Yes, but what did they do for FUN?

Glad you asked!

 Evidently, Buckman and Pierz (as well as most small towns in the 19-teens) had singing groups, bands, athletic and card clubs, church related activities and house parties.  Plus, there was also one outstanding (and a little unbelievable) recreation--putting on plays. According to Horst's book and the Pierz Journal, thespianism was rampant in Morrison county then ☺.

"A Modern Ananias", huh?  Let's see if it's online...wow, it is!  TG for Archive.org and the Library of Congress, huh?  It's an old-time comedy, a laugh a minute, perfect for amateur players with a little prompting from the author:

Click the link there and page thru the script.  Can you imagine some of our greats saying those lines, ON STAGE?  Me neither.  But they did.
I'd love to see this play produced, wouldn't you? A challenge: round up a cast and put it on, costumes and sets and all.  I'll pay ya five times what dad paid to trim trees, honest!

All for a buck forty-eight?

Wow,  dad had some of these tools at his workbench in the garage, remember?  I suppose they came from an auction, or from his dad's workshop.  I do recall asking him what the tool on the lower right was for, and he didn't know ☺!


It's cool that you could fix tinware AND leather stuff with the same set of tools, and that Curly kept them just cuz they were too neat to toss.


--Montgomery Ward, 1904-05

NEWS from the 1895 Minnesota census!

Well! It looks like Family Search is really updating it's site. Larry directed me to the 1895 Minnesota census (Buckman township) that used to be incredibly faded but is nicely legible now in their version.  YAY for them....and for us researchers.

Paging thru Buckman township, I saw "Otremba Katie" age 86 as the first entry on page 14.  Flipping back a page, a-ha! she's living with her daughter and husband, Martha and Joe Hortsch.  Anton Otremba had died in 1883, but Catherine Schalwig Otremba would live till 1902.  (Martha was 27 in 1895, and 30 years later, she and Joe were included in this photo, over on the right ☺).

Anyway, more newsy is the fact that the enumerator was a ninny that year. It took 7 pages to determine his last name was Hilborne ....Homer Hilborne didn't worry about getting their names right either.  (He might have been a nice guy, but in my book this sin is MORTAL, dammit).  Homer had my mom's Joseph JANSON family listed as Johnson...and he did the same to John Janson down the road.  He had some Otrembas written as O'Tremba (the Irish-Polish branch, evidently).  All the Muellers that year were listed as MILLER, the English spelling, but Mike Sand was MICHEL, the German spelling.  (LOL, remember the throat clearing  sound in the middle of that name?)

 Gramma Lizzie Sand was 12 that year, and was listed as living with  Henry Sand, probably as a hired girl.  I'm not sure who Henry was, but it looks like he was widowed.    Lizzie's brother Charlie isn't living at home either.

Over in Agram township, on page 3 of 7 (on the O'Tremba page), there's John (78),  Mary (76), son Anton (42) and little Katie Hesch (11) who was from Wisconsin.  Katie was Mathias's daughter, probably spending the summer with gramma and grampa in Minnesota.  (These are the immigrants mentioned on the masthead, top'o'the blog, ok?)  Yes, Homer Hilborne was the enumerator.

That year, Math was 4 years old and the baby of the Paul Hesch family.  Our future grandpa was 11, and his oldest sister Rose had recently married Louie Gottwalt, so she wasn't on the list of kids.

Oh man, if you have a little time, create an account & sign in to Family Search.  Try SAND or HESCH in 1895.  It's fun to see who lived where, and all the names you'll recognize, PLUS how well thought out the new FamSearch site is.

Sheesh...it's too bad that we depend on someone in Georgia to find online sites we should know about right here in Central Minnesota!   Here's a VERY cool webpage you should bookmark if you know or grew up in St Cloud.  It's a series of virtual tours of historic buildings and homes, downtown and south to the Barden Park area.
WOW, and YAY, Larry!!

This lil "gopher" was an illustration used over and over in the 1896 U of M yearbook.  (I wonder if the student who drew it ever heard the end of it?  It's obviously a chipmunk.  We're defensive about our state animal, ya know).
Anyway....Chippy the "gopher" is starting a new career here on HH as the mascot for an ocassional feature I'm calling

COOL STUFF ABOUT CENTRAL MINNESOTA

And heres the first post:

If you're from St Cloud, you've probably seen this mural before--but where?  And, when was it created? Also, why would it be in St Cloud?
Normal prizes (3X what dad paid us for trimming poplars) given for correct answers...lol