Lillie Woodbury Tourtellotte: 52 Ancestors 2020 Prompt "Back to School"

Back to School in Pursuit of the Artistic Life

Lillie Woodbury Tourtellotte: 1879-1954

My fourth cousin twice removed Lillie Woodbury Tourtellotte was a woman ahead of her time. She was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on April 4, 1879 to parents Mills Tourtellotte and Lillie Woodbury. The Tourtellottes were financially comfortable; her grandfather Monroe Lynde Tourtellotte was a major landowner in the area, and her father was a prominent attorney. Given the conservative culture of turn-of-the-century Wisconsin, I was surprised to find Lillie had travelled to Brooklyn, New York to attend the Pratt Institute where she became an artist. Lillie went back to school to pursue a degree and a career in an era when women were encouraged to marry and be homemakers.

The Pratt Institute had only been open a few years when Lillie became a student in the 1890s. It was founded by Charles Pratt, who made a fortune in the oil business. According to Wikipedia, “the college was one of the first in the country open to all people, regardless of class, color, and gender…many programs were tailored for the growing need to train industrial workers in the changing economy with training in design and engineering.”

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

It would have been quite radical for Lillie to attend such a free-thinking, co-ed institution. Her choice to pursue a career after graduating would have been even more radical. She specialized in the decoration of ceramics, and by 1900 was working as a ceramics instructor for schools including Alfred University, the New York State Clay and Ceramics School, and the School of Industrial Arts in Trenton, New Jersey.

Art class at the Pratt Institute in 1899

The 1901 Alfred University report by the university president states on page 19: "Upon my recommendation the Board of Managers appointed Miss Lillie W Tourtellotte Instructor in Art and Graphics. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute and well qualified for the post."

She was the principal assistant to the director of the Alfred University Program and the New York State Clay and Ceramics School, a Prof. Binns. She was described as a “woman of great abilities” in the areas of graphics and decorative arts.

Prof. Binns teaching a ceramics class at Alfred University

Lillie married in 1907 or 1908 to engineer George L Bennett. She had two sons, Mills and Hugh, but continued her artwork. Census records from 1910 onward list her profession as “artist” or “designer” in the field of ceramics. She also described herself as a landscape painter on one form.

The one photo of her posted on Ancestry showing her in late life features her outdoors at an easel, smiling hugely, a palette in one hand and the other petting a large dog. It seems fitting that the photo would show her as an artist. I can’t believe it was typical for middle to upper-class married women to list a profession on a census form, particularly when their children were young.

She travelled abroad with her mother and younger son Hugh as well. There are records of their return by ship to New York City from France in 1926, 1927, 1928, and again in 1930. At that point in her life, she was living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where her husband worked as a formulations engineer for an enamel company.

At some point, Lillie and George separated and possibly divorced. They ended up living on opposite coasts. Lillie died in San Diego, California on December 14, 1954 at the age of 75, following a car accident.  

Sources: 

https://www.sawdustanddirt.com/2010/02/binns-alfred-and-development-of-studio.html, accessed 2020

http://www.aapvrf.cornell.edu/arlis-wny/artsandcrafts/surveypage19.htmArtist Repository Info about Arts and Info about WNY Arts accessed 2018

 http://www.mocavo.com/American-Art-Directory-1905/753267/361, accessed 2018

http://www.mocavo.com/Alfred-University-College-of-Liberal-Arts-Catalogue-1900-01-Volume-1900-01/116553/25, accessed 2018

The Day Children: 52 Ancestors 2020 Prompt “Chosen Family”

Two Very Different Choices: Chosen Family

Thankful Day: 1897-1960

Eugene Ingersall Day: 1898-1979

Jessie Florence Day Thiesse: 1902-1963

Sometimes I think I know exactly what I’m going to write as I start work on a blog post, but then as I conduct additional research to confirm my facts, I’ll discover new things that change my perspective on my ancestor’s story, and change my entire approach to the prompt. “Chosen Family” turned out to be one of those times. I thought I’d be writing about three children placed in an orphanage, with the youngest eventually adopted by a relative—her chosen family. But as I researched, I realized there were other choices and other families involved in this story that made it far more complex.

Thankful Day, Eugene Day and Jessie Day are my third cousins twice removed on the Mills/Dane branch of my family tree. The children were born to Eugene Charles Day and his wife, Lucilla Reed in Tuolumne County, California.

