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 :)

Our Revolutionary War Captian

Short note tonight. GGG Grandfather Smith Bradshaw married a woman named Elizabeth Chrisman. Elizabeth was the Granddaughter of Captian George Chrisman of the Rockingham County Militia in the Revolutionary War. Pretty cool.

would love to visit this homestead some day

http://www.georgechrismanhouse.com/index.html

Hopkins Family

The Bradshaw line has a rich history. I have told you about Great Great Grandpa Thomas Bradshaw, and haven't even gotten into his father Smith Bradshaw. But they both married women of interesting lineages on their own. Thomas married Nancy Catherine Hopkins in 1865. I came across a book written in 1905 about our Hopkins line. I am slowly doing what I can to verify the information in it. It is called A chapter in Hopkins Genealogy 1735 - 1905. It tells the tale of the Scotch-Irish (I have the feeling our actual Campbell line is Scotch Irish as well) pg2. This is the tale of 3 brothers, John, William and Archibald, in Colonial America, settling new land, dealing with all the hardships and effort.

Here are some transcribed pages from the will of Archibald (our direct ancestor). I find it quite interesting.

p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6

Archibald had 5 children with his wife Jennet Love Hopkins, one of whom was a son Ephriam.
Ephriam had 7 children with his wife Nancy Shanklin Hopkins, one of whom was a son Archibald (this is a popular name in this family).
Archibald had 6 children with his wife Ruth Gordon including a daughter Sarah Ann,
Sarah Ann had 8 children with her husband Archibald Hopkins (a cousin) one of whom was Nancy Catherine whom married Thomas Bradshaw.

Pictures

I've been trying to get some pics together. Here are some fun ones I've got so far.

I start with this one, my parents wedding :)



Here is one at my parents wedding reception. it's great because it's got both of their parents in it as well. They look mahvelous



Here is a great pic of my mothers parents, Ole and Mildred Lund, looking suave in Panama



Here is a pic at my Grandma Charles and Elsie Campbell's 50th Wedding Anniversary. This includes their children Marian, Glenn, my dad Jerry, Virgil and Virginia.



Some more pics from my moms side....

my uncle Dick harvesting on the Lund homestead



My Mothers Maternal Grandfather Carl Hendriksen



My Mothers Paternal Grandparents Olaf and Lina



more to come

Marion Campbell Homesteading Records

Tonight I wanted to post the homesteading records I received for my Great Grandpa Marion Campbell in Blaine MT.

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Judge Thomas Bradshaw

Thomas Bradshaw is my paternal Grandpa's maternal Grandpa. Got that ;) Thomas was born in Lewis County Mo. in 1843 to Smith Bradshaw and Elizabeth Chrisman Bradshaw. To elaborate on his connection, his daughter, Annie, married Marion Campbell, and their son was my Grandpa Charlie.

Cencus records would indicate Smith Bradshaw was farming in MO in the years Thomas grew up. He and Elizabeth had 11 children. Thomas was one of the youngest if not the youngest. When the civil war broke out, Thomas joined the Confederacy. He would have been only 18 years old.

I had heard we had a confederate in our family, and my cousin confirmed he was the one, so I started digging. The whole thing makes me kinda sad really, for all involved. I have very strong feelings about the confederacy and then the first records I found on Ancestry.com were POW records. The Confederates didn't keep alot of records, especially not the outfit he was part of I'd imagine. Let me elaborate. The POW records list his unit as Porters, in Marion County, MO. Now I feel pretty comfortable associating our Thomas with this regiment as Joseph C Porter , was actually Thomas' cousin. Porter was tasked with recruitment and bushwacking in Northern Mo where he lived. So it makes alot of sense. The records are less than perfect but it looks like Thomas was captured Oct 10, 1862 and looks to have been in custody till June of 1863, spending time in Gratiot Street Prison and Alton Prison, neither of which I would wish on anyone.

I don't really know what happened to him during the rest of the war. I do know he met and married Nancy Catherine Hopkins in Rockingham County Va (I have requested those records), in Oct 1865. They moved back to Mo. Together they had 8 children, 5 of whom survived to adulthood. They farmed. Later in life he became a Judge. He passed in 1910.

