Gunshot Mystery: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “In the News”

 

Fred Macbeth Victim of Shooting in Mankato

Fred Macbeth: 1873-1906 (Maternal First Cousin 3x Removed)

 

Fred Macbeth had a short life, dying at the age of only thirty-two. He left few records behind, but there was one tantalizing hint that he enjoyed what time he had—that he might have been a bit wild. At age 26, he was the victim of a shooting—not in the more crime-ridden big city of St. Paul, where he was living and working, but back in his sleepy hometown of Mankato, Minnesota. Fred was in the news, and the news wasn’t good!

Fred Macbeth was born September 1, 1873, in Mankato, Minnesota to parents Collin Macbeth and Ellen Downing Macbeth. He was the fifth of their six children, and the youngest of their four sons. His father, Collin, died when he was ten years old.

By 1893, Fred was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, working as a laborer and boarding in someone’s home. I have found no 1900 census record for him. But he did appear in the newspapers the year before.

The first article, dated October 18, 1899, reported that Fred was shot in the left leg by a man named Alois Getzell. The article states Fred was “on his way to the home of his brother.” (See No. 1, below.) Two of his brothers, Charles and John H. Macbeth, were living in Mankato at the time, so he could have been intending to visit either of them.

The shooter apparently panicked, “supposing Macbeth and companion were going to hold him up.” What was Fred doing at the time to convince Mr. Getzell that he was in danger? And who was Fred’s companion? The article went on to state that Fred’s wound could be fatal, and that he was visiting friends in Mankato, but lived and worked in South St. Paul for “commission merchants” Tomlinson & Stafford.

The follow-up article, dated November 1, 1899, left me with more questions. (No. 2, below) The shooter “was allowed to plead guilty to assault in the third degree and paid a fine of $15.” Quite a light sentence for a shooting on a public street. “Both parties were considered at fault, and Mr. Macbeth was not seriously injured and did not care to prosecute Getzel, who is an old man.” This makes it sound like Fred really was threatening to rob the old fellow! The article noted that Getzel was drunk at the time. I would wager Fred had been drinking as well. 

There are no further records for Fred until his marriage on January 13, 1904 to a young woman named Addeline “Addie” Leseman. Fred was thirty; Addie was just twenty-one. After the marriage, the couple moved to South Dakota, where they appear on the South Dakota State Census in 1905. Fred and Addie were living with Fred’s brother Collin and Collin’s wife Mamie on the farm Collin homesteading.

Fred's 1905 South Dakota Census Record

Tragically, just a year later on January 26, 1906, Fred died in South Dakota. I have found no death record indicating his cause of death. Addie filed probate papers in Minnesota as his executor. 

Fred's probate record following his death in 1906

She seems to have moved back to Minnesota following his death. She may have been ill herself and needed to live with her parents in Blue Earth County, since she died August 26, 1907 of tuberculosis at the tender age of twenty-three. (See No. 4 below) She is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Mankato, as is Fred. They are probably buried together, but there is no marker for her grave so I can’t be certain.

Addie Macbeth's death record: cause of death listed as end stage "tubercular consumption".

Without two small news items about Fred’s altercation with an old, frightened man with a gun, Fred’s life would have passed in obscurity. To family historians like me, the sum of his life would have been his birth, a few census records and a headstone. He left no children, and even his widow died shortly after his untimely death. Thanks to the newspaper, I have a glimpse into his real life: that of a young man who cared enough about his family and friends to travel nearly one hundred miles to visit them, but who may have been a little wild and out of control that night in October 1899, leading to a dangerous encounter in a quiet Minnesota town.  

 

Sources:

 

1.       Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN. Oct. 18, 1899 issue. Accessed on Newspapers.com.

2.       Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, MN. Nov. 1, 1899 issue. Accessed on Newspapers.com.

3.       "South Dakota, State Census, 1905", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MM4B-ZN1 : Sat Jul 20 04:06:03 UTC 2024), Entries for Addie Macbeth and Fred Macbeth.

4.       "Minnesota, Deaths and Burials, 1835-1990", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FD41-6MR : 16 January 2020), Addie Leaseman McBath.

