Decoration Day’s Importance in Our Family: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “Tradition”

 

Bringing Flowers to the Graves: Grandma Macbeth Carried on a Tradition

Nora Elsie Hoffman Macbeth: 1899-1994

 

This week’s prompt, Tradition, had me struggling. I had written about our family’s primary traditions in previous years’ posts. Then I glanced at the calendar and noticed that Memorial Day was just a few weeks away, and that made me recall my grandmother’s tradition of decorating the family graves on “Decoration Day”, the original name for Memorial Day.

Americans began observing Memorial Day after the Civil War as a way to honor fallen soldiers on both sides of the war. They decorated the graves with flowers. The first national proclamation of the Memorial Day Order was issued by the Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, General John A. Logan, on May 5,1868. It read in part:

“The 30th day of May, 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

My grandfather’s maternal grandfather, Jerome Dane, had served in the Civil War, and had been active in local GAR chapters, so following his death, his children and grandchildren honored his grave each Memorial Day. Grandpa Macbeth probably made many trips to Tivoli Cemetery over the years, and my mother remembered visiting Great-Grandpa Dane’s headstone as a child.

Captain Jerome Dane, Union Army, Civil War Photo 

As the years passed, the holiday grew to honor the graves of all individuals who had served in the military, not just Civil War soldiers. Family members served in WWI and WWII, so their graves were honored as well. Below is a photo of my granduncle Harold Macbeth who served as an Army private in World War I.

Harold Macbeth, World War I, taken in 1918.

My grandmother and her sisters eventually expanded their Memorial Day observances to include non-military family members. They used the day to travel to the local cemeteries to leave flowers on the graves of their parents and other important family members. Grandma often used her own garden flowers for her grave tributes—I remember that peonies from the bushes at the bottom of the hill were some of her favorites if they bloomed early enough. She also bought artificial flowers or arrangements and left those instead of live flowers.

I have fond memories of running around the cemetery while my parents and grandparents placed their floral offerings. I remember the graves of soldiers having tiny flags on them—probably the work of a Boy Scout Troop or the local VFW chapter.

While this may not have been the most significant of my family's traditions, it still brings back sweet memories for me. I have been unable to continue this tradition since I no longer live near my ancestors’ graves. But I try to travel to a family cemetery whenever I visit Minnesota, as seen in the photo above. This year, I will be honoring my ancestors’ memories from afar.

Sources:

National Cemetery Administration, Memorial Day History. https://www.cem.va.gov/history/Memorial-Day-history.asp

Family photos.

Loosening the Mortar in My Hanover, Germany Brick Wall: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “A Brick Wall Revisited”

Possible Parents for Maria Christina Uepkendanz

Maria Christina Uepkendanz: 1806-1850 (Maternal Third Great-Grandmother)

 

When I first started researching my Hoffman line several years ago, I hit a brick wall at my third-great-grandmother, Maria Christina Uepkendanz. I had very minimal, poorly sourced information that indicated she was born on October 24, 1806 in Hanover, Germany, but there was no information on her parents. I didn’t even have proof of her birthdate—I had copied the birthdate information from other Ancestry trees. When I saw Amy Johnson Crow’s prompt for this week, A Brick Wall Revisited, I decided it was time to revisit Maria, and see if I could loosen some of the mortar in that brick wall.

All I really knew about Maria was that she was married to my third-great-grandfather, Friedrich Behrend Heinrich Christoph Hoffman around 1830 in Hanover, Germany. Their children were born in Oedelum, a village in Hanover. Maria purportedly died in Oedelum in 1850.

Aerial view of Oedelum, Hanover, Germany today.

I was excited when I saw that Ancestry had “Potential Father” and “Potential Mother” listed for Maria. But when I realized there was only one new “Hint” for her, and that hint was merely a link to someone else’s tree, I could feel the brick wall re-hardening.

I examined the three Ancestry trees that contained Maria and her purported parents, Johann Heinrich Christoph Uepkendanz and Catharina Sophie Dorothea Baarman. The only citations on any of the three trees for Maria’s parentage were each other. Who came up with these parents originally and where did they get the information?

I decided to check FamilySearch. It too lacked any verifiable information on Maria’s parents. The entry for Catharina Sophie Dorothea Baarman gave a source for her birth from a researcher going by the name “aosmith2”. The “record” said her birth date was December 8, 1779 and she was born in Germany. The source was listed as “Legacy NFS Source”. According to AI, “A legacy NFS source is informational data on FamilySearch that was transferred from the "New FamilySearch" (NFS) system to the current Family Tree when it went live around 2012. These are essentially inherited text notes—including old censuses, birth records, or user-submitted research—that often lack direct digital documentation, serving more as clues to be verified.”

That was not helpful. It basically means someone may have found a non-digitized source years ago, but didn’t bother to copy or transcribe it or tell where they found it.

