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.....................................
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment