Jill Holman

Fjerestad versus Fjeseth

July 10, 2016 by Jill Holman

My clever and persistent mother recently decided to tackle the death of Lars Fjerstad. There was a family story about how he was working at a neighbor’s house and they hadn’t seen smoke over there in a couple days and so they went over and he was dead. We think maybe he died in Minnesota, but was buried in South Dakota? And we haven’t been able to find a death certificate.

She insists on documentation. She wants proof, so she conducted some extensive research. She looked for proof of death. She looked for proof of life. Lars and Anna moved around a bit, so she looked in several counties on both sides of the border between Minnesota and South Dakota. She explored civil and religious records. Some she had to go through page by page. Some were in Norwegian. (No, she doesn’t know Norwegian, but you can follow the pattern of church records in a foreign language if you put your mind to it.)

Also complicating matters, there is an error in the South Dakota Cemetery Index. The entry for Lasse J. Fjerestad has the death date as 1614. Oops. And in case you were thinking there was another Lasse J. Fjerestad, no, the index only goes back to 1831. 1614 is definitely a typo.

My clever and persistent mother had just about given up. She decided she would check one last time. And voila! A recently posted image popped up on FindaGrave.com! Thank you Sherbie58 for taking these pictures! This is our guy:

Lasse J. “Louis” Fjerestad
2 Oct 1864 – 7 Feb 1914
Sterling Lutheran Cemetery
Volga, Brookings County, South Dakota

Also interesting, there are two other Fjerestads in the Sterling cemetery. Two infants that appear to be in the same grave: Henry and Esther. Henry 1901-1902 was Lars’ son. But Esther 1895-1896 is another mystery to solve! Who did she belong to?

Lessons Learned

If you do a search, you find a few family trees that have a Lars Fjerstad that was born in 1864 and died in 1918. These are all wrong! Somehow we have copied an error from each other. These are two separate men! There was a Lars Fjeseth 1844-1918 and a Lars Fjerstad 1864-1914.
Lars Fjeseth 1844-1918 was a prominent man in the area. Those of us who descend from Lars Fjerstad 1864-1914 need to stop claiming him as our ancestor.
P.S. If you really are descended from Lars I. Fjeseth 1844-1918, his grave is over here in Singsaas Cemetery in Hendricks, Brookings County, South Dakota.

Wild Aunt Rose

August 30, 2015 by Jill Holman

My grandmother wrote this:

Rosie LaClair was my mothers aunt. She was an old maid and she lived for many years in an old shack in Turtle Lake, WI with pigs & chickens. They had the run of the house, except her living room. We used to go see her on Sunday after church. It was quite an experience with the pigs and chickens in her kitchen. She would shoo them out when we were there. She had an old coal stove and her hands and arms were black up to her elbows with coal dust and soot. She lived there for quite a few years, her house finally burnt down and she lost everything. My mother and dad took her in, but she got to be too much for my mother and dad to handle. They had to put her in a nursing home. She refused to bathe and change clothes. It took four people to give her a bath in the nursing home. She really had a mind of her own and wasn’t too fond of water. What she lived on, I’ll never know, as there was no Social Security in those days.

Also, my mother remembers when she was little, they visited Aunt Rose in the nursing home and Rose lunged at her as if to attack her! I wonder, was Aunt Rose kind of crazy? Or just different & didn’t fit in society very well?

I like to think of her as Wild Aunt Rose, a strong, independent woman. She owned her own home around 1910-1920 without ever having married. She was a laundress in the 1920 census.

It was thought that she lived to be 101, but the birth date of 1859 on her death certificate doesn’t seem to be true. We have found her baptism in the church register in 1868 and her age as reported in the censuses from 1870-1905 support the 1868 date. (Relatedly, you might recall from The Mystery of Peter LeClair – The Birth Breakthrough that we found that her father didn’t live as long as we previously thought either. Funny family!)

Rose Leclair's Grave — Rose LeClair’s Grave (bottom right)
at Saint Ann Cemetery, Turtle Lake WI

The Basic Facts:
Rose LeClair Houle
b. 15 Nov 1868, St. Michel, Sherbrooke, Quebec
d. 15 Jun 1960, Rice Lake, WI

Van Bunschoten, Van Benschoten, Benschoter

May 25, 2015 by Jill Holman

The big excitement here is that Aaron Van Benschoten supposedly took care of George Washington’s horses & was in his body guard. Both Aaron & his dad, Isaac, were Revolutionary War soldiers & you can find them in the official DAR & SAR records.
Although I think it is pretty amazing to trace back to Teunis in the Netherlands in the 1600s as well!

I haven’t verified everything myself in original records yet, but here is what I have so far from various sources:

And let’s chat about Oliver a bit because he sounds like quite a character. He was married to his first wife Martha & they had 6 kids & then he married Sarah & she had 10 kids. There are nice stories of Oliver in frontier Iowa, being a great blacksmith, running a hotel & being sheriff.
And Oliver is still remembered! He was one of the pioneers in Voices from the Past at Riverview Cemetery in Algona in 2014.

Following this family through the census records:
1790 – Aaron is in Shawangunk, Ulster, NY
1800 – Aaron is in Mamakating, Ulster, NY
1810 – Aaron is in Neversink, Sullivan, NY
1820 – Aaron is in Red Hook, Dutchess, NY
1830 – William is in Middleton, Delaware, NY
1840 – Oliver is in Berlin, Erie, OH
1850 – Oliver is in Berlin, Erie, OH
1860 – Oliver is in Algona, Kossuth, IA
1870 – Oliver is in Algona, Kossuth, IA
1880 – Oliver is in Portland, Kossuth, IA
1885 – Oliver is in Portland, Kossuth, IA
1895 – Oliver is in Silver Lake, Martin, MN
1900 – Sarah is in Silver Lake, Martin, MN
1910 – Sarah is in Silver Lake, Martin, MN

Resources

Mesabi Pioneers

April 5, 2015 by Jill Holman

This is a book about the first men who started the Mountain Iron Mine. (Which was a big deal! It was the beginning of mining the Mesabi Range, which turned out to be the largest iron ore deposit in the world. It is now an historic landmark & as it says in the National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Mountain Iron Mine, “Minnesota steel was a significant factor in the decisive role this country played in the two World Wars.”)

