Johannes Janson, the immigrant

 For years, I thought my great grandparents (Joseph and Franziska) just never had time for a portrait, or didn't like cameras, or something.  Turns out we do have at least one photo of both of them, not to mention the later lovely pic that graces the top of this blog with the widow Franziska.


But the couple who became our greats arrived here with another couple--Joseph's cousin John, his wife Anna (Sauer) Janson and their five kids.  THIS couple, it seems, had no problems with photography, at least once their family was grown.

The legend in the Janson family is that after Joe and John arrived in Buckman with their pregnant wives and five kids each, the one room cabin on the land west of town was a little too small.  Joe and John "had words", and John took his family five miles south.  I'm not sure where that was, but they eventually moved to Mayhew Lake, Mn.

When Larry first convinced me that genealogy would be fun, we checked to see if there was anything online already about Jansons.  Wow! there was a lovely website by one of John and Anna's great-grands, Carrie.  She had gobs of photos (including these, of course).  I copied those that applied, with her blessings.  At the time, only a few of the pics were people I knew about (Sr. Mamertha, for instance), but since then, we've made more and more connections.

One of the cool legends in their family regards who John was before he left Baden.  Here's a photo of him in 1870 (at 25) during the Franco-Prussian war when he was a soldier in Germany.  Later, he was a cabinet maker, and still later, a farmer here in Minnesota.  (Too bad we have no such legend about Joseph, who's history seems to have begun on a boat to America in 1883--sigh!)  As far as possible, we'll tell John's story now.  If you find this and are descended from John and Anna, let me know, ok?  "marlysky" on googles' e-mail service.

Thanks!