Why it's good to wear stripes

The only quiet moment on Saturday--
Glenn, me, Pauline and Tom

Tom served a delicious lunch of soup and fresh popovers.  All went well (read: no soup on the blouse) until he offered some terrific grape jam for the popovers.  That was my downfall, but we were talking so non-stop that I never saw the glob on my chest till I was almost home...sigh!  We got up from the table on Saturday, and Bev had her camera ready.  Thank goodness Pauline agreed to stand in front. (Anyway, you can barely see the jelly ☺).
 A gracious host, a consuming subject and delightful people to share it all with. What a good time!

Janson news from 1955 and this weekend ☺

Last summer, I got an email from Sebastian's grandson Tom.  We compared notes, answered questions each of us had, and decided we should get together with Tom's cousin, Glenn, since we had so many stories to compare. (Tom is Dick's son, and Glenn is Joe's son). 


We finally got together this last Saturday (!) at Tom's house and had a wonderful time.  What made it even more fun was Glenn's wife Bev and Tom's mom, Pauline (Bev is the real genealogist of that cool couple, and Pauline, at 93, actually knew a lot of the people we were talking about...including mom, who she said I looked like ☺).  So, we talked like crazy, and shared pictures, documents and stories.  


I'm waiting for copies of old photos from Tom (Got em, THANKS, Tom!)  and new ones from Bev, (got em--THANKS, Bev!) but here's a really cool story we pieced together in the meantime.  It's amazing, I promise:


In 1955, grandpa Anton Janson had a heart attack and eventually died at the home of his brother Wendelin, in Los Angeles.  As Wendelin sat watch over Anton that night, he wrote an angry letter to Mom and Uncle Reinhard.  He said he'd seen this coming, Anton should be at home in Minnesota not in California, etc...but that "We can not let this thing end up like Dan Janson ended up in Sacramento"......"I'll tell you again, we just can't afford to let this end up like Dan Janson we just can't".


When Larry and I first read the letter, we'd never heard of Dan Janson, but we've done considerable research since then.  Dan's parents left Horrenberg when the other two families did, but sailed later, and settled 17 miles from Buckman, in Rice, Minnesota.  


We still don't know what happened with Dan/Wendelin, but on Saturday, Glenn told us about accidentally finding another Glenn Janson, in Spokane, Washington.  Evidently, the two men wrote back and forth, and when MN Glenn had occasion to fly to Washington, he arranged to meet WA Glenn. MG said that as he came off the plane and glanced at the people waiting there, he picked out WG right away.  MG said they tried for an hour and a half to find relatives in common, but failed.  But as MG got up to catch his plane, WG asked if MG had ever heard of Rice, Minnesota?  Evidently, WG had relatives from there, but our Glenn didn't know of any Jansons in Rice....


So now, Bev and Glenn intend to call Washington Glenn and make the connection, and maybe ask about the infamous Dan.  Isn't that COOL?
  
Of COURSE we'll let you know what they find out, ok?

Mom and Muriel

Today, Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program called 

Remembering Hubert H. Humphrey's Life in Politics .

Of course, Muriel Humphrey was part of the audio, which made me think of mom, who admired Muriel a lot. 

In fact, my sisters wrote to Mrs Humphrey and asked for an autographed photo.  It arrived in time for mom's birthday, I think.  We teased about framing the photo or building a little altar ala the BVM.  Since Muriel had sent the photo on request, "Muriel" could be asked for just about anything, like, "I've always wanted blue eyes--I bet Muriel could get em for me..."  It was always funny, really.

Well, ok, I suppose you had to be there.

I think mom liked her apparent calmness and loyalty, and that she spoke well.  When I think of mom's heros, I'd say they were Jack Paar, Winnie Doroff and Muriel Humphrey....a pretty elite subset of humanity, but only Muriel sent an autographed 8X10 glossy.

A Janson Relative?

WOW--last night, I found this interesting obit from a newspaper in Canton, Ohio, June 1st, 1906. (Searching for family names on the Library of Congress website called Chronicling America just got better because they've added more historic newspapers--YAY!) 


