Is There Really a Governor in the Family Tree? 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Power”

 

Was Wisconsin Governor Davidson My Second-Great-Grandmother’s Nephew?

Ragnhild Olsdatter (Nausteplassen) Ve: 1800-1918
Gov. James O. Davidson: 1854-1922

 

            According to other genealogists in my Peterson-Severson extended family, my second-great-grandmother, Ragnhild Olsdatter Ve, had a half-nephew who became a political powerhouse in America. I am trying—unsuccessfully so far-- to verify this story.

             I continually struggle to find records for my Norwegian ancestors. The Norwegian practice of using the father’s first name, combined with the name of the farm where the family worked and lived, as a surname, has me greatly confused. I have discovered that people can have more than one combination surname—when they moved to a new town, the place name part of the surname would change. Siblings could thus have different names. Girls would have a surname like Olsdatter (Ole’s daughter), while sons would have the surname Olson or Olsen. Then the farm name adds more uncertainty. One daughter could be Olsdatter Ve, for the Ve farm, and another Osdatter Joramo, when the family moved to a new home. So many possible combinations. I am never sure if anything I find can be trusted or verified. Obviously I need the help of a genealogist who specializes in Norway to help me.

            Ragnhild Olsdatter Ve (sometimes Vee, sometimes with the Nausteplassen location added) was born some time around 1807 near OvreArdal, Sogn Og Fjordane, Norway. It appears her parents were Ole Johannesen and Jorond Monsdatter. Shortly after her birth, in 1810, her father died.

Ragnhild Olsdatter Ve

            Apparently her mother remarried and had at least one more child, a son named Ole Davidson. Ole was Ragnhild’s half-brother. I have not been able to verify this part of the story using Ancestry records. Other family trees agree that Ole Johannesen died in 1810, but have no records attached that prove the year of death. And I find no record of Jorond’s remarriage and the birth of additional children with her new husband.

            I tried to work backwards from the records of Wisconsin Governor James O. Davidson. According to his obituary and his Wikipedia entry, Davidson was born February 10, 1854 in Årdal, Sogn og Fjordane County, Norway to parents Ole Davidson and Ingabor Jensdatter.  James, at that point called Jens, immigrated in 1872 to the United States when he was 18 years old. He was accompanied by his widowed father. These details are suggestive. Jens/James was born in the correct area of Norway. But the half-sibling link between Ole Davidson and Ragnhild’s mother is missing thus far.

            James Davidson arrived in Wisconsin in debt for his passage and needing a way to support himself. He first worked as farm laborer, and then trained as a tailor. He started a successful mercantile and tailoring business in Soldiers Grove Wisconsin. He married Helen Bliss in 1883, and became involved in Republican politics.

Gov. James O. Davidson

            Davidson served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1893 to 1899. He was elected Wisconsin State treasurer in 1898 and 1900. He joined Robert M. La Follette’s gubernatorial ticket, and was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1902, serving until 1906 when Gov. La Follette resigned to become Wisconsin’s Senator. Davidson filled the remainder of La Follette’s term. He was elected governor in the next election, and re-elected in 1908, serving until 1911.  According to Wikipedia, under his leadership “state regulation of the railroads was extended to include public utilities, telegraph, telephone, electricity, water companies, and the insurance industry.” He seems to have been an effective leader.

            I will continue to search for records that will verify Gov. Davidson’s connection to my ancestors. Until then, our link to political power in the early twentieth century will remain tantalizing but unproven.

 

Sources:

https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nrk_sogn_og_fjordane/fylkesleksikon/1517627.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O._Davidson#:~:text=James%20Ole%20Davidson%20(February%2010,the%20U.S.%20state%20of%20Wisconsin.

Obituary of Gov. James O. Davidson.   http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wisobits/genealogy/name/d.html#DavidsonJamesOGov

Family Tree prepared by Joel Botten.

The Cousin Game: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Unusual Source”

 Breaking Brick Walls with a Family Search “Game”

            When I installed the Family Search app on my phone, I never expected it to lead to clues that would help break down “brick walls” in my research—sometimes even brick walls that I hadn’t even discovered yet. And it was due to what my genealogy society jokingly calls the “cousin game”—truly an unusual source of information.

