Henry Clay Dane: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Out of Place"

Henry Clay Dane 1833-1895 (both years approximate)

                While reviewing my Dane family ancestors, I noticed that I didn’t have a death date for my First Cousin 4x Removed Henry Clay Dane. (Relationship: his father was my paternal third-great-grandfather David Dane's brother.) I decided to fix that. When a preliminary Ancestry records search failed to provide information, I turned to Google, and that’s when things got interesting.

                Google pulled up an Ancestry Message Board request from 2008. An Australian researcher was asking for information “regarding an American man named Henry C. Dane, a former Massachusetts resident who is confirmed to have married an Australian woman. He is referred to as a "Major", possibly in the American Civil War, as he is said to have served in either the 41st Mass Infantry; or may have been a 1st Lieut. in Co C, 3rd Mass Cav.; 1861-1865. He may have been born around 1833. Before his military service he was said to have been a lawyer. He became a resident of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1875.”

                Australia? What was Henry Dane, a Maine native who ended up working as an attorney in Washington D.C. and Boston after serving in the Civil War, doing in Australia in 1875? This was a man who was truly “out of place”.

                Following up on leads contained in the message board led me to some fascinating resources and information. I was able to confirm the Australian Henry Dane was in fact my ancestor Henry Dane. His path to Australia was quite amazing, and taught me about a nineteenth century form of entertainment of which I was unaware.

                Henry Clay Dane was born in Fayette, Maine in either 1833 or 1834. Fayette is a small town in Kennebec County in the Winthrop Lakes region near the center of the state. His father, Massachusetts native John Dane, had moved there after his 1812 marriage to Sarah Sutton of New Hampshire. John farmed and was a tanner according to census records. He and Sarah had several children—other people’s Ancestry trees list eight children although the records on some of them are very sparse. Henry was the second youngest of their children.

                Henry abandoned farming and Fayette while quite young. By age 16, he was living with his older sister, Sarah Augusta Dane Newcomb and her husband Josiah Newcomb in Norton, Massachusetts. His younger sister Eliza was also living there. It is unclear if his parents weren’t able to care for them, or if they were in Massachusetts for educational or work opportunities. Henry’s brother-in-law was listed on the 1850 census as a “housewright”, a builder of wood houses, and Henry was listed as an apprentice, so perhaps he was living there to learn Josiah Newcomb’s trade.

1850 Census entry

                By 1855, Henry was 22 years old, and had apparently relocated to Otsego, New York where he was boarding with an unrelated family. The census record identifies him as H.C. Dane, and states he was born in Maine and was a student. I found historical records from the Otsego area describing the Cherry Valley Academy, an apparently well-respected school that employed several lawyers as faculty during the 1850s. Since I know that Henry eventually worked as an attorney, I hypothesize Henry was in the Otsego area to train in the field of law.  

Henry returned to Massachusetts at some point in the 1860s, for he was in Cambridge when he enlisted in the Union Army on October 4, 1862. He mustered in as 1st Lieutenant in the Massachusetts 41^st Regiment, and later received a commission as Captain of Co. "F", Third Massachusetts Calvary Regiment. He was promoted to Brevet Major 13 March, 1865. He later claimed to have participated in the capture of New Orleans, the siege of Port Hudson, the Red River Expedition and operations in the Shenandoah Valley during his war service. I will have to find his Civil War service record to confirm those claims.

Maj. Henry C Dane, Civil War

Following the war, he returned to Cambridge and set up a legal practice in Boston. He married a young Cambridge woman on November 5, 1867. He was 34; his bride, Angeline E. Parker, was only 22. The marriage was short-lived; Angeline died in 1869.

Henry remained in Boston until at least 1876; a city directory lists him as a lawyer with offices at 30 Kilby, a downtown address that now houses a high rise building. Another source states he was in practice with another attorney and the firm was called Dane & Baker.  

At some point between 1876 and the 1880 census, Henry left the practice of law and became a professional lecturer. During the late nineteenth century, public lectures were popular entertainments, and companies were formed to hire interesting speakers and arrange the bookings. Henry joined one of these companies, the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. 

