Born on the Fourth

Earlier this week, Em and Scott were here working on making the former office/junk room into a viable guest room....a big job!  I sorted some stuff and found an envelope I'd put away  months ago--mom stuff.  Cool to find again.




 Mom (Orlinda Janson Hesch ) was born in 1915, on the 4th of July.  So even if these items don't have anything to do with summer or July, they give us a glimpse of her as a girl--first an essay she wrote at 8 years old when she was a student at St Michaels in Buckman and English was her second language...

...and later when she attended Cathedral, in St Cloud.  No big deal, just too precious to not add here.  She would have been 97 today.  

We still miss her.

The Greulichs

When Larry first convinced me that my families' genealogy would be fascinating ("No, really--this'll be fun!") my only research to date was a connection with an older gentleman on the west coast who said he was related to the Jansons.  I'd posted some mis-information on an online message board one Sunday, and he saw it and contacted me.  

Eventually, he sent me the Janson Family tree going back from my grandpa Anton Janson, including Greulichs who'd married Jansons along the way.  He found the tree in a book written by a Ronellenfitch in Horrenburg, Germany.  I recognized the Ronellenfitch name from Buckman, but I didn't know that that family had also married Jansons over there.  So, cool!

The gentleman from California who'd sent the info was August Greulich, a name I'd never heard before.  But look--evidently, great grandpa Joe kept in touch with other expats from home, even if they'd settled in Kentucky.  

And yes, according to Family Search, there was a Daniel Greulich in Louisville, Kentucky who was born in Germany in 1831, and died a year after he visited Minnesota: September 19, 1910.

I really hope they had a lovely visit. Great grandpa Joe died in December, 1911.

Elizabeth Naber 1873-1911

One of the conundrums Larry and I ran into early in our search was the numerous different Elizabeth Nabers we found.  We eventually discovered that my grandmothers' father, Gerhard Naber, had married twice to women named Elizabeth and with the second Elizabeth had a daughter they named... Elizabeth.  

When great grandpa Gerhard died in Iowa, his widow Elizabeth moved to Buckman with her sons John and Gerhard, and daughters Margaret and Elizabeth.  A third daughter, Katherine, already lived in Pierz (Mrs William Bahns).

Evidently, the younger Elizabeth had kidney troubles* even before they left Iowa, and finally died of it in April, 1911:

 I was struck by the life/death/funeral/burial economy of the announcement in the paper.  Sure, the Pierz Journal was a weekly, and this all happened within a week.  It was strange, tho, seeing it all on one page.

* Bright's Disease is an older classification for different forms of kidney disease. It was named after Dr. Richard Bright, who described the condition in the early 19th century. Lack of understanding of kidney function naturally meant that several different conditions could be considered Bright's Disease. These include inflammation of the kidney, commonly called nephritis. Inflammation may be the result of too much protein being shed through the kidneys, called proteinuria, or hematuria, which causes blood in the urine. As well, Bright's Disease might describe kidney failure due to high blood pressure or retention of fluids.

Those symptoms most commonly associated with Bright's Disease were intense pain on either or both sides of the lower back. Fever might be present and intense edema, or retention of fluids, might cause the extremities to appear extremely swollen. Breath could be labored and difficult, particularly if kidney failure caused fluid to accumulate in the lungs, or was caused by metastasized cancer.

Naber news from 1912

"John T. Schmid, recently from Medina, N. D., has bought the farm of Margaret Naber, better known as the old "Poster Farm" east of Buckman, and moved onto it a few weeks ago".

Margaret Naber was my grandmother, before she married Anton Janson, but HOW did she come by a farm of her own?  We know "John Naber and his mother" moved to Buckman from Petersburg Iowa in the spring of 1910 (his sisters Margaret and Elizabeth moved there, too...was that just understood?)
We know the farm in Iowa must have sold for big bucks (Larry found an article mentioning the great increase in Iowa farm land prices  then), so perhaps the Nabers invested in a few farms instead of just one.  It would have been a good way to bestow a legacy on a child and increase the value of the inheritance at the same time, huh?

More from the Morrison Co Pictorial Atlas

Wow, an '80s photo taken at my cousin Galen's wedding to Ann Held.  I still say he really lucked out ☺, Ann is delightful.  Unbelievable that their youngest son graduated from High School this month.

Wendelin's "Dan Janson"

Back in November, 2009, I posted a letter that grandpa Anton's brother Wendelin wrote as Anton lay dying at Wendelin's house in LA.  He was angry that Anton hadn't stayed in Minnesota, and, I think, that it was beginning to seem like Jansons came to California to die...on Wendelin's dime.
In the letter, he wrote that  "we can't let this thing end up like Dan Janson..." Larry and I had no idea what that meant--we hadn't discovered Daniel yet (in Rice, Mn) and what could have happened that upset Wendelin so?  
Eventually Larry and I pieced stuff together,and realized he meant his father's COUSIN Dan, the Janson immigrant who'd settled in Rice.  
"None of you would be in Buckman or St Cloud today without the help from here.  I’ll tell you again, we just can’t afford to let this end up like Dan Janson we just can’t".
Whew.  Dan Janson died in Sacramento, California November 10, 1910.  Grandpa Anton died in 1955, so Wendelin was still smarting about something that happened 45 years earlier.  Did Mom and Uncle Reinhard even know what he was talking about?


Frankly, we don't know the story either, but we can speculate:  based on the fact that even in 1955 when grandpa Anton died there, he couldn't be shipped home unaccompanied on the train.  A relative had to claim the body and go along with it--so in 1910, was Wendelin elected to take time off work, identify the body, and take Daniel home?  And oh-oh, was he expected to pay for both, plus doctor bills?  

Daniel and Wendelin would have known each other, surely, but they probably weren't close, or it wouldn't have bugged him quite so much.  Obviously it did anyway, all those years later.

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.