Jill's Genealogy Journey

Stories, Discoveries & Tips

Jill Holman

Immigrant Exhibits

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Recently, I discovered that the Minnesota Digital Library launched several online exhibits about Minnesota immigrants. In the one on immigrant experiences, something jumped out at me: Lars Fjeseth. You might recall that this is not our Lars, but the two have similar names and lived at the same time near each other: https://jillholman.com/genealogy/fjerestad-versus-fjeseth/

The new exhibits are:

  • Minnesota Immigrants: People on the Move
  • Minnesota Immigrants: Immigrant Experiences
  • Minnesota Immigrants: Preserving Culture

There also is an older exhibit called Farm to Table. Find all four exhibits here.

Next, I clicked through and explored some of the Primary Source Sets, which were very interesting. Here are three of my favorites:

  • Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota
  • Lumber Industry in Minnesota
  • Mining on the Iron Range

They have added a lot of resources since the last time I checked! Let’s see what they have for Chisholm.

Here we see that we get 151 items when we search for Chisholm in the Minnesota Digital Library.

There are several pictures of the mines and also the ruins after the 1908 fire. While few of the people are labeled, you can get an idea of what it looked like to be there in the early 1900s, which is when William and Katri Laitala arrived in Chisholm. I think these two pictures might be my favorite:

That could be my great-grandfather William standing there!

Rootstech 2021

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Have you heard of Rootstech? It is a huge genealogy conference. Don’t worry if you missed it in February, the recordings are still available for a year. With hundreds of sessions, there are topics for everyone.

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Here are some of my favorite sessions relating to DNA:

Here are some of my favorite sessions relating to storytelling:

LaBlanc Cousins in 1941

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Here is a neat old photograph from October 1941, probably in Comstock or Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. These were my grandmother’s cousins, but she is not in the picture. Her son was just a few months old at the time, so she likely was home caring for him.

Doris & Calvin with their LaBlanc cousins October 1941

We can identify a few people for sure. Renie and Melena and their two youngest Doris and Calvin. They were living in Comstock at the time. We think we see William and Emily LaBlanc and their littlest son Ronnie, who were living in Turtle Lake.

I went to the 1940 census to see where the cousins were living and how old they were at the time. Likely most if not all of William and Emily’s family are in the picture, but we aren’t sure exactly who is who. In 1941, they would have been these ages:

  • Byron, 19
  • Alice, 17
  • John, 16
  • Laurance, 15
  • Ervin, 12
  • Francis, 5

Who are the rest of the people? It is possible the Kuschner’s came from Duluth and are in the picture. Edward was 32 in 1941, Dorothy was 26, Lois was 6 and Lloyd was 4. I don’t think Aime and Rose Desmedt are in the picture, but maybe their daughter Muriel came with the Kuschners? What is the chance that the Temtes or the Moscrops came from Los Angeles?

I imagine war was on their minds. Paris had fallen to the Nazis the previous year and then the Nazis bombed England for months. The attack on Pearl Harbor would happen in December and the US would join WWII. Two of these cousins would lose their lives in the war:

  • Robert Temte registered for the draft the same month as this picture, on 27 Oct 1941. He died just a few months later, 27 Mar 1942 aboard the Atik, torpedoed by a U-boat off the coast of North Carolina.
  • Byron LaBlanc was reported MIA 9 August 1944 when the B-24 he was serving on disappeared on a combat mine-laying mission over the South China Sea.

Lastly, I finally tried MyHeritage In Color™ on this picture. It does bring an old photograph to life!

LaBlanc cousins October 1941 in color

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5 Highlights from A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

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Well, this book isn’t really brief and it isn’t really about everyone, but it is interesting. It starts off great, but does go off on some tangents here and there. A few of my favorite highlights from the book:

1 – We all descend from royalty. Charlemagne is the ancestor of all Europeans alive today. However, we don’t necessarily carry his DNA.

