Lost Burial Plot: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Family Lore”

 

Where was Peder Buried?

Peder Peterson Joramo: 1815-Before 1880 (Paternal great-grandfather)

 

There has always been some family lore about the location of my great-grandfather Peder Peterson’s grave. A recent article in my hometown’s newspaper may offer a clue about the true location—and the location isn’t where family stories claimed it lay.

My great-grandfather was born in the Lesja, Oppland region of Norway around 1815. He decided to emigrate with his wife and five children in 1870. They settled in Lake Hanska Township in Brown County, Minnesota. Peder’s two daughters quickly married, and his eldest son, Peder, seems to have died. That left Peder, his wife Anna Gulbrandsdatter, and his two youngest sons, Jacob and Paul, to farm on their Brown County homestead.

At some point prior to 1880, tragedy struck (I can’t confirm the year, but by the time of the 1880 census, Anna was a widow). One of Peder’s work horses slammed him into an outbuilding or a fence. He was pinned between the horse and the solid object, and sustained crush injuries. According to the family lore, his desperate wife and sons took him to a neighbor’s dugout home. The neighbor’s wife had some nursing skills, and she did what she could, but he succumbed to internal injuries.

My father believed Peder was buried at that neighbor’s farm not far from their well. Peder had died before any official cemeteries had been established in the area, so it seems logical that he might have been buried where he died. My father believed the grave was located on land that was eventually farmed by my father’s cousin Sidney. My father was Peder’s grandson (Paul’s son) and Sidney was Peder’s great-grandson (Jacob’s grandson). Their two farms included some of the land Peder had originally homesteaded. The supposed location of the grave was a bit north and east of the property that eventually became Lake Hanska Church Cemetery. My brother eventually acquired Sidney’s land, and now he farms the possible grave location.

My newest piece of information came from an article written by Joel Botten, a genealogist and historian of the Hanska area, which was published in the November 2, 2023 edition of the Hanska Herald newspaper. Botten was recounting early pioneer Christian Ahlness’ immigration story. The article included a photo of an oil painting of Ahlness’dugout home in Lake Hanska Township. The photo caption reads:

“This is a painting by Christian’s daughter Marie Ahlness of the home they established on the present site of the Lake Hanska Cemetery. The first cemetery site, south of the present site, proved to be too wet, Christian offed his higher land which had contained his first dugout for a permanent cemetery. His dugout site became his family plot.”

This was the first time either my brother or I had heard of an earlier cemetery site. Was Peder buried there? If so, the family lore had the location off by a half mile or so. As you can see on the map below, the present cemetery is on the north side of the gravel road. If the original cemetery was to the south, it would have been on the south side of the present road. Our family lore thought Peder was buried north of the present cemetery.

Numbers refer to the following: 1 is location of present cemetery. 2 is the general area where family lore claimed Peder was buried, 3 is the general area where the first cemetery was located, and 4 is my family's farm.

We knew that once the cemetery had been established, some of the local families chose to move the graves of family members who had been buried earlier. Those graves were dug up and the bodies reinterred in the cemetery. However, our family did not believe that Peder’s body had been moved to the new cemetery.

I found a Lake Hanska church record that suggests either Peder or his son Peder’s body was reburied in the new cemetery. The record shows burials by year, and seems to show a mass reburial of eight people on August 28, 1878. All eight had varied death dates that were months and even years earlier than the burial date.

One entry is for a “Peder Joramo”. Joramo was Peder’s Norwegian “farm” surname, and his children used Peterson/Pederson and Joramo fairly interchangeably as surnames. The entry also indicates that this Peder Joramo was born in Lesja. Both Peder the father and Peder the son were born in Lesja. Each entry on the record also provides the age of individual at death. The age provided for the re-buried Peder appears to read “17”, which would suggest it was Peder’s son, but the age has been amended with a fountain pen to the point where it is difficult to read. The death date for this Peder Joramo was June 14, 1878. Peder the father would have been 63 in 1878 if the birth year 1815 is correct. Even if the number doesn’t actually read “17”, it does not appear to be a number in the fifties or sixties which would have been more likely to refer to Peder the father. 

So it seems that Peder’s burial spot and date of death remain a mystery. Did he die in 1878, or did his son die then? Was he buried on a neighbor’s farm north of the new cemetery? Was he buried at the first, slightly swampy cemetery south of the current burial ground? Was his body ever moved to the newer cemetery? I think we will never know for sure.

Sources:

Lake Hanska Lutheran Church records, U.S. Evangelical Lutheran Church Records 1781-1969. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60722/images/41742_314248-00259?pId=776153

Hanska Herald. November 2, 2023 edition.