A 1913 bride

For 38 years of my life I was a florist, so of course bridal bouquets always catch my eye and interest. This is even more true if they're from a family wedding.

This bouquet was the one Margaret Naber carried when she married Anton Janson in May, 1913.  It looks to be 4 or 5 large open roses in different colors at the top, with ranunculas and lily of the valley (or stephanotis?) cascading.
Ranunculas and lily of the valley are spring flowers, but full blown roses couldn't have been grown in Buckman in May.  Besides, these seem particularly large and sturdy.  Where would fresh flowers have come from in 1913?


I started looking online--Little Falls?  St Cloud?  Amazingly, there's a history of Minnesota florists online. A flower shop opened in Brainerd in 1901...hmm, maybe there?  Little Falls Greenhouse opened in 1947, and Lens Flower Dell in the 60s.  I didn't know of earlier florists....so I emailed Morrison County Historical Society and got a wonderful answer (bottom of this post).


 Larry and I were online this morning, talking it over.  I mentioned again that they look almost artificial, and if they were, they might have been ordered from anywhere.  He said, "Oh sure, mail order...maybe the Sand Sisters in LF?"


The lights went on! The Sand sisters owned a millinery shop in Little Falls, but there was also a millinery in Buckman, just south of John Hesch's store.  The flowers DO look like hat trimming flowers, don't they?  Her veil and Anton's boutonniere were largish lily of the valley...too big and too sturdy to be real.  WOW!
It makes sense that a milliner would provide wedding bouquets, and certainly, the flowers could be used later to trim a hat.  

(Kinda cool that the Sand Cafe is now the Flower Dell, huh?)

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Wow!  And then, Larry found some wonderful catalogs and magazines online from the winter of 1912, and spring of 1913...it seems to me Margaret Naber bought a dress modeled on Paris fashion.  

Way to go, Gramma!

Here's the email answer from MCHS:

"In response to your question about florists, there are a few
possibilities. The Little Falls Greenhouse was opened around 1940.
Previous to that the Odd Shop offered flowers beginning in the late 1930s.
The Odd Shop was a gift store. There was also the Gordon Guy Flower Shop
in the 1940s but then it became a photography business. Also in the 30s is
Chinberg Florist; they appear to be the first actual florists, opening
around 1930. Lastly, the Levis Book Store carried flowers in 1916/1917 so
they are a possibility for where your grandmother bought her bouquet.

Another possibility, if the flowers were artificial is that they could
have been bought at a millinery".

Marissa Knaak
Intern

THANKS to the world's best researcher and to Marissa...Woohoo!

Oh sure, I suppose you want to see the WHOLE dress, right?

Anton Janson and Margaret Naber

May 19, 1913

Farm Dogs

I think Nabers and Jansons always had favorite dogs. They liked being in the picture, too, I guess. ☺
I inherited Ida's photo album, and there are tons of dog photos without people.  I'm sure Ida knew each one's name...

Another photo-editing miracle

The original of this pic is 3 X 4 inches--about the size of a cel phone--so it was hard to see who the people might be.  Yeah, Grandpa Janson always stood that way, like a leaning tower, so it was probably him.  But then, what about the others?

The old black & white photos don't distort when they're enlarged because there's so much info stored on them, so we can see that this is probably the Anton Janson family...but hmm, not quite.  The littlest kid would have been Reinhard, at maybe 4?  Then this was 1925, and Loretta (with the elbows) would have been 8, and Linda, 10.  The woman in back would have been Margaret, my grandma, but I question the photo.

(For ease of reference, lets name these figures, ok?  The woman in the black coat is Big Girl;  the woman reaching out we'll call Woman;  the girl in white is Elbows, and the little kid is LK...lol)

Another thing we have to consider is who the photographer was.  Who did they know in 1925 with a camera?  Well, Ida Naber, and we know they visited each other fairly often.  That summer,  Ida was 23, and her sis Walburga was 27.  If they were visiting, taking pictures was a given. 

But at 10, mom wouldn't have been as tall as 'Big Girl' in the photo, and would have been dressed more like 'Elbows'...so maybe the 'Woman' was grandma Margaret, and 'Big Girl' was Walburga...and at this moment, Linda was still combing her hair or something.  Was it the day this ▼ pic was taken?   And, which farm was this?  The Janson farm in Buckman, or the Naber farm in Bancroft, Iowa?

(Yah, it's also possible that 'Big Girl' was a 'Hired Girl', but that's not as fun as speculating !)

The Anton Janson Family

This was a negative I found last week in a box of photos.  Its pretty recognizable-- that has to be grandpa Janson, and there's mom as a girl.  But, the photo is backwards...lol

Thanks to the miracle of computer photo-editing programs, we can easily flip it and darken it.  So, here we have Margaret (Naber) Janson & Anton Janson, with their three kids.  Reinhard was born in 1921, so if he was 5 in this photo, then Loretta was 9 and Orlinda was 11, and the year was 1926.

(OK, so Larry's photo editing is better than mine...lol)

Joe Janson, Blacksmith

If you drive into Buckman, Minnesota from the south, on Highway 25, you'll pass St Michaels church on the left.  A block farther, on the opposite corner, you'll see a long, white building with a garage door facing 25.

That was the location (same building underneath?) of Joe Janson's Blacksmith shop. 

This is how the interior looked in 1925.  If you needed horseshoes, he was obviously your man.

How was Joe related? 