 

Was Our Farmhouse a Kit House? 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Home Sweet Home”

The Peterson Family House: Lumber and Supplies Arrived By Train

Paul Peterson: 1867-1941 (Paternal Grandfather)

 

The house I grew up in and that my brother lives in now was originally built during my father’s childhood. He was born in 1917, so it was probably built around 1930. My father said the house was a “kit house”.

So what is a kit house? Wikipedia defines it as follows:

“Kit houses, also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses, mail order homes, or catalog homes, were a type of housing that was popular in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the first half of the 20th century. Kit house manufacturers sold houses in many different plans and styles, from simple bungalows to imposing Colonials, and supplied at a fixed price all materials needed for construction of a particular house, but typically excluding brick, concrete, or masonry (such as would be needed for laying a foundation, which the customer would have to arrange to have done locally).”

“Depending on the size and style of the plan, the materials needed to construct a typical house, including perhaps 10,000–30,000 pieces of lumber and other building material would be shipped by rail, filling one or two railroad boxcars, which would be loaded at the company's mill and sent to the customer's home town, where they would be parked on a siding or in a freight yard for unloading. Once the materials arrived, a customer would arrange for a local carpenter or contractor to assemble the house on a piece of property owned by the customer.”

My father remembered the train bringing the house materials. Rather than stopping in nearby Hanska, the train stopped about half a mile outside town. The train tracks crossed the rural road where our farm was located just a little ways from the house site. The rail car of materials was unloaded into my uncle’s field across the road so the lumber and supplies didn’t have to be transported as far. 

My father said that my grandfather, Paul Peterson, hired local people to prepare the foundation and construct the house. My brother jokes that the foundation installers didn’t use the best materials; our basement always leaked during spring snowmelts and after big rainstorms, and the concrete was a little crumbly in texture. However, the foundation has successfully held up the house for nearly a century.

Ad for a four-square kit home

I have been trying to verify that the home is actually a kit house. I’ve looked at a lot of the kit house catalogs for the era, but haven’t been able to identify a specific plan that matches our house. I can find similar designs, but the windows and door placement don’t quite match up.

The house style is a “foursquare”, described by Homesandgardens.com as “a two-story, cube-shaped single house characterized by a full or half-width front porch, a hipped roof, double-hung wood windows and dormer windows in the attic.” Other sites note that there are often four rooms on each floor. Our house is definitely a four-square, as it is cube-shaped, has a hip roof, a half-width front porch, double-hung wood windows, a single dormer in the attic, and four rooms on each floor of the house.

Another four-square style, fairly close to our home

Four-squares were popular kit home styles. Kit homes were available through general mail-order companies like Sears and Montgomery Ward, as well as through companies like Aladdin Homes and Gordon Van Tine, who only sold homes. So did Paul Peterson actually order a kit from a catalog from one of those major companies? Or did he work with a regional company that used a basic design to pre-cut a home?

Our house from the rear. Attic dormer visible at left, window on stair landing in center. Hipped roof.

I will probably have to search the archives of the local newspaper to find any answers. If the house truly was a kit home, I am sure it would have been a bit of a curiosity and would have been covered by the local paper. There would at least have been a mention in the gossipy community news items that residents submitted for publication. It would be fun to verify my father’s story.

Sources:

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

https://everydayoldhouse.com/american-foursquare-kit-homes-wardway/

https://searshomes.org/index.php/2014/10/14/montgomery-ward/

https://kithouses.org/topic/identification/

https://everydayoldhouse.com/foursquare-sears-kit-house/

Heading North to Break Down the Wall: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Brick Wall”

Where Have All the Wee Brothers Gone? Gone to Canada Every One?

Nels or Nils Wee: 1882-1938 (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
Henry Theodore Wee: 1884-1944 (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
Ingvald Julius Wee: 1886-1961 (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
Karl Jorgen “George” Wee: 1888- ?  (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)

 

Brick walls in genealogy either come down painfully slowly, brick by precious brick as information is pieced together, or they collapse all at once with a fortuitous discovery. I made one of those lucky discoveries recently.

