Joseph Janson's last will and testament

Oh, such a beautiful fall day today!  It's breezy and 64° and I'm happy ☺.

Yesterday, we heard from Bob G, a Johannes Janson descendant (his mom was a Daniel).  Bob's sent info before, about that side of the family and about the Zeeland, too, the ship that carried both families to America.

If you recall, Johannes had a son named Joseph, who became the blacksmith and village clerk in Buckman.  That made two Joe Jansons to keep separate, i.e., if the newspaper said Joe Janson had visitors from New Munich, then you knew it was old Joe, but if the paper mentioned Joe Janson's daughter who was working in Little Falls, you knew it was blacksmith Joe.  The problem ended in December 1911, when our grandpa's father Joseph died.  What Bob found was a last will written by (old) Joseph and his wife Franziska, from February, 1911.

The document must have been a transcription because the handwriting is too even and legible and (carelessly misspelled), but it gives us a list of what they owned, as well as who their close friends were (Ignatz Ronellenfitch and Joseph Weisbrik). This is soooo cool!

THANKS, BOB!

Jansons in the Pierz Journal

ACK!  It's such a shame that mom's family was so private.  The Janson mentions are rare in the 'Buckman News' column in the Pierz Journal, even with Math Hesch being a close neighbor.   Still, once in awhile.....

This visit may have been the occasion this photo was taken, huh?

____________________________

OK, this one refers to Joe Janson the blacksmith in Buckman, not our great grandfather Joe.

 ___________________________

A whole string of extended family mentions here, starting with the news (still new to us in 2012!) that GG Joe went to California to recuperate.  Was this the occasion for one of the financial setbacks Grandpa Anton spoke of?

Grasping at straws, see?  But this proves grandpa was spotted in town.

 Great grandpa Joseph Janson died on December 19, 1911

December 28, 1911

_________________________________

____________________________

Finding this next clip was stunning for a number of reasons--one being that the PJ didn't know Daniel's name, but printed the item anyway.  Also, Daniel must have been well known in Pierz/Lastrup/Buckman, because of his brother John Janson.  People "knew" which Janson they meant, I guess.

We didn't know that Daniel died in California, either.  

From the Pierz Journal, December 1, 1910:

 (BTW, Larry thinks it's cool to see an incidence of a  letter misplaced by the typesetter ☺)

This state fair seal was in the Journal.  I just thought it was cool.

Hundred year old Janson news

 From the December 21, 1911 Pierz Journal--a clipping just loaded with family connections!

The first line about Mrs. Naber and son:  That was our grandmother Maggie's mom, Elizabeth, and brother, John.  (It still surprises me to find diverse relatives in the Buckman News!)

The party held at Ignatz Ronellenfitch's farm (first place south of the Janson farm) is interesting too.  Everyone who read that would have known that (my g-grandpa) Joe Janson had died two days earlier, and that the Jansons and Ronellenfitchs were relatives from the same town in Germany...so loosing Joe made celebrating a bit harder.  Still, that set of guests insured SOME merriment.

Lastly, "J. B. Brander was a visitor at the home of Joe Janson Sunday."  Was J.B. Brander the parish priest?  Maybe Math was implying that he visited as a family friend rather than the pastor, huh? I suppose they would have been making funeral arrangements that night...

Joseph and Wendelin Janson NEWS

From the Pierz Journal, April 20, 1911--
"Joe Janson Sr. left for California Monday to visit his son Wendeline, who is running a truck farm out there.  Joe will stay a year for his health.  He has rheumatism and we hope it will help him".

Wow!  Three short sentences and look what we've learned: 1) Great grandpa tried California weather as a cure. 2) Wendelin did something besides the railroad, at least for awhile, and 3) Buckman knew Joseph as the Senior Joe Janson because his cousins' son was also Joe Janson (blacksmith in Buckman).

It's hard to imagine Wendelin trying something as agricultural as truck farming.  On the other hand, just cuz it's in the paper doesn't make it true.

Grandpa Anton said his father was weak and ill when they moved home from trying Virginia in 1902, but we didn't know that he went to California for his health 9 years later.  He didn't last a whole year--he died after 8 months, on December 19th, 1911. I wonder, did he die in California?
 .......................
So, I went looking for the Joseph Janson obit in the Pierz Journals of December 21 and 28.  No luck.  All I found was this, in Math's "Buckman" column, complete with misspellings:
(Yes, yes...I know you're supposed to copy something exactly.  Tough ☺).
"Sebastian Janson returned to his home in Wadena Saturday.  He was here to attend the funeral of his father Joe Janson".

Joseph Janson's American Citizenship Document

Thanks to Tom Janson for this!

Leaving Antwerp in February, 1883

Here's the family story about how Josef and Johannes Janson and their families left Europe:
Mom said they packed up and left by night, secretly loading their stuff and kids into rowboats on the river.  I always assumed "the river" was the Rhine, like we'd mean the Mississippi, but looking at the map of that area, there's a tributary to the Rhine right from Dielheim.  Wow--was that river really deep and wide enough to float get-away boats?
Anyway, the Rhine seems to meander all over, but eventually leads to the ports in Rotterdam and Antwerp in a whole different country, Holland.  Mom said they were "safe from pursuit" there, and could leave on the next ship out.  That ship turned out to be the Zeeland, a Red Star Line ship (last post, right!)