The California location in itself is interesting. Eugene was born in Hermon, New York. He was one of five children, and three of his siblings lived out their lives just miles from where they were born. However, for some reason lost to history, Eugene and his sister Jessie Day, the two youngest children in the family, decided to move to the rugged mining area of Tuolumne County, California. Eugene became a miner, investing in quartz and gold mines.

Eugene married a beautiful young woman from Tuolumne, Lucilla Reed, in 1875 when he was only 19 years old; Lucilla was about 16. According to a bio from Eugene’s Findagrave page, “Lucilla Reed was born in in Tuolumne County in August 1859. Her mother Lajuana Weh nah yah, a Native American, was born in Tuolumne County in 1845, and her father, David Millard Reed, was born in New York in 1836.” Eugene and Lucilla’s first child, Thankful Anna (named after Eugene’s mother Thankful Bennet Day), was not born until 1897, twenty-two years after their marriage. Perhaps Lucilla had previous miscarriages or stillbirths, but a twenty year span seems exceptional.

Lucilla Reed Day

Their second child, Eugene Ingersall, was born a year later on the 4^th of July. Their third child, Jesse (or Jessie) Florence Day, was born four years later on March 24, 1902. Tragically, Lucilla died of heart disease just eight weeks later. Eugene was left a widower, with an infant and four- and five-year old children to care for, a difficult proposition for a miner in his 40s who needed to be at the remote mine site for weeks at a time.

Although some family records suggest that Eugene’s ranchero on Yankee Hill was home to several of Lucilla’s tribal members in addition to their own nuclear family, none of Lucilla’s relatives took over caring for the children. The reasons are unclear. Eugene instead chose to place his children in the care of the nuns at the convent orphanage in Grass Valley, California, while he continued to mine for gold. (Coincidentally, the orphanage is the same one I discussed in my previous blog entry, where the unfortunate Reppert children lived a decade later.)

At some point during Eugene’s twenty years in Tuolumne County, his younger sister Jessie must have come out to visit him from New York. While in the area, she met Frank Thisse, a salesman from Lovelock, Nevada, who invested in several mines in Tuolumne County. He eventually became Justice of the Peace in Skidoo, California, now a ghost town in Death Valley National Park. They married and were living in the area when Lucilla died. Jessie and Frank took baby Jessie Day in and raised her for several years—long enough that when they sent her to the orphanage to join her siblings at some point, the little child was registered as Jessie Thisse, as we see on the 1910 census. Little Jessie’s siblings appear on the same census under the surname Day.

Another sort of separation must have taken place as well. Despite the children being only one quarter Native American/Miwok, Thankful and Eugene were identified in many documents as “Indian”. Jessie was identified as “white”. This difference had repercussions.

At some point after the 1910 census, Thankful and Eugene left the orphanage. The circumstances are unknown—did they run away? Did their father reclaim them? Did their mother’s relatives claim them? Did they reach an age that the orphanage expected them to leave and earn a living?

Eugene probably had few happy memories from his time there, as he was seriously injured and expected to die after falling 17 feet from a balcony with several other children on June 15, 1907. He received a skull fracture, and the nuns had sent a letter to his father’s last known location at Sonora, California, asking that he come to his nine-year-old son’s bedside. Presumably Eugene recovered without any lasting effects, for as an adult, he held a responsible position as a railway brakeman for forty years.

Eugene and Thankful apparently returned to the ranchero where they were born, living with their mother’s relatives. They received official recognition as tribal members, and Thankful actually served as the secretary for the Miwok tribe when they received federal recognition as the “Tuolumne Band of Me-wuk Indians from the Tuolumne Rancheria” in 1937. 

When they married, they chose Native American spouses. Eugene married a Miwok woman named Pearl Thompson. The couple had twelve children. They lived in Tuolumne their entire lives, with Eugene working for the railroad. He served in the military in World War I and was head of the local American Legion Post. In addition, he served as the Indian Agent at the Tuolumne Rancheria in the 1930s. Census records identify Eugene and his children as “Indian”.

Me-wuk member farming on the Tuolumne Rancheria in 1920s

Thankful first married Daniel B. Wilson in 1919, with whom she had four children. He worked in the oil industry, and they lived in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. He was from an Arizona tribe. After his death, she married Frederick Geisdorff, and moved back to the Me-Wuk Rancheria. Thankful and Frederick had one son, Robert, in 1927. She became involved in tribal affairs as well, serving as an officer in the tribal government during the 1930s. Census records also list her and her children as “Indian”.