I am attaching a copy of a civil war POW record, his obituary, and his death certificate

Danish Saga Kings? Ja Youbetcha

When I was young, my mother reestablished connections with family in Norway, related to her beloved Grandfather Carl. When I was a freshman in college, a zillion years ago, she went to visit, and some of them have come here as well. I have in all honesty been pretty peripheral in all this, and regret that now. I have been saying for some time I want to take her back to Norway, and still hope we can accomplish that.

Apparently this family has done extensive research into their heritage. Mom was given a copy of some of the final output relating directly to her Grandfather. I don't know what documentation was done.

So last night I started trying to translate the forward to this book. Jay! This is for you! Viking Kings and Archers abound.

"Schytte-family are our oldest known relatives in the Nordic countries. With the help of the family seal, this family traced back to the old Danish saga-kings,
all the way to the last part of the 8th century. The family's oldest members stand out as good archers, and although the seal has changed over time, archery remains in the design of the seal. Their family members who took the doctor degree in the 16th and 17th century, selected the nickname toxotious, (Latin for archery). It is likely that the actual family name Schytte comes from archery.

Right up to the 15th century Taa was used as a nickname in the Schytte-family. Professor Barry Koht believed that it came from club foot, that often walked in the family. Several Danish and Norwegian Viking Kings were of Taa/Schytte family, among them Harold Harfargre.

The image of family vapnet / seal is from "Geschlechterbuch der Familie Schutte" by Albert Schuthe, Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, Germany. "

so this is gonna be interesting. What I do know is that Great Grandpa Carl (Hendriksen) came from an island called Vega in Norway. He spent at least some time fishing with his father. His father, Hendrik Johan Eriksen, drown on a fishing boat. His mother's name was Henrika Peternella Johanna Klaudatter. These are taken directly from the family document. I will post some family sheets as I continue going through it.

Ladies Night

I was looking for some travel documents on my mothers side tonight, to confirm what I've been told about her family. I found the manifests for both my Mother's Grandmothers. Emma Petersen Hendriksen and Oline Nagelhus Lund.

Emma, my mothers maternal grandmother, arrived on the Bergensfjord in New York on 6/19/1916. Sadly she passed away in 1928 of complications after gallbladder surgery, leaving behind her husband Carl and young daughter, Mildred. She is listed as being from Helgeland district of Norway.

Emma Part 1 Emma Part 2

Lina was my mothers paternal grandmother. She arrived in New York on 10/5/1909, on a ship called United States. She was from Snaasa (yeah I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong), Norway. Lina went to Spokane, WA with her friend, and I am not sure how she wound up meeting my Great Grandpa. Have begun looking for her Marriage document. Olaf and Lina had three boys, Ole, Arnold and Ivar, and one girl, Anne together. I posted some information about their homestead in Simpson, MT a few days ago, and after farming and raising their family they retired to Mesa, AZ. Lina lived a long productive life, if the records I have are to be believed, 98 years long. I met her once or twice when I was quite young. I am hoping maybe my mom will tell us a little bit about what kind of person she was as she knew her in the comments.

Lina Part 1 Lina Part 2

Germany

Well yesterday I went to a conference about ways to trace your genealogy in Germany. My paternal grandmother Elsie was born to two immigrants of German descent from Pomerania. Considering WWII sits in between their departure and my current efforts, and the land now belongs to Poland, I had some serious concerns about my ability to accomplish anything on the other side of the Atlantic. But I learned at the conference that the family history center (our friends in Salt Lake City) do have alot of records on microfilm. I hadn't gotten the impression, on my earlier brief investigation, that they did. The nice thing is that they have branch centers all over and I can simply order most microfilm to view right here.

What we learned yesterday was that there are some basic tools to help identify the correct microfilm/s to order. I have jumped one hurdle I believe, in that I have basically located place of origin for both my Great Grandpa Frederick (Fritz) Matthies, and my Great Grandma Bertha Beise.

I lucked out really. Bertha travelled with her parents Carl and Johanna? (this is interesting in that cencus records list her as Minnie), a brother August, and two sisters, Anna and Martha. They travelled out of Hamburg, on the Dania (click on the D at the top and scroll down to Dania), May 10, 1890, and arrived in New York harbor May 22, 1890. Hamburg kept good records and I have record of both ends of the journey documenting the town they came from. Bertha was 13.

