had electricity.

But of course progress wasn't uniform back then (as tho it ever is).  We found this next  clip from December 1915.  They were installing old technology--gas lights--in Billig's saloon, the Hesch store and the old church.  Sigh...☺

Who was John Heach?

This afternoon, Larry showed me a GREAT customized search engine he came up with to find key words on Minnesota Reflections.  He suggested I try a name--any name--from those we've researched.  I tried Otremba, and found gobs of hits, of course. One, the July 31, 1913 issue, 

had this startling headline:

Autobiography of John Heach.  

Wow, could it be a misprint?  Did they mean grandpa's brother John...or the John Hesch in Agram township?  I'd never heard of a family named Heach around Morrison county, but what do I know?  

As we read the entire column, written in first person, we were still unsure if this was a relative. What he described wasn't familiar, but then.... He was supposed to have lived around Pierz for 25 years and was "well known". Hmm, did we need to do lots more research?  

The next autobiographical installment was the next week, August 7, 1913.  The headline was the same, mid front page at the top.  This John was erudite, and descriptive.  He'd evidently traveled a lot, around the world even.  WHO was he?

It's worth it to go to Minnesota Reflections online and search the word HEACH.    After those first two columns, the name is mentioned here and there, and finally there's an small announcement in 1915, of his death, with a tribute printed the following week.  We're pretty sure he wasn't one of us, that it wasn't a mis-print...see what you think.

Sr Laura in Browerville, c. 1915

This is pretty cool: Grandpa's sister Theresa became Sr Laura, OSB.  Here she is in one of her first teaching positions, in Browerville, Mn, with the 8th grade graduating class.  The boy in front on the right is her nephew Louis Gottwalt.  How did that happen?  His family lived in Rice, Mn. I'll have to ask Lynn, whom we have to THANK for this beautiful photo ☺!

Bridgeman-Russell Creamery, Pierz

.

When I first saw this ad in the early Pierz Journals, I took note.  I'd never heard of the Bridgeman-Russell Creamery but the name reminds me of ice cream and the public school in Sauk Rapids.   So when I saw the name on the building just south of St Joseph's Church in Pierz (The photo below was taken from the church steeple in 1915), a light went on ☺.  So THAT'S where it was!


But really, knowing what you know about our German dairy farmer ancestors, do you think the wording of the ad made ANY of them flock to B-R?

Me either.....

Extra, Extra! Getcher old news here!

Among family history buffs, the availability of old newspapers' online is a godsend.  We've found info we would never have known to search for, since the articles were often wire service fillers in other towns' papers.
In particular, we can search for family names over thousands of issues in dozens of towns from, for instance, 1880 to 1922 (earliest to latest digitized copies).  Unusual names work best, of course.
These first two are interesting not only for the familiar name involved, but for the physical distance between the two newspapers (Los Angeles, California, and Washington D.C.) BTW, I'm not typing the family name to keep it from being searchable from HH...you need to recognize the name in the article.
(Clever, huh?)

Now this blurb made me laugh.  We called this practice a "Shiveree"--something family and friends did to a newlywed couple early in their marriage, when the couple was probably engaged in what newlyweds often do.  THIS one got out of hand, sounds like.  

And lastly, here's an article Larry found in the Duluth Tribune of August 1, 1915.  We're pretty sure this wasn't OUR Charlie.  We do know that Charlie and Elizabeth were back in Duluth, at least for a time, around 1917 (we have his WWI draft card from there).  But we also know a Norwegian Charles Sand lived in Duluth around this time. Well then!

Fixing Up Downtown Buckman in 1915

Larry and I realize how very much you enjoy reading about our latest obscure obsession re the tiny berg of Buckman, a Minnesota village whose heyday was about 70 years ago, yeah.  I suspect you understand that almost anything can set us off, too.  Oh, hell, bear with us, reading this won't kill you...

A faded print from the Pictorial Atlas shows a street crew in 1915, in Buckman, right?  But look, it's hard to tell whether we're looking north or south (and isn't it fascinating how your eyes and brain can switch it back and forth like that?)  The guys are on the crest of the hill, and we had to study what houses they could be, in the background.  What house had a second story door, next to a house with no windows on this side?  It puzzled us, and so we compared it to another photo we have of the metropolis.

The red outline is the actual machine they cobbled together to make sidewalk pouring easier.  They're in the middle of the future highway, but they're not working on the road--see the wooden form in the foreground?  I think they were pouring a sidewalk from the bank across to Schmolkes Store.  

Take note of all four five men in the pic (according to Horst, they were Fritz & John Mueller, Frank &
 Pete Poster and Peter Grundhoefer, looking on)-see #2?  He's partly hidden by a small silo of material, possibly a water tank.  But that silo shape is positioned just right to look like the south wall of the house behind it, see?

As a gift to YOU, we outlined the buildings to correspond with the view we know is looking south--the postcard photo from 1911.  When I enlarged the pink-outlined house, there was the second floor door between the windows.  So, the sidewalk crew photographer was looking north, toward Pierz and the wavery wagon road going up the far hill.  Isn't that nifty?

Oh, and check man #4 up there.  I'm not sure about when Andrew Suess moved to Buckman, but the pose reminds me of him in the pic we have of men around Brandl's Garage, from 1925.  'Course, #4 could have been one of various retired farmers who'd moved into town, but we have no pics of them ☺.  

Added two months later:

Pierz Journal, April 24, 1913.
Of interest: I believe Carl Kropp
also built St Michaels Church.
Here, the Poster cement machine
 was being used on the new High school.

  Horst emailed today, and had this to say:
 "By the way, the second story of that building you marked was the Sitzman General Store" [pink outline] "with upstairs meeting hall and saloon, later to be Billig's Saloon, then Albert Gohl's Shoe and Harness Shop.  The stairs were on the north side.  Hoheisel's house", [green outline] "the former Frank Mischke dwelling, is just to the north of that, the place without windows".
THANKS, Horst!

DANG, I'm proud of us!!