Traveling Through Time

Week Nine - Disaster I am behind on my blogging BECAUSE - I can't think of one disaster that occurred in my family.  I've been researching a long time and there is nothing that comes to mind in my immediate  family that would say disaster. I do have distant relatives in what I would call disaster situations - a Civil War soldier who came home and found his brother was having an affair with his wife.  A resulting dual left them both dead. A relative bitten by a rabid dog, who suffered a horrible death, too early in history have an antidote. available. Obituary Washington Register  The sad news of the sudden death of our young friend, John Ott, whose home is five miles south of town, which was received last Wednesday evening, took our people by compete surprise.  Mr. Ott some two years ago bitten by a dog that he feared was mad, and although he tried a madstone without effect, the thought that he would die of hydrophobia continually preyed upon ...

Week Eight - Prosperity My father and his two brothers were farmers in North Dakota starting in the early 1900's.  It was a time of drought, low farm prices, and economic depression.  My father Eugene and one brother, Elmer,  had filed for land under the Homestead Ac, an act granting 160 acres of land to each farmer, for a small registration fee, providing they cultivated it, improved it, and stayed on the land for five years.   My uncle married Amanda, who also had Homestead land, giving him 320 acres to farm. The third brother Anton, never owned land of his own, working for Elmer until the situation grew intolerable for him, and he left unannounced to join the Army during WWI. Times were tough. The Northern Plains states, which had experienced plenty of rain and great weather conditions when my uncle first arrived in 1901,  subsequently suffered from drought and poor crops, loss of cattle, for a period of about 10 years.  Farmers who purchased tractor...

Week Seven - Favorite Discovery My favorite discovery was the first one I ever made.  I had begun to be interested in my family history  and had an opportunity to go to the National Archives in Washington DC.  The year was 1995.  My mother had died in 1993, and she and I spent many hours together over the course of a year going over names, letters, pictures and memories.  When she was gone, I was left with many thoughts swirling around in my head..... I wanted to know more!  Ancestry.com was a year away from being created, so finding something online wasn't even a thought. It was a dark, gray day in DC, perfect for spending time indoors doing research. The building was formidable, the hallways big and empty, and my footsteps echoed as I sought the room where I could begin research.   I had decided I would look for my father's passenger records.  He had come with his older brother in 1909 from Sweden.  That's all I knew. When I finally f...

Week Six - Same Name Four consecutive generations named John Harvey Blake - The first one by that name was born in 1895 the last in 1969.  John Harvey Blake Sr., Jr., the Third and the Fourth.    A very proud tradition in our family.  The first one was called "Harvey", second  "Bud" third  "John" and the last  "Jack."  The middle name of Harvey came from the farming and grist mill partner of John Sr.'s father.  The Harvey farm still exists in Childs Maryland.

Week Five Far Away My father left home in Sweden when he was 16.  I was born when he was 51.  By then, any remembrances of his home, parents or siblings  were long buried in the recesses of his mind.  I was the last child born to a generation of  six siblings, three of whom came to American, three who stayed home. My oldest cousin was born in 1904; I was born in 1945, a 44 year spread. I grew up hearing a few vague family stories, but my perception of them, or where they were was remote.  I didn't take a plane trip until I was in college, and I had no concept of where Sweden was, or what it took to get there.  And frankly, it didn't occur to me at the time to wonder. What I heard were just stories, not attached to real people. The same was true of the two other  brothers who came to the United States. One of my uncles in the States died in 1931, long before I was born.    The  oldest uncle lived so far away, we never saw h...

Week 4 Close to Home My maternal grandmother was a Mennonite.  I have been fortunate in my research in that the family names are well documented, and family history goes back to Switzerland in the 1500's.  Her family came from Austria, but like many Mennonites, persecution and deliberate changes in laws forced them to keep on the move.  The original members of her family came through Pennsylvania and Ohio, eventually ending up in Iowa.  Like many of her religion, her families were quite large.  The result for some in their small rural community was that there were women who couldn't find spouses.  This picture is of two of my grandmother's aunts and a cousin, all in their nineties.  They never married and lived in the family farmhouse.  There were four sisters and a brother.. all living a "single" life.   Other than going to church, they stayed at home and did "handiwork", crocheting, embroidering, knitting and quilting.   They never l...