            The “cousin game” is actually called “Relatives Around Me”. FamilySearch describes it as follows:

“Have you ever sat in a room full of people and wondered if or how you might be related to those around you? Relatives Around Me, a fun feature in the FamilySearch Family Tree app, can tell you how you are related to friends, neighbors, or anyone sitting near you. To try Relatives Around Me, you and your potential cousin both need to be signed in to the Family Tree app and within approximately 100 feet of each other. (To download the app, click iOS or Android.)

Once you have signed in, select More at the bottom right of the screen (iOS) or the drop-down in the top left (Android), and then select Relatives Around Me. This option opens a page with a green button that says “Scan for Friends.”

  

Tap the green button to start scanning. Anyone else who taps the green button and is within range will show up in a list on your device, and you will show up on theirs. Selecting the person’s name will bring up a pedigree graphic showing your common ancestor and the lines through which you both descend.”

The pedigree graphics from both programs are valuable, as they show ancestors not only from your own tree, but also from the FamilySearch wiki. That’s how brick walls are breached: someone else working on a shared ancestor has made a connection a step or two further up a shared branch of the tree. You can then take that information and attempt to verify it and build upon it. Here is an example of a pedigree graphic:

            Of course not all the information on these pedigree charts turns out to be accurate. People in the wiki make mistakes. Every new ancestor I discover through this program must be verified before I add them to my tree. Some have turned out to be false leads. But others have pointed me in the right direction, and helped me find new ancestors.

Recent COVID era innovations have allowed for socially distant, remote scanning—my genealogy society’s DNA Special Interest Group, for example, set up a remote “Relatives Finder” session, and I discovered I had several extremely distant cousins in the group. “Relatives Finder” is a similar program to “Relatives Around Me” but is operated by the BYU Family History Technology Lab.

            I am attending the virtual Roots Tech Convention in a few days, and the Roots Tech organizers are going to use the “Relatives Finder” program to link up attendees with any cousins attending the event. Given the huge number of attendees at the virtual event, I expect I will be amazed at the number of new leads I discover. I may be spending the next couple years trying to verify potential new ancestors. I’m looking forward to it! I hope that I can get leads for the parts of my tree that still dead-end just a couple generations back.

Sources:

https://www.relativefinder.org/#/main

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/relatives/

 

Romantic Calling Cards: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Valentines”

Rural Minnesota Courtship: “Hidden Name” Calling Cards

Anna Peterson: 1895-1913
Pearl Peterson: 1901-1962

Among my family’s photos and memorabilia are some charming little vintage calling cards. They bear messages that remind me of the sweet sentiments found on early Valentine’s Day cards, and may have served the same purpose as Valentines do now—to express a bit of romantic interest in the opposite sex.

As I researched these little cards, I found them often referred to as “Victorian Calling Cards”. You can find them for sale on vintage and antique store websites, with the sellers claiming they were printed in the 1880s or 1890s. I believe these were printed about ten to twenty years later.

I have four of these cards. A site called Peculiar History describes them well:

“While there are many examples of Victorian calling cards, some of the most elaborate include ‘scrap’ cards or ‘hidden name’ cards. The backing of each card carries the name of the person and is sometimes elaborately die-cut along the edges. Over the name, a small chromolithograph picture is pasted on one edge which then can be lifted to discover the caller. The chromolithograph image themes include hearts, doves, scrolls, urns, cupids, roses and women’s hands, among many others. There are also examples of short poems included in many of these pictures.”

My favorite of the four cards shows a woman’s hand against a backdrop of roses and pansies, reaching out to touch a beribboned white dove holding a card in its beak that reads, “May true friends be around you.” Beneath the scrap picture is the name “Anna Peterson” printed in script. My research found that the motifs of a woman’s hand combined with flowers symbolized friendship. The different motifs used had special meanings.

The second card’s chromolithograph features a woman’s hand holding a fancy card that depicts a snowy scene of a house and trees, and the words “All happiness to you!” The card and hand are surrounded with roses and forget-me-nots. The hidden name in this card is “Pearl Peterson”.

The next card has a smaller and thinner chromolithograph, but the die-cut card beneath is elaborately embossed with floral garlands. The picture features a hand reaching toward roses, with two white doves in the foreground, while the background shows a snow covered scene of a river, a bare tree and snow-roofed houses. The hidden name, in very elaborate script, is “Martin Rinde”.

The last card features an elaborate die-cut pattern on the backing card—it is a tear-drop shape with punched out circles making a border along the edge. The chromolithograph features a white dove holding a sprig of pine or yew, sitting amidst roses, yellow daisies, and small pink flowers. A woman’s hand holds a blue scroll of paper that reads “A token of regard for thee, In this my simple offering, see!” The hidden name is “Oscar O. Syverson.”

