January 1955

Anton Janson, my grandfather, died in Los Angeles in January, 1955.  Mom kept a box of mementos about it, including newspapers (St Cloud Times and Pierz Journal), sympathy cards she received, correspondence from Wendelin, his brother, and from Helen Hesch, and his personal effects (his billfold and rosary). 

The box has been in my basement since mom died in 1996.  I finally opened it again this week.

54 years later, the leather billfold and rosary pouch have a light green patina.  His zippered billfold has three LA Transit tokens, two library  cards, and his Townsend Club membership card.

The rosary pouch had an unusual rosary in it...nine decades sections of three beads.  It's very light-weight--was it intended for travel?

Here's a close-up of both sides of the medal, in German.  If you can translate the words, I'm sure there's an indulgence in it for you.

Some Janson Photos

I've always liked this photo of my Janson grandparents.  It must have been taken in the 1930s / early 40s, possibly at Pine Grove Park in Little Falls, Minnesota.  (Grandpa's straw boater seems earlier than 1930, but Grandma's hat seems later, and the grills in the left background indicate it was a park.  The grills're probably still in service).

Grandma's wearing the same dress and hat in this photo....but I don't think it was the same day, and she looks thinner in the park picture.  Also, the grass is short (mowed) in this picture, and it's not, in the park.  I'm trying to think of a reason for the corsage, tho.  She was no longer alive when her two surviving children were married.

Mom's sister Loretta died in October 1938, and this photo was probably taken the day of her funeral.  Here, from the right, is Reinhard at 17 and Linda at 23.  The older woman has to be Katherine (Naber) Bahns and 5 of her children--I recognize them, but not well enough to name them, except for Johnny. 

They're Betty (Sarp), Helen (Cable), Angie and Regina Bahns, I think.  If you know, let me know and I'll change the post.

Here's Loretta (left) and Linda (right) with ??  Mom looks to be about 8 there, so it was about 1923.  They're in a farm yard...near a cellar door I don't recognize.  It could be from a trip to see Ida and Walberg Naber, in Bancroft, Iowa? 

More later...

Old Newspaper news

I've spent way too much time lately on the CHRONICLING AMERICA site from the Library of Congress, but it's kind of a homage to Grandpa Anton, cuz he'd have loved it so much.  It fascinates me because there are newspapers from as early as the year he was born, 1880, from 15 states, including Virginia and Minnesota. 

After clicking around and downloading lots of those pages, I'm beginning to understand more about the times around 1900--what the topics of conversation probably were (the weather and prices..lol), and what their humor and stories reflected: some prejudice against immigrants, and the normal city-dweller scorn for rural folks. 

I've been curious about the Jansons' decision to move--leaving 18 years of hard work behind--did they have any real facts about where they were going?  This glorious ad and others like it were fairly regular in the Globe pre-1905. 

The northern newspapers realized there were lots of German immigrants here--surely some of them wished they had settled in a warmer climate.  According to a taped biography Dick Janson gave in the 1970s, the family expected a German Catholic Church in Hampden.  There wasn't one.  Dick said, too, that "My mother especially talked about life in Virginia, and that they were looked down on at the time.  The blacks were alot nicer than the whites that they knew".

This article was in the Farmville, Virginia, Herald   in March, 1903.  This was the year all the Jansons returned to Minnesota.  As Larry observed, Virginia seemed to be a revolving door about then.

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Another interesting series in the Globe was the extensive coverage of the cyclone that damaged St Cloud, wiped out Sauk Rapids and continued to Buckman in April, 1886.

This was Grandpa Antons recollection of the 1886 tornado, and how it affected him as a child of 6.

