It's time for the County Fair

It's County Fair time so yesterday afternoon Ole and I drove down to the little town that hosts the fair and dropped off our entries. Ole entered three bottles of his homemade wine. He says the chokecherry that he entered this year from 2006 is the best wine he's ever made. I'm not much of a wine connoisseur, but even I like this stuff.

He entered wine last year too. None of the wine that was entered from any participant was opened. Now tell me - how can you judge wine without tasting it? When he asked the ladies in the entry booth about that they told him they thought the judge last year was a non-drinker so she didn't bother to taste any of the entries! Seems to me they should find a different judge, then, huh? I entered homemade salsa last year that EVERYBODY raved about when they tried it. THAT wasn't opened either - if that happens again this year I think I'll have to "rattle some cages."

I also entered some photos that I've taken over the summer. Last year one of my photos got grand champion, but I don't know if any of these are of that caliber. I blew them all up to 8x10, matted and framed them, so they do look pretty good, at least to my eye.

Ole's bringing the motorhome up to the house so I can start cleaning and he can start loading. I'm SO looking forward to this trip as we haven't been on any major trips since last fall. Our tentative plan is to head for Red Lodge, Montana and spend a few days there where we'll ride over Bear Tooth Pass on the Harley. Then we'll move on down to Thermopolis and cover that area, including Meeteetse and all the hot springs. Then it's over to the Tetons for a few days. Next stop will be ten days in Sturgis, SD and the Black Hills where we'll connect with our long-time friends from Arizona. On the way home we'll spend several days in Medora, ND and the Badlands where hopefully Lovely Daughter and the New Man will be able to meet us. So we'll have a full plate during this trip, but hopefully be able to take things at a slow pace and unwind a little bit.

Well, that's it for today Folks, I better shake my fanny and get moving.

A Peek Into the Past

I must admit I have some strange ways of entertaining myself. One of the things I LOVE to do is go through old pictures. Even though I’ve been through them many times over the last years, it seems that each time I look at them I make new discoveries.

In yesterday’s entry I told you about my maternal Grandmother’s family hiding from the Indians by submerging themselves in a slough and breathing through reeds until the Indians left. Below is a picture of that family taken a number of years after the incident, of course. That’s my Grandmother standing in back on the left behind my Great Grandfather.

Next is a picture of my Mother’s parents, Adam and Sophie, on their wedding day. Adam was married once before to a woman named Tilda who died shortly after they were married. Less than six months later he married Sophie. Apparently Adam was a mover and a shaker back then and wasn’t going to waste any time!

Through the years they had eight kids – six sons and two daughters. That’s my Mom on the far left with all the braids wrapped around her head. This was taken in 1918. My Mother would have been thirteen at the time. Look at the frown on my Grandmother’s face, and doesn’t it look like she’s lost all her teeth?

At the time the above picture was taken the family was living in southern Minnesota. My Grandfather had purchased land in north central North Dakota and sent his two oldest sons and oldest daughter there to manage it until he could get his Minnesota farm sold and move the rest of the family.

Here’s a picture of how they moved – yes, that’s right – in a boxcar. They loaded up all their farm equipment and livestock and someone had to ride with the livestock to take care of it. I don’t know that the women rode in the boxcar, but that’s where the men stayed.

Now the two oldest sons, George and Oscar, and the oldest daughter, Hulda, were at the North Dakota farm for about two years before the rest of the family came. I believe Hulda was about eighteen years old at this time. The Great Northern Railroad ran through town and there was a very “dapper” man from Sioux City, Iowa, who ran the railroad office. His name was Al, and he and Hulda started “keeping company.” Al was substantially older than Hulda, and he must have been a fast talker because the next thing you know Hulda ended up “in a family way” as it was so genteelly stated back then. They were married “on the fly” and shortly thereafter a baby girl was born named Adeline. Unfortunately Adeline was epileptic and because they didn’t have all the medications back then to treat epilepsy, she died having a seizure at age eight. They never had any more children.

Here’s a picture of some of the family members taken shortly after their wedding. That’s Hulda in the dress with the white bib front and Al standing to her right in the three-piece suit.

Okay, enough entertainment for today. I really need to get started with my day. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover and sitting here doesn’t get that done.

Not only am I a Half-breed - - - -

I was going through some file drawers the other day, just kind of picking and cleaning and emptying and refiling – you know how it is. They get so full you have to weed things out to make room for all the new stuff you accumulate. One of the file cabinets in my computer room is a lateral 4-drawer file 48 inches wide, and one of the drawers is completely FULL of all the genealogy materials and records that I’ve collected over the last ten years. I have managed to make some sense of all this information, have “assembled” two books and made them available to all the descendants I have located.

