Rev. Warner Keller: 52 Ancestors Prompt "At Worship"

Warner Berton Keller: 1919-2010

52 Ancestors, 52 Weeks: At Worship

                My family included several ancestors who were ministers, some in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and others in the twentieth century. My third cousin once removed, Warner Berton Keller, was of the more recent clergymen I have found in the family tree.

                Rev. Keller was born August 11, 1919 to parents Jacob and Sadie Randall Keller. He was a twin; his brother was named Wendell. Warner grew up on the family farm near Burtrum, Minnesota. He attended school in Burtrum, where he played on the baseball and basketball teams and was class valedictorian.

                                           Jacob, Wendell, Elsie, Warner and Sadie Keller

                According to his obituary, he had a religious conversion at age 12, and felt called to the ministry in his teens. He became a pastor of his first church at age nineteen, without formal training or a college education! Such confidence and commitment at such a young age! The 1940 census shows him living on his own in Burtrum, working as a minister. The industry column reads “of the Gospel”.

                On December 30, 1940, he married Pearl Knapp of Minneapolis. I am not sure how he met the young woman, as Minneapolis was a considerable distance from Burtrum. 

                By the time of his WWII draft registration, he was the minister of the Free Methodist Church in Motley, Minnesota, about forty miles north of Burtrum.  His brother, meanwhile, was in a teacher training program at the time he registered for the draft. While Warner did not serve in the military, his brother Wendell did, serving several years and eventually marrying a woman in Arizona.

Warner and his wife ministered to several churches in a variety of states over several decades, serving Methodist parishes in South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. They had five children: Roger, Barbara, Robert, Rick and Kathi.

                According to Warner’s obituary, the church congregations he served all experienced growth during his years as their pastor. He was elected as the Superintendent of the North Minnesota Conference of the Free Methodist Church at only 33. The obituary noted that he was known for his “excellent preaching and his evangelistic fervor”.

                 Warner spent several years as the minister of the Free Methodist Church in Centralia, Washington, and returned to the city in retirement. Rev. Keller died at age 90 on January 16, 2010 after a long life at worship.

Salma Dane: 52 Ancestors Prompt "In the Newspaper"

Salma Dane (1833-1910) and Albert B. “Bert” Dane  (1876-1972)
52 Weeks 52 Ancestors Week 13 Prompt: In the Newspaper

A tiny newspaper clipping changed the way I looked at the relationship between these two men. The story is so charming—the type of story that one assumes only happens in fiction, but as this newspaper article showed me, truth is stranger, and in this case, sweeter, than fiction.

Salma Dane is my third great-uncle, the brother of my second great-grandfather Jerome Dane. Salma was born in 1833 in New York to David Dane and Sally Randall, the eighth of their nine children. Following David’s death when Salma was two, the family relocated to Wisconsin. Salma met and married Hannah “Hattie” Comstock in Wisconsin, and by the 1860 census, they had settled in Oakfield, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. Their first child, a daughter Hattie, was born there in 1859. Sadly, Hattie died just days after her first birthday.

Salma and Hattie moved to Minnesota, settling in the Waseca area, and then in Janesville, Minnesota where Salma worked as a carpenter and joiner, and also farmed.  They had two more sons. Freddie was born in 1868, and David was born in 1873. Tragically, both little boys died. Freddie died in 1874 at age 6, and David died a year later at age 2. They are buried together in the Janesville cemetery under a single white marble marker.

A year later, a newspaper story in the February 15, 1876 Janesville Argus described a little miracle that brought joy for the Danes after so much loss. The newspaper reported that the previous Tuesday, February 8, someone left a baby boy in the entryway of Mr. H. S. Bown’s house.

The story states, “The little waif was very cold, having been long in the night air probably. Mr. Brown heard the door open and the child cry, but caught no glympse (sic) of the party.”

Another newspaper noted that Mr. Brown was apparently long past the age of fathering a child. The story joked that “Generally speaking, there’s nothing unusual in finding a baby in most Minnesota families, but our friend H. S. Brown of Janesville has reached that period in life where he expects nothing of the kind.”

The story notes that the baby “is a fine healthy boy some two months old and has been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Salma Dane. It could not have fallen into better hands and is undoubtedly better off than if left to the tender ? care of its inhuman parents.” Obviously the community had felt sorry for the Danes, and supported their adoption of the abandoned child.

