Saturday, October 24, 2009

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

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