Unfortunately I didn’t get interested in family history until my mother died in 1997. She was the last one in her family of her generation and could have filled in so many blanks for me had I been into documenting things at that time. But no, leave it to me – I always have to do things the hard way, and after her death it left me searching for lots of answers.

You certainly find out some interesting things about your ancestors when you go searching – some actual facts and plenty of “fairy tales.”

My mother was a full-blooded Swede, second generation. Her father arrived in the United States in 1880 and then sent money back to Sweden so his next youngest sister could come the following year. They both worked and saved enough to send for the remainder of the family, which consisted of their parents (Anders and Maja) and six younger brothers and sisters. A seventh child was born after they arrived in the United States. To this date I have managed to contact every living descendant of Anders and Maja. I would have to go back and count, but I believe they number somewhere up in the six hundreds. Some of them I’ve developed a relationship with and have actually traveled to meet. Some I wish I had never met (aacckkk), and some are wonderful people.

My Grandfather (Mom’s father) was a very tall, slender man and my Grandmother (Mom’s mother) was very tiny and petite. Another very interesting thing I discovered is how certain characteristics can skip many generations and then show up farther on down the line. I have a first cousin who is the spitting image of my grandfather. If all you saw was the face and didn’t have the clothing to judge by you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. He’s also very tall and slender, but the facial characteristics blew me away when I first compared the pictures. My grandmother was just slightly pigeon-toed in her right foot and had a rather strange gait when she walked because of it. She also had a rather unique posture when she was standing. My oldest niece has the exact same pigeon-toe in her right foot and the same posture when standing. She makes many of the same gestures with her hands when talking. None of these characteristics were noticeable in her mother (my sister). My niece would be three generations down from my grandmother!! I guess some little piece of DNA got sent on down the pipeline somewhere.

Now my maternal grandmother’s family history is somewhat sketchy as they came to the United States about twenty years earlier – 1862 to be exact, and records weren’t kept very well at that time. This was during the Civil War and also at the time of the Indian Wars in southern Minnesota. From what I’ve been able to ascertain my great grandparents, Johann and Kristine, arrived in St. Paul on a barge on the Mississippi River and transferred from there to another barge that was going up the Minnesota River. They didn’t go very far until they found land to homestead just to the southwest of what is now Minneapolis. During that summer the Indians went on a rampage massacring settlers that were scattered throughout the countryside. Entire families were killed. Some folks managed to escape and take refuge in Fort Snelling, but others had to fend for themselves. From what I’ve been able to research in some of the local county historical societies in that area there were several families that managed to escape by submerging themselves in a slough and breathing through reeds when the Indians came through. They spent many hours under water and didn’t surface until the Indians had killed all their livestock and burned their buildings. Johann and Kristine and their two oldest daughters were among these people. One of those daughters was my grandmother.

Johann and Kristine went on to have five more children, but unfortunately all five of them died during a two-year period in the late 1800s. From what I’ve been able to ascertain they died from some kind of flu that ran rampant during that time. What a tragedy.

I’ve also managed to complete some research in Sweden by hiring a genealogist that is affiliated with the Swedish National Archives. Apparently tracking back in the Scandinavian countries is a breeze because excellent records were kept. The Church and State were “one” at that time and every year a government official would come around and take a census to update records. If you wanted to move your family from one parish (comparable to our states) to another you had to get a letter signed by the priest acknowledging the fact that you were leaving. Your names would then be removed from his Big Book. When you arrived at your destination you had to check in with that parish priest so he could record you in his Big Book. I managed to collect data back to 1747 and then everything stopped.

After much correspondence with the genealogist I had hired and with the Swedish archives I made the interesting discovery that the female ancestor that I had managed to track down named Maja Jonsdottir, had the occupation of Prostitute!! The Swedish Archives had a much nicer name for it than prostitute, but I don’t remember offhand what it was. Anyway, being the Church and State were “one,” and they were trying to have an upstanding and pure government, they didn’t believe in prostitutes, so all records prior to her were destroyed. As far as they were concerned she didn’t exist!

So there you have it folks – not only am I a half-breed, the product of a Swedish mother and a Norwegian father, but I’m the descendant of a prostitute and I married a Finlander. I was told that wasn’t good either because they always carry knives, you know!!