Fifteen Minutes of Fame (in 1921)

This week, Larry's been investigating one E.W.Ewing, who showed up in Little Falls in June, 1921.  He arrived with a movie camera and a crew who'd help him immortalize Little Falls.  He intended to make a movie to be called "Welcome, Stranger"--a fantastic 2 reel movie featuring local businesses and homes, not to mention people from town appearing along side a Charlie Chaplin look-alike called Charlie St Francis.  It'd be a promotional movie that could be shown far and wide.  It would convince new people that Little Falls was an unparalleled place to move to and invest in.

Wow, right?  So of course Larry looked farther, searching on Chronicling America, the Library of Congress newspaper site.

Hmm...he found the same come-on in the Wilmar and Albert Lea newspapers, promising them the same things about their towns.
Still, it might not have been a con--maybe locals really did participate, and maybe the movies were played in other theaters around the state, or country.  But we suspect Little Falls especially knew better, since the fiasco with the Ford movie company and  Henry Gau from nearby Pierz.  That had to be fresh in their minds, filmed the fall before, and shown at the Faust in Pierz in February 1921.
Were any of these movies ever made?  Larry says he hasn't found any evidence of it so far, but there's always an outside chance, right?

By October, it looks like E.W. found a new tact: Maybe New Ulm had an especially active American Legion chapter, based on aging Civil War vets plus WWI veterans, too.  Their "Welcome Stranger" would include film from the summer Legion Convention held there.  We'll let you know if we find any evidence the films were made, promise.

 YAY, LARRY ☺

Stuff you never thought to ask about...

Here's a collection of articles from local-ish papers between 1900 and 1921.  They're a reminder about how MUCH was changing in those years--from the church's opinion about suffrage to  electricity, to miracle cures, to population...

 ...for instance, did you know that the Cold Spring dam was dynamited in 1921, a result of an evidently ongoing dispute?  Or that a mention of great uncle John Hesch going to seek relief for his rheumatism in Wisconsin was likely to see "the Bone Setter"? Cool.

George and Lloyd Harting, and John Heach?

 As we mentioned in the last post,  Little Falls was home to George and Lloyd Harting, sons of a  furniture dealer there, Harting and Sons.  George was born in 1877, and Lloyd in 1901, so together they covered a lot of artistic canvas, you might say (DAMN, I'm funny).

But WHY are we fixated on them here on HH? 
Well, partly because they were written up in the Little Falls Herald and Transcript in those years and we can't RESIST any possible connections--to wit, another article from 1906 involving our old friend John Heach*. 

  But first, there was this article in the Herald--George (the elder bro) illustrated a couple pages for "Browning's Magazine", but all I could find was Browning's Industrial Magazine.  I flipped page by page thru October, 1906, and there were no poems or interpretive drawings, just schematics and diagrams of machines.  Sigh!   If the right magazine is ever digitized, we'll add the drawings here for sure.  Don't hold your breath.

*In the meantime, LOOK at the mystery we discovered:

"The old picture drawn by a few of our local artists, of John Heach, when he defeated a LaFond mob in Bares saloon on September 28, 1900, is again on exhibition in one of our lower town [Pierz] saloons. The picture was drawn right after the battle and beautifully framed and placed in Bares saloon at that time.  Later it was placed in the American House [hotel] in Little Falls for about two years, after which it was again taken back to Pierz.  Mr Heach thinks a great deal of the picture and will not allow the saloonkeeper to dispose of it for any money."

Yes, I can hear you thinking  "fer dumb"...but isn't it kind of mystically providential that we discovered unknown (to us) artists in LF and then a mention of John Heach and a drawing of him that could still be around? Ok, ok, that's a real long shot, but wouldn't it be COOL if it was rolled up or among other pictures at the Weyerhaeuser, or in someone's attic or (horrors!) at a Pierz garage sale?  It's possible, IF it's still around, that the owner has no idea what it depicts.  We already have the staff at the Morrison County Historical Society alerted, and they're looking....cross your fingers, ok?

We'll post their answer and anything else we hear about it ☺, promise.

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 LIbrary of Congress comes thru AGAIN!

Hooray!  Larry's been watching the LoC website, and realized they were about to post the historic newspapers from Little Falls, Morrison County, Mn.  He was actually able to keep it a SECRET until they were online and searchable.  What an amazing ability, one so far beyond me....
ANYWAY, this is about as fun as online genealogy gets:  to have home access  not only to the Pierz Journal, but to 

• the Little Falls Herald from April 1893 to December 1932 (1300 issues!)
• the Little Falls Transcript from March 1878 to April 1894 (537 issues)
• the Little Falls Weekly Transcript from May 1894 to January 1901 (505 issues)

is blow-me-away COOL!  They all included news about Buckman and Pierz tho the actual village news columns were after 1900, seems like.  The links above are to the earliest online issues of each paper.  Check em out--and remember this is your tax money at work, making at LEAST two people very thrilled and happy.

 ☺ x 3

THANK YOU LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

AND LARRY!

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!

115 year old news from Little Falls

An article found (by Larry ☺) in the Penny Press from St Paul and Minneapolis in November, 1896.  It's interesting because it's  a series of items that have no bearing on the next item.  The penny press newspapers were inexpensive papers for the masses, so the editor wasn't  paying much for this piece.  For readers here in other languages, I've added # between subjects, ok?