Maj. Dane's speaking bureau photo          

He had several speaking topics, including descriptions of his travels in Europe under the titles “Up the Rhine and Over the Alps with a Knapsack” and “Constantinople, the Queen of the Levant” as well as a speech on the female sex cryptically titled “The Heroic in Womanhood”.

His most popular speech was based on his Civil War experiences, and was titled “The Great Naval Battles of the American Rebellion.” An Australian reporter described it as follows: “The furious engagements between the Confederates and the Federal ships were depicted in the most graphic language, which completely riveted the attention of the audience for the two hours the lecture lasted, while the drily humorous sallies which the lecturer occasionally indulged in created a good deal of merriment.” The Daily Advocate of Newark Ohio was equally complimentary, stating that “Major Dane is simply matchless in his style of oratory. He has the quality known as ‘ideal presence’ in a greater degree than any other speaker we have listened to.”

Handbill promoting three of Dane's speeches in Australia, 1887

I found several newspaper reports of his performances around the country. He was a very popular speaker, and, according to a letter he wrote a friend in 1887, “I have advanced somewhat up the line of my class, and now stand among the head chaps.”

                Speakers for the Redpath Lyceum could command good fees for the era. Minor speakers could get $200 per engagement, while famous individuals could command up to $800 or so. Presumably, Henry Dane fell somewhere in the middle range. He traveled extensively across the country, ending up on the West Coast in the late 1880s. He was being courted by Australian venues, and after receiving assurances “that many who had come to this land have had all expenses paid and received more than that”, he set sail for Sydney on a steamship. He was excited by the beauty of the country, writing  to friend Henry Allison of Massachusetts on August 18, 1887 about his experiences in Australia, and assuring him that “I am safe in the land of former savages and convicts.”

Letter from Henry to friend Henry Allison

During his travels, he met a young woman named Jeanie Grahame Cook, the daughter of Samuel Cook, the longtime general manager of the Sydney Herald newspaper. They married July 14, 1891 in what was described “the wedding of the week”. The ceremony took place in the backyard of the Cook home under “a large tree where a floral rail and altar had been erected, the guests watching the proceedings from the balcony”.  It was a true May-December romance: Major Dane was 58 years old, and his bride a tender 24!

                Following a honeymoon in Tasmania, the couple moved to the United States, where Henry returned to his speaking engagements. They traveled back and forth to Australia over the years, and on one of their return trips somewhere between 1895 and 1898 (have not found death records), Henry died on board the ship Mariposa and was buried at sea somewhere in the Pacific. Jeanie moved back to Australia. She never remarried, becoming an advocate for early childhood education and universal kindergarten.

                Obviously, I have more research to do on this fascinating man, who was truly “out of place” not just geographically, but professionally as well. Henry Clay Dane was a daring, unique man who turned a love of travel, adventure and performance into an unusual career. 

Rev. Warner Keller: 52 Ancestors Prompt "At Worship"

Warner Berton Keller: 1919-2010

52 Ancestors, 52 Weeks: At Worship

                My family included several ancestors who were ministers, some in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and others in the twentieth century. My third cousin once removed, Warner Berton Keller, was of the more recent clergymen I have found in the family tree.

                Rev. Keller was born August 11, 1919 to parents Jacob and Sadie Randall Keller. He was a twin; his brother was named Wendell. Warner grew up on the family farm near Burtrum, Minnesota. He attended school in Burtrum, where he played on the baseball and basketball teams and was class valedictorian.

                                           Jacob, Wendell, Elsie, Warner and Sadie Keller

                According to his obituary, he had a religious conversion at age 12, and felt called to the ministry in his teens. He became a pastor of his first church at age nineteen, without formal training or a college education! Such confidence and commitment at such a young age! The 1940 census shows him living on his own in Burtrum, working as a minister. The industry column reads “of the Gospel”.

                On December 30, 1940, he married Pearl Knapp of Minneapolis. I am not sure how he met the young woman, as Minneapolis was a considerable distance from Burtrum. 