I wanted to read this book because I knew the main character was Finnish like my great-grandfather & the story was set near where he settled in northern Minnesota. Arthur, the main character, was an early pioneer to the area & my great-grandfather came a bit later, but there are similar Finnish characteristics such as being a man of few words, being a good moral man & sisu of course! I am not sure if all Finns have an aptitude for building, but my family shares this with Arthur as well. Comparing the main facts on the two:

Arthur Maki aka Arvid Mäkelä	William Laitala aka Vitho Laitala
Main character of Mesabi Pioneers	My great-grandfather
Born 1864	Born 1878
Came to the iron range 1891	Came to Chisholm in 1903 (about 16 miles west of Mountain Iron)
Escaping the Russian military	Escaping something too perhaps?

One part of the book that I especially enjoyed was how well the Finn & the Indian got along. They had a lot in common:

Appreciation of nature
Listening more than talking
Being outcasts
Being very moral & hard-working, but being treated badly
Sweat lodge & sauna
Living with names given to them because their original names were too difficult for people

I was also struck with how hard that had to be for people who loved the wilderness to see the pine forests clear cut & huge pits dug into the earth. Mesabi Pioneers is a must read for you if:

You have a Finnish immigrant ancestor
You have family in or from the Iron Range
You are curious about life in frontier Minnesota
You are interested in early open pit iron mining

The author did a great job bringing to life what it was like back then, being a pioneer in northern Minnesota. It was a diverse community of immigrants and these people had a lot of strength & determination. You may think historical fiction has to be boring & dry, but it doesn’t! This book is really quite an enjoyable read. Get the book here.

The author is currently working on the next book & you can get updates with how it is going here.

While this book is fiction, it is based on true events, so I couldn’t resist seeing what pictures I could find. They made this great video about the book that has many magnificent old pictures!:

And of course there are some great old photographs from the MHS:

The Merritt family!
Mountain Iron in 1891 (town or camp I wonder?)
The Depot in 1893

And I couldn’t ignore this one of what it would have looked like when my great-grandfather arrived:

Miners - Mesabi Range 1903 — Miners – Mesabi Range 1903 (from LOC)

The Family Tree of the Characters from Once Upon a Time

November 23, 2014 by Jill Holman

Spoiler alert – don’t read this if you haven’t already watched the show!

I am highly amused by the the jumble of different characters from different realms on the TV show, Once Upon a Time. And especially the relationships. And being the genealogy geek that I am, I had to draw their family tree.

It is a funny family tree. You might say it is a bit non-traditional. First, the basics in a traditional chart:

But that is missing some of the juicy complexity! Let’s get more of the details in there:

OUAT Family Tree Detailed — OUAT Family Tree
Detailed Version

A few comments . . .

The Evil Queen is stepmother to Snow White & adoptive mother to Henry, who is Snow White’s grandson. That’s complicated.
Captain Hook stole Rumplestiltskin’s wife (& Rumple took his hand). Hook also loves Snow White’s daughter, Emma, who happens to be mother to Rumple’s grandson. That is tricky.
(And the Wizard of Oz also asked Emma to marry him. hee hee.)
Peter Pan is Rumple’s dad!? And Baelfire loves the Darlings, they are his adoptive family, he feels they are his real family.
The Wicked Witch of the West from Oz is half sister to the Evil Queen & their mother could spin straw into gold (Miller’s Daughter) & also was the Queen of Hearts from Wonderland. Yowza.

Hmmm, now if only I could convey the different realms & time periods on this chart . . .

Finnish Ancestors On My Mind

September 21, 2014 by Jill Holman

My clever and persistent mother is working on the Laitala part of the family. It sounds like she is finding some cool stuff that we will be able to share soon.

And I have just read Finns in Minnesota by Arnold R. Alanen. It is a quick read at 112 pages & it has lots of fun pictures. I especially liked all the Finnish terms & phrases included, of course Sisu, we have all heard that one before. How about “Oma tupa, oma lupa,” which he translated as “one’s home, one’s way.” (Which differs slightly from Edgar’s translation of “One’s own cabin, one’s own freedom” in Finnish Proverbs in Minnesota.)

Alanen also highlights The Finnish Cookbook by Beatrice Ojakangas – I had to check that one out! She remembered yummy food from her Finnish grandparents & lived in Finland for a year. Her cookbook came out in 1964 & it is more than just recipes. She has an introduction including personality, language & a bit of history. The recipes are put into historical & cultural context & adapted to the American kitchen. Both Finnish & English names appear. There is lots of emphasis on items for the coffee table! Hmmm, I have got to get my hands on some sour rye bread!

In addition, Alanen mentions Bobby Aro & he sounded familiar, so I had to go see what I could find . . .

Bobby Aro Song:

Bobby Aro Documentary:

And here is something fun, a little more recent & actually in Finnish!

Also, my head is full of images of historic Chisholm. We do not usually think of northern Minnesota as the Old West, but Chisholm was that same sort of rough & tumble boomtown with lots of young single Finnish men, working in the mines and lumber camps, living in boarding houses. And then there was lots of drinking & carousing. What an interesting time & place!

There are some great old images in Hans R. Wasastjerna’s History of the Finns in Minnesota – don’t you love these?!

Jill Holman

Lessons Learned

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