The record for Maria’s father also reference a “legacy NFS Source”, so I have no actual records to evaluate.

I tried using whole text search on FamilySearch, but, given the number of potential variations of the spelling of even the surname Uepkendanz, not to mention the first and double middle names, it is probably unsurprising that I met with no success.

I next tried the FamilySearch Card Catalog for Hanover, Germany, but the only potential resources are not accessible from home.

I had slightly more luck with individual genealogies posted on FamilySearch. I cannot view their sources, only the actual trees. Two trees contain the following parentage information:

This corresponds to what other Ancestry trees indicate, although on Ancestry the other two potential grandparents are also listed, once again without any records as sources.

In summary, I have very, very slightly loosened the mortar in my Maria Uepkendanz brick wall. I now have the names of potential parents and potential grandparents for her. Sadly, the names are all I have been able to locate at this point. In addition, my birthdate, death date, and locations of birth and death also lack appropriate verification, and I have found no marriage record for Maria and her husband Friedrich Hoffman. I suspect that I need some professional help to search German genealogical materials to find any actual records that would confirm her parentage, birth and death.

Sources:

"Pedigree Resource File," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:W3MF-MQT : accessed 23 April 2026), entry for Johann Heinrich Christoph Uepkendanz; "manning family tree" file (2:2:2:MMK2-5WY), submitted 8 November 2025 by LisaOslund [identity withheld for privacy].

My Grandmother’s School Notebook from 1912-1916: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Written”

 
A Glimpse into My Grandmother’s School Years: Nora’s Class Notebook

Nora Elsie Hoffman: 1899-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)

 

One of the items I received from my mom before she died was her mother’s school notebook from 1912-1916. I love this heirloom. It shows my Grandmother Nora’s penmanship and reveals a little about her schooling and the era in which she was raised.

The composition notebook is similar to the hardcover composition notebooks used in schools today, except it is smaller. The common notebook dimensions today are 7 1/2 inches by 10 inches, while my grandmother’s notebook is about 6 ½ x 8 ¼ inches. There is no manufacturing information printed on the notebook, and no obvious price.

The cover features an American flag and the words “Freedom’s Emblem” above a small blue eagle with a shield featuring stars and stripes, and laurel and wheat in its talons. Gold stars appear over the eagle’s head, and his beak holds a gold banner. I am not sure if this patriotic imagery was common in that era or whether Nora had a choice of several possible colors and patterns and preferred this one. Nora’s name is printed in the upper right corner.

The notebook contains a series of what I first assumed were poems. I copied some of the lines from the poems into a search engine, and discovered that most of them came from a book called “Songs of the Child World” written in 1897 by Alice C.D. Riley and Jesse Smith Gaynor. Riley was the lyricist and Gaynor composed the music.

The first page of the notebook shows an example. “The Owl” was a song from the Riley and Gaynor book. Apparently Nora’s teachers—she lists them at the top of the page as “Miss Oconner—1912” and “Miss Sanborn—1914”—had their students copy the lyrics into their notebooks so they could learn the songs. Several were songs about flowers, including “The Tulip” below.

The notebook also included dialogue from several short plays. The page below is the start of a play called “The Sewing Society”, and lists the names of the students who were to play the parts. Nora was to play the part of Mrs. Green. Another cast member was named Sadie—that may have been Nora’s older sister.

The notebook was also used for Nora’s classwork in 1916. She seems to have taken notes for an American History class, as the page below shows. I was interested to see that slavery was listed as the second cause of the Civil War, behind only secession. Now our government seems to be trying to remove this from history books, claiming blaming slavery is revisionist history, but Nora’s notes show that over a century ago, just five decades after the war, history texts recognized that slavery was a principle cause for the war.

I noted that Nora’s penmanship became more distinctive as the years passed. When she began using the notebook, she was thirteen. She had probably just started high school in Mankato, having completed grades one through eight in a one-room schoolhouse near her home. The final sections of the notebook were written in 1916 when she was seventeen and about to graduate from high school. The history lesson handwriting was more like what I remember of my grandmother’s penmanship.

Nora at about age 15, around 1914. Confirmation photo.

Near the end of the notebook, there is a list of the U.S. Presidents, noting the years they served and their home states. The penmanship for the list is identical to her handwriting as an older adult. I believe this list was written many years later, as it is written in ball-point pen, while the rest of the notebook is written in pencil. In addition, the president list includes Harry Truman, so it was probably compiled after World War II. An even later addition to the list, written in different ink, adds Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, so that part was written in the 1960s.

I love owning this little piece of my grandmother’s life. It is so interesting to see what types of things were included in her high school education—music, plays, and history lessons. I love seeing her careful script—rather narrow and spidery as a freshman, and a bit looser and more confident as a senior. I wish I had asked her about her high school memories when she was still with us.