The descendants of Eugene and Thankful remain active with the tribe. Photos from recent Me-wuk celebrations feature Wilson, Geisdorff and Day adults and children.

Acorn Festival at Tuolumne Rancheria, with four Wilson and Day descendants

Their little sister Jessie’s story is far different. She remained in the orphanage until at least 1914, for she appears in a Grass Valley news article as a musical performer in a concert at the orphanage. It isn’t clear when she left; her Aunt Jessie Thisse and husband Frank moved back to Frank’s hometown of Lovelock Nevada at some point after 1910. By 1919, Jessie is living with them and attending high school in Lovelock. She played on the basketball team and performed in the school opera in 1920, and is identified as the Thisses’ daughter in news articles and the 1920 census. It is unclear if the couple ever formally adopted her, however. When her aunt Jessie Thisse died in 1929, Jessie Day is listed as her niece in the obituary. Interestingly, the only other survivor listed is another niece from New York—no mention of Thankful or Eugene.

Jessie married a high school classmate shortly after graduation. Andrew Johnson was a mechanic, and the couple had five children before Andrew’s untimely death at age 50 in 1954. Census records identify Jessie and her children as white; no reference is made to her Miwok heritage.

Jessie then married a much younger man, Howard Lamp. She also died quite young, at age 61, after what was described in the obituary as “a long illness”.

It appears that once Thankful, Eugene and Jessie’s mother died, the children took two very different paths in life. Thankful and Eugene chose to identify with their mother’s Native American half of the family, despite only being one quarter Miwok. They appear to have had some sort of limited relationship with their father after they left the orphanage, for young Eugene was listed as the contact person on his father’s death certificate. However, neither of them appears to have had any relationship with their little sister. Their obituaries and Findagrave biographies say that their parents had only two children; they don’t even seem to recognize that she existed.

Jessie does not appear to have had any relationship with Thankful or Eugene, or with her mother’s relatives. It is unclear how often she or the Thisses saw her father, either. The Thisses had some mining business connections with Eugene, so there must have been some contact. Jessie never seemed to claim her Native American heritage. Her aunt and uncle, who became her adoptive parents, however informally, seem to have kept her at a remove from her mother’s people. She grew up as a white person, far from the Tuolumne Rancheria. Once she relocated to Frank Thisse’s hometown of Lovelock, she left her previous identity as Jessie Day behind.

So all three of these children chose their family. Thankful and Eugene chose their Miwok relatives as their true family of the heart. Jessie chose her white aunt and uncle as her family of the heart. It is unfortunate that the choices the children made meant that they never formed a close sibling relationship. Is this a story of “passing” as white? Were the Thisses embarrassed by Eugene’s choice to marry a half-Miwok woman? Did Jessie deliberately hide part of her heritage? Did her siblings deny her existence because they were angry with her choice to pass as white? We will never know.

Follow-up to the Black Sheep Post: The Tragic Aftermath for the Reppert Family

Vengeful Killer Husband Claude M. Reppert: 1874-1932

Cheating Wife Maude Reppert: 1886-1978

Reppert Children:

            Daniel G. Reppert: 1903-1933

            Grace M. Reppert 1904-1918

            William E. Reppert: 1908-1928

At the end of my previous post on dead-beat dad and all-around scoundrel William Herniman, who was murdered when discovered by his mistress’ enraged husband, I admitted to being curious about the fate of his murderer’s family. I couldn’t resist investigating. Tragically, it appears Claude Reppert’s February 17, 1917 act of violence shattered and eventually destroyed his entire family.

When William Herniman first began his affair with Claude Reppert’s wife Maude in 1916, she was already a troubled soul. A 1912 news article reported that she was being committed to a mental institution for the second time. She was first declared insane in August 1908 and was institutionalized until May 1909. She was probably suffering post-partum depression at the time of her first episode of mental illness, since her fourth child, William, had just been born a month earlier in July. While she was locked away, her 22-month-old daughter Ethel May died, so she returned home to the demands of a young infant and two older children, while she was weighed down by grief and probably a lot of guilt at not being with her Ethel when she died.   

The family seem to have struggled financially as well. When the Herniman affair began, the Repperts were living in a “tent house on the dance platform near the Kennett Hotel” in the mining boom town of Kennett, California. The family moved to Kennett from the hamlet of Castella; both towns were in Shasta County in northern California near Redding. Reppert was working long, hard hours in a zinc mine in Kennett, but he couldn’t have been earning much if the best home they could afford was a tent. February in the mountains near Shasta Lake would have been miserably cold even with wood or stone walls—with only canvas as protection from the bitter wind, it must have been bone-chilling. Trapped in such a horrible place while raising three young children. Maude must have been desperate and depressed, so she was easy prey for a sweet-talking older man.