                By the time of his WWII draft registration, he was the minister of the Free Methodist Church in Motley, Minnesota, about forty miles north of Burtrum.  His brother, meanwhile, was in a teacher training program at the time he registered for the draft. While Warner did not serve in the military, his brother Wendell did, serving several years and eventually marrying a woman in Arizona.

Warner and his wife ministered to several churches in a variety of states over several decades, serving Methodist parishes in South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. They had five children: Roger, Barbara, Robert, Rick and Kathi.

                According to Warner’s obituary, the church congregations he served all experienced growth during his years as their pastor. He was elected as the Superintendent of the North Minnesota Conference of the Free Methodist Church at only 33. The obituary noted that he was known for his “excellent preaching and his evangelistic fervor”.

                 Warner spent several years as the minister of the Free Methodist Church in Centralia, Washington, and returned to the city in retirement. Rev. Keller died at age 90 on January 16, 2010 after a long life at worship.

Salma Dane: 52 Ancestors Prompt "In the Newspaper"

Salma Dane (1833-1910) and Albert B. “Bert” Dane  (1876-1972)
52 Weeks 52 Ancestors Week 13 Prompt: In the Newspaper

A tiny newspaper clipping changed the way I looked at the relationship between these two men. The story is so charming—the type of story that one assumes only happens in fiction, but as this newspaper article showed me, truth is stranger, and in this case, sweeter, than fiction.

Salma Dane is my third great-uncle, the brother of my second great-grandfather Jerome Dane. Salma was born in 1833 in New York to David Dane and Sally Randall, the eighth of their nine children. Following David’s death when Salma was two, the family relocated to Wisconsin. Salma met and married Hannah “Hattie” Comstock in Wisconsin, and by the 1860 census, they had settled in Oakfield, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. Their first child, a daughter Hattie, was born there in 1859. Sadly, Hattie died just days after her first birthday.

Salma and Hattie moved to Minnesota, settling in the Waseca area, and then in Janesville, Minnesota where Salma worked as a carpenter and joiner, and also farmed.  They had two more sons. Freddie was born in 1868, and David was born in 1873. Tragically, both little boys died. Freddie died in 1874 at age 6, and David died a year later at age 2. They are buried together in the Janesville cemetery under a single white marble marker.

A year later, a newspaper story in the February 15, 1876 Janesville Argus described a little miracle that brought joy for the Danes after so much loss. The newspaper reported that the previous Tuesday, February 8, someone left a baby boy in the entryway of Mr. H. S. Bown’s house.

The story states, “The little waif was very cold, having been long in the night air probably. Mr. Brown heard the door open and the child cry, but caught no glympse (sic) of the party.”

Another newspaper noted that Mr. Brown was apparently long past the age of fathering a child. The story joked that “Generally speaking, there’s nothing unusual in finding a baby in most Minnesota families, but our friend H. S. Brown of Janesville has reached that period in life where he expects nothing of the kind.”

The story notes that the baby “is a fine healthy boy some two months old and has been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Salma Dane. It could not have fallen into better hands and is undoubtedly better off than if left to the tender ? care of its inhuman parents.” Obviously the community had felt sorry for the Danes, and supported their adoption of the abandoned child.

The second newspaper was a bit kinder to the birth parents, noting that the boy was “snugly wrapped up and laid in the [back] room” of Brown’s house. The paper also stated there was “no clue to the donor.”

I can’t fathom the desperation and despair that must have driven Albert’s mother to abandon her son. The community of Janesville was very small, and it would been nearly impossible to have hidden a pregnancy and birth, much less care for the baby for six weeks to two months without others in the community finding out. Therefore, I suspect the parents were from outside the community. They must have ridden a horse or buggy to the edge of town and chosen a house that looked occupied. 

Luckily, given the frigid temperature of a Minnesota February, the baby was discovered in time, and was taken in by eager adoptive parents. By this point, Salma and Hattie were getting too old to conceive again, so I imagine they were thrilled to get another chance at parenthood.

Apparently, the little boy thrived under Salma and Hattie’s care. The state issued a new birth certificate for the baby, listing him as Albert B. Dane and giving him a birth date of February 9, 1876, which is probably the date the Danes took him in. Given the birth record, without the newspaper article posted by one of my distant cousins on Ancestry, I never would have known that Albert wasn’t Salma and Hattie’s natural child.