Jacob Woolhart 1819-1892

I went to the Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Rice today to find Daniel Janson, and I did.  (See post from this morning).   But I 'had to' stop at the Rice public cemetery, in case there were familiar names...and of course, there were, just not related to me. 
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The public cemetery in Rice, Minnesota is a desolate place, a large, flat, neglected field.  Headstones face in different directions and the oldest ones are mostly crooked or broken.  The grass is cut in the main section, but over half of the fenced area has no graves--it's just weeds.....except for one lone monument at the southeast corner.
I was curious...who was buried out there, and why?  So, I went to look:

It's a family monument with the name WOLHART in relief on the bottom east face--Jacob Wolhart.
On the south face is Mary Maria Wolhart, and the north face, Lettie and Effie.

Judging by the birth and death dates inscribed there, I checked the 1880 census for Langola township, Benton County, Minnesota.
Ah....

The Jacob and Mary WOOLHART family. 
Here's what's inscribed on the stone:

Jacob Wolhart Born April 6, 1819, Died June 8, 1892
Mary Maria Wolhart Born July 21, 1834, Died July 30, 1916
Lettie M, Born July 24, 1855, Died December 25, 1873
Effie R, Born July 31, 1860, Died September 20, 1880

I still don't know WHY they're so far from the other graves.  They aren't related to Jansons; I just don't want them forgotten.  I've posted them so the name is searchable.

More clues...

One of the neatest things about online research is that you can cast such a wide net.  If you type JANSON into a search engine, any mention of the name shows up in all the documents that engine has access to.  Then, the human brain chooses which hits are relevant. 
Not that long ago, searching for family was incredibly hit-and-miss ("Hmm, maybe born in Buckman, records would be in the church books.  I need to go there and see..."). 
But now, records are often online, especially census pages.  Looking for Jansons in Minnesota in, say, 1900, on ancestry.com narrows the search to...wow!  Not only Joseph's family in Hampden, Virginia, and John's family in Mayhew Lake, but Daniel Janson, in Rice!

Hmm, my tree doesn't show a Daniel Janson born in 1850, but there's a good chance he's related, as Larry says, by proximity.

Ok, so what else is online about this man?  He was 50 in 1900, and with his wife Katherine, had 5 children--Alois, Sophia, Amelia, Joseph and Daniel, Jr.

They owned land west of Rice--10 acres of what I know to be sand prairie.  Our Master Researcher Larry found this plat map from 1903:

                                                                             (While it doesn't tell us much about them, the map adds to our general knowledge of the area...like, where the train depot in Rice was, and that there was a hotel right across the tracks.  (When I was a little girl, I remember dropping Little Grandpa off there).  And look, Rice had 2 schools, and a stockyard, and a second hotel.  It was a small but booming village).



Daniel died in 1910.  His son Joseph, 27 and single, must have seen profit in adding to the size of Rice.  This "Jos. Janson First Addition to the Village of Rice" plat is also online (Thank you, Larry!):

 

These are intriguing clues, ya know? 

Eventually, we'll find out how Daniel connects.  Mysteries abound, but some of the answers are online...we just haven't found them, yet.  Sometimes, tho, all it takes is a trip to the cemetery:

Immaculate Conception Cemetery, Rice Minnesota

Stearns History Museum

I didn't expect to find Buckman history in Stearns county, but my grandfathers' brother, Sebastian,  did settle  there, in New Munich.

In his folder at the MUSEUM, I also found this obituary for his sister Anna.

Fall in Minnesota

Listening to MPR yesterday, I heard an essay that tickled me.  Of course, I can't find it on their website, but the author was talking about seasonal changes here in the Heartland.  He said this time of year is the "So Long Salad, Hello Hotdish" time of year.

Joseph & Franziska (Fuchs) Janson

Just for the record, we spent some time trying to locate my Janson Great Grandparent's grave. We knew it had to be in Buckman at St Michaels, but I was looking for a grave STONE, not just a marker, so I walked right past this cross...

...but it's only logical that the husband of "Frances" would be next to hers, but has somehow been lost since 1911.

Sebastian Janson 1873-1962

Immaculate Conception Cemetery, New Munich, Mn.