Anna Peterson and Pearl Peterson are two of my father’s sisters. They were born in Lake Hanska Township in Brown County Minnesota to parents Paul Peterson and Regina Syverson Peterson. Anna was born in 1895, and Pearl was born in 1901.

 The cards certainly would not have been used until the two girls were in their teens and would be paying formal calls on neighbors and friends. Therefore, the most likely period they would have been used is between 1910 and 1918—Anna married at age sixteen in 1912, so her card wouldn’t have read Peterson after 1912. Pearl married in 1920.

The other cards were likely from young men who called on the sisters and their family. I found Oscar O. Syverson on Ancestry. He was a year older that Anna, born in Linden Township in 1894, so he wouldn’t have purchased calling cards until his teens—1910 at the earliest. Sadly, apparently no young lady ever returned his “regard”, for he never married.

As for the second young man, Martin Rinde, I can find no record of him on Ancestry.

I suspect that like most trends, calling cards began as something the upper class used, and then over time the practice trickled down to the lower classes. Pearl and Anna Peterson were far from upper class. They lived in a tiny farm house on the prairie without running water. These cards would have been a luxurious little treat for a poor farming family. Since three of the cards feature winter items—a pine spray in the beak of a dove, and winter scenes in the backgrounds of two—I wonder if by the 1910s the cards weren’t being used as traditional year-around calling cards, but as Valentine’s Day greetings.

Whatever their purpose, the charming little “hidden name” cards were being used in rural Minnesota long after the Victorian era was over. The printing of the hidden names was probably handled by the local newspaper office, which doubled as a printing service in the tiny town closest to the Peterson farm. Now over a century old, the cards are lovely little reminders of the joys of courtship in a past era.

 

Sources:

https://peculiarhistory.com/post/169692389750/victorian-calling-cards

https://hobancards.com/calling-cards-and-visiting-cards-brief-history

http://www.antiqueconnectionmall.com/CallingCards.htm

Nora Hoffman Macbeth: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “In the Kitchen”

Grandma’s Kitchen: Home to African Violets, a Metal Formica Table and the Heart of the Family

Nora Elsie Hoffman Macbeth: 1899-1994

 

            As soon as I read this prompt, I immediately thought of my grandmother’s kitchen. Some of my best childhood memories took place in that tiny room. The room was home to a thousand different household functions—I don’t know how my grandmother managed to do so much in that cramped space.

            Grandma’s kitchen had scarcely any wall space—the L-shaped room had a stunning six doorways—the main door out to the porch and farmyard, the door to the stairway leading to the second floor, the door to the basement, the door to the huge pantry, the door to the living room, and lastly, the door to an enclosed porch we called the “sunporch”. The remaining space featured wall-mounted coat hooks by the door next to an old white porcelain sink surrounded by white metal cabinets, a stove on the tiny wall between the basement and the upstairs doors, and the refrigerator wedged between the pantry and the living room doors. The kitchen table was pressed up against the wall opposite the stove.

The tiny corner by the living room door contained a turntable console with a row of books on top, and table linens stored beneath instead of records. A black dial telephone was mounted on the wall above, along with a wall calendar from a local bank. All my grandmother had to do was drag a chair over from the kitchen table so she could sit and talk comfortably. She had three sisters and a sister-in-law plus her daughter (my mother), and she loved to talk to them all for hours.

            When she had to iron clothes, Grandma would drag out a large, folding ironing board from a cubby on the back wall of the basement steps, and would open it to stand in the space between the living room door and the kitchen table. It would block traffic to and from the living room, forcing people to go through the sunporch to get to the back of the house.

            My grandmother was a lover of gardening, and hated the long winter months when her garden was frozen under a blanket of snow. To satisfy her craving for plants, she grew pots of African violets. My grandfather, who loved to craft things with wood, built her a series of shelves along the window that looked out on the sunporch, each shelf screwed into the window frame. Her violets lived there, carefully tended, watered and fertilized—studded with blossoms of deep purple, purple and white stripes, lavender, violet, and pink.

