Matthies family

I have spent a little time working on determining what happened to my paternal grandma Elsie Matthies family. She had 6 siblings, 4 girls and 2 boys. I have tracked down the obituaries of everyone and thought I might post them.

I will start with the parents Fred and Bertha. I wrote a little bit about what I knew about them here.

I am still working on determining Fred's family in Germany where he came from but here is his obituary

I was able to locate the tiny village in Pommerania (now Poland) where Bertha came from and wrote about that here and here is her obituary

Fred and Bertha are buried in Minot, ND where they retired. All of Grandmas siblings chose to be buried there as well, except Grandma herself, despite the fact that several were not in the area at all when they died.

Anna 1900 - 1989 was the oldest. She married Sylvester Kinsella and stayed in the Minot area. She had a daughter named Agnes, married name Wunderlich.

Minnie 1901 - 1936 was next. She married Roy Kinzell. They had twin boys, Ronald and Donald, and a daughter Violet. Ronald appears to have passed as an toddler, sadly, but I do not know that story yet. Minnie obviously was young when she died too. The scan I have of the newspaper is not very clear, but the best I could do, and appears to make reference to an abdominal ailment. Donald and Violet (Mueller) are in the Minot area as of July 2012.

Paul, 1903 - 1969 is next. It seems strange that the boys were the hardest for me to find information on, but this was a pretty close family and I had information from an aunt on the girls married names. They showed up in census data quite easily. Paul got married and divorced, enlisted in the Army, from Tacoma, WA during WWII at 39, and I couldn't find him again. It was only after checking with a cemetery about a grave I actually knew was there that I stumbled across both Paul and William being buried there too. He had two daughters. Betty and Cleo. His obituary is the second page after Williams on this document.

My Grandma Elsie is next. Her obituary is here. I didn't know this soft spoken, hard working woman with a bit of a sly smile as well as I would have liked.

Clara, 1906 - 1995 follows. I actually met Clara in CA, but I was far too young to remember. She seems to have kept in close contact with her siblings despite moving to CA and then LA. If you read the obituaries of her brother William and sister Minnie, from 1936, it looks like she was married to someone with the last name of Weisgerber, I will have to track that down. She was later married to William (Bud) Holloway. She had no children.

William, 1909 - 1936 is next. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for his parents to watch two of their children die within 6 months of each other that year.

Finally there is the youngest, Olga, 1911 - 1970. She married Frank Morgan, lived in Butte MT and had a daughter named Corrine.

I received a photo album in amongst a box of photos that I am quite sure is of this family. Very little of it is marked though. Would love to figure out more than I have.

here is one of Olga and Corrine for you

Texas... who'da believed it

the wild world of the internet have led me to the wilds of a 19th century Northeast TX colony. I mean really? But it just seems like people were willing to try and risk ALOT in those days. I also suspect they often were sold fools gold and made the best of it too, but hey. So I was hunting around old posts on Rootsweb under one or the other Counties in MO that we had family in and I came across a post about the Andersons. My families Andersons. So I fired off an e-mail to the poster. She told me quite a story. In point of reference... if you look at my last post with pictures of James Campbell, you see his first wife Rebecca. She's the stern looking one ;) Rebecca was an Anderson.

The story she told me goes as follows. Rebecca's Uncle and shortly thereafter her Grandparents went down to settle TX around 1846. This was during the time Texas was the Republic of Texas, and they settled in a place called the Peters Colony. TX was eager to bring in settlement, and offered 320 acres to a family or 160 to a single male. This was doled out by the colony 'empresarios' who were under contract to encourage the settlment. The land of the Peters Colony was good, but the Comanche weren't real welcoming (and who can blame them).

Later, back in MO during the civil war, a serious riff developed in the family between those who favored the Union and those who favored the South. Well, Rebeccas father Andrew (who would be my GGG Grandfather) was one of the latter, and according to the story things got so hot he had to run from a Unionist posse called by one of his daughters (could it have been Rebecca? Don't know) and left to join his brother and parents in TX. Obviously this is a family story thats hard to corroberate but wow.

There is a large contingent of Andersons that lived in and remain in Dallas County.



So I've some reading to do on this part of TX and this family, I've already ordered a family genealogy I should be receiving soon. But the world gets even smaller... this woman who told me all this married a Campbell, who may very well also be related, he is checking on some of the names I mentioned LOL.

Road Trip

Road Trip

so Minda and I took a road trip to MT. Part of the goal was to pick up some family photos that have been in a chest for quite some time. The trip was great. We had an awesome time visiting family, seeing Glacier park, ect. And wow... the pictures. I've started scanning some. Not only was it wonderful to see faces...it also felt like a confirmation of what I'd been digging up. Yes... I was right that James Campbell was my Great Great Grandpa. Wow there is his second wife (whom I just happened to stumble across) and their son Clay (whom was born when James was 72, hey if Tony Randall could do it why couldn't James Campbell, but as a point of reference Clay was born 7 years after his half-nephew, my Grandpa Charlie). Look at my Grandma and her sisters... and much more.

I do not have everything scanned but I'd like to share some.

Returning to James Campbell I thought I'd throw this out.
you tell me... I think there are three different women in these photos, and if thats the case I missed a wife LOL. What do you think?

love the old pictures so much.

