Comes the dawn, again

Finding newspaper articles about the Hesch clan in the last couple of years, we sometimes would find a name that didn't "fit" as far as I knew.  We'd just make a mental note of it and go on, confident that the the connection would be made eventually.  This time took longer than usual....

The Q:  Who was Mary Conley?

(There'll be a quiz, so pay attention)...

I know we found the name Conley or Connley in a Buckman obit ot two, and in a mention of Grandpa's brother Frank visiting them in the cities.

Ahh, thanks to clever sleuthing and Anna's obit on Find a Grave.

Cecilia Dehler and Mary Connelly were sisters, 

daughters of Billy Meyer and Anna Otremba, 

so they were first cousins of the other four, above.

All their mothers were Otremba sisters--

Mary(Hesch), Martha (Hortsch) and Anna (Meyer).

TaaDaa!

One hundred year of old NEWS

Whoa, I already have an exciting file of interesting stuff we've found in the Little Falls newspapers from 1893 to about 1932.  For instance, did you realize that Little Falls hosted Chautauquas?  "The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day".  They were the TED talks of those years.
And remember John Heach who was written up in the Pierz Journal in 1914-15?  He was known around Pierz as a vagabond, an eccentric fix-it guy who preferred to sleep in peoples' barns.  Well LOOK what Larry found from November, 1899--John wasn't destitute after all, unless he blew thru $23,000 in 15 years, which is, I suppose, possible.  

 Here's the announcement of the birth of Dad's older sister Mary Louise, the baby who died before he was born.  She died when she was a year old, January 1911.

 "Joe Hortsch, Jr., cut his foot quite badly last week while cutting wood at home.  The foot part would not be so bad, but a brand new rubber is gone too."

 No, Little Falls wasn't a big town in 1900, except by rural Minnesota standards.  5,774 people was big enough that you didn't know everybody.  It had grown a lot in 3 years, and St Cloud was only about 3,000 people larger.
Little Falls showed "every indication of still greater growth in the immediate future."

And here's the obituary of Louisa (Rausch) Sand, grandma's mom.  She died at the end of 1921 at the home of her daughter, Vernie Wintermeyer, in St Cloud.  Mike Sand lived until 1931, in Buckman.

There are a couple glaring mistakes here, like Sr Teresita, not Ccriza, and John Sand and Mrs Anton Hesch of Buckman, not John Anton Hess.

We figure a more concise obit was published in the PJ, but so far 1921 isn't online.  We'll see, eventually.
















This ad for the 1916 Minnesota State Fair caught my eye cuz it's so....different.  It looks military, with those wings and gears  and psudo-helmet at the top.  Makes me wonder if they had a competition back then too, for the design of the posters and logo.  If not, we should remember that this was right before we got into WWI, and everyone knew we were gearing up for it.  The thought of 3,000,000 square feet of labor saving devices for home, factory and farm IS daunting.  But then, it's still what's shown at the fair ☺.

Ok, this is just a small sample, the first installment,  of what we've found.  Stay tuned for a Mike Sand story about a missing Grittner boy, and why Genola decided against calling itself Grainville, and a few wedding announcements of people you'll recognize, and a birthday party mom attended when she was five....good stuff!

The New Pierz Bar

 Well, here's more info about the bar mentioned in the last post, so now we have a little provenance, right?




 

Who was Maggie Dehler? Answered!

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 right.  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...☺

German words in Math's Diary

Thanks to the excellent translation skills of Michael Hortsch, we have some new info! There were three pages of German written by Helena Wiciak and Math, but that'll be a different post.

THIS post deals with what he wrote down on the second part of the page, above. It was something he saw posted in Opole, probably in the White Wall Theater. Michael translates:

"Wer hier larmt oder
hetzt wird an die
Frische luft gesetzt"

(In German these lines rhyme.)

"Those who make noise or cause trouble will be thrown out".

LOL!
BTW, Math probably thought the rhyme was cute, and I'm sure he used it in the Buckman News once he got home....probably saying some local farmer had it posted in his chicken coop...lol

(And, if you missed the post about the first bit highlighted above, here's the translation, also courtesy of Michael Hortsch:

"Blessing in the Hortsch Inn in Susslau:

Wo Glaube da Liebe
Wo Liebe da Frieden
Wo Freiden da Gott
Wo Gott keine Not

Where there is Faith there is Love.
Where there is love there is peace.
Where there is peace there is God.
Where is God there is no adversity".)

Thank you, Michael! You made this a LOT easier for Larry and me.

More about Math's Diary!