It was finally sunny here yesterday, so we went to New Munich to cruise the cemetery (doesn't everybody do that on a nice October day?)

I was actually looking for SAND relatives buried there (dad's grandparents) but found this stone, too. Oddly, I didn't expect to find it, but then realized that Sebastian Janson & Mary Roos' son Dick was the postmaster in New Munich for years. We even found the house I remembered in town...and it's still the PO.

Of course, Dick is buried there too:

...so the trip was definitely worthwhile.
The cemetery in New Munich is square, with a white wall surrounding it, except for the southeast corner. There, it looks like the wall was deliberately broken out, and an addition was added. There are 2 graves there, one of which is a Mary Janson. Hmm. Who was she, and why, when there's still plenty of room inside the cemetery, did they bump the wall out like that?

March, 2010--Joe Janson wrote to say

"Mary Janson, whose grave is just outside the walls of the cemetery, was the daughter of Dick and Pauline Janson (and my sister). Because she died at birth and hadn't been baptized the church wouldn't allow my parents to bury her inside the consecrated walls. My brother Tom took it upon himself to right this wrong and the church opened up that area to the rest of the cemetery within the past ten years. That's why the wall is cut out like it is".

Thank you, Joe.I considered that possibility, but thought the church made exceptions for infants.  Sadly, they didn't.  (I'm personally offended that the wall looks broken on both ends, rather than neat and square.  But, I suppose jagged makes it clear that the church was not happy about doing it.  Sometimes the Catholic Church really is just plain WRONG).

Elizabeth the first

I realize I'm all over the map (ahem) with Jansonabilia, but there really is no clear way to tell the story. If you read from the beginning, maybe it'll all make sense eventually.

We're constantly searching for clues--that's the FUN part--and we're trying to make reasonable connections.

(When/if you explore Nabers in Iowa, you'll fine these 4 towns mentioned: Dyersville, Earlville, Petersburg and New Vienna).

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Here, from the church record book in New Vienna, Delaware County, Iowa, is the entry for Gerhard Naber and Elizabeth Rupiper's wedding on the 18th of May, 1858.

We think this couple had 4 children, and that three of them died before age 5...OR, they had only Henry, and Elizabeth the second had nine kids, four of whom died in infancy (if you go by the hand-drawn tree I posted yesterday).

If we go by census records, then 4 children were born before 1870, when Elizabeth (Rupiper) Naber died. She's buried in the Petersburg cemetery.


This is the plat map of most of Bremen township in Delaware County, Iowa. New Vienna (also called New Wine) is just off the right side....5 miles away.

Commit these maps to memory--we'll refer to them again.

WHO was Elizabeth Naber?

Elizabeth Naber has been a mystery to us because her death certificate says her father was Bernard Richls, and we believe she was the second 'Elizabeth' married to Gerhard Naber but we can't seem to prove it.

Background: When we were kids, we regularly went to Bancroft, Iowa to visit mom's cousins, Ida and Walburga Naber, tho mom said they were "not really cousins".
Over the years, when we'd ask mom about it, she seemed vague, or maybe we weren't listening. The questions were always about Ida and Walburg because we didn't have any other Naber relatives. As it turns out, they were the daughters of Gerhard Naber's son Henry with his first wife Elizabeth. Mom's mother, Margaret, was Gerhard's daughter by this second Elizabeth.
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I don't know where this tree came from or who drew it, but I found it among mom's stuff after she died in 1996. I tucked it away. Another family with repeat names through generations--argh.
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Along with it was this immediate family tree in mom's handwriting--ah, "Richels"--amazing that it took me 13 years to make the connection, but even then, either spelling could be correct.


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Searching ancestry.com, Bernard Richels, b 1864, arrived alone from Germany in May of 1886, but he can't be the parent of Elizabeth, since she was born in 1846. Besides, after that, even he drops off the radar...

Don't loose any sleep, ok? We'll keep looking!