I think my favorite find was this one of my Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Elsie.



I would say they were pretty stylin for Great Falls, MT

I looked and looked at these pics and I THINK I've figured out a pic of Grandpas parents, Marion and Anna.



and I also THINK I've figured out a pic of Grandmas parents (actually there are several), Fred and Bertha.



I think its quite instructive about our family that my Grandpa kept pictures of his schools ... and even a favorite teacher (which I'm not including)

first Green City, MO



then Blaine, MT



There is much more. But I'll leave it at this for now.

Bradshaw

I wanted to post this link I came across. This is very good work on our Bradshaw line. It is fascinating to find another line in the family that goes back 300 years in our country. It would appear John Bradshaw came to Virginia as a "Headright", basically an indentured servant around 1690. I have positively confirmed our connection to Smith Bradshaw, Johns Great Grandson, through Smiths son Thomas. From there I will let the source of the work speak. I have begun an e-mail conversation with the sites owner, I have definitely found that collaboration is key in this work :)

Bradshaw Genealogy

Norwegian Digital Archives - digitalarkivet

very excited to find quite a bit of information for free online on the Norwegian Digital Archives that I'd love to share :) There are church records and cencus records and much more that I haven't dug into. but I've found documentation for things I did know and a few things about my Great-Grandma Emma I didn't think I'd necessarily ever find.

Some of this I've covered already but am attaching more documents:

So my mothers Maternal Grandparents where Karl Henrikson and Emma Petersen

Emma's Babtism is here

Karl's is here

They both grew up in Nordland County, Vega Municipality



their marriage is here

Karls parents where Henrik Eriksen and Henrika Klausdatter
Emmas parents were Martinius Petersen and Martine (Tina) Pedersen

love the symmetry of the first names ;) But yes these are their names.

my mothers Paternal Grandparents met in the United States and come from different areas of Norway. I am not finding church records in the digital archives
for them... but I am finding them in the cencus records

Olaf Oleson Atletveit Lund here

Oline Olsdatter Nagelhus here

Olafs Parents were Ole Jonsen and Anne Margrethe Eriksdatter Jorstad
Linas parents were Ole Svendsen Nagelhus and Olea Olsdatter Nagelhus

Olaf was from Sjernaroy

Lina was from Snaasa

Real Time

So I thought I'd post this link to an article about living relative (it's not all about the past), whom I've never met. Daryl is a 1rst cousin once removed. My Mothers cousin, she remembers him well growing up. He sounds like quite the adrenaline junky, and per my mom has been since boyhood :P

On a different note, we are beginning to wonder if there may be a genetic link to Parkinsons in that side of my family. There are lots of interesting things that have come up in this journey.

http://www.adn.com/2009/02/07/683375/an-alaska-life-lived-large.html

Family Ties

Well Hello! After a very long break for an eventful summer and fall, it's good to be back working on this project and to have some exciting things to share. This is definitely an ongoing process and you never know whats going to happen.

Over Christmas I chatted with my mother a bit about her family, and got some cousins info recorded in my tree for her side. I also checked back in with her brother, who is very kindly trying to connect with a branch of the family I have no connections with at all.

But I think the most exciting breakthrough occurred when I started searching my paternal grandmother Elsie's family again. Its not such a big world after all.

So I came across some mention of our family Beise, in a google search, on a rootsweb message board, from 10 years ago! Honestly I don't know how I missed them before but that's another story. Anyway I went ahead, took a shot in the dark, and answered the posts and sent off an e-mail as well..... within an hour she answered back! This has been awesome. First check out the pics of my GG-Grandparents


My Paternal Grandmothers Maternal Grandpa, Carl Beise, is above and her Grandmother, Wilhemina Pattis Beise, and aunt Ida Pattis Beise, are to the right. Its funny on first glimpse I was very happy to receive these pictures but they aren't the greatest quality. Then I sent them to my oldest brother and he said hey! That looks like me. Looking again I really can see him in my GG-Grandpa. Now watch, he was talking bout my GG-Grandma and her daughter-in-law (and niece actually). Pictures are like that I think.

So Marilyn, the distant cousin I ran into online, has been researching for quite some time and was able to use LDS resources to track down the little town in what was once Pomerania and is now Poland, our shared family, Carl and Wilhemina (pictured) came from, and she was able to study them as far back as they were available. I think I blogged about the class I took on this process. I actually hadn't gotten to this yet. They came across in 1892 with 4 children (according to Marylin they lost a little girl on the way), so only 3 made it to adulthood. We lucked out really, that the records were even on microfilm to study, and I have now ordered them to view myself. But it gets even better. She went over to Poland and to the village, and amazingly the church survived WWII. She sent pics of this as well.





I in turn have been able to share with her census information I've found on Ancestry.com that she didn't have. It's been great exchanging information with someone so enthusiastic... and closer to the sources, she was alive when Wilhemina passed. She has also inspired me to get over to the local Family Search Library and order those records and search for my Great Grandpa Fred Matthies church records from Germany/Pomerania. I have determined the village, but I am unfortunately not having any luck, so far, finding them in the LDS microfilms. It may be that the records aren't available at all, but I am inspired to go on :)