Jill's Genealogy Journey

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Old Photographs

The Fjerstad Timeline

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Here is the most current and correct information for the Fjerstads now that a few more documents have surfaced.

Pete Fjerstad’s Ancestors
  • 5 Jan 1778 – Ole & Ingri marry Leikanger, Sogn Og Fjordane, Norway (index)
  • 1801 – Povel & Christi & kids are in Leikanger, Sogn Og Fjordane, Norway (census)
  • 26 Oct 1835 – Sjur Nilssen & Guri marry in Etne, Hordaland, Norway (marriage)
  • 2 Oct 1864 – Lasse born to Johannes Paulsen & Anna Lassedr in Balestrand, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway (baptism)
  • 13 Sep 1866 – Anna born Norway to Nils & Anna(death cert, 1900 census)
  • 1875 – Nels O Sjurson is in Martin, Rock, MN (census)
  • 8 Apr 1885 – Anna immigrated (emigration database)
  • 12 Apr 1886 – Lasse immigrated (emigration database)
  • 22 Nov 1889 – Lasse Fjerstad & Anna Jordahl married Arendahl, Fillmore, MN (marriage cert)
  • 14 Jan 1893 – Johannes Paulsen Fjarestad buried in Balestrand, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway (buriel)
  • 15 Jun 1893 – Anna immigrated (emigration database)
  • 1895 – Lars & Anna & baby Johan are with brother Ole & a mother Anna in Arendahl, Fillmore, MN (census)
Pic of Fjerstads1922
Amanda, her son, her husband, Anna holding Fran & Atchie circa 1922
  • 2 Oct 1895 – Pete b. Fillmore MN (grandma, death cert, draft card)
  • 2 Sep 1898 – Claire Fjerstad born Staples MN (funeral card, death cert)
  • 1900 – Lasse & Anna with 4 kids & brother Ole in Arendahl, Fillmore, MN (census)
  • 1910 – Louis & Anna with 6 kids in Brookings SD (census)
  • 7 Feb 1914 – Lars died
  • 1915 – Anna owned land in Hansonville (plat book)
  • 1917 – Pete farmed in Hendricks MN (draft card)
  • 1919 – Claire & Pete married Hendricks MN, she worked in a bank at the time (Fran & Margaret)
Pic of Fjerstads1922
Claire holding Fran
circa 1922
  • 1920 – Pete & Claire in Toronto, Deuel SD, he worked in a restaurant (census)
  • 1920 – Anna & 2 sons in Hansonville Lincoln MN (census)
  • 23 Jan 1920 – Frances Fjerstad born to Peter and Clair Deuel SD (birth cert)
  • 1930 – Pete & Claire in Yellow Medicine MN with 7 kids, he’s a car mechanic (census)
  • 1930 – Anna is with son Henry’s family in Saginaw, Saginaw, MI (census)
  • 1934 – Anna is in Mpls at 3853 44th Ave (city dir)
  • 16 Feb 1937 – Glen and Fran married in Milbank living in Ortonville MN (marriage cert)
Pic of Fjerstads1940
Fran & her father Pete
His mother Anna holding Fran’s son Boyd
Four Generations!
  • 1940 – Claire has 8 kids in Madison, Lac Qui Parle, MN (census)
  • 1940 – Pete is in the State Reformatory in St Cloud (census)
  • 1940 – Anna is with Bert and Harold & 2 kids on 44th Ave (census)
  • 1942 – Pete is in Madison, Lac Qui Parle, MN (WWII draft card)
  • 8 May 1950 – Anna is with daughter Bertha’s family in Brooklyn, Hennepin, MN (census)
  • 7 Jun 1950 – Anna dies Hennepin MN (death cert)
  • 30 Aug 1951 – Claire dies St Paul MN, marriage box says separated (funeral card, death cert)
  • 23 Jan 1968 – Glen Holman dies Hennepin Co MN (death cert)
  • 2 Aug 1974 – Pete dies Hennepin MN (death cert)
  • 17 May 2002 – Fran dies Hennepin Co MN (death cert)
  • (As always, there are no details about living descendants to protect their privacy.)
Pic of Fjerstads1941
“Fjerstad Brats August 24, 1941”
(that was written on the back)
L-R back: Fran, Robert, Margaret, Lorraine
front: Paul, Mary Ann, Dick, Dean, Jody


 
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Ancestor Ornaments

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Do you find it hard to know what to do with all your research?

What if there are some easy and fun options?

How about ancestor ornaments!?

Ancestor Ornaments: Holman, Fjerstad, Laitala & Middendorp

What a nice way to honor our ancestors!

Click here if you want to see these ancestor ornaments up close.

If you want more context on these pictures:

P.S. Thinking about doing this yourself? It was a little fussy to design these, but if you have some technical skills and you already have done the genealogy research, it isn’t too difficult. You can even use mine to get started and customize ornaments yourself!

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!

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

Resources

Wild Aunt Rose

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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.

Rose LeClair
Rose LeClair (around 1910?)
1868-1960

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

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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:

The Ancestors of Nellie Benschoter
The Ancestors of Nellie Benschoter


 
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.
 

Oliver Benschoter
Oliver Benschoter


 

Sarah Crose Benschoter
Sarah Crose Benschoter


 
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