My Father’s Unknown Brother: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Overlooked”

The Overlooked Baby: My Father’s Unknown Sibling

Oscar Peterson: 1898-1898

 

I received a notification from FamilySearch today that they had located a new record for my grandmother, Regina Syverson Peterson. I checked out the new record, and was perplexed. It was an 1898 death record for an infant named Oscar Peterson born in Lake Hanska Township, Brown County Minnesota. Oscar’s parents were listed as Paul and Regina Peterson.

The names on the record were all familiar. Paul and Regina Peterson were my paternal grandparents. They farmed in Lake Hanska Township. They had a son named Oscar. The only problem was the date. The only Oscar Peterson I knew of, my Uncle Oscar, was born October 8, 1908, a full decade after the death of the Oscar on this death record. And my Uncle Oscar did not die in infancy. He grew up, married, had two children, and died of a heart attack at age 57 on April 12, 1966.

So what did this mean? Was there another Peterson family living in the sparsely populated area of 1890s Lake Hanska Township? A family with the exact same first names as my grandparents? It seemed unlikely.

I turned to my Ancestry tree, and did a search for an Oscar Peterson who was born and died in Lake Hanska Township in 1898. To my surprise, I found two birth records that matched. The first was a birth record from a database called the Minnesota, U.S., Births and Christenings Index, 1840-1980. It stated that Oscar Peterson was born February 3, 1898 in Brown County. He was a male. The record listed an FHL Film Number of 1870146.

The second record was more conclusive. It was a christening record, so included information on the names of the baby’s parents. It had an FHL Film Number of 1671372. While there was no image attached to the record, it listed both the place of birth, Lake Hanska Township, and the place of the christening, Burnstown Township, also in Brown County, Minnesota. This is probably why I had never run across the record before this—I had found a lot of baptism/christening records for my Peterson ancestors in the Lake Hanska Lutheran Church database. However, this child wasn’t christened at Lake Hanska Lutheran.

I looked up the christening record for Regina and Paul’s eldest child, Anna. She too was christened in Burnstown Township. I can’t imagine why those two children were baptized nearly thirty miles from their home—it would have taken hours to travel that far in a horse-drawn wagon. The Lake Hanska Lutheran church, located just two miles or so from the Peterson farm, had organized in the 1860s—why didn’t the Petersons go there? The rest of their children seem to have been christened at Lake Hanska. Did they have relatives in Burnstown Township? I looked at plat maps from 1886 and 1905 for Burnstown Township, but failed to find any surnames I recognized.

I am amazed that Paul and Regina’s other children never seem to have mentioned their lost sibling Oscar. As far as my brother and I knew, Paul and Regina only had nine children, but here was a tenth. Did the second Oscar ever know he was named in honor of his brother who had died ten years before?

I decided to review the Petersons’ 1900 census form. That year, the census asked mothers how many children they had borne, and how many of those children still survived. I was shocked to see Regina’s response to the question: she told the census taker that she had borne 5 children, and only two survived. At the time of the 1900 census, Paul and Regina’s only living children were Anna, their eldest daughter born in 1895, and Randine, born in 1899. Oscar was born between those two children. But according to this census form, Paul and Regina had two more children who died in infancy. How tragic! They had been married for eight years by that point, so it is likely they lost two children before Anna was born, since she was born four years after their marriage.

I also verified this information on the 1910 census, where they once again asked how many children had been born, and how many survived. Regina responded that she had borne nine children by then, and that six survived, which matches what she said in 1900.

As yet, I have found no information on Paul and Regina’s other two children who did not survive. Perhaps they were stillborn so no birth record was filed. The real puzzle is where little Oscar is buried. I have found no information on him on Findagrave. I will have to examine Paul and Regina’s plot at Lake Hanska Cemetery to see if there might be an unmarked grave next to them. I also have no burial record for the other two infants.

Paul and Regina's 1892 Wedding Photo

I am embarrassed to have overlooked so much important information about my own grandparents. First, I had never thought to ask why Paul and Regina had been married four years before Anna was born. That’s an unusually long time between a marriage and the first child. Second, I had never thought to look at the question about the number of children born when I first looked at the 1900 and 1910 census records. That was sheer carelessness. I thought I knew the answers and never bothered to check if I was right. This is an important lesson for me to remember in my future genealogical research.

Sources:

Ancestry.com. Minnesota, U.S., Births and Christenings Index, 1840-1980 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data:"Minnesota Births and Christenings, 1840–1980." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2009, 2010. Index entries derived from digital copies of original and compiled records.

"Minnesota, County Deaths, 1850-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7Z7R-LTW2 : 14 December 2020), Oscar Petterson, Lake Hanska Township, Brown, Minnesota, United States; citing Death, multiple county courthouses, Minnesota.