Violets, tile trim and Last Supper bas relief

            It’s odd what the brain remembers and what it forgets. Until I examined this photo of Grandma’s kitchen from 1963, I had forgotten some details. I hadn’t remember the tile border around the room that separated the two paint shades on the walls. I’d forgotten the bas relief of the Last Supper mounted on the wall above the table. And I’d forgotten what the table and chairs looked like, with their curved silver metal legs, the oval black-and-gold-flecked white formica table-top with the metal edge, and the plastic upholstered chair cushions—I think they were charcoal and white.

Clockwise, Nora Macbeth, her sister Sadie and husband Fred Seltenreich, sister Mart Seltenreich, sister Jennie and Delbert Edwards, and sister-in-law Mildred Hoffman (also Delbert's sister), 1963. Photo taken by Nora's husband Ivan.

            My favorite childhood memories involved Grandma’s huge pantry. It provided storage for food, spices and the usual pantry goods, but also Grandma’s pots, pans, dishes and silverware. Tucked in drawers and cupboards were towels, tablecloths, napkins and potholders, most featuring hand embroidered decorations my grandmother added.

            The best feature of the room, however, was the large workspace under a window that looked out onto the screened porch that ran the length of the back side of the house. The space was made for mixing and kneading bread dough, for the house was built in a time long before the advent of supermarkets and sliced mass-market bread. My grandmother inherited the house and the pantry from her mother-in-law, Lucy Macbeth, and, just like Lucy, she made her own bread for many years until she started complaining of “rheumatism”, which was probably osteoarthritis in her shoulders from heavy, repetitive labor like kneading bread dough, making lye soap, and washing and wringing clothes with a crank washer.

            Below the workspace was a tilt-out drawer where the huge 50 pound sacks of flour were kept—that was how people bought flour in those days, contained in fabric sacks. Fabric was expensive, so the flour sacks, which occasionally featured floral prints as well as solid colors, were repurposed into dresses, blouses, and aprons. I remember my excitement as a child when Grandma let me tilt open the drawer and use the red plastic measuring cup inside to measure out the flour we needed for a baking project. I had a special apron to wear at Grandma’s too—an over-the-head smock style similar to her own. I learned how to make yeast dough from her, punching down dough as I gazed out the pantry window through the screened porch at the chicken house and the garage.

            I also remember Grandma’s cookie jar, shaped like a lamb, painted a soft brown color with pink trim, and the words on the lamb’s tummy “For good little lambs only.” No matter whether I was a good lamb or not, the jar always held cookies. Usually they were homemade peanut butter cookies, a special favorite of my grandpa’s, or a molasses spice cookie. Occasionally, there were store-bought cookies like Fig Newtons or vanilla sandwich cookies.

            Grandma didn’t have a dining room, so all the family meals were eaten at the kitchen table. I graduated from an old wooden highchair to a real chair—at first with Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs stacked on the seat so I could reach the table. Grandma was a good cook, so I always looked forward to eating there. We drove to their house—thirty miles from our farm-- at least a two or three Sundays every month, so Sunday dinner at Grandma’s was a tradition.

            The kitchen table was also used to play games—Chinese Checkers, Sorry, and a variety of card games. Often the adults played card games too complex for children, so my brother and I would play with a set of toy farm animals and equipment that were stored in another niche on the basement stairs. The kitchen was also a source of entertainment—a radio sat on one of the shelves—I think it was on one over the stove—and music and farm commodities news would be playing.

            My Grandma’s kitchen was the center of her home. Looking back, I realize that the kitchen, like Grandma, was filled with a sense of love and purpose. Nora, like her kitchen, was a woman of many talents who stepped up to do whatever needed to be done.

Jerome Dane Meets Abe Lincoln? 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Family Legend”

 

“Captain Dane Relates Interesting Stories of Lincoln”

Jerome Dane: 1828-1908

 

            My second-great-grandfather, Captain Jerome Dane, was a colorful character who enjoyed an audience. He loved to tell stories about his life to the press. He gave his final interview to the Mankato Daily Free Press on July 17, 1907, just months before his death in February of 1908. In this interview, he claimed to have met Abraham Lincoln in the late 1840s when he spent several months living in Springfield, Illinois. Family members remembered this story—he had told it several times over the years before it was recorded by a reporter. But is it true? I don’t think I will ever be able to find real evidence to support his story, so it will probably remain a family legend. However, it is a great story—his recounting was full of detail. I like to believe it has a basis in truth.