Sources:

Riley, A. C. D. 1867-1953. (1897-1915). Gaynor, Jesse S. Songs of the Child World. Cincinnati: [publisher not identified]. 1897.

Crafting a Family Business: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Family Business”

 

Bill and Betty Hoffman Carlson and the Founding of Carlson Craft

Betty Bernice Jane Hoffman: 1920-1988 (Maternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
William Dewey Carlson: 1915-2012 (Husband of Maternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)

 

Growing up in Southern Minnesota, I was familiar with the Carlson Craft Company, located in nearby Mankato. They were the premier printing company in the region, and along with business stationary and publications, they printed many of the wedding invitations and graduation announcements families sent out and received. I think I ordered my own wedding invitations from Carlson Craft. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that the founders of Carlson Craft were in my family tree.

Betty Hoffman was born in Mankato on February 22, 1920, to parents Howard Christian Hoffman and Clementine Morrison Hoffman. She was their only child. Howard’s father, Henry Jacob Hoffman, was my great-grandfather William Hoffman’s brother.

Betty married William “Bill” Carlson on September 15, 1946. She was twenty-six and he was thirty-one. He had served in World War II, and in an interview with Connect Business Magazine in 1988, he recalled that when he returned home from war, he wanted to start a business; he didn’t want to work for someone else.

Bill considered several types of businesses, including a small hotel and a diaper service business. He said that “in early 1948… I got the idea for a letter copying service, from a US Dept. of Commerce booklet that was filled with ideas for returning servicemen for operating their own business. In those days, of course, there weren’t any copying machines, so flyers or invitations had to be copied either by offset printing or, as in our case, by mimeograph.” (see 1 below)

Bill Carlson operating early printing machine

The business fit his and Betty’s needs, he said. In 1948, she was still recovering from cancer treatments, and he wanted a business that wouldn’t risk her recovery. Also, both Bill and Betty had experience with mimeography, and as a prior accountant, Bill had experience managing finances.

They started the Carlson Letter Service in the family room of their home, mailing business pitch letters to fifty potential client companies. 

The Carlsons' Mankato home where they started their business

Within a few years, they decided they wanted to focus on the wholesale wedding invitation market. Bill recalled that, “The profits in being in business for myself did not come overnight. In fact, it took seven years before the profit of my business exceeded what I would have earned at my prior accounting job.” (1 below)

While Bill and Betty tried to get the printing business off the ground, they also started their family. Their daughters Nancy and Patricia were born in 1949 and 1951.

First Carlson delivery truck

The business grew, moving into a building on Front Street in Mankato, eventually employing 500 people.  Bill and Betty tried to treat their employees well, providing some benefits even to part-time employees. They also pledged to donate five percent of their profits to charity.

In 1959 Bill impulsively hired a young college student named Glen Taylor, which turned out to be one of the best business decisions he ever made. Taylor worked his way up in the business, and in 1972 Taylor bought the business from Bill and Betty Carlson, changing the company’s name to Carlson Craft.

1970 Newspaper ad (See 3 below)

According to the company’s website, under Taylor’s leadership, Carlson Craft has grown to become one of the “largest privately held corporations in the US, with more than 80 companies and 12,000 employees. The Occasions Group was formed in 1998 to bring together five Taylor facilities as one company with one goal: to be the preferred social print partner for life's events.”(2 below)

As for Bill Carlson, he stated in 1998, “I retired at 59 and haven’t regretted it because it allowed me to give more time to my family, civic organizations and my church.” (1 below) Betty had continued to have health problems over the years, so they prioritized travel and time together in retirement.

Betty Hoffman Carlson died January 10, 1988. She was sixty-seven. Bill Carlson remarried and died in 2012.

Learning about the history of Carlson Craft and my cousin’s role in founding and growing the company was a real delight. Bill and Betty built a company that just celebrated its 75^th anniversary, and still brings joy to brides and grooms nationwide.

 

Sources:

1.       “How Carlson Crafted His Business.” Vance, Daniel. Connect Business Magazine May 1998

2.        https://www.navitor.com/blog/the-history-of-navitor/

3.       Carlson Wedding Service advertisement. Estherville Daily News, Estherville, Iowa. Tue, May 12, 1970

Were My German Ancestors Fortyeighters? 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Migration”

 

Part of a Wave of German Immigrants: Hoffmans, Funks, and Streus

Johann Friedrich Streu: 1808-1883 (Maternal Third-Great Grandfather)
Friederica Christina Dethloff Streu: 1804-1883 (Maternal Third-Great Grandmother)
Sophia Maria Christiane Streu: 1840-1922 (Maternal Second-Great Grandmother)
Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman: 1836-1906  (Maternal Second-Great Grandfather)
Charles Nicolas Funk: 1817-1889 (Maternal Second-Great Grandfather)