Apparently Maude had planned to steal away with William Herniman on February 17, but the night before she either confessed to her husband on her own, or he forced her to admit to the affair. A news article after Reppert was set free by the grand jury reported:

“Mrs. Reppert knew full well what was coming. She confessed the night before to her husband that she and Herniman had been intimate. ‘You leave it to me,’ said Reppert to his wife. ‘He’ll be my meat.’ Mrs. Reppert was forbidden to give Herniman any warning.”

She must have felt extremely guilty about her lover’s death and about the trauma her older children had suffered. Herniman had sent them away on a freight train by themselves—they were 12 and 13 at the time. It is unclear as to Herniman’s attentions. Did he plan to run off with the children in tow, or was the train trip an attempt to abandon them? Did their absence the night before the planned elopement clue their father in on his wife’s affair? 

I suspect the children may have feared their father; the daughter, Grace, told the newspaper she witnessed meetings between her mother and Herniman, and yet she never told her father about it. She seemed to feel no great loyalty to him. I like to think William Herniman hatched his plan to run away in order to save his lover and her children from a violent man. However, there is no information about Reppert’s nature and behavior to support or refute my speculation. 

What we do know is that shortly after Reppert was freed after the grand jury refused to indict him for murder, Maude Reppert had another breakdown. Claude had her committed to the state hospital in Stockton. Less than a month after the murders, Claude took this three children to Grass Valley. The March 15 Sacramento Bee reported that “he will place them in a convent, there to be cared for at his expense.” He wasted no time before abandoning his children. The oldest was 13 and could have helped care for his siblings while Claude worked. Why didn’t Reppert seek out relatives that might have helped? His parents and siblings lived in California. I think that his choice to dump them at the convent, which was basically an orphanage, is quite telling about the type of father he was.

The convent did not prove to be a safe haven. Here is the fate of each of the children:

Grace Reppert 1904-1918

Grace arrived at the convent just as the Spanish Flu epidemic swept through the United States. The December 28, 1918 issue of the Sacramento Bee reported that 100 cases of the flu were reported in Grass Valley, with 70 of the cases at the two convent schools. “The children are taken down very rapidly…One death has occurred, that of Grace Reppert…She was aged 14 years.” Poor little Grace.

William Earl Reppert 1908-1928

It is not clear how long William remained at the convent, or the terms under which he left. Was he kicked out? Did he run away? He didn’t age out, since he appears at the tender age of 14 as a hardened car thief in Sacramento, Along with two other boys, he had stolen several vehicles over several weeks, taking them joyriding before abandoning them. He also stole items he found in the cars. He was living at an address in Sacramento with one of his partners in crime; the home may have been a foster home or group home. He was sent to a detention center.

His criminal activities must have continued as he grew older, for by 1928 he was an inmate at the Preston School of Industry, a reform school or juvenile detention facility. This “school” rented out the inmates as laborers, which was typical of the facilities of the era. William and five other inmates were digging a ditch for a sewer line at a construction site. The 13-foot-deep ditch collapsed and William and a new inmate were crushed and smothered under the dirt. It took four hours to dig out their bodies. The other four prisoners were injured but were pulled out. The article describing the incident notes that William was “serving a term from San Francisco”.

Preston School of Industry in Ione, now abandoned

Daniel Reppert 1903-1933

Like his younger brother, Daniel turned to a life of crime at a young age. The Sacramento Bee reported he was arrested for vagrancy at a rooming house in November 1920. He had a large number of keys and a check for $25 in his pocket. I inferred that he was using the keys to gain access to other rooms or buildings, and was stealing things, including the check. Less than a month later, he was arrested again for burglary. The December 10 article said he was returned to the custody of the Preston School in Ione; he had been sent there for delinquency in 1918 at age fifteen. Obviously, he had left the convent soon after his father abandoned him there the year before.

He continued a life of crime, ending up in San Quentin prison for passing bad checks/fraud in 1929. He never left. He died in San Quentin on May 21, 1933. Cause of death was not indicated on the record. Daniel was only 30 years old.

Daniel barely outlived his father. Claude Milton Reppert died March 6, 1932 at age 58 in Sacramento. He was a former carpenter with a railroad, but was out on disability when he was killed by a “paralytic stroke”. He was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Sacramento with three of his four children—Daniel was buried at San Quentin.