I had previously posted about the Wee or Vee brothers who emigrated from Norway and settled near their aunt, my great-grandmother Ragnhild Olsdatter Ve Syverson and her husband Ove in Brown County Minnesota. One of those immigrant brothers, Anders Olsson Wee (or Vee), had ten children who were raised near Hanska, Minnesota. I easily found records for most of those ten children, but three of them, sons Henry Theodore, Ingvald Julius, and Karl Jorgen, seemed to have simply disappeared from records. A fourth brother, Nels, disappeared for years before reappearing in Hanska burial records. The Wee brothers were one of my brick walls. This winter I returned to researching the family in the hopes that I would find some clue to the fate of the missing Wees. And amazingly I did, by looking further north to Alberta, Canada.

Nels, Henry, Ingvald and Jorgen were the second, third, fourth and fifth of Anders and Sigrid Wee’s ten children. Ole, the eldest son, was the natural choice for helping Anders with the farm and his youngest siblings, with the idea that he would take over the farm when Anders needed to step back. Anders and Sigrid’s daughters would marry and leave the farm, but what were the other sons to do? Anders’ farm wasn’t large enough to divide it among them. In 1890s Brown County, most men farmed or plied a trade like blacksmithing or cabinetry. Other options were professions like the ministry, medicine or law, but training for those professions required money for college, something immigrants like the Wees did not have. The Wee sons knew how to farm, but all the homesteads in southern Minnesota were already claimed, so farmland was no longer cheap to acquire: you needed a lot of money. If the four brothers wanted to farm, they were going to have to move. But where?

Ingvald had a fairly unique name, so I began searching for him first. He was born in January 1886, and appeared in the 1900 census as a fourteen-year-old. But by the 1910 census, he was gone. I found him on a census record from an area called Battle River in Alberta, Canada. Could this be the same man? The census record stated that he was born in 1886 in the United States, that he immigrated to Canada in 1908 and was naturalized in 1919. He was a farmer and stated that he was Norwegian and a Lutheran. The evidence suggests this is the correct man.

I found his homestead records from January 1908. He was only 22 when he applied for his homestead. The opportunity to acquire farmland without having to buy it was obviously the draw to Alberta. He was still on the same plot of land in 1916, and in 1931 as well, so he obviously proved up his homestead.

However, it must have been a lonely life. He never married; not surprising as there were few women in the area, and none who were single. He seems to be the only Norwegian on the census page, and the only one to immigrate from the United States. Did he speak English well enough to communicate with his neighbors? The photos of the area’s early years show a rather barren, treeless and flat land, and the community he lived closest to, Acadia, was very small. The census records say he lived in a wood house and had no radio. The house was valued at $4000, which was about the median value for the area. Was Ingvald happy there? Did he ever travel back to Minnesota to visit his family? Hanska was over one thousand miles from his Alberta farm.  

Acadia, Alberta in early 1900s when Ingvald arrived

Ingvald died August 21, 1961 at the age of 75 in Edmonton, Alberta. Edmonton was far from his farm—about 430 kilometers. Did he move there when his health failed? Did he have the financial means to support himself when he could no longer farm? And what happened to his land after he moved and died? I still have so many questions about his life.

Once I had located Ingvald in Canada, I looked for his brothers there as well. I found Henry on the 1931 census living in the region of Innisfail, Alberta, about 325 kilometers from the Acadia area where Ingvald lived. 

I believe Henry also homesteaded, although I have been unable to find his paperwork. There is a homestead application for a Henry Andrew Vee, but the birth dates are wrong, although that Henry was also born in the United States. Innisfail appears to have been a more prosperous town than Battle River/Acadia, so perhaps that is why Henry chose to homestead so far from Ingvald.

Innisfail, Alberta in 1909, one year after Henry Wee's arrival

I was able to confirm my 1931 Henry T. Vee was the Wee brother I was searching for when I discovered a 1923 border crossing document for Nels Wee, Henry’s older brother. Nels, then age 42, was on his way back to the United States from Alberta. He listed his last address as “Lomless, Alberta”, which I believe is some sort of misspelling. His next of kin was listed as his brother Henry, living in Disbury (near Innisfail), Alberta, and he states he was born in “Henskert, Minnesota”, a misspelling of Hanska by the U. S. Border Agent in Idaho where Nels was entering the country. Obviously, Henry and Nels were the sons of Anders Wee. Interestingly, Nels stated he was headed for Spokane, Washington. I wonder what motivated him to go there.