Her future husband Frederick Matthies arrived in Baltimore on the SS Oldenburg on Apr 14, 1892. I am still investigating whom he travelled with. He was 24, but there was a Matthies family that travelled on that ship, and there was some kind of relationship. The Oldenburg sailed out of Bremen. They didn't keep their departure records, and thankfully the arrival records included town of origin. Finding his record was a trick. Love Ancestry, but his record wasn't coming up on my searches of his index. It was suggested that town of origin was on his naturalization records, so I went to Minnesota Historical Society and got a copy of those records. There I found the month and year of arrival and port of arrival, and was able to scan the ship records visually to find him.

I have several documents from Swift County MN, where they settled temporarily, including Fritz and Berthas marriage certificate, and Fritz's naturalization records, but don't have them scanned at this point in time. I am attaching the departure/arrival records

Bertha departure Bertha arrival Fritz departure

From there they introduced us to some tools to determine what town originally held the records that are needed for the search, because that is how the FHC would have them indexed. The interesting thing is most the records would be kept by Churches of course, and you really should know whether they were Protestant or Catholic (or Jewish if that is the case) cuz the Churches or Synagogue might not be in the same town. This might sound dumb but I don't honestly know the answer to this for Fritz and Bertha but am expecting Protestant. Soooo next step is to check into this and order the microfilm!

Homesteading

So because I didn't get a chance to scan any more of my paper documents in the past few days, and also because I'm kinda excited to have received these documents electronically today, I'm gonna switch gears and post about my moms family. I received the homestead application of my Mother's Paternal Grandmother, Lina Lund, today. She homesteaded with her husband, Olaf, up in Simpson, MT. Simpson is literally 20 miles from the Canadian border. The closest thing to a town really was Havre. I linked that article because I often wonder about their personal stories of those early days. I have heard a few of the town generally during the wild and woolly bootlegging days, and took a fascinating tour called 'Havre beneath the streets'

Olaf and Lina's (gee guess where they are from :)) farm, at least part of it IIRC, is still in the family. I will have to get some pictures to post. They are not the only ones in the family to get their 320 acres though. Lena's brother Ingvald, and my Great Grandpa Marion Campbell (dads side of course), also got their land. Interestingly enough my father said the other day 320 acres is not, was not, nearly enough to make a living up there. There were some tough times. But its amazing land, feels a bit like you are on top of the world. I will post Marion Campbell's and Ingvald Nagelhus' (yup thats right, Nagelhus) applications when I get them in a couple days.

I will also be ordering homestead records from North Dakota. I understand Olaf homesteaded there around 1900 and I'm pretty sure folks in my dads maternal line did the same. Land, land everywhere.

so for those interested here are links to the documents. As you can see there are lots of hoops to jump through.

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First Post

So I am not much of a writer, but I thought I'd give this a shot. I've had a great deal of fun and even a few adventures in my few short months of doing family research. At this point I'd like to share some of what I've learned with those who would be interested, including some of the documents I've assembled.

So I'm going to start with my Grandfather Charles Campbell. Just one week ago I was running round a graveyard in Henry County, KY with my oldest brother snapping pictures of graves. We were hot on the trail of my great great great grandfather John. Actually I'm still working on that one. But we had fun anyway. We also made it to the deed room in New Castle.

So I suppose I should take a step back. Grandpa Charlie is my paternal Grandfather. A Campbell of course, I remember him as a very personable guy, loved to laugh, play cards of all sorts, and buy me dairy queen from down the street :). I'll say more about him in future entries, but for now lets just put some basic facts up.

Charlie was born in 11/6/1902 in Green City, Sullivan, MO to

Marion Campbell and Annie Virginia Bradshaw Campbell

Marion Campbell was born 4/29/1866 in Knox County, MO to

James Campbell and Rebecca Anderson Campbell

James Campbell was born 4/20/1837 in Henry Co, KY to John Campbell and Annie Scott Campbell

Book Cover P1 P2

Here it gets fuzzy. Information would indicate that John was born in 1804

I think he was born to another John. I will submit my case in my next entry I think but enough for tonight and forgive me link issues on my first post.