Maude divorced Claude at some point between 1918 and 1930. She was working as a housekeeper in 1930, but by the 1940 census, she had been reinstitutionalized at the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane. She remained a troubled, lonely soul after the mental institutions were emptied, finally dying in 1978 at the age of 92. Her obituary lists no relatives, only a friend.

I wonder what might have happened to this tragic family if William Herniman had managed to run off with Maude and her children. Would the three children have avoided becoming criminals and dying young, or were their fates already set early in childhood? Did the sins of the father doom these children?  

52 Ancestors 2020 Prompt “Black Sheep”: William Henry Herniman

Bad Boy Meets Bad End 

William Henry Herniman: 1856-1917

It’s not often that genealogy research leads to a lurid murder case. I had recently broken through a “brick wall” researching my third great-grandmother Nancy Ann Herniman. I was thrilled to find her parents and numerous siblings. One of those siblings was John Herniman, father of an amazing 14 children. His oldest child was William Henry, making him my first cousin three times removed. A quick search turned up his Findagrave entry, which stated he was murdered.

Of course I’ll confess to being excited, especially when my Newspapers.com research turned up several articles from across California—it was quite the story!

Santa Cruz Evening News 17 Feb 1917

First, some background on William. He was born February 22, 1856 in Buffalo, New York to John Herniman and his wife Jane McCann Herniman. The family moved several times during his childhood, always further westward, first to Michigan, then Wisconsin, then Minnesota. By the late 1880s, William had moved to Oregon, where he met Emma Jane Black. They were married in Hood River in 1889; William was 33 and Emma only 21. They quickly had a child, and relocated to California, where Emma was born and still had family. They had seven more children, the last, Robert John, was born in 1908 when Emma was 40 and William 52.

Apparently William deserted his family shortly after Robert’s birth. When Emma was interviewed for the 1910 census, she claimed she was widowed—she probably hated to admit her husband had abandoned her and their eight young children. She was living in Napa near her siblings.

Meanwhile, William had scampered off first to Colfax, California, and then to the tiny town of Kennett in Shasta County. He was working odd jobs and had started romancing a married woman with three children, a Mrs. Maude Reppert. He was trying to persuade her over several months to run away with him; she was reluctant. Her daughter reported later that he came to the house every morning and “forced” Mrs. Reppert to sit on his lap.

William decided to push her into leaving her husband by using her children. He somehow persuaded her 12 year old son and 13 year old daughter to get on a freight train to Chico. There are conflicting explanations of why he did this. At first the cheating wife claimed he’d sent the children ahead and said they would join them. Later she implied he was trying to get rid of the children. And what of her third child? What were the cheating couple’s plan for him?

The poor older children became a story in and of themselves. They were caught hitching a ride on another train, and told a wild story to the police of being abandoned by their parents, sent to live with foster parents, and that couple abandoned them as well. They gave false names to the police, curiously using the first name “William” for the name of both their supposed birth parent and foster parent. Their real father’s name was Claude Reppert. Later when their true identities were discovered, the children said that William Herniman threatened to kill them if they didn’t leave town; that he bought them a ticket on the train and forced them to leave their home.

Whatever the case, on the morning of February 17, 1917, William Herniman went to the Reppert house. He expected Claude to have left for work at a local zinc mine, and that Mrs. Reppert would be ready to elope with him. Instead he found an armed and angry Claude Reppert waiting for him. Claude shot him twice in the head, killing William. 

While Reppert was arrested for murder, he was released days later after a grand jury refused to indict him. This jury of his peers sided with Reppert, feeling a man who was trying to steal another man’s wife had earned getting shot.

William’s sister-in-law had contacted police by this time to let them know that William had deserted his wife and eight children eight years earlier. This helped to inflame public sentiment against him I am sure. The newspaper erroneously claimed the children were grown for some reason, despite the fact that in 1917, the three youngest were only 9, 12 and 14 years old.

This story from the Santa Ana paper gets the victim and killer confused--very amusing!

Emma’s hometown newspaper exhibited a Fox News-like bias, pontificating that “any man deserves to die like a dog who enters a happy home to leave shame and sorrow like the slime of a viper.” The writer also claimed that William intended to “lose” the Reppert children and “when he tired of the deluded mother would have deserted her as he did to his wife and eight children in this county.” Not exactly factual, reasoned reporting, but certainly salacious good fun for the reading public.