Knowing that Nels had been in Alberta, I started searching for him on the census records, locating him in Battle River, Alberta not far from Ingvald, in the 1916 census. Like his brothers, he immigrated in 1908 and was naturalized a few years later. He must have homesteaded as well; he was farming. And, like his brothers, he was living alone.

Nels Wee census record 1916

I have found no records of Nels in the Spokane area after the 1923 border crossing. It appears he was moving back to the United States, so I guess that something must have gone wrong with his homestead plan. Did he get a poor piece of land that simply couldn’t be farmed profitably? Was he a poor farmer and went bankrupt?

The only other record I found for Nels was his burial record. He died October 27, 1938 at the age of fifty-seven and was buried at the Lake Hanska Cemetery. This would indicate he returned home to Hanska at some point between his leaving Canada in 1923 and his death in 1938.

As for Henry, I found a voters record for him dated 1940, and his death record just four years later. He died March 17, 1944 at the age of sixty. He was buried in Innisfail Cemetery.

The final brother, Karl Jorgen or George Wee, took a slightly different path than his older brothers. He remained in Minnesota when they all moved to Canada in 1908. He appears on the 1910 US census at age 22 living with his widowed mother, brother Ole, who was running the farm, and three sisters and two little brothers. He was still using Jorgen as his name that year, and was working as a farm laborer, presumably for his brother Ole.

George Wee at far left of photo. His younger brothers Willie and Gilbert are in the front seat. Photo approximately 1914.

He is still living at home at the time of the 1920 census, although he is now going by the anglicized first name of George. His sisters are all married and out of the house, so the Wee farm residents include only widowed Sigrid, Ole, still running the farm, and George’s two younger brothers Willie and Gilbert, now in their twenties. It must have been an awkward existence for George—no wife and no land of his own as he entered his thirties. That may have prompted him to finally join his older brothers in Alberta. He appears on the 1921 Canada census as a farm laborer living with his employer, Clayton Wallace, in the Coronation area of Battle Creek, Alberta, not far from Ingvald and Nels. This must have been frustrating for George—once again he was working for someone else rather than farming his own land, and this time his boss was two years his junior.

George Wee working in Alberta in 1921

After that 1921 census, George simply disappears. I have found a 1930 census record for a George Wee who was an inmate at the state mental hospital in St. Peter, Minnesota. The patient was born in Minnesota in approximately 1890, and his parents were both Norwegian. The age is two years off from George’s, who was born January 26, 1888, but it is close enough to be a possibility. Inmate George Wee died August 18, 1946 in the state hospital. Is that the explanation for George’s disappearance?

Thanks to a chance discovery of Ingvald Julius Wee’s Canadian census record, the brick wall that blocked my finding the lost Wee brothers came crashing down. I had made a rookie genealogy mistake: I had kept searching where I thought the brothers should be, Minnesota, not expanding my search further afield. If I had thought about what those young men would have wanted, land of their own to farm, perhaps I would have thought to look towards Canada, where determined, hardy settlers could still get free land through the Canada homestead program. While I still have questions about Nels and George, I have so much more information about their lives than I did just a month ago.

 

Sources:

1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Ancestry.Com. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1556/records/761056689?tid=46986934&pid=322350819542&ssrc=pt

Alberta, Canada, Homestead Records, 1870-1930. Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60865/records/120180?tid=46986934&pid=322350819542&ssrc=pt

Alberta, Canada Deaths Index, 1870-1970. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61561/records/294572?tid=46986934&pid=322350819540&ssrc=pt

Henry Theodore Wee Findagrave Entry. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122467897/henry-theodore-wee?

U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1960, Eastport, Idaho. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1075

United States Census Records. 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930. Accessed on Ancestry.com.

Prairie Towns website. Historical photos of Alberta towns. http://www.prairie-towns.com/innisfail-images.html