Traveling Through Time

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...