None of William’s family members claimed his body, which was not surprising. As a result, he was buried in Potter’s Field at the County Hospital in Redding. I wonder what happened to the Reppert family—I can’t imagine any either parent or the two oldest children feeling any sort of security or trust in one another after the events of February 1917.

Sources:

Santa Ana Register, Feb 17-1917, pg 1, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57484244/backwards-story-with-victim-as-killer/

https://www.newspapers.com/search/#dr_year=1917-1917&query=william+herniman%2C&oquery=william+herniman%2C+1917

Little Chicago: 52 Ancestors 2020 Prompt “Small”

Little Chicago: Liquor Smuggling During (or After?) Prohiibition

Junen Percy Kyllo: 1921-1964

Loren Harley Kyllo: 1924-1997

Parents: Pearl Peterson (my dad’s older sister) and Joseph Kyllo

Prohibition started in 1920 and lasted until 1933. It failed to wean Americans from alcohol—it just turned everyone who liked a beer or a mixed drink into a lawbreaker. Regular people desperate to make a little extra money became criminals by providing drinkers with the liquor they wanted. According to family lore, my paternal first cousins Junen and Loren Kyllo got into the illegal liquor trade, distributing hooch smuggled to tiny Hanska, Minnesota by Chicago mobsters.

My father regaled my brother with stories about his nephews and their ingenious money-making plan. The pair were the sons of dad’s sister Pearl Peterson and her husband Joseph Kyllo. Pearl was sixteen years older than my father, so Junen and Loren were only four and seven years younger than my dad.  Being so close in age and living near one another, dad’s nephews were also his good friends as they grew into young adults.

Loren, Juhl and Junen at the Peterson farm, 1930s

At some point in the 1930s, Junen and Loren went into business together, running an auto repair shop in Hanska. The car repair business wasn’t exactly a money-maker, especially in the 1930s in rural Minnesota. Car ownership among poorer people was still pretty new at that point, with some people still using horses for farming and transportation. It’s probably not all that surprising that car repair became the secondary business—illegal liquor sales was the real moneymaker, and the car repair business was a great way to launder the illicit profits.

Supposedly, mobsters from Chicago would drive down a couple times a year to deliver the liquor. In the fall, they would stop off at my great-uncle Jacob’s house after making their deliveries so they could get in a little duck hunting in the sloughs near his property. They’d park their cars in his farmyard, getting out in their snazzy suits and shiny shoes, swapping into hunting clothes. They’d also trade their handguns and shoulder holsters for shotguns, and would head out. They’d pay Uncle Jacob with booze when they returned to their cars with their trophies, once again changing clothes before starting their trip back to Illinois. He found them to be pretty pleasant fellows.

The Chicago connection explains why the Kyllo repair shop became known in Hanska as “Little Chicago”, a sly local reference to the real business conducted on the down-low.

When I first heard this story, I thought it made perfect sense. Then I looked at Junen and Loren’s ages during Prohibition—they were only 12 and 9 when Prohibition ended! So did my father lie? That seems unlikely, especially since my brother remembered that someone who was preparing a centennial book about Hanska came out to interview my dad about Little Chicago, thinking he’d be a good source of information since the Kyllos died in the 1960s. My dad refused, apparently reluctant to besmirch his cousins’ reputation in print, even though the story was common knowledge.

Was it really Junen and Loren’s father Joseph who ran Little Chicago? He was farming at the time, and then moved to Minneapolis where he and my father’s sister Pearl both worked for Honeywell. I don’t think he had time to run a second business. Besides, I have the photo of Junen and Loren in front of Little Chicago, and they were obviously adults.

Loren and Junen in front of "Little Chicago" in Hanska, MN. Junen was on the local baseball team. Circa 1940.

Then I realized that after Prohibition ended, the state of Minnesota took charge of liquor sales—you had to go to a Muni (municipal liquor store) to buy liquor, and the price included a state tax. According to the Minnesota Department of Alcohol and Gambling,

“In December 1933, Minnesota passed the Liquor Control Act. The act was established to regulate the manufacture, distribution, retail sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages in the state of Minnesota.The Liquor Control Department was created to enforce the Liquor Control Act….The department had 12 agents. During this time, Minnesota still had many dry counties. Bootlegging, the transportation and distribution of alcohol beverages in the dry areas, was an enforcement concern.”