A friend who is also working on her family tree recently asked me if my German ancestors were “Forty-eighters”. I had no idea what the term meant, and headed off to do some research. Wikipedia provided me with a basic working definition of the group:

“The Forty-eighters (48ers) were Europeans who participated in or supported the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe, particularly those who were expelled from or emigrated from their native land following those revolutions…In the German Confederation, the Forty-eighters favoured unification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights.” (3)

Wikipedia noted that after the revolutions failed, many of these supporters elected to emigrate, heading for Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ancestry’s article on German immigration stated:

“Between 1848 and 1861, many Germans, known as “Forty-Eighters”, immigrated to the United States. While the exact numbers are unknown, the best estimates are that between 4,000 and 10,000 Forty-Eighters immigrated along with many other Germans who arrived at that time.” (2)

“Forty-Eighters could be found across the Midwestern landscape from the Dakotas to Ohio.” (2)

Illustration of Forty-Eighters boarding ships to emigrate from Germany

So were my German ancestors part of this movement? First, I needed to check on the years they arrived in the United States—did their arrival dates fall within the period from 1848 to 1861?

Yes, they all did. My second-great-grandfather Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman (Americanized name of Henry), was born in Oedelum, Hanover, Germany on June 4, 1836, and arrived in the United States in 1855 at the age of nineteen. He would have only been twelve years old when the attempted 1848 revolution occurred, so it seems unlikely he was involved in the movement, unless his family members, who all remained in Germany, were supporters.

Henry and Sophia Hoffman

Henry’s eventual wife and my second-great-grandmother, Sophia Maria Christiane Streu, was born May 29, 1840 in Mecklenburg, Germany, to parents Johann and Freidrica Streu. The family seems to have arrived in America in 1857 when Sophia was sixteen. Her family moved to the Milwaukee area, and that is where Sophia met and married Henry. Milwaukee was one of the areas that Forty-Eighters settled in, so Sophia’s father Johann could have been a follower of the movement.

My remaining German immigrant ancestor was another second-great-grandfather, Charles Nicolas Funk, the father of my great-grandmother Hellena Funk. Charles was born May 12, 1817 in Prussia. He appears on the 1860 census as a cabinetmaker in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and was naturalized November 8, 1864. His arrival date in America is unclear, but was obviously prior to the 1860 census and at least five years before his 1864 naturalization—five years of continuous residence was required by the government. He was certainly old enough to have been involved in 1848, and as a cabinetmaker, he shared some of the characteristics of Forty-Eighters, who were more likely to have been educated or tradesmen rather than the very poor.

What other characteristics did the Forty-Eighters share? Many of them joined the Turners or formed Turner groups in the United States. According to Wikipedia, “Turners are members of German-American gymnastic clubs called Turnvereine. They promoted German culture, physical culture, and liberal politics.” (4)  I don’t believe any of my second-great-grandparents were members.

In addition, many Forty-eighters supported the Union in the Civil War. While I know that Charles Funk registered for the Union draft, he was already in his mid-forties by that time, so he was apparently never drafted and never served. Henry Hoffman also registered for the draft while living in Wisconsin in 1863, but also never served. He continued to farm and father more children throughout the war years before moving to Minnesota in 1870.

I do know that all three families—Hoffman, Streu and Funk—ended up settling near Mankato, Minnesota. As seen in the map below, that area of southeastern Minnesota welcomed large numbers of German immigrants. Mankato had a German-language Lutheran church that my ancestors attended, and a large German population. The nearby community of New Ulm was all German, and was definitely settled by Forty-Eighters. New Ulm still has an active Turner Hall and Turner group.

1872 map of German population, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

There is no definitive evidence proving that my three German ancestors arrived as part of the Forty-Eighters movement, although all of them arrived around the same time period and settled near the Forty-Eighter community of New Ulm, Minnesota. I will never know whether their political beliefs led to their decision to emigrate or if they were simply part of a larger German migratory movement. Ancestry reports that nearly six million Germans immigrated between 1820 and 1910, and only a small percentage of those migrants were Forty-Eighters.

 

Sources:

1. “German Immigration in 1848. https://www.ancestry.com/historical-insights/migration-settlement/immigration/german-immigration-1848

2. The Forty-Eighters of Germany Come to America.  https://www.junctionbooks.net/blog-2/the-forty-eighters-of-germany-come-to-america

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-eighters

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turners

Courting Couple: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Favorite Photo”

 

Ivan and Nora In Love: My Grandparents In Front of Their Future Home

Ivan Macbeth: 1904-1972 (Maternal Grandfather)
Nora Hoffman: 1899-1994 (Materna Grandmother)

 

I loved this photo as soon as I saw it in my grandmother’s old photo album. I feel that it visually captures a special moment in my grandparents’ lives—the point where they knew they were going to build a life together, but before their April 14, 1926 marriage actually started that chapter of their lives . The photo’s background also serves as a striking metaphor for that pivotal moment.