Doesn't the name and occupation seem awfully familiar?  So, is "Wendelheim, Hessen, Germany" anywhere near Deilheim and Horrenburg?  When I look at a map of Germany, I locate Mannheim first, because our Jansons came from just south of that city....so, when I found a current map of where Hessen is...yes, Mannheim is on the bottom  of the bright pink part, see?
Evidently, the newspaper misspelled the name of the town, too.  It should have an s:
  


Hmm, there seems to be two Wendelsheims, both in southern Germany--one in Rhineland-Palatinate and the other is a suburban district of Rottenburg am Neckar in the administrative district of Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg (Germany).  I'd guess we're talking about the second one, huh?

While googling "Wendelheim, Hessen, Germany", a family history book from another family showed up too: Record of the Descendants of Johann Jost Wentz, by Richard Willing Wentz.  What caught my eye was a discussion of name origins, specifically WENDEL and WENDELIN (like grandpa's older brother, Wendelin).  Take a few minutes and read these three pages--it's  background that definitely pertains to our family and the naming traditions in Catholic Germany of the time:

No, you're right, none of this connects the above obituary to our Jansons.  He might have been related or not, but finding that obit got us a whole lot more information, and THATS cool. ☺

Online Iconography

(This post is copied from our other blog, Hesch History, but it's more about St Michaels in Buckman than it is about Heschs.  It concerns a painting "procured from Bernard Richter in St Annaberg, Silesia" in 1902, which hangs now in the new part of St Michaels.  (Walk in the main door and look up to your left).  

I'll probably always be stunned by what's available online in the way of tools (and toys).  Photoshop, for one.  Sure, everyone knows you can fade wrinkles or replace a whole body with PS, but there are other WAY more useful things it can do.  Larry took the side view of the painting from the church in Buckman and made it a full-view, AND lightened it alot (so we could see it better).  In fact, it's  probably never been cleaned.  We expect it was lighter and brighter 100 years ago (tho certainly not as bright as the image at the bottom of this post ☺).

Another amazing tool here is the plethora of images available online...but why would we need other pictures?  Well, Larry and I were both brought up Catholic.  We've all seen St Michael the Archangel a gazillion times, right?....but looking at the painting, we realized something was wrong.  The classic St Michael image holds a sword in his right hand (to conquer Satan), and a scale in his left (justice).  In earlier images, he might have held a shield instead of the scale, but the sword was a given, as was the dragon/devil/lizard under his feet...the flames not so much.
In the Buckman painting, those iconic elements are missing or..odd, somehow.  
The Buckman painting shows something in the clouds above the angel, who's holding a chain in his left hand, and something we can't figure out aloft, in his right.  In fact, Larry wondered if the figure was more like Archangel Gabriel iconography.  
So, last night, Larry started looking for more info on Bernard Richter and St Annasberg in Silesia, while I started looking for classic pics of Mike and Gabe, to check iconic differences between them.
(BTW, 'iconic' means the elements in an image that stand for this particular saint, like a tonsure, lily and book always means St Dominic, even if you can't read the inscription).
We both scored.  Larry found a book called 
The St. Anne Church  in Annaberg, by Ernst Oswald Schmidt,

 published in 1908.  It's written in Old German, but it's been machine 

translated...which helps, but not much ☺.  We definitely found the name 
Richter there, as well as a stained glass window depicting Archangel Michael. 
However, that image is completely different from the painting in Buckman.

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My search results were interesting.  I used Google images as well as TinEye reverse image search and found that Gabriel was most connected with the Annunciation, and he almost always had figures in the clouds around him.  And  I was looking for some connection between the high altar statue in St Michaels in Buckman and the Bernard Richter painting, both of which have the odd element of a chain rather than a scale in Michael's left hand.  I found only one other.  Was that just boredom with painting scales?

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Here's the adjusted painting, as well as the lighter version.  On the right is a holy card that must have been in most Catholic prayerbooks back then, because that pose is used over and over for St Michael. Maybe it was part of the 1800s Gettyimages?

Larry figured out that the two figures in the clouds above Michael identify the painting as coming from Annaberg.  They are St Ann and her daughter, Mary.
But what is that in Mike's right (dominant) hand?  In icon-language, the right hand was like the summation of a story, so what it holds is important.  Is it the severed head of the dragon? Or...mundanely, is it Michael's hat?  Hey, it matches his clothes.  Richter wasn't Michaelangelo, after all, but he painted something more personal for his patrons in Minnesota, more in the Polish German spirit, meant to remind them of their roots in the old country. Das war gut genug.

If you're reading this and you find yourself in St Michaels in Buckman, would you check the painting and see what you think he's holding?  Blogs can be changed...let me know, ok?