Perhaps Hanska was a dry town(although it later had a very busy Muni that still does a brisk business as a bar today). Therefore, there would still have been an incentive to smuggle in tax-free liquor and sell it under the table even though Prohibition had ended. The Kyllos probably ran the liquor business in the late 1930s into the early 1940s. I believe that’s the true story behind the mystery of Little Chicago and my dad’s slightly shady cousins.

Loren Kyllo 1942, Navy uniform

Both Junen and Loren left their business behind when World War II began. They enlisted and served honorably, Junen in the Army and Loren in the Navy. When they returned from the war, they got jobs in the Twin Cities and married. Loren had two daughters; sadly, Junen died unexpectedly at age 42 with no children.

I’ll keep trying to verify this story about my cousins. Perhaps the local newspaper’s archives contain advertisements for the auto repair business that would at least confirm the years that the business existed.   

 Sources:

 https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/age/alcohol/Pages/regulation-history.aspx

Anfinn Anfinnson Vetti: 52 Ancestors 2020 Prompt “The Old Country”

 Anfinn Anfinnson Vetti: 1715-1773 4^th Great-Grandfather

Tomas Anfinnsson Vetti 1766-1851 3^rd Great-Grandfather

Sjur Tomasson Hestetun Svalheim: 1807-? Great-great Grandfather

Ove Sjursson/Syverson Svalheim: 1840-1882 Great Grandfather

A distant cousin of mine, Joel Botten, has done extensive research into the Norwegian families that immigrated to America in the late 1800s and settled in the Hanska, Minnesota area. He is incredibly generous with his research, and provided my family with valuable information on my great-grandfather, Ove Syverson, and the family and region he came from in Norway. Mr. Botten told us Ove’s ancestors came from a farm called Vetti that still exists in the Ardal region of Norway. To my delight, the farm rents rooms to tourists and hikers, so it has a website. I discovered a treasure trove of photos and information about the exact place in the Old Country where my ancestors were born, lived and farmed.

According to Mr. Botten, my fourth-great-grandfather Anfinn Anfinnsson Vetti and his wife, Elsa Jorgensdatter “bought a farm called Vetti, the highest and most remote farm in the mountains of Ovre Ardal. It was purcheased from the minister Christopher Munthe. Jim Klobuchar, Tribune writer (and incidentally the father of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar) stayed at Vetti and wrote of it in his column.”

The accompanying family tree Mr. Botten provided, which I am in the process of verifying on Ancestry, showed that Anfinn was born in 1715 and married Elsa in 1745. They had several children, the last of whom was my third-great-grandfather Tomas Anfinnsson Vetti, born in 1766. He married Marita Tolleivsdatter Hestetun and one of their sons, Sjur (Syver) Tomasson Hestetun Svalheim, born in 1807, was my second-great-grandfather. He married Randi Olsdatter Ve, and their sixth child was my great-grandfather Ove Sjursson (Syverson) Svalheim, who emigrated in 1869 with his wife Ragnhild Oldsdatter Ve and the oldest of their children.

Norwegian surnames are tricky. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, families used the names of the large farms they lived on as surnames, similar to English surnames that referenced locations like Underhill or Redpath. As we can see in the family tree above, Sjur Tomasson Hestetun Svalheim did not live on the Vetti farm. By that point, as he was a younger son, he moved, farming on the Svalheim land, which became his surname and that of my great-grandfather until he moved to Minnesota and dropped the location name in favor of his patronymic. I will have to research the Svalheim location further. For this post, we will focus on the Vetti farm that belonged to Sjur’s grandparents and uncle.

Vetti Farm

Wikipedia provides some information on the Vetti Gard or Vetti Farm:

“Vetti (or Vetti Gard) is an old farm area in the Utladalen valley in Årdal Municipality in Vestland County, Norway. It located northeast of Øvre Årdal, along the Utla river and has likely been inhabited since 1120. From Vetti, there are two walking paths into the Utladalen Landscape Protection Area and the Jotunheimen National Park. One path goes to the waterfall Vettisfossen and the other one goes to old mountain farm, Vettismorki, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) to the north.”

Satellite view: dot is farm, Utla River to left

The Vetti Gard Turiststasjon website provides some history of the farm, stating in rather stilted English:

“Vetti is a farm with a long history. The meaning of the name Vetti supposedly means something along the lines of “fairy tale meadow”, and the fairy tale landscape connection makes sense when experiencing the contrasts between the mowing fields, the roar of the waterfalls and the close vicinity to wild nature. The entire valley of Utladalen as outlying fields has belonged to the farm of Vetti for centuries. Old sources tell us that there were arable land and the cultivation of grains going as far back as 1120. As so many of the outlying farms, Vetti was left deserted after the Black Death. Vetti was officially named as a deserted farm in 1601, making it perhaps more desirable as clearing a deserted farm could lead to both a period of tax exemption and future tax breaks. From 1603 onwards a man named Eirik was named as the farmer. Sources say that the current Vetti family arrived at the farm in 1714."