Salma died in 1910, and left his property divided between his wife and Albert, a sign that the family was on good terms.

Albert eventually left farming and became a salesman for a drugstore company. He went on to marry and had a daughter, Dorothy Zaida Dane. His wife died at some point before the 1930 census. By then daughter Dorothy was married and launched on her own life. Albert remarried, and by 1935 he had moved to California.  The 1940 census states he was occupied as a candy maker for his own confectionary business! He died January 31, 1962 in Los Angeles at age 85. He came a long way from being a foundling left in the back room of a house in small town Minnesota.

Edward Peter Hoffman: 52 Ancestors Prompt "12"

Edward Peter Hoffman: 1882-1972
52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors Week 12 Prompt: 12

Last week I blogged about the large family of Johannes “Henry” Hoffman and Sophia Streu Hoffman, parents of thirteen children who survived to adulthood. So when I was confronted with the prompt “12”, I immediately thought of writing about their twelfth child, my great-uncle Edward Peter Hoffman. 

Edward was born February 26, 1882, when his father was age 45 and his mother was 41. Both parents were German immigrants, and had settled on a farm in Mankato Township, Blue Earth County, Minnesota. It is hard to determine how profitable the farm may have been, but as the children grew up, they moved out and formed their own households fairly quickly. By the time Edward was 17, only the four youngest children remained at home.  Edward had left school and was working as a farm laborer, presumably for his father.

Edward around 1900

Just six years later, Edward’s father was dead. According to the 1900 census, the farm was still mortgaged, so it is hard to tell if the family was able to keep the land. Edward had still been living with his parents in 1905 when the state census was taken, but there is no record of him in the 1910 census that seems to match. He reappears in records November 19, 1912 when he marries Minnie P. Kind (or Kindt) in Blue Earth County. He is 29 and she is 20 years of age. She immigrated to the United States with her mother and stepfather, and the 1910 census shows she was working in the knitting mills in Mankato by the time she was 17. Edward must have stayed in the area after his father’s death to have met and courted Minnie.

Edward and Minnie's wedding

By the time the 1920 census occurs, Edward and Minnie are living at 1203 East Line in Mankato. They have a 5 year old son, Edward, and three daughters, Harriet, age 4; Lorraine, age 19 months, and Geneva, just 2 months old. Edward is also providing a home for his 79 year old mother, and two adult nephews, Rudolph and John Lamm. The three men are all employed in trades. Edward is working as a carpenter with the cryptic note that his employer is “Bridge”. His nephew Rudolph is a plumber working for a plumbing contractor, and John has followed his uncle into carpentry, and is working on houses.

By the 1930 census, the family had two more children, Raymond, born in 1921, and Muriel, born in 1923. Edward’s mother had died and one of the Lamm brothers had moved out. The family had moved to a house at 116 Germania St. I have tried to find the house on current maps of Mankato, but it no longer exists. I suspect the street may have been renamed at some point; I can pinpoint the area from the surrounding streets and addresses on the census forms, but Germania Street is no longer there, although the general neighborhood is still known as Germania.

Edward Hoffman Family

Edward continues to work as a carpenter according to both the 1930 and 1940 censuses. He is employed by the railroad, which was listed on the 1940 census as the Omaka, which I believe was the Chicaog Minneapolis, St. Paul Omaha Railway Company, commonly called the Omaha line. He apparently built and repaired bridges for the railroad, earning $1131 in 1940. By the 1940 census, the family has added an additional two children, son Gerald, born in 1931  and daughter Joanne, born in  1934, when her parents were 42 and 51 years old.  The family also included a grandson named Wayne, illegitimate son of daughter Harriet. Edward and Minnie raised him.

Railway share for "Omaha Line"

Minnie died quite young, in 1952 at age 61. She had raised eight children and a grandchild—hard physical labor in that era. Edward never remarried, dying on December 30, 1972 at the age of ninety. He was living in Sibley at his death, most likely with his daughter Harriet. He is buried with Minnie at Pilgrim’s Rest Cemetery in Mankato, Minnesota.