The second newspaper was a bit kinder to the birth parents, noting that the boy was “snugly wrapped up and laid in the [back] room” of Brown’s house. The paper also stated there was “no clue to the donor.”

I can’t fathom the desperation and despair that must have driven Albert’s mother to abandon her son. The community of Janesville was very small, and it would been nearly impossible to have hidden a pregnancy and birth, much less care for the baby for six weeks to two months without others in the community finding out. Therefore, I suspect the parents were from outside the community. They must have ridden a horse or buggy to the edge of town and chosen a house that looked occupied. 

Luckily, given the frigid temperature of a Minnesota February, the baby was discovered in time, and was taken in by eager adoptive parents. By this point, Salma and Hattie were getting too old to conceive again, so I imagine they were thrilled to get another chance at parenthood.

Apparently, the little boy thrived under Salma and Hattie’s care. The state issued a new birth certificate for the baby, listing him as Albert B. Dane and giving him a birth date of February 9, 1876, which is probably the date the Danes took him in. Given the birth record, without the newspaper article posted by one of my distant cousins on Ancestry, I never would have known that Albert wasn’t Salma and Hattie’s natural child.

Salma died in 1910, and left his property divided between his wife and Albert, a sign that the family was on good terms.

Albert eventually left farming and became a salesman for a drugstore company. He went on to marry and had a daughter, Dorothy Zaida Dane. His wife died at some point before the 1930 census. By then daughter Dorothy was married and launched on her own life. Albert remarried, and by 1935 he had moved to California.  The 1940 census states he was occupied as a candy maker for his own confectionary business! He died January 31, 1962 in Los Angeles at age 85. He came a long way from being a foundling left in the back room of a house in small town Minnesota.

Edward Peter Hoffman: 52 Ancestors Prompt "12"

Edward Peter Hoffman: 1882-1972
52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors Week 12 Prompt: 12

Last week I blogged about the large family of Johannes “Henry” Hoffman and Sophia Streu Hoffman, parents of thirteen children who survived to adulthood. So when I was confronted with the prompt “12”, I immediately thought of writing about their twelfth child, my great-uncle Edward Peter Hoffman. 

Edward was born February 26, 1882, when his father was age 45 and his mother was 41. Both parents were German immigrants, and had settled on a farm in Mankato Township, Blue Earth County, Minnesota. It is hard to determine how profitable the farm may have been, but as the children grew up, they moved out and formed their own households fairly quickly. By the time Edward was 17, only the four youngest children remained at home.  Edward had left school and was working as a farm laborer, presumably for his father.

Edward around 1900

Just six years later, Edward’s father was dead. According to the 1900 census, the farm was still mortgaged, so it is hard to tell if the family was able to keep the land. Edward had still been living with his parents in 1905 when the state census was taken, but there is no record of him in the 1910 census that seems to match. He reappears in records November 19, 1912 when he marries Minnie P. Kind (or Kindt) in Blue Earth County. He is 29 and she is 20 years of age. She immigrated to the United States with her mother and stepfather, and the 1910 census shows she was working in the knitting mills in Mankato by the time she was 17. Edward must have stayed in the area after his father’s death to have met and courted Minnie.

Edward and Minnie's wedding

By the time the 1920 census occurs, Edward and Minnie are living at 1203 East Line in Mankato. They have a 5 year old son, Edward, and three daughters, Harriet, age 4; Lorraine, age 19 months, and Geneva, just 2 months old. Edward is also providing a home for his 79 year old mother, and two adult nephews, Rudolph and John Lamm. The three men are all employed in trades. Edward is working as a carpenter with the cryptic note that his employer is “Bridge”. His nephew Rudolph is a plumber working for a plumbing contractor, and John has followed his uncle into carpentry, and is working on houses.

By the 1930 census, the family had two more children, Raymond, born in 1921, and Muriel, born in 1923. Edward’s mother had died and one of the Lamm brothers had moved out. The family had moved to a house at 116 Germania St. I have tried to find the house on current maps of Mankato, but it no longer exists. I suspect the street may have been renamed at some point; I can pinpoint the area from the surrounding streets and addresses on the census forms, but Germania Street is no longer there, although the general neighborhood is still known as Germania.

