Fire! Fire!!

Scrolling thru old Pierz Journal and Little Falls Herald newspaper clippings this morning, I realize there are stories we haven't obsessively covered yet.  Can you believe it?
For instance, How Did Pierz and Buckman Deal With Fires?  Many people couldn't afford and didn't have insurance, or if they did, the amount was small.  Even in a time when a house might have been worth $450, it might be insured for only $50.  (We think most insurance was thru "secret societies" like the Improved Red Men or the Knights of Columbus...otherwise, you just didn't have any insurance).
My curiosity about grandpa and grandma's house fire in 1916 started it all.  It looks like they had some insurance, and they rebuilt in two months with some financial help from St Michael's parishioners.  (The Dixville header was probably because their farm would have been closer to Dixville than Buckman).

I assume both the Heschs and Schlegels were helped  to rebuild by family and neighbors.  There were other fires reported in those years, of course, but this one seemed especially kind, don't you think?

April 16, 1914

 (No, the Schlegel family isn't related as far as I know...☺)


Another fire, this time in the barn behind a Pierz saloon.  It sounds pretty awful.

Our grandfolks had mysteries, too

Years ago, after mom and dad retired, they lived south of Rice on the river.  One winter, Curly (dad) put a fish house out on the ice, but didn't get around to licensing it, or in fact, himself.  He figured it was close enough...like fishing in his backyard...no one would care, really...but he didn't paint his name on the thing, either (per law).  

It was fine until the game warden showed up. Luckily, Curl had just gone up to the house for a snack, but he'd left his line in the water, another big ice-fishing no-no.  The warden followed footprints up to their driveway, where they were lost (whew) and when he went to the door, Curly lied thru his teeth.  No, he didn't know who owned it...yes, he'd seen someone there today....no, didn't see him leave...didn't know when it was hauled out there....had no idea...yah, maybe there was a car parked on the road...nope, didn't remember anything...

So, the warden destroyed the fish house--I believe he lit it on fire--of course, Curly had to watch, agreeing out loud but swearing a blue streak in his head. 

 He told that story to everybody who came by.  Relatives heard it in German, and everybody laughed like crazy.  Dad actually admired the warden because he could have made it much worse for dad, the obvious lawbreaker.  The legal penalties at the time were worse than just loosing your fish house, but this guy rubbed Curly's nose in it and made him watch, and pretend to agree.

When I first found this clipping, it didn't sound like the perpetrator was a "bad guy", really.  He had a story intended to fool the locals, but he paid his way, mostly, and I suspect people liked him.  The fact that no name was used means they figured it was an alias anyway. I suppose they felt a little used, a little burnt, but they liked the guy, and wished he would have been legit.

This next clipping is from the Little Falls Herald a week earlier.  Evidently the team was returned just fine after the story ran, but "C.H.Clook" got away.

See the last lines of the first clipping up there?  About intending to "work the bogus check scheme that was so successful a short time ago?  That worked once, but no more".  Here's THAT story, from May, 1908, about one L.F.Bruel, who also got away with it, looks like.

As much as they were pissed at being scammed, the idea that someone was bold enough to pull something like this was a tiny bit admired...especially if you were not from Pierz ☺.

Travel, Blow snakes and Karo syrup

The Andersons probably went by way of St Cloud, making the trip 132 miles instead of 103 miles and an hour and 49 minutes now.   

 The western hognose snake (puff adder or blow snake) is primarily diurnal. If threatened (or perceiving a threat), it may flatten its neck (much like a cobra), hiss, and make mock strikes...Although it is more common that they will flatten their heads out, some individuals may puff up, filling their throats with air. This is more common with adolescent males.

Oh yeah, I was sure this was a pull-yer-leg story, but just for fun I googled "blow snake"--and, wow, there really is/WAS such a thing.  (With snakes, you react first, talk later).  There may have been a small benefit in seeing one if it meant your friends plying you with liquor as a cure, too. "...the snake blew it's poison into his face and poisoned him" was enough, even if there was no poison.

 Wonder if the side track in Elk River ever materialized?  Who knew there were mineral springs there? Stranger things have happened; it was an age of possibilities and mineral water was mineral water, right?

 Wow, just think--Paul's wife Mary (Otremba) Hesch came here when she was 12, and now, at 57, she went to see the big ships.  Course, this may have had something to do with Math & Ted talking about going to Europe (they did the following spring), and maybe Mary wanted to see for herself whether or not the were safer now.

What an odd ad, huh?  Corn syrup was better than honey?  But maybe honey was considered poor man's sugar, where Karo was manufactured.  