Edward and Minnie before her death--around 1950?

Edward’s life may not have been the most exciting, but like so many members of my family tree, he lived a solid, productive life, working hard to support his family. He took on responsibilities that others shirked, providing homes for several extended family members. As Child No. 12 of Henry and Sophia Hoffman, he was a fine example of the type of solid citizens they raised. 

Johannes Heinrich "Henry" Wilhelm Hoffman Family: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Large Family"

52 Ancestors 52 Weeks: Large Family

Johannes Heinrich “Henry” Hoffman 1836-1906
Sophia Maria Christiane Streu 1840-1922

My maternal great-grandfather, William Hoffman, came from a huge family. He was the fourth of thirteen surviving children. There may have even been a fourteenth child, a twin, who died shortly after birth, if my distant cousins’ family trees can be believed.


William’s parents were German immigrants. Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman was born June 4, 1836 in a community then called Oedelum near the town of Hildesheim, which is located in Germany’s Hanover region. Johannes Heinrich’s mother died when he was 14 years old, and in 1855, at age 19, he emigrated, apparently alone, leaving his father behind in Hanover.


William’s mother, Sophia Maria Christiane Streu, was born May 29, 1840, in Weitendorf, Mecklenburg, Germany. Her entire family—four children and parents—emigrated when she was 17, sailing for New York on May 1, 1857 on the ship Johanes The family settled in Racine, Wisconsin.

Sophia and Johannes Heinrich met somewhere in Wisconsin, and were married in 1859 when she was 19 and he was 23. By the 1860 census, they were living in Greenfield Township, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Johannes Heinrich, now going by the American name Henry, was working as a carpenter.

By the next census in 1870, the couple had moved to the nearby township of Franklin, where Henry was farming. They had five children by this point: Berthia, 10; Amelia, 8; William, 6; Henry, 4; and Elizabeth Minnie, 1.

By the time their sixth child, George Jacob, was born in late 1870 or early 1871, they were living in Minnesota. It is unclear why they chose to move, leaving extended family behind in Wisconsin. Sophia gave birth to twin daughters just a year later on December 17, 1872; if there were twins, only Ida survived.


By the time the 1875 Minnesota State Census was administered, the family had grown to eight children with the birth of baby George. They were farming in Blue Earth County, Minnesota.

The 1880 census shows three more sons had been born since 1875, John, age 3; Alfred, 2; and five-month-old infant Rudolph. It must have been a very full farmhouse in Mankato Township, as Sophia’s parents, John and Frederika Streu, had moved in. The four oldest children, teens ranging in age from 19 to just 13, no longer attended school. Presumably their labor was needed on the farm and managing such a huge household.


No census records remain from 1890 for the family, but Henry and Sophia had their last two children in the early 1880s. Edward Peter was born in 1882, and their final daughter Laura was born in 1884, when Henry was 48 and Sophia 44.


By the 1900 census, most of the children had left home to start their own families, including my great-grandfather, William. This left only the four youngest children, Alfred, Rudolph, Edward and Laura, ranging in age from 20 to 16. Henry was still farming, and his youngest sons were all listed as farm laborers, presumably on his land.  


Henry and Sophia ended up with an amazing 62 grandchildren, including my great-grandfather William’s seven children. I can’t even begin to imagine how many descendants they have by now. What an amazing family! They must have been good parents to have successfully nurtured thirteen children to adulthood in an era where many families lost several children to illness and accidents. They must have been resourceful, hard workers to support such a huge family with the products of a single farm.


Henry died at age 70 on June 21, 1906. Sophia was 81 when she died on March 23, 1922. They are buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Mankato, Minnesota.

Sever O. Severson: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Bachelor Uncle"

52 Ancestors, 52 Weeks Prompt: Bachelor Uncle

Sever Severson: January 21, 1882-April 7, 1953?