Online sleuthing/More about Wendelin

Larry and I have developed quite a bit of curiosity about Grandpa's oldest brother, Wendelin. To start from the beginning, he was born in (present day) Balzfeld, Rhine-Neckar Kreis, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany on October 20, 1871, and died June 8th, 1958.
When the family emigrated, he was 11. He had the distinction of being in charge of the family chamber pot on the whole journey. (When mom told us the story, she said it wouldn't have been that unusual on board the ship, but the train ride from Philadelphia to Chicago to Minneapolis to Little Falls was miserable for him. The story always made us laugh, tho.)
When he was 24, he enlisted in the Third United States Infantry in St Paul, Mn, at Fort Snelling, "for service in the Phillipines". This was just before the Spanish-American War, and we haven't discovered whether he went to the Phillipines or not.
When he was discharged, he took a trip to Europe, returning on the Kensington in early August, 1898.
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Since he re-enlisted in May, 1899 and deserted in August of that year, we assume he went to Virginia with the family in 1900....but again, we don't know.
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Wendelin spent most of his life in Los Angeles, California. The earliest documentation of that, tho, is the 1915 city directory, where he's a freight handler living on Stephenson St. He worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
But, earlier, in the 1905 Minnesota Census, we find him at 258 East 7th Street in St Paul, Mn., one of 20 men living there.

I searched online to see what that address was. Maps put it near the Capitol, off Wabasha Avenue. Was it a rooming house, or was it the Ramsey County jail? Did they hold deserters in county jails?
If /when we find answers, I'll add to this post.

Stay tuned!

On the Move...

We were looking online for the answers to a fairly complicated set of genealogical questions about the Janson family, and Larry found answers that we could ONLY have found online. I'm still stunned, in awe of how his mind works, and delighted....I feel like Dr Watson to his Sherlock Holmes.

What we knew:

1. The Janson family moved to Hampden, Virginia in 1900 after spending 18 years in Minnesota improving their acreage, clearing fields, planting crops, and building a house and out-buildings on the farm west of Buckman.

2. Their eldest son, Wendelin, had enlisted in the military, served a 3 year stint, and was honorably discharged (1898). That summer, he took a trip to Europe.

3. The next spring, he re-enlisted, stayed 3 months, and deserted (1899).

4. In 1903 when Buckman incorporated, Joseph Janson was back there as one of the petitioners.

5. Altho the whole Joseph Janson family is listed in Hampden in the 1900 census, we believe that only Anton, plus 'one brother and three sisters*' accompanied Joseph and Franziska there, and that Anton stayed in Virginia for 3 more years after they went back to Minnesota, according to his WPA bio, right.
(* Anna, Rose, and Frances, plus Sebastian and his wife Mary Roos, who lived in Meherrin, Va).

6. The first two of Sebastian & Mary's kids were born in Virginia.

This all produced quite a few questions for Larry and me--like, what made them decide on Virginia, and why, right then? What kind of farms were available there? How did they find out about Hampden and Prince Edward County? Were there other German families in the area? Was the climate there really similar to southern Germany? (We were suspicious that they moved to hide Wendelin, but no, we don't think he was there at all).

The Library of Congress Chronicling America website: It's digitized historic newspapers from 15 states so far, and they include some from Minnesota and Virginia.

Larry found this article in the St Paul, Minnesota GLOBE Newspaper. A young scholar (W.E.B.DuBois!) uses Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia as a "typical" Southern town 30 years after the Civil War. Farmville happens to be about 5 miles from Hampden, and we think the Jansons may have read it, not with a view to the "Race Problem", but instead, imagining how they might fit there.
Click the article to read it.
Another internet WOW was information found in Google Books: this short rundown of Prince Edward County mentions German farmers moving there about 1900, and another book said it was about 12 families...

Amazingly, this FOR SALE ad appeared in the GLOBE, February 14, 1904--it could certainly have been placed by Grandpa Anton....

A photo of a West Virginia farm about the same time.