The photo depicts my grandparents standing against the roadcut carved into the hillside below the farmhouse they would move into after their marriage. Roads in the area were changing from narrow, muddy dirt roads traversed by horses, into gravel or paved roads wide enough for cars to pass each other. The county was widening and flattening out the road that wound from Eagle Lake towards Mankato. The equipment had cut down through the hillside to make the new roadbed. While my grandfather wasn’t a tall man—probably about 5 feet 8 inches, and he and Grandma Nora were sitting on a dirt shelf rather than standing up, given that there was at least three to four feet of dirt above their heads, it appears the road cut was at least ten feet deep.

I believe the photo was taken in the year before their marriage, since Grandpa Ivan is not wearing a wedding ring on his visible left hand. The trees behind them in the Macbeth farmyard still have leaves, so I am guessing the photo was taken in early fall. Grandma Nora is wearing a long-sleeved top and Grandpa is wearing a suitcoat, so the weather was neither hot as it would have been in summer, nor particularly chilly as it would have been in late fall. I am putting a likely date of September 1925 on the photo; about seven months before their wedding. The shadows are sharp, with the sun coming from the west, so the photo was likely taken in late afternoon.

Ivan and Nora were probably engaged by this point, or close to announcing their engagement. Even though they are a bit stiff-looking and aren’t holding hands, they are sitting close to one another, leaning towards each other. I can see from their body language that they are definitely a “couple”.

My grandmother, Nora Hoffman, was twenty-six when they married, while Ivan Macbeth had just turned twenty-two. My grandmother was always sensitive about the age difference, even lying about her own age on occasion. This is the first photo where I can really see how very young Ivan was, and how Nora looks more mature.

I love their clothes. They seem to have been dressed up for a date or a party. Ivan seems to be holding a scarf or soft hat, and Nora holds a lovely hat decorated with a small bunch of flowers. Her hair is bobbed in the flapper-type style of the 1920s. She appears to be wearing pale hose, and has shoes decorated with some sort of buckle. He is wearing a nice suit and dark tie, and has a handkerchief peeking from his suit pocket. He’s wearing dark dress shoes, and the narrow pants legs accentuate his lean, lanky build.

In this photo, my grandparents are preparing to set out on a new road in their life, so it is appropriate that they are posing on the new road being built in front of their soon-to-be home.

The Language of the Old Country: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Language”

The Fiction that Our Immigrant Ancestors Quickly Learned English

People who are hostile to new U.S. immigrants often complain that immigrants cling to their home country’s language and prefer to live with other immigrants. What happened to the idea of the melting pot, these people gripe. Our ancestors learned English right after they came to America, and quickly adopted American culture, they claim. They chide today’s immigrants, demanding that they learn to speak English!  Now!

But did our ancestors really embrace American culture and the English language right after they landed in America? I’m sure there were a few people who did, but most of our immigrant ancestors did the same things that modern immigrants do: they took decades to truly learn English, and they preferred to live with other people from their home country, speaking the Old Country language, eating Old Country foods, and worshipping and reading newspapers in their native language.

Examples abound from my own family. My father’s grandparents all immigrated from Norway, and joined other Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota, forming a Norwegian community in Brown County. Nearby was a German community, and a few miles away, a Swedish community. Each community set up their own churches that used their home country language. Newspapers were printed in their home country language. My father, born in 1917, nearly fifty years after his Syverson grandparents immigrated, spoke with a strong Norwegian accent. Why? Because his parents, who had spent most of their lives in America, spoke Norwegian at home as well as English.

An example is this postcard from my great-uncle Siver Syverson addressed to his mother Ragnhild. While my photo cut off the postal cancellation date, the company that made the post card did not begin producing them until 1909. I am guessing Siver travelled to Canada and sent the postcard sometime between 1912 and 1915. Siver was born in the United States in 1882. His parents immigrated in 1868, so Ragnhild had been in America for at least forty years by the time this postcard was written. But her American-born son was still communicating with her in Norwegian.

My father’s family attended a nearby Lutheran church that continued to offer services in Norwegian well into the 1900s. Here is the parish register for my father’s 1917 baptism. The headings are in Norwegian. Most of the ministers that served such churches came directly from Norway to serve American congregations.

My grandmother, Nora Hoffman, was the child of German immigrants, and attended a German Lutheran church in Mankato, Minnesota. Many of the forms they used, like wedding, baptism and confirmation certificates, were written in German. Hymns and services were conducted in German into the 20^th century even though the German immigrants in the area had arrived at least thirty years earlier. Below you can see my grandmother’s 1900 baptism certificate in German. 