“Jørgen Anfinnson, born 1747, was most likely the first farmer on Vetti to own the farm. Since then the family lived on the farm until the 1980s. Up until the 19th century there was only one farm at Vetti. Later on the farms of Lauvhaugen and Flaten became part of the community, first as tenant farms and later on as owner-occupied farms. Vetti has had seasonal farms at the mountain farms of Vettismorki and Fleskedalen. The latter vas previously known as Fleskenosdalen. The seasonal farm at Fleskenosdalen was in use up until 1953, whilst seasonal farming was taking place at Vettismorki up until 1968. The seasonal farm included a fenced in mowing field which was harvested up until the end of the 1950s.”

The Vetti Gard history lists Jorgen Anfinnson as the probable first farmer, despite acknowledging that the Vetti family arrived at the farm in 1714. That is around the date of Anfinn Anfinnsson Vetti’s birth. The Jorgen mentioned in the website was Anfinn’s second oldest son, so my fourth-great-uncle. Jorgen was born at Vetti. It is unclear whether other siblings continued to live and work at Vetti along with him, or if they, like Jorgen’s nephew Sjur, moved to other Ardal area farms.

The farm history also states that the Vetti family continued to live on the farm until the 1980s. This corresponds with the Jim Klobuchar column, recounting his July 1986 visit to Vetti Gard. He reported that siblings Jorgen and Johanna Vetti lived there and welcomed tourists. Klobuchar compared Johanna to Mother Goose, and described the farm as follows:

“…on the slopes below the 200-year-old farmhouse [Jorgen] still raises potatoes, barley and cauliflower. Next to the main house is an ancient shed and granary standing on stubby posts papered near the bottom to make it impossible for all but the most acrobatic mice to enter.”

Klobuchar also reported that Jorgen Vetti “said he couldn’t trace the family lineage or the history of the farm much before 1714, which was about the time George Washington was born.” Klobuchar also said that Johanna Vetti asked about ancestors who had moved to Minnesota; it is unclear if she was referencing Ove Syverson or later relatives, as she mentioned them settling in St. Paul.

Now the Vetti family is gone from Vetti Gard, and the farm is only open during the summer months for tourists and mountain hikers. The website explains:

“Vetti Gard Turiststasjon has been an important place for mountaineers since the mountain pioneers found their way into the valley of Utladalen as early as the 19th century. Famous Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg once said that he became 10 years younger every time he visited Vetti, and chances are that if you have found your way there once, you will want to visit again. The farm has also housed other famous people such as the explorer Fridtjof Nansen, mountaineer William C. Slingsby and the current queen consort of Norway, Queen Sonja.”

Upper farm in winter--you can see why the site is only open in summer.

The website continues: “At present day, Vetti Farm Tourist Station is open during the summer months, found at the heart of Jotunheimen. The farm has 13 rooms and 27 beds in total. Extra beds/mattresses can be put down in the barn and tents can be erected on the farm’s land. In addition to this there is room for 12 in a dormitory in the barn. The farm serves food during the summer season.”

The rooms pictured are filled with rustic furniture and lovely décor. Prices are amazingly inexpensive at the current exchange rate of 1 NOK equaling 11 cents. Rooms run around 460 NOK, or about $50, and breakfast is under $20, while dinner is about $44.

I am stunned at the beauty of this place, and amazed by its history. I marvel at the thought of people living in such a wild, remote area in the twelfth century, and then dying during the Black Death, leaving the farm abandoned and lost. Perhaps someday we can return to the Old Country and visit the farm, or perhaps one of our children can make the trek. I like to imagine them staying in one of the charming rooms and walking through buildings which may have been standing when my great-grandfather left Ovre Ardal in the 1860s. They can look out at the mountain landscapes and the fields studded with wildflowers, the same views that my fourth great-grandparents must have gazed upon with pride when they first bought the farm. What a miracle that it still exists!

Sources:

https://en.vettigard.no/about-vetti-farm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetti,_Sogn_og_Fjordane

“Mother Goose in All Her Grandeur” by Jim Klobuchar, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 19 Jul 1986, pg. 21-22.