LITTLE FALLS NEWS.
Little Falls, Minn., Nov 16--(Special)--
Among the amendments adopted at the election just past is the one that no foreign born citizen shall be entitled to vote until he shall have taken out his final citizenship papers, and he must have done this three months previous to the election at which he proposes to vote.  It also provides that the voter shall have been in the state six months and in the voting precinct thirty days, whereas before he had to have been only four months in the state and ten days in the precinct.  This will make a good deal of difference in Morrison county and in Little Falls.  It will greatly affect the city election next spring. #  There are over 100 school teachers employed in this county.  The average enrollment is 3,812 scholars.  # The citizens of Royalton are trying to get the Farmer's Institute, which locates in a place in each county for a few days every fall there.  Last fall the institute was held here. #
The new Catholic church of Royalton which has just been completed will be dedicated Nov. 19. #  Judge of Probate Richardson has received notice from the officials of the Fergus Falls insane asylum of the release of Mrs. Mary Marsic, Mrs Anna Eastberg and Anna Schultz from the Fergus Falls insane asylum. # The following is the official vote for representatives in the fourty-sixth district: Ferris (Rep.), 6,341; Jones (Rep.), 6,163; Head (Rep.), 6,049; Hartshorn, (Rep.), 6,018; Koop, (Dem.) 5,108; Sheets, (Dem.), 4,816; Newton, (Dem.), 4,856 and Bohall, (Dem.), 4,697. #  The Weyerhauser syndicate has contracted with David Dobie for a cut of 35,000,000 feet of logs in northern Wisconsin. # Papers were served today in a suit against the City of Little Falls for damages said to be caused by defects in the sidewalk.  The complainant is Lizzie Lukaszewicz, and she claims injuries in the amount of $6,000. # Ryan Brothers, shoe merchants of this city, have closed out, owing to the hard times.  # A considerable number of scholars have been sick within the past two weeks with chicken pox and diptheria, but only in one or two instances has the illness proved fatal. #  A movement is on foot among the school teachers to hold school on Saturday and make Monday the vacation day.

John Day Smith, Albert Bulow and the St Cloud Journal Press

In 1888, a farmer from Buckman* was murdered on his way home from Royalton.  The murderer, one Albert Bulow, was found, tried and hanged in Little Falls in July 1889.  It was the only hanging in Little Falls history, and created a circus atmosphere there.  More about that HERE.

"Public, daytime hangings were the rule for capital offenders in the territorial and early statehood days of Minnesota. However, community leaders came to realize that crowds attended executions primarily for their entertainment value, with the consumption of alcohol and ensuing violent acts a common occurrence. In 1889 the Minnesota legislature passed the John Day Smith law, frequently called the “midnight assassination law,” that required the private, nighttime execution of prisoners facing a death sentence. Although Minnesota today no longer has capital punishment, the John Day Smith law opened a new frontier in the public policy debate over capital punishment. It also led to the passage of similar laws in other states that are still in effect today".

From THIS  PAGE.


Anyway, this morning, Larry showed me an online site with a new assortment of digitized newspapers, and one that came up from Minnesota was an article concerning the  The John Day Smith law and how newspapers perceived their rights regarding hangings, especially the Bulow case.
I got that much, and that one paper was being snarky about what another paper published, but it STILL didn't compute, so I tried diagramming it.

I don't think it helps, but I did get to use Mason's cute little face. ("A little cheeky" !) lol

So, its a St Paul paper running an article found in the St Cloud paper about a complaint by the Little Falls paper that "nobody complained" about the over-publicity by "the Twin Cities Dailies" of the Bulow trial and hanging.  Here's one page of what they meant: its the Library of Congress site / St Paul Daily Globe front page from July 19, 1889.  Whew!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

More about Bulow / John Day Smith's law: 

Papers from around the nation were quick to report their Minnesota colleagues' transgressions, but they might have seen it as a trend--how do you sell papers without describing horrors?

(Ft. Worth, Pittsburg and Sacramento).

Added much later: Plat maps from right around 1900 show the *Franklin Eich farm was across the road and south of Joe Janson's farm (mom's homeplace).  Yup, what we know as the Roman and Emily Dehler farm.

Fascinating OLD news

I've been perusing the old newspapers online at CHRONICLING AMERICA from the Library of Congress, in particular, the St Paul (Daily) Globe, published  from 1884 to 1905 (it was a daily for only part of that time).  There was also a Minneapolis paper at the time, and certainly Der Nordstern would have been subscribed to by the Hesch family, but the Globe was American, and provided a view of the broader non-German world.  I suspect some issues trickled to Buckman. 

                     :::///:::///:::///:::///:::///:::

What's so mesmerizing to me tho, is the background--what was humorous to them, what was newsworthy (even as a filler), and what other facts we can glean from those articles.  For instance:

1905-- For years, loggers went to the northwoods, cut logs, and sent them floating downstream to the saw mills.  This photo shows the advent of logs-by-rail, and also, the use of photographs in newspapers rather than drawings.

1890, May--We've debated HOW Paul Hesch arrived in Minnesota since we can't find him on ships lists from American ports.  (They're probably not all online, right, and the chances of his ship being omitted are...?)  Still, here's one possibility, through Canada.

1898--By now, the Globe did a 'humor' page--most of which doesn't seem clever or funny now, but it must have appealed then...lol  It seems to be the precursor to our funnies.

1898--I hope their artists were paid well, but I doubt it.  The header on a December 4 page, one of 32 that day.

1886, April--The cyclone devastation in Sauk Rapids.  It's a pretty close copy of a photograph we found elsewhere, except there was a rotund man and a boy in the foreground there.