No matter how eager immigrants are to start new lives in America, they still take pride in their home culture—and they should! I take pride in my Norwegian and German roots, after all. And it is perfectly natural that immigrants would seek to settle near other immigrants from their homeland—it offers a built-in support system and a sense of community. Our ancestors did the same. In addition, English is a complex and difficult language to master, so it is perfectly natural that adults would take decades to become comfortable and fluent, often being forced to rely on their children, who attended schools taught in English, to act as translators.

We accept that we need to examine historical records to trace our ancestors. We also need to look at what historical records tell us about American immigration before we make unfounded claims about our immigrant ancestors’ embrace of American culture and language.

 

Sources:

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Archives; Elk Grove Village, Illinois; Congregational Records. Church Name or Description: Lake Hanska Lutheran. Births: 1917. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60722/images/41742_314248-00282?pId=776547

A Wedding in the 1880s: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Favorite Photo”

A Formal Photo for a Formal Occasion: A Typical 1880s Wedding Photo

Elizabeth “Minnie” Hoffman: 1869-1945 (Maternal Great-Grandaunt)
Frank L Graham: 1863-1939 (Maternal Great-Granduncle by Marriage)

 

My grandmother, Nora Hoffman Macbeth, passed down a number of family photos, including wedding photos for most of her numerous aunts and uncles. My brother has the originals; I scanned them for my records. One of these family treasures is this 1888 wedding photo, featuring my grandmother’s Aunt Elizabeth Hoffman and her new husband Frank Graham. I was charmed by the details and the facial expressions in the photo, and by what the image can tell us about weddings in the 1880s.

So who were Elizabeth Hoffman and Frank Graham? Elizabeth was born January 3, 1869 to parents Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman and Sophia Maria Christiane Streu. Johannes and Sophia had immigrated from Germany in the 1850s and married around 1860 in the Milwaukee area. Elizabeth was the fifth of their eventual eleven children.

The family moved to Blue Earth County, Minnesota around 1870, so Elizabeth grew up on their farm near Mankato.

Frank Graham grew up on a farm in Martin County in Tenhassen Township, nearly 65 miles away, appearing on the 1880 federal census and the 1885 Minnesota State Census living with his parents.  I am not sure how the two young people met. Perhaps Frank moved to the Mankato area at some point after the 1885 census and they met there.

They married July 1, 1888 in Decoria Township, Blue Earth County, Minnesota. Frank was 24 years old, and Elizabeth was just 19 years old.

What can we gather and surmise from this photo?

First, the bride is not wearing white. It was quite common in the 1880s for brides to simply wear their best dresses for their weddings. White wedding dresses were becoming more popular thanks to Queen Victoria wearing one for her 1840s wedding, but many women could not afford a special dress, especially  in such an impractical color.

Elizabeth’s dress was fairly elaborate, featuring a jacket with dark velvet sleeves, collar and pockets. It is impossible to tell what color it was, but it was obviously quite dark, perhaps a dark green or blue, or even black. Even though Frank and Elizabeth were married in midsummer on July 1, Elizabeth’s skirt and jacket appear to be made of heavy fabrics—possibly a winter-weight wool. Elizabeth wore a blouse beneath her jacket—you can see the shirt sleeves peeping out from the velvet sleeves, and the dark shirt rises above the jacket’s velvet collar. The shirt collar rises high along her throat, edged with light colored piping. Elizabeth wore a bar-shaped broach to pin the shirt collar closed. Given how warm this outfit was, I suspect she may have worn the outfit only for the formal photo with her husband, and wore a lighter weight gown for the actual wedding ceremony.

Elizabeth was also wearing a corset, giving her that wasp-waisted shape that was so desirable in the Victorian era. The jacket hugs her corseted waist, with a double row of buttons holding the jacket closed. The skirt is rather plain in design compared to the jacket, but appears to be well tailored.

Elizabeth also took pains with her hair, which was elaborately curled and pinned.

As for Frank, he has also taken pains with his appearance. He is wearing a handsome suit and vest. Beneath the suit he wore a fancy shirt with a pattern of stripes or checks. The shirt also seems to have a sort of built-in tie or ascot that he has tacked down with a square tie pin. He has a watch chain and fob artfully draped across his chest. His boots look clean and cared for, and he appears to have visited the barber—his hair is neatly cut, and his chin and neck clean-shaven. I found his blond mustache—a contrast to his darker hair—charming.

Frank has a slight smile on his face, while Elizabeth looks very young and very solemn. Of course, due to the long photo exposures of the period, sitters were told not to smile so their image wouldn’t be blurred by movement.

The final thing to note about the photo is that neither the bride nor groom are wearing wedding rings. Was the photo taken before the ceremony, or did the couple not use wedding rings?

So what happened to Elizabeth and Frank after this photo was taken? The couple had only one child, Laura Jane, who was born seven years after their marriage. I suspect Elizabeth may have had some miscarriages or fertility problems.