Edward Hoffman Family

Edward continues to work as a carpenter according to both the 1930 and 1940 censuses. He is employed by the railroad, which was listed on the 1940 census as the Omaka, which I believe was the Chicaog Minneapolis, St. Paul Omaha Railway Company, commonly called the Omaha line. He apparently built and repaired bridges for the railroad, earning $1131 in 1940. By the 1940 census, the family has added an additional two children, son Gerald, born in 1931  and daughter Joanne, born in  1934, when her parents were 42 and 51 years old.  The family also included a grandson named Wayne, illegitimate son of daughter Harriet. Edward and Minnie raised him.

Railway share for "Omaha Line"

Minnie died quite young, in 1952 at age 61. She had raised eight children and a grandchild—hard physical labor in that era. Edward never remarried, dying on December 30, 1972 at the age of ninety. He was living in Sibley at his death, most likely with his daughter Harriet. He is buried with Minnie at Pilgrim’s Rest Cemetery in Mankato, Minnesota.

Edward and Minnie before her death--around 1950?

Edward’s life may not have been the most exciting, but like so many members of my family tree, he lived a solid, productive life, working hard to support his family. He took on responsibilities that others shirked, providing homes for several extended family members. As Child No. 12 of Henry and Sophia Hoffman, he was a fine example of the type of solid citizens they raised. 

Johannes Heinrich "Henry" Wilhelm Hoffman Family: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Large Family"

52 Ancestors 52 Weeks: Large Family

Johannes Heinrich “Henry” Hoffman 1836-1906
Sophia Maria Christiane Streu 1840-1922

My maternal great-grandfather, William Hoffman, came from a huge family. He was the fourth of thirteen surviving children. There may have even been a fourteenth child, a twin, who died shortly after birth, if my distant cousins’ family trees can be believed.


William’s parents were German immigrants. Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman was born June 4, 1836 in a community then called Oedelum near the town of Hildesheim, which is located in Germany’s Hanover region. Johannes Heinrich’s mother died when he was 14 years old, and in 1855, at age 19, he emigrated, apparently alone, leaving his father behind in Hanover.


William’s mother, Sophia Maria Christiane Streu, was born May 29, 1840, in Weitendorf, Mecklenburg, Germany. Her entire family—four children and parents—emigrated when she was 17, sailing for New York on May 1, 1857 on the ship Johanes The family settled in Racine, Wisconsin.

Sophia and Johannes Heinrich met somewhere in Wisconsin, and were married in 1859 when she was 19 and he was 23. By the 1860 census, they were living in Greenfield Township, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Johannes Heinrich, now going by the American name Henry, was working as a carpenter.

By the next census in 1870, the couple had moved to the nearby township of Franklin, where Henry was farming. They had five children by this point: Berthia, 10; Amelia, 8; William, 6; Henry, 4; and Elizabeth Minnie, 1.

By the time their sixth child, George Jacob, was born in late 1870 or early 1871, they were living in Minnesota. It is unclear why they chose to move, leaving extended family behind in Wisconsin. Sophia gave birth to twin daughters just a year later on December 17, 1872; if there were twins, only Ida survived.


By the time the 1875 Minnesota State Census was administered, the family had grown to eight children with the birth of baby George. They were farming in Blue Earth County, Minnesota.

The 1880 census shows three more sons had been born since 1875, John, age 3; Alfred, 2; and five-month-old infant Rudolph. It must have been a very full farmhouse in Mankato Township, as Sophia’s parents, John and Frederika Streu, had moved in. The four oldest children, teens ranging in age from 19 to just 13, no longer attended school. Presumably their labor was needed on the farm and managing such a huge household.


No census records remain from 1890 for the family, but Henry and Sophia had their last two children in the early 1880s. Edward Peter was born in 1882, and their final daughter Laura was born in 1884, when Henry was 48 and Sophia 44.


By the 1900 census, most of the children had left home to start their own families, including my great-grandfather, William. This left only the four youngest children, Alfred, Rudolph, Edward and Laura, ranging in age from 20 to 16. Henry was still farming, and his youngest sons were all listed as farm laborers, presumably on his land.  


Henry and Sophia ended up with an amazing 62 grandchildren, including my great-grandfather William’s seven children. I can’t even begin to imagine how many descendants they have by now. What an amazing family! They must have been good parents to have successfully nurtured thirteen children to adulthood in an era where many families lost several children to illness and accidents. They must have been resourceful, hard workers to support such a huge family with the products of a single farm.


Henry died at age 70 on June 21, 1906. Sophia was 81 when she died on March 23, 1922. They are buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Mankato, Minnesota.