 Joe A. Janson was our great-grandfathers' cousins' son. In other words, John Janson (the immigrant) named this son 'Joseph Anton', and he became a blacksmith in Buckman. Joe A. married Mary Poster, and they had 3 kids--Irene, Robert and Otto.

In fact, here's the WPA bio Joseph gave to John Schmolke in 1937:

The Janson home farm in the '40s

Once again, searching newspapers gives us a part of the story: Larry found this in the Brainerd newspaper in

August, 1946...

At the time, grandpa Anton Janson was 66. His wife Margaret Naber Janson had died 15 months earlier, in April 1945.

Their daughter, Linda, was about to be married on September 28th, and their son, Reinhard, enlisted in the Army on 15 October 1946. 

......................................

The Brainerd Dispatch carried news from a large area, and still does.  I'm not sure what "accepted" meant in this article from October 1946...were these men already AT Ft. Snelling?
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We're trying to put together a timeline regarding who owned what, when.  I was born on that farm in 1949, so my parents were living there...but didn't Reinhard own the farm?  Well no....

Here's what we've figured out:

1946--Anton decides to retire because Linda is getting married, and Reinhard isn't ready to settle down yet.  Was the auction a ruse?  Or, was everything sold--animals, machinery and household items?  By the end of 1946, Anton had a new son-in-law who intended to farm and a son who was off in the service...
1947--Anton writes a pamphlet about his experiences as a pioneer, and Linda has a baby girl. 
1948--Reinhard is home from Japan, and marries on June 26.  They set up housekeeping on a farm in Mayhew Lake, Mn, and live there for more than a year.
1949--Linda has another daughter--ahem--ME.
1950 or so--the two couples exchange farms, and Linda takes Anton's desk with all of the family pictures.  (Reinhards kids grew up thinking their dad was never photographed as a kid).
1951--Linda has a third daughter, on the Mayhew Lake farm.  The farm there is poor, mostly sand, and a bad investment.  They move to St Cloud, where Mike takes advantage of the GI Bill, and starts working for the VA.
1952--Reinhard's first son is born, on the family farm in Buckman.  Life isn't easy for them either.  Anton travels between the farm, St Cloud, and Los Angeles, California...making the circuit continuously.
1953--Linda has a fourth daughter and Reinhard has a second son...lol
1955--Anton has a heart attack in LA and dies.  He's buried in Buckman, Minnesota.
1956--Linda has a son, and so does Reinhard.
1958--Another son for Reinhard...
1966--and another!  Yay!

Linda & Loretta Janson

When mom's cousin Ida Naber died at 93 (in 1995),  I inherited her photo album.  99% of the photos in it are un-marked--some, I recognize, most, I don't.  Argh. 

But these two, I definitely recognize.  I'm not sure I've ever seen mom's Solemn Communion picture before, but I've seen Loretta's and wasn't sure who she was...lol  It has to be her, tho, since mom always said my sister Kathy looked like Loretta.  I can see it, in her eyes, and the shape of her face.

That's Linda Janson (c. 1927) on the left, and Loretta Janson (c. 1929) on the right, daughters of Anton and Margaret (Naber) Janson.

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...

Little Grandpa

My dad's father (Anton Hesch) was a tall substantial man, probably about 6 feet and 250 pounds, while my mom's father, (Anton Janson) was about 5'7" and thin. He might have weighed 150 pounds...so, in our family, we had a "Big Grandpa", and a "Little Grandpa".

All his life, Little Grandpa wanted to be stronger and healthier than he was. He had poor eyesight, and felt he'd spent his formative years working too hard for "proper development" of his body. When he married, at 33, he was still looking for something that would help make him more fit.

Then, he discovered Physical Culture Magazine by a man named Bernarr MacFadden, who was evangelical about exercise and health food. Grandpa Janson felt that he'd missed getting an education as a child, so he was a 'seeker' as an adult. MacFadden was only one of Grandpa's guiding lights, but mom remembered taking "healthy" brown bread to school and being vegetarian when nobody knew what that was. She hated it.

Still, have a look at an issue or two of those Physical Culture Magazines. They're fascinating--the articles and ads are SO early 1900s America.

Anton Janson-1880 to 1955

When my mom passed away in 1996, I had the responsibility of disposing of her stuff, so a lot of "memorabilia" got stored in my basement, where it still languishes. I would deny that I'm sentimental, but the evidence shows otherwise...

Still, I'm amazed at what cool stuff I kept (let's face it--I kept it ALL). A copy of the Pierz Journal from Thursday, January 27th, 1955 had grandpa's obit on the front page.

There's a pretty neat story that goes with it: At the time, when a person died far from home, the authorities would not send a body home un-accompanied. It was the family's responsibility to go there and claim it, and take it home.
No one here in Minnesota could afford such a journey. Mom with young kids, and Uncle Reinhard on the farm--neither had extra funds...
But Helen Hesch lived in California and volunteered to pose as his married daughter (the reason her last name was different than his) and go claim the body AND accompany it home to Buckman.
After that, Helen became a saint in our household.

About 1935

This is my Grandpa Anton Janson and his three children--Loretta, Reinhard and Orlinda.
The original photo was a 1" by 2" print on tin, probably taken at a carnival*. Loretta looks to be about 15, and Reinhard looks about 12, so Orlinda (mom) would be 20...and Grandpa was 55.

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*I didn't realize there was a dog in the photo till Larry pointed it out--see? Mom's sitting on it. (My attempt at photoshopping Fido's eyes back in were pathetic--it made the thing look like a canine Marty Feldman).