After her birth, Frank volunteered to serve in the Minnesota Infantry in the Spanish American War. I have been unable to find details about his service, other than that he was a private in the 13^th  Minnesota Infantry, Company D. The Minnesota 13^th was sent to Manila in 1898 to put down an insurrection there. They returned to the United States in 1899. Did he volunteer to earn extra money? Out of patriotism? At 32, he was older than most of his fellow soldiers. It must have been hard on Elizabeth to be left at home to care for their young daughter alone.

By the time of the 1905 state census, Frank was back in Minnesota. He was working as a mason and the couple and their daughter were living in Fairmont, Minnesota. They continued to live in Fairmont at 1000 North Elm Street until their deaths. Frank died March 22, 1939 at age 75. Elizabeth died March 5, 1945 at age 76. Their daughter married and had two children.

1000 N. Elm, Fairmont, MN today, from Google Street View

I love Elizabeth and Frank’s wedding photo. It may not be the most elegant or beautiful photo, but it captures that moment in their lives so vividly, and gives us a window into the world of hard-working immigrant families in 1880s Minnesota. Let’s raise a toast to the bride and groom!

New Year’s Eve Oysters: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Tranditions”

 

Grandma’s New Year’s Eve Prescription: Oyster Stew

Nora Elsie Hoffman Macbeth: 1899-1994

 

For my Grandma Nora, the New Year couldn’t start properly without a good helping of oyster stew the night before. My mom picked up the tradition, and every year we’d be shopping for canned oysters at the rural Minnesota supermarkets near our home. Amazingly, they were always available, so I suspect that this tradition was fairly common in the area.

Grandma Nora as a young woman

My Grandma Nora’s parents were both of German descent. I believe she acquired the recipe and the tradition from one of them. According to my Google research, oyster stew was only a holiday tradition in the northern areas of Germany, possibly due to the closer proximity to the sea. Lena Funk’s father emigrated from northern Germany, so perhaps the oyster stew was a little piece of the Old Country he brought with him.

Apparently more people serve oyster stew on Christmas Eve rather than New Year’s Eve. However, the tradition makes more sense to me as a propitious way to begin a new year since the oysters are believed to promote libido and fertility. It’s very similar to the southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas for the same reason.

I’m not sure if my grandmother was trying to promote healthy libidos or not. I know that she was rather superstitious, and claimed that consuming oyster stew on New Year’s Eve brought good fortune in the coming year.

Another genealogist who had the same New Year’s Eve tradition found an authentic German recipe for the stew or soup that sounds close to the one my grandmother and mother used (I used Google Translate to convert it into English):

Austernsuppe  (Oyster Soup)

Portionen: 4

Oyster soup ingredients

24 oysters (with juice)

40 grams of butter

3/4 cup(s) whole milk (hot)

Sweet paprika

Salt

Pepper

For oyster soup, cook the shelled oysters in the hot butter with the oyster juice.

As soon as the oyster crusts begin to curl, add hot milk, season with salt and pepper and heat through.

Serve the oyster soup in soup bowls sprinkled with sweet paprika.

 

My grandmother used more milk than this, and less butter. Fresh oysters were hard to find in Minnesota at the best of times, and in winter during the 1970s was nearly impossible. We used canned oysters. I recall that she added carrots and onions, and occasionally potatoes. Here is a recipe that is more similar to hers:

New Year’s Oyster Stew

4 servings

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup minced onion

1/4 cup diced celery

1/4 cup diced carrot

1/2 teaspoon mild paprika

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

8 ounces bottled fresh oysters with liqueur

4 cups nonfat milk

1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder

1 cup half-and-half

Combine water, onion, celery, carrot, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper in a small pot. Cover and simmer over low heat until vegetables are tender. If necessary, add more water. Strain oysters and pour the liqueur into the pot with the vegetables. Chop oysters into 1/2-inch pieces and set aside.

In another pot, stir together the liquid milk, dry milk and half-and-half. Heat at medium-low temperature until warm. Stir in the vegetable mixture and increase the temperature slightly. Cook 1 minute and add the oysters. Heat at medium heat until hot. Serve immediately.

 

My family’s soup was served with saltines, or even more appropriately, oyster crackers. I remember how my brother and I loved the oyster crackers. It was a fairly bland dish, which was probably why I enjoyed it as a child.

Sadly, I didn’t carry on this tradition. I only made the soup once or twice when my own children were young. I’m not the biggest fan of canned oysters, and my children weren’t impressed. Perhaps I should try again with fresh oysters.

 

Sources:

Recipe courtesy of https://www.ichkoche.at/austernsuppe-rezept-179466

https://www.dglobe.com/news/celebrating-christmas-german-style

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-lz1f31history182839-oyster-stew-holiday-tradition--2008dec31-story.html#:

 

Tracing a Life Gone Awry: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Timeline”

From Independence to Asylum Inmate

Anna Stroy: 1877-1961

 

While researching my second-great-granduncle Johann Streu/John Stroy, I discovered that his youngest daughter, Anna, ended up in the Norfolk State Hospital for the Insane, spending over half her life as an inmate. I knew that in early part of the twentieth century, people with problems like severe intellectual and developmental disability and severe autism were often institutionalized with the mentally ill. Was Anna’s condition lifelong, or did it develop later in life? I decided to track the data points in the records creating a timeline to see what I could learn.