This next article blew us away.  We thought "Live long and prosper" was Star Trek...but no--actually, it was used to wish a happy life to newlyweds too.

(Everything old, etc)

A 1908 Carwash

Look closely ☺

Some 1907- 1914 News

Today's post needs little explanation, being an odd collection of news like we've done before, but you know I'll chat you up anyway, right?  

  
I'd just found the P.H.Hartmann obit the night before Shari and I went to Oakland Cemetery in Little Falls (Mn), so I thought I'd look for his grave and get a photo.  Yes, I posted the obit on his Find a Grave page, just for equilibrium on the internet ☺. 



START DRIVING EARLY had a far different meaning once, but by 1911 it was already a play on words.  It worked on me ☺, reading the article 100 years later.  

What a neat view of the logging industry--the spring thaw was early that year, so the down-river mills fired up in early April.  The info would have been pertinent to just about 
everyone who lived in Morrison Co. because of all the tributary streams that fed the Mississippi.  Once the ice went out, logs followed. Between 20 and 25 MILLION feet of logs at the landing in Little Falls?!  Whew.

BTW, I mentioned this to a client who recalled pulling submerged pine logs out of the river in the 1970s, and using the wood.  Wait, didn't they have to be dried out first?  He said no, they came out of 60 years under water pretty much like they'd gone in--not at all water logged or rotted.  How cool to learn that!

                                                           

 John Naber, mom's uncle John, must have had problem when he drove the Studebaker home...




We explored Secret Societies in June 2010 (they were fashionable in Morrison Co too).  Below are a couple of articles about the Red Men in Little Falls, one that's just embarrassing  and one about how they became "Improved".  Yes, these were grown men (President Roosevelt among 'em).

The Reformatory in St Cloud has been "over-populated" for years, it seems.  Yeah, it was a different place in 1911.

Let's compare photos of downtown Pierz, ok?

Last night was rainy/stormy in Georgia where Larry is (g'head, sing along), and frightfully cold here (which sounds like I'd have been out sledding if it'd been only -5, but nope, I wouldn't have been).  So, we decided to investigate these photos of Pierz, Minnesota, instead, as anyone would.

Four--no five--views of Lower Town Pierz--all looking north toward the church.  Larry and I were trying to figure a date for each of em.  The above, we're pretty sure, was taken in 1908.  (It came from a postcard showing four views of Pierz that SAID "1908"). 

The last one is the Google Streetview from 2009, just for shits and giggles.

The second one looks sharper, so it feels more recent, but there's a ragged awning on the left, an awning that looks new in picture 3.  Then too, see the outside staircase on the white building?  It's not there yet in the third photo. The wooden fire tower with the city hall steeple behind it shows in all four.  BTW, the hose-drying tower held the fire-alarm bell, too, just so ya know.

These two guys in front of the staircase caught our interest.  I've convinced myself that the one with the white beard was John Heach ☺.  The other man, we think, had parked his bicycle a few feet away in front of the place with the Grain Belt Beer sign.  The photo is even more interesting if you enlarge it to full screen--see the car parked to their left?  Right above it a sign says "PIERZ HOTEL", and across the street on the Neisius building (nearest the viewer), we think the darker half-sign says "BANK OF PIERZ'.  Since the new German State Bank building opened in December 1916, this gives us another parameter.  The PJ mentions the bank well before 1916, and there were paid ads in the paper, too, as early as 1914. (Maybe earlier--but I noticed em in 1914 ☺).


(Ok, it's SEVEN years later (2020!).  I finally saw what should have been  obvious--this wasn't intended as a typical street scene.  It's a hearse, heading to the church most likely.  That's why people are simply standing respectfully, hands behind their backs. Changes the whole picture, doesn't it?)

Check the similarities between these two photos: the telephone/electric poles, which look like they were being installed in the photo below, see?  Yay, we know from the Pierz Journal that the Jacob Neisius store and home were the first electric customers in Pierz...so this, below, was July, 1912. The Pierz Journal was still in it's original building, on the left.  (We're trying to figure out what the roundish sign in front of the JOURNAL sign was for--any ideas?)

We've speculated before that there was a photographers studio on the south end--one who was enamored  by the street and its muddy changing charm.  This one looks like the same era as #2 up there, but see the sign on the third building on the right?  We think it says BIJOU, which was the theater in town.  We'll do a post about the enterprising Faust family soon.