2 – Genetics is a lot more complicated than many of us learned in school with Mendel’s peas.

  • Going back more than a few generations, it is a web not a tree.
  • People moved in all directions all the time.
  • Genes interact and there usually isn’t just one gene for a trait.
  • Diseases often have several variations with different gene combinations.

3 – Race doesn’t exist in genetics.

4 – There is a really great story of how they proved some bones dug up from a parking lot were from Richard III.

5 – The environment affects our DNA and we can pass these changes on to our offspring. In particular, farming has had a big impact on our genes.

Does that interest you? If so, this book might be for you. Get it here: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford

One surprise, the author is very negative about genetic genealogy. It is good for people to be warned in this area since there are scams. However, he could have mentioned where there are good tests and how it can be useful, which is mainly to find cousins so that you can collaborate on your genealogy research. If you want to be an educated consumer, read: Which DNA Test is Best?

The 1918 Flu Pandemic

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Typist wearing influenza mask in 1918 NY (From NARA)

In this time of COVID-19, I have the 1918 Flu Pandemic on my mind. How did it affect my ancestors?

First, I looked at death dates for my direct ancestors and found two candidates.

  • John Middendorp died January 1918 in WI. While I don’t have a death certificate for him yet, WI didn’t report any flu cases until the fall, so he probably died from something else.
  • Antoine LeBlanc died on February 18, 1919 in Oswego NY. I don’t have a death certificate for him yet either, but we do have an obituary courtesy of cousin Monte. It says he died of a long illness. I am betting that wasn’t the flu, but we don’t know for sure.

Relatedly, here is a nice post from someone whose father was in the Army suffering from the flu and had two ancestors die in TN.

Even though I don’t have any direct evidence of how the 1918 flu affected my ancestors, it surely did change their lives. At the time, there were closures and lots of people wearing masks. It is interesting to see the pictures we have from that time and learn about what it was like . . . .

 

West of the Moon and Norwegian Emigration

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Cover of West of the Moon by Margi Preus

I found myself listening to West of the Moon by Margi Preus on a recent road trip and I really liked it. It is a good story and it won a Minnesota Book Award in 2015. She draws on Norwegian folk tales, so I felt I was getting in touch with my Norwegian heritage.

While this book is fiction, she was inspired to write it by her great-great-grandmother’s diary, where she describes coming to America in 1851. In particular, there was a girl alone on the ship in the diary which inspired Preus to write this story.

I have always been interested in emmigrant stories. What is that like to leave everything you know and endure a difficult journey in the hopes of making a better life somewhere new?
The author did a bunch of historical research and yet the book still has a timeless, fairy-tale quality. It is not just a children’s book either! There are some good philosophical questions in there as well.

Wait a minute, didn’t my Norwegian great-great-grandmother come to America as well? Did she come alone like the girl who inspired the story? Was she hoping to find her father like the girl in the story?

Pic of Fjerstads1940
Anna with her son Pete and his daughter Fran and her son Boyd (Four Generations! circa 1940)


Here is what we know so far . . .


We find my great-great-grandmother, Anna, in an emigration database leaving Bergen, Norway 8 Apr 1885. I have not yet been able to document her complete journey through ships logs or border crossings. She has a lot of name variations.


Her father was already in America, but we don’t know that they kept in touch. She had been born out of wedlock, so she probably was looking forward to a fresh start. Her brother Amond emigrated later in 1905.


She got married to Lars Fjerstad in Minnesota on 22 Nov 1889. He had emigrated the year after Anna. I imagine they met here since they were from different Norwegian towns. They went on to have six children and 22 grandchildren.


They did have relatives around from Lars’ side of the family. His three siblings also came to America in 1892 and 1893. His mother came in 1893 after her husband died and we see her living with Lars and Anna at the time of the 1895 census. Brother Ole was living with Lars and Anna at the time of the 1900 census.

The White Bear from Kay Nielsen’s version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon in 1922


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