            I have transcribed the pertinent sections of the newspaper interview below:

“The Captain’s story is as follows: ‘I was discharged from the regular army at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis in the summer of 1848. From St. Louis I made my way to Springfield, Ill., reaching there in August. I spent some time chopping wood on the bottoms of the Sangamon River. A man whose name I cannot recall, offered me a team and wagon, agreeing to furnish half the feed, if I would use it in teaming and give him half of what I made. I found a lot of red oak logs, cut for saw logs which had lain two or three years and were pretty well water soaked. The party who owned the logs said I could have them if I would cut them up.

            I cut them up into cordwood and hauled it to a vacant lot in Springfield in the fall while the roads were in good condition. The spring of 1849 was very wet and the streets were almost impassable. A great many people were out of wood. Then I went to hauling. The first load I hauled I sold to Lincoln. I had a wagon box full—perhaps a quarter of a cord—as the streets were too muddy to haul a full load. I was on the street with the wood, when mr. Lincoln came around and asked me if the wood was for sale. I told him that it was. He then asked me what kind it was and what I wanted for it. I replied that it was dead red oak and that I wanted $2 for the load. He replied that it looked like pretty tough wood, but that he would take it.

            So I drove around and unloaded it in the rear of this house. A day or two after this Mr. Lincoln met me on the street and laughingly inquired if I had any more wood to sell, and added ‘that the load of wood you sold me was good dead oak sure enough. I can’t get fire enough under it to bring it to life.’”

            I love the word play in the story—Lincoln’s comment at the end certainly sounds like the sort of dry wit he was known for.

            Captain Dane recounted another meeting with Lincoln a little further down in the interview.

            “I left Springfield in March, 1849, hiring out to a man by the name of Fox to take a drove of cattle through to Philadelphia. This man Fox had 1,200 head, divided into droves of 120 each. Fox took me with him to help get the cattle across the rivers. When I hired out to Fox we went into Lincoln’s law office to make out a contract. Lincoln wrote out an article of agreement. I asked him how much it was. He inquirether I would pay for it or Fox. I said that as I was the one who called for it, I supposed I would have to pay for it. He said: ‘If you are to pay for it I won’t charge you anything but if Fox is to pay for it I would charge $1.’”

        This is another example of detail that might be true. I can imagine Lincoln might have had a soft spot for young men without resources, trying to make their own way in the world, just as he had done. Captain Dane wouldn’t have yet turned 21, while Lincoln was over a decade older. I can see him giving a young man a break on the cost of a simple contract.

Captain Dane had one final comment about Lincoln:

“I saw Lincoln frequently in Springfield. He was very tall, rawboned, had a large mouth and was always good-natured.”

            What a charming and amazing story! It’s understandable that it captured the imaginations of Captain Dane’s descendants—his grandson, Ivan Macbeth, (my grandfather) passed the story along to my mother and mentioned it to me when I was a child and still too young to understand the significance of meeting Abraham Lincoln.

Are there any obvious flaws in Captain Dane’s timeline? Lincoln had served in the House of Representatives from 1846 to 1848. He left after serving a single term, returning to Springfield and his law practice. So he was back in Springfield during the spring of 1849, and could have purchased wood. As a practicing lawyer that spring, he could also have written up a simple work contract when asked. It sounds as if my ancestor was a friendly, garrulous sort, as Lincoln was. It is possible that the two would have enjoyed chatting had they met.

            The timeline of Captain Dane’s military service also seems to fit the story. Jerome enlisted at 18 and served in the Mexican War, which lasted from 1846 until 1848. So his muster-out date of June 1848 sounds plausible. According to Wikipedia, the location also fit, for “upon the return of the triumphant U.S. forces in 1848, many were deployed to Jefferson Barracks due to its strategic location and healthful situation.”

Jerome’s claims that he didn’t return to his birthplace in New York after his discharge, or immediately tried to rejoin his siblings in Wisconsin are also possible. After all, he was unmarried, barely 21 years old, and had no responsibilities. Selling wood and droving cattle in the Springfield area would have provided both a living and some independence, along with a chance for adventure. Late in 1849, Dane did decide to head north to join his brothers and mother in Wisconsin, where he met and married his wife in 1850.

Jerome Dane late in life

            Whether or not every detail is true, this is a marvelous family legend that I will ensure is passed down to more of Jerome Dane’s ancestors.

Sources:

Mankato Daily Free Press, July 17, 1907. “Sold Wood to Abe”. Accessed at Blue Earth County Historical Society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

https://www.nps.gov/articles/lincoln-home-national-historic-site-a-place-of-growth-and-memory-teaching-with-historic-places.htm