I'm fascinated by the relative size of the church tower in each of the photos.  How can it figure so prominently in the first four but be almost invisible in the current one?  Even if these old pics were taken from a step ladder, the google mobile camera is mounted on top of a car.

THANKS to Carrie P. for "South End of Main Street, Pierz, Minn."

John Austin Williams (updated)

Remember our search for William Williams?  He was a possible twin, and connects with us because he was adopted from the orphan trains by Magdalena Sand, widow of Nicholas Sand, in St Cloud, Mn.  Go, read that post, then come back here for the sequel ☺.

John Austin Williams

This week, we had a comment on that post from the granddaughter of William's probable twin, John.  She sent this photo of him, too, probably taken in the 1920s.
We're hoping a Minnesota Sand might make the connection to John's brother William, whose adopted mom was Nick Sand's second wife, Magdalena Brodie Sand.  Are there photos of William around?  What a thrill if Will had a photo taken about this age, too.  They were born in 1908, so this might have been 1925 (a high school graduation photo?)

OK, keywords: John Austin Williams, Brady/Brodie/Sand, Joseph William Williams, 1908, New York Foundling Hospital.

A bit more info:  Slim was researching online this morning (next day) and found this website listing orphan train riders, by whom they were adopted, and where.  At the bottom of that page is a Joseph William Williams, with the Sand/Brodie/St Cloud information.
(Larry found the riders website when we first posted about Wm Williams.  Evidently, info there gets updated, too ☺).

Slim said her grandfather John Austin Williams was born September 27, 1908.  This paragraph about Joseph William Williams says he was born August 11, 1910 so they may have been brothers.  We just don't know...yet.

Joseph  William Williams (birth name) William Sand (foster/adoptive name) (deceased)
1913 NYFH Rider to St Cloud, MN to Magdalena Sand & brother Bernard Brady family.
Born William Williams of Brooklyn, New York on 8/11/1910.  He was placed in the New York Foundling Hospital by his mother at 2 weeks old.  In 1913, at 3 years and 5 months old, he was placed with Magdalena Sand in St Cloud, Minnesota.  He married Eleanore Ludenia and they had six children.  He worked for the railroad most of his life.  He died  April 20, 1985.

THANK YOU, Slim!

More about Joe Sand & Antonia (Poser) Sand

While I was off gallivanting with the grands last weekend, Larry was busy finding other online connections, like looking in CANADA for Joe and Antonia Sand, specifically on Find a Grave.com. 

 (Some cool things about Find a Grave: you can add pictures if you have them, 

and there are clickable links to other family members if they're known).  

And there they were, on their wedding day in January, 1908:

Skip this next part if you already know:

 Joseph was Grandma Elizabeth's oldest brother, and dad's uncle Joe.  

Did Curly ever mention Aunt Antonia?

August, 1978 SERVICES FOR MRS. ANTONIA SAND Mrs. Antonia Sand of Shaunavon, Sask. Died at St. Anthony's Home in Moose Jaw on Saturday, August 19 at the age of 92. Mrs. Sand was born at Pierz, Minnesota on April 17, 1886 and married Joseph Sand in Pierz on January 14, 1908. Mr. And Mrs. Sand came to Canada in May of 1911, homesteading in the Voll School district area. They lived and farmed there until the fall of 1948, when they moved into Shaunavon. Mrs. Sand continued to live in Shaunavon until August of 1968 when she took up residence at St. Anthony's Home in Moose Jaw. She was a long-time member of St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church at Illerburn and later a member of Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Shaunavon. She was also a member of the Ladies Altar Society and the C.W.L. Mrs. Sand was predeceased by her husband, Joe, on March 29, 1965 and one daughter, Agnes, on September 29, 1968; as well as by three brothers and one sister. She is survived by two sons, Ervin of Edmonton, Alberta and Mike of Shaunavon, Sask.; one daughter, (Mary) Mrs. Peter Lewans of Shaunavon; twenty-eight grandchildren; and sixty-seven great grandchildren. Funeral services were held at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Shaunavon on Tuesday, August 22 and 10:30 a.m. with celebration of the mass with Rev. Father Sylvester Lewans O.M.I., Rev. Father A. Bouchard and Rev. Father B. Adee officiating. Interment followed at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery at Shaunavon with Binkley's Funeral Service in care of arrangements. Pallbearers were all grandsons, Edward Grubbe, Lawrence Grubee, Ben Lewans, Philip Lewans, Robert Sand and Henry Sand. I'd copy Joe's obit here too, but it'll be more fun for you to follow the link above and find her spouse yourself. Gawd, I'm SO good to you!