Wow. I spent a good part of Saturday with Louise, Math Hesch's daughter (Math was my grandpa Anton's brother). It was a totally fun day, and I wonder how two people can talk that MUCH without collapsing...lol

I still can't believe it, but she allowed me to take Math's diary home with me so I could scan every page. It's truly a sacred trust. To hold that notebook in my hands...to know it went with him on the Olympic, and on the trains, in London and Berlin and Guschwitz where his mom was born, to realize it spent time in his breast pocket at the Wintergarten, and in the parks with the girls he met...that he reached for it when he saw the zeppelin overhead, and when he visited Franz Hortsch, and when they put their feet in Russia.... Wow.

If you recall, Math's grandaughter Joanie transcribed what he wrote (see the pdf file on the sidebar--scroll down) but she left out the German parts. Now, I see why: some parts were written by new friends they met, and they're often written in the old script, Suetterlin, which Michael Hortsch says hasn't been taught in German schools for over 80 years.

BUT, Suetterlin is exactly what Larry and I have been "reading" in those Bohemian church books for over a year, so we can mostly figure out what it says.

Sometimes, ya just gotta be grateful for the way stuff works out.


Here's the 10th image from the diary (approximately pages 12-13) where Math mentions something he read in the Hortsch saloon , and something else he read in Oppeln:

Larry, the MASTER of web-searching, realized the words from the tavern were somewhat repetitive, and just like that, he found this, c. 1900. This picture, or something very like it, was what Math saw:
Ah. You want to know what it SAYS, huh?

"Wo Glaube da Liebe-Where there is Faith, there is Love
Wo Liebe da Friede-Where there is Love, there is Peace
Wo Friede da Segen-Where there is Peace, there is Blessing
Wo Segen da Gott-Where there is Blessing, there is God
Wo Gott keine Noth-Where there is God, there is no adversity".

(Edit: Since that poster/saying was fairly common in Prussia then, we found the translation online, when someone else asked for a translation. I copied the translated verse, without checking line for line..

Michael Hortsch wrote: "The Blessing you found on-line is the one Math found in the Hortsch inn. However the version you printed has one additional line. Math's transcribed version goes directly from peace to God, no blessing in between". LOL

(No, we haven't figured out what the Oppeln quote says yet...lol)

Thanks, Michael!!

12 days

Genealogical Uber-Sleuthing at its finest!

Our great grandmother, Mary Otremba, had a sister named Martha, who married Joe Hortsch. Joe was Franz' brother, so Math and Ted were just looking-up their aunt's brother-in-law when they were in Europe:

When Larry and I were first looking at Math's diary, he asked if I knew of Frank Hortsch--was he on my tree...did I recognize the name?

I'd certainly heard the Hortsch name at home, and I thought they were related, but I didn't know how.

So, when we were looking for Otrembas in the Kattowice Adressbuch from 1914 , we looked for Frank there as well, but we didn't know if he owned the gasthaus, so we didn't look hard. Still, Larry found HORTSCH genealogies online, and here's what came of that:

One hit, a genealogy, was posted by someone named Kathie. I e-mailed her, and she e-mailed her cousin, Michael. They had no way of knowing that an 11 page journal of a 1914 trip was buried somewhere in a Historical Society Museum in Minnesota, or that it mentioned their Great Grandpa!

(These are photos they sent:)
THIS is the first gasthaus Frank owned, in Sysslau, near Lorzendorf (Lorenzdorf), and it's the one Math and Ted visited.

Later, Frank owned another pub in Waschelwitz, his mothers' home village, but in 1914, he was here, near Lorzendorf (Lorenzdorf), a village name that Math goofed up...lol

And THIS is Frank himself, with his second wife, Thekla Goliasch.

Another cool thing here is that Kathie and Michael didn't know that Great Grandpa Franz had been shot in the forehead or that he was blind in one eye as a result.

As Larry says, genealogical answers ALWAYS open more questions...lol

These folks (below) are Franz' son Frank, with his wife Margaret, and Martha (Otremba) Hortsch.

MARTHA was the connecting link here:

Our great grandmother, Mary Otremba, had a sister named Martha, who married Joe Hortsch. Joe was Franz' brother, so Math and Ted were looking-up their aunt's brother-in-law when they were in Europe.

Now, THAT'S cool!

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Clarification from Michael Hortsch: "The photo shows Martha Otremba Hortsch (1867-1946) on the right. She was the wife of Joseph Hortsch (1864-1938). In the middle is Frank (Franz) Hortsch junior (1880-1962), the oldest son of the innkeeper Franz Hortsch (1860-1926) back in Silesia. On the left is Frank's wife Margaret Terhaar (1883-1961). Franz Hortsch senior and Joseph Hortsch were brothers".

Thanks, Michael!