           I have many questions about my great-uncle Sever Severson. Exactly when and where did he die? Which of the multiple spellings of his name on various documents is the correct one? Why did he become an itinerant laborer rather than work the family farm? And why did he never marry?
            Sever, or Siver, or Syver, was born on January 21, 1882, to Ragnhild and Ove Syverson. He was their eighth child, and the second child named Sever. The first baby Sever was born in 1869 and died in 1876. Another baby, Ole, born in 1872, died in infancy. Ragnhild and Ove re-used that name as well; the second Ole was born in 1873, right after his brother of that name had died. The family lived in Linden Township in Brown County, Minnesota. His parents were immigrants from Norway who had settled in a pocket of fellow Norwegians outside a tiny community called Hanska.
            A mere five months after the second Sever’s birth, the family suffered another tragic death. Sever’s father Ove was killed in a freak farming accident on June 28, 1882; according to family lore, he was crushed to death by a horse. Ove was only 42, and left his 34 year old wife with a 160 acre homestead, an infant, and five other young children to raise. Ragnhild must have been a true force of nature, for she somehow managed to run the farm, keep her children fed, and her new baby alive, all while dealing with incredible grief and loss. I am sure the children had to pitch in and help with the farm work from very young ages onward to help and support their mother. I doubt Sever ever had a childhood in the way we think is normal now, with free time to play with friends and his siblings.

At some point during Sever’s childhood, his older brother Ole became the head of the household, farming in partnership with his mother. Three of Sever’s sisters married and moved away, and the youngest, Anna Sirine, died suddenly at age 19 when Sever was just 14.

Ole married in 1899 when Sever was 17. By the 1900 census, Sever was out of the house, living with his sister Jorgine and her husband Hans and working as Hans’ farm hand. In the state census of 1905, Sever was back home with his mother and his brother Ole and Ole’s wife Inger. Sever was listed as a farm laborer, presumably working for his mother and brother.

            Why had the farm been disposed of this way, given to only one brother with apparently nothing for the younger brother? This wasn’t necessarily typical for the place and time; other younger sons were often full partners on their family’s farm.
            By the 1910 census, the family had suffered another string of tragedies. Sever’s sister Jorgine had died in 1908, and Ole’s wife Inger and their young son Oscar both died, Oscar in 1904, and Inger shortly after the 1905 census. Sever was still living with Ole and their mother on the family farm at this point, but he told the census taker he “worked out” as a laborer, so was employed somewhere else. He was 28 by this point, and still unmarried.
            Sever’s WWI draft card, dated September 12, 1918, is a fascinating document. He had moved hundreds of miles northwest to the tiny community of Winger, Minnesota in Polk County near the North Dakota border. He was working as a farm laborer for a man named Emil Uhler. I can find no familial connections between the Uhlers and the Seversons, so I am baffled as to why he moved there. The record once again shows conflicts in the spelling of his name: the draft board listed him as “Siver O Siverson” but he signed his name “Sever O. Severson”. Since he chose this spelling when signing his name, I chose to use it as well. He is described as being a medium build and height 36-year-old, with grey eyes and dark brown hair.
            Just two years later, there is no sign of Sever when the 1920 census was taken. I can’t find any Sever Seversons of any spelling that seem to match my great uncle. There is no record of the Uhlers in Polk County either, and no sign of Sever among relatives in Brown County, Minnesota.  
            Sever’s next appearance is at age 48 in the 1930 census. He is a lodger in the home of the Schmiesing family in Lake Hanska Township, not far from my grandparents’ farm. Sever is still working as a farm laborer. Sever’s mother and brother Ole had sold the farm and moved to Hanska, where Ole reported on the 1930 census that he did odd jobs to support himself. Perhaps this explains why Sever was never part of the operation and management of the family farm; perhaps the farm simply wasn’t profitable enough to support many people. Both Ole and Ragnhild died in 1933; Ole was only 59 at the time of his death.