1877:  

Anna was born April 1, 1877 in Elmwood Nebraska to parents Johann and Johannah Kupke Streu. She was the youngest of their 6 children.  

1880:

Anna appears on the census with her family.

1900:

Anna appears on the census, age 23, living with her parents. She is not employed.

1901:

A news item in the January 4, 1901 issue of the Elmwood Nebraska Leader-Echo states “Miss Anna Stroy returned to her work in Lincoln, Tuesday evening.” So at 24, she was holding down a job and presumably living on her own in Lincoln, Nebraska.

1905:

Anna’s mother dies.

1906:

News item from the Ashland Journal on March 2, 1906 reads: “Anna Stroy and sister Emma Gakemeier are visiting relatives at Glenwood, Iowa for an indefinite period.”

1908:

News item from the Ashland Gazette on January 31, 1908: “Miss Anna Stroy was an Omaha visitor Thursday of last week.        

1909:

News item from the Ashland Gazette on September 3, 1909: “John Stroy and family and Miss Anna Stroy returned Tuesday from a three weeks outing in Colorado.” Note: it is unclear if the John Stroy mentioned is Anna’s father or, more likely, her older brother, who was married and the father of three children in 1909.

News item from the December 3, 1909 Ashland Gazette describing the removal of 700 apple trees from Anna Stroy’s farm, so they must have been running an orchard, but were now returning the land to farming use. Was this Anna’s father’s old land?

1910:

Anna and her father are living together in Elmwood, Nebraska in a house on Kansas Street. She is 33. Her father is 75. She is not employed.

1918:

Anna’s father Johann died on March 27, 1918.

1920:

The 1920 census finds Anna living at the Norfolk Hospital for the Insane in Norfolk, Nebraska. She is 41 years old.

1924:

The Elmwood Leader-Echo published an article on May 23, 1924 detailing a lawsuit brought by Anna’s brother John as her guardian. She owned farmland, and the school district had condemned five acres to use as a school site, but paid less for the land than Anna’s brother thought was fair. She is described as “incompetent.” The jurors awarded an additional $460 in compensation.

1930:

The census finds her still an inmate in the Norfolk Hospital.

1934:

Legal notice in the Plattsmouth Journal of Plattsmouth, Nebraska providing public notice that John Stroy has filed for paperwork requesting approval of his guardianship expenses and report for Anna, an incompetent.

1939:

Anna is listed as a surviving relative in her sister Emma’s obituary. Ashland Gazette October 18, 1939.

1940:

The census finds Anna still a resident at the Norfolk Hospital for the Insane. She is 62.

1961:

Anna Stroy died on July 11, 1961 at age 84. Her obituary stated that “She lived in the Murdock community until 1917 when she became a paitient at the state hospital in Norfolk. She remained there until about five years ago when she was transferred to a nursing home in Plattsmouth.” Obituary published in the Ashland Gazette on July 20, 1961.

1962:

Springfield Monitor, Papillion Nebraska published a Notice of Sale for Anna’s farm on January 11, 1962.

 

So what did I learn from this timeline? First, Anna had been independent early in her life. She was able to hold a job and live on her own. However, at some point she moved back home, and lived with her parents until she was committed to the Norfolk Hospital. Did her mental illness manifest in her early twenties when she moved back home? Schizophrenia can manifest in early adulthood. She could have been bipolar or severely depressed. Did her condition worsen as the years went by? Whatever mental illness she suffered, it apparently wasn’t apparent from birth.  

Anna’s mother died in 1905. Anna continued to live with her father and travel with family for the next decade. However, we see that her father was preparing for her support once he was no longer alive to care for her: he placed 160 acres of farmland in her name by 1909.

As her father’s health failed, the family must have decided that Anna needed more care than they could provide, for according to her obituary, she was committed in 1917, a year before her father’s death. The timeline shows that her siblings took responsibility for her—her sister traveled with her one year, and her brother another year. Her brother became her guardian after her father’s death, and managed her affairs until his death in 1954.

Dining hall at the Norfolk State Hospital around 1915

The Norfolk State Hospital for the Insane appears to have been a decent institution. The photographs I was able to find show attractive buildings and a clean interior with plenty of staff to care for the patients. I hope the hospital was able to provide good care for Anna, as she spent half of her life there, from age 39 to approximately 79, when she was transferred to a nursing home.

The use of a timeline helped me track Anna Stroy’s life more effectively. While I may never know the details, I can at least see the framework and milestones of her life,