So this week, Larry found a pdf containing places in Belgium, the US, and Holland where you can write to find info about ancestors who left on Red Star ships. However, what really interested us were the photos sprinkled thru the brochure: 

The Red Star Line building, evidently at the port in Antwerp.

Waiting to go.
Judging by the women's clothing, this was a good 40 years
after  the Jansons left, but possibly from the same building?

 "Everything for passengers is done free of charge in this building"
says the sign (in 5 languages).  These were luggage disinfecting machines...
but I think they were not even thought of when our folks left.
These pics seem to be from well after 1900.

The most interesting photo, I think, is this pic showing passengers filing on board.
The words under the pic are the only explanation given, 
but the walkway in the foreground vs. the line of people farther down the quay 
speaks volumes.
 
And, damn, that's one SMALL ship.

Very very pregnant X 2

Occasionally, it pays to go back over documents just to see if there's anything new to be gleaned from them--stuff we didn't notice or appreciate with the limited knowledge we had then.

THIS is one of those documents.  Larry asked if I knew for sure when Joseph and Franziska Janson arrived in Buckman?  I thought Spring, 1883.  So, we looked for documentation in our files.

My ships lists showed Johannes and Joseph and their families arrived in Philadelphia from Antwerp in March 1883 on the Zeeland, and grandpa's book only said it was "early spring" when they arrived in Buckman from Little Falls.

Neither Larry or I realized before tonight that Josephs wife Franziska AND John's wife Maria were pregnant on the boat trip, and that both were due very soon.
Anton's sister Anna was born April 16, and Maria gave birth to little Francisca on April 22 that spring.  Both couples came here with 5 kids each, and now there were two more babies, in a tiny log cabin in a "garden size clearing in the woods".

St Michael's Church book, Births, 1883.  Stored in Pierz.

Joseph & Franziska (Fuchs) Janson

Just for the record, we spent some time trying to locate my Janson Great Grandparent's grave. We knew it had to be in Buckman at St Michaels, but I was looking for a grave STONE, not just a marker, so I walked right past this cross...

...but it's only logical that the husband of "Frances" would be next to hers, but has somehow been lost since 1911.

Where IS Horrenburg?

Thanks to Google, here're a couple of maps of the JANSON and FUCHS home territory.
The red marker, left, is the Balzfeld/Horrenburg area.

Larry found a website this morning called Auswanderung aus Sudwestdeutschland (Emigration from Southwest Germany) and with the search engine there, we found 49 Jansons who left between 1852 and 1883 (altho many names are duplicates).
There seemed to be a "first wave" in 1852-54 and a "second wave" in 1883. Wonder what made some Jansons wait 30 more years before leaving?
.



There's a family story that our two Janson families left the district of Horrenberg clandestinely, by taking row boats at night and floating down the Rhine to the port of Amsterdam. Between the families there were 10 kids, three of them under 3 years old.
Nine of the 10 were boys, and the oldest, Wendelin, was 11.
.


The Rhine River begins in the Alps and flows north. (Growing up near the Mississippi, it's tough to imagine that). Balzfeld and Horrenburg are just below and a little east of Mannheim.

Imagine what fantastic impressions Wendelin had from that trip....and how he'd naturally compare the new land in Virginia* and Minnesota to where he was born.

Nine years after arriving in America, Wendelin enlisted in the cavalry and fought in the Spanish-American War. Larry found his enlistment record online, but we don't know if he was assigned to Cuba, or the Phillipines, a half-world away. He spent most of his life in California, so we assume the latter.

*Oh, the reference to Virginia? Evidentally, the Jansons may have tried Virginia first to have land most like home, or they bought land there later--the whole family is listed in the 1900 census in Hampden, Prince Edward Co, Virginia. Grandpa said later, in his book, that the area was still so economically affected by the Civil War that they gave up, and went back to Minnesota.

Starting with "What we know"

About 5 years ago, maybe longer, I did some on-line inquiring about Joseph and Franziska (Fuchs) Janson, and got a reply from a man named August Gruelich, in California. He'd been researching the family for years. Our 'common ancestor' was through my Grandmother, Franziska Fuchs, and the connection was two or three generations back.
He eventually sent me the family tree gleaned from church records and a family record book he has access to.
I thought it was cool, and filed it away.

About that same time, I became online friends with Larry in Georgia, who's turned out to be a highly skilled researcher, and a genealogy nut to boot! When we started talking "family"--OMG--he kept finding articles, photos and related trees online, and asking me if they pertained! Some, I recognized. Some connected with both sides of my family thru the village of Buckman, Minnesota....only a few didn't connect at all.

Sheesh. When he sent me a copy of FamilyTreeMaker for my birthday, what could I do? Ever since, we've been doggedly looking for Nabers, Fuchs and Jansons while searching for dad's family, too....lol
There's more and more online these days--original American and European records, maps, and scholarly articles--about our forebearers lives in general. It's possible now to better understand their mindsets and the living conditions they left behind...and what they were looking for, here. It's a fascinating story.

My grandfather, Anton Janson, was a year old when he, his parents and siblings emmigrated. He was their 5th child ( 3 more were born here). One family story was that Joseph and his cousin, John, and HIS family, left Balzfeld and Horrenburg, Germany, at night, by row boat, floating down the river to Amsterdam, where they boarded a ship to America. And that Wendelin was in charge of the chamber pot, ALL the way....

There are more stories that need checking out, too. That's what this is all about!