Their deaths left only two of the original eight siblings alive, my grandmother Regina Severson Peterson, and Sever. By the 1940 census, Sever seems to have been living in Minneapolis at the Standard Hotel, which was apparently a residential hotel for poor day laborers. The census form lists that Sever’s birthplace as Iowa, and the birth year is off by two years, but I can find no other census record that matches him as well. He lists his occupation as farm laborer, which matches my great-uncle.
            I was surprised to discover that Sever’s 1942 WWII draft card stated he was living with my grandmother, his sister, Regina Peterson. My grandfather had died just months earlier, so I suspect Regina asked Sever to move in. My father inherited the family farm and had been running it for some years as his father grew sicker, but perhaps Regina thought he needed Sever’s help. Curiously, my father never mentioned Sever living with them; I am not sure how long the arrangement lasted. I can’t remember my father ever speaking of his uncle Sever, although he had plenty of stories about his paternal uncle Jacob.
            My grandmother Regina died in 1952, and her obituary states she was survived by her brother Sever of Minneapolis. That is the only indication I have that Sever was alive into the 1950s. I found a possible death date in the Minnesota Death Record Index, but there are no details of the sort found on a death certificate that would confirm this was the correct Sever. I will have to purchase a copy of the certificate to find out if my hypothesis is correct. Wherever he died, he seems to have died alone. He is not buried in either of the cemeteries where his other family members were interred, so I have no idea what happened to his body, or if any of his nieces and nephews even cared. My bachelor uncle seems to have been a sad and lonely man.

Julia Peterson Severson: 52 Ancestors Week 8 Prompt "Family Photo"

Julia Peterson Severson
February 6, 1857-September 21, 1939

My grandfather, Paul Peterson, had two sisters who nearly disappeared from the collective family memory. Marit and Julia accompanied their parents and three borthers to America. The family moved around several times after they arrived in the Midwest, and both sisters met other Norwegian immigrants and married. Marit and her husband moved to northern Minnesota and were almost forgotten by the Southern Minnesota family members.  Julia met Sever Severson, and they were married in Madelia, Minnesota on February 9, 1877 when she was twenty years old. Shortly afterward the young couple moved to Brookings, South Dakota, where they became one of the original families to settle in the town. They ran a restaurant, among other ventures, and had seven children. Sever died in 1897. Julia eventually married again in 1912 to Iver Grudem, when all but her youngest child were grown up.


 

Paul and his brother Jacob seem to have had minimal contact with their sister and her family over the years. Travel was difficult for farmers, so I doubt they ever traveled to Brookings, and I have no evidence Julia visited their farms in Minnesota. Paul talked so little about her to his children—my father and my aunts and uncles-- that they never spoke of her to their children. So by the time my generation, Paul’s grandchildren, became the oldest members of the southern Minnesota side of the family, no one even remembered that Paul and Jacob had any siblings.

Only my brother, who had found a written statement listing all of the family members, knew about her. The document was dictated by Paul and Julia’s father, Peter, as part of the family’s  emigration paperwork. It was written in Norwegian script, making it impossible for a non-Norwegian to decipher anything beyond Julia’s name and birth date. My brother also found a clipping of a charming interview she gave the Brookings, SD newspaper sometime before her death in the 1939, where she talks about her life there in the late 1800s and early years of the twentieth century.

I had always been curious about Julia since my father, Juhl Peterson, was named in her honor. I was sorry that we had no identifiable photos of her, or of any of her children. But that changed this year.

I was contacted by a gentleman through Ancestry in January, asking if I was related to Julia. He was a descendant of her second husband and said he had a family photo that he believed might show her with her seven children. He hoped I could verify it was them.

I was so excited. The sexes and approximate ages of the children in the photo matched with the records for them I had found on Ancestry. The potential Julia also had a similar facial shape to my grandfather Paul. I sent the photo to my brother, the keeper of the family photo albums inherited from Paul and his wife Regina. Regrettably, my grandparents didn’t believe in writing on photos, so most of the photos contained in the albums are a mystery to our generation. My brother agreed with me that the mother in the photo looked a bit like Paul, and he said she looked even more like the one photo of Paul and Julia’s mother, Anna, that he has found. He also thought the photo itself looked familiar—he thinks it may be among the dozens of mystery photos in the antique albums, although he hasn’t had time to verify this yet. 

We may never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the photo shows Julia Peterson Severson and her seven children, but we are convinced that we finally have a photo of our long-lost great aunt. We are delighted to add the photo to our family records.