PLEASE CONTACT:
The Polk County Historical Society
Robert Street East
Crookston, MN 56716
218-281-1038
Open daily from 1-5 pm starting May 19th... until September
Those interested in genealogy may wish to check, also- http://www.mnhs.org/library/collections/
Polk County Historical Society… March 01
Polk
County’s History (including family histories) was published in 1976.
Crookston’s
History was published in 1979.
Time to get busy on your family history!
Diana Chirillo sent the
above photo of her great-grandfather Andrew Gustaf Shoholm who is a Fosston
miller at the Stadsvold Elevator and Flour Mill. Andrew is at the far right. Diana
says the calendar on the wall looks like it’s MAY.
Based on when May 1 is on Wednesday… it's likely that the year is 1929.
Andrew was born in 1876 in
Sweden and came to Minnesota in 1900. He
married Caroline Sveve from Bear Park, Norman County and lived in Fosston until
they moved to California in the late 1930’s.
These posters have the surname BJOIN written on the back. That’s all we know about them right now… that & the fact that they were in a magazine during WWI.
Can anyone tell us about the Bjoin family?
THE
MYSTERY OF THE MISSING BROTHER
Ray Miller of Portland ME
If
you can add anything to Ray’s MYSTERY (or solve it) contact him at
ray@hearfones.com
Here’s what
little information I have on the Anundsen side of the family. My mother,
Elizabeth Sathre, born 1902 in Crookston had a mother, whose maiden name was
Othilda Anundsen. She was know as ‘Tilly’ and was born in Independence (or
Chimney rock) WI 4 Nov. 1877. There were four children I know of, Emma, Edgar,
Othilda and Jeanette.
Tilly
later went to Crookston College, a school my grandfather J.C. Sathre founded and
ran. She later married the president of the school (I’ll bet there’s one
dandy of a story there) and later had four children, Floyd, Haven Curtis, Helen
and Elizabeth, my mother.
Othilda’s
father was brother (I think) to Brynhild Anundsen, Publisher of the Dekorah
Posten in Dekorah IA. I know Brynhild had a brother Johan Martinius and I
suspect there was another brother who was my grandmother’s father because the
following story is known in the family. Brynhild had a daughter who died and my
grandmother, at about high school age, went to live with ‘her uncle’ in
Dekorah IA. (My cousin Connie Sathre sent a newspaper article relating that.)
Tilly graduated class valedictorian from Decorah High School. Everything about
Tilly’s father is sketchy. My mother doesn’t remember ever seeing her
grandparents but recalls that in their home, some one was building caskets.
Could be that’s what my great grandfather did for a living? (The plot
thickens). My mother also recalls that he was given to strong drink (what’
new?). From my mother’s vague memory she thinks he died in ‘the
northeast’, but northeast what? She also believes he was drowned in a large
river in the East.. Who knows? Aside from my mother’s memory of events and the
newspaper account of Tilla’s graduation in Decorah there was no solid evidence
that my mother was actually related to the ‘other brothers’.
My
mother also tells the story that Tilla’s mother was picking berries with a
cousin in a field near Northfield MN when they saw some rowdies riding into town
on horses, laughing and carrying on. Later they saw the same men riding fast out
of town with one of the men over the back of a horse, dead or wounded. That was
the day, Sept. 1875, that Jessie James’ gang staged their great robbery of the
bank there. Hell of a story, huh? In addition, Nancy Bergman of Whitehall WI
reports that local legend has it that the Northfleld bank loot is buried
somewhere in or near Chimney Rock WI.
In
September 2000, my mother (at age 98) and I motored to WI, IA, ND and MN
visiting with Jane (Anundsen) Bullard and Ellie Anundsen (John Anundsen’s
wife) in Decorah. My cousin Connie Sathre in Silver Spring MD had suggested
checking out the Anundsen Publishing Co. in Decorah, which we did, with
favorable results. We also visited cousin Harvey Sathre in Adams MN and cousin
Martin Sathre in Bemidji.
Since
then I have been in touch with two more cousins, Aldyne (Anundsen) Fuller of
Baudette MN and her brother, Bertel Anundsen of the same town. Aldyne and I have
traded some family information and her son, Dale who has done some family
detective work, will also send me some info.
Somehow
there seems to be a mystery here. I’m sure my grandmother had a father and a
mother and all evidence points to a brother of Brynhild in Decorah, but no one
seems to know of the other ‘missing brother’. My mother is too honest to
have whopped up the whole tale, and records show Othilda marrying my
grandfather, J.C. Sathre. Could my great grandfather Anundsen been so much of a
black sheep as to be ‘forgotten’ by everyone? Is there another good story
here? (I love a good story, and can spin a couple of yarns myself)
Since
I wrote this page in January ‘01, I have run down many alleys, most of them
blind, through the help of the Family History Center of the Mormon Church I have
checked on some church records in Norway, called all over the country running
down Othildas’s sister (Mrs.) Jeanette Lehman of St. Louis; tried brother
Edgar, last heard of in Denver, and contacted others who helped somehow to shed
light on facts or (detective) methods.
Jan
Christiansen did the church record search in Norway that showed Amund Amundsen,
my grandmother’s father, to have the same parents as Johan Martinius and
Brynhild Anundsen (whose descendants I have visited or contacted).
I
include his comments here:
This
family of yours did not exactly live in the town of Skien as we know the town
today. They lived just outside the town, on the properties of a farm called
Nordre
Brekke
(Northern Brekke)in the parish of Gjerpen. (This part of Gjerpen has later been
incorporated in the own of Skien.)
I
first searched the parish records of Skien, but found nothing. Then I tried the
(lIjerpen records as I knew that the names Brynhild and Amund/Anund was used a
lot in Gjerpen.
So
I found in the census of 1845 that in House number 28 under the farm
Nordre
Brekke, there lived Anund Brcrnnildsen, worker, age 28.1/2, married to Maren
Aamundsdatter, age 33. They had the child Brønnild, age 1.
I
then looked through the birth records and found in 1849 in Gjerpen:
Amund
Amundsen born 10/10-1849 under Nordre Brekke. Parents Amund Brynnildsen and
Maren Amundsdatter.
This
is the same family as above.
I
also found them married in Gjerpen: 28/11-1844. Amund Brynhildsen, born Helgen
parish, dwelling place: Brekkejordet (which is a part of Brekke Nordre), age 27.
Father was Brynhild Larsen Bjerkeholdt. married to:
Maren
Amundsdatter, born on the farm Berberg in Gjerperl, dwelling place:
Bratsbergkleven,
Father Amund Olsen Berberg.
In
the local history of the Holla parish, where Helgen is an annex-parish, I found
the farm Bjørkholt,...”Bjørkholt was a small place under the farm
Stenstadvalen until 1803. Here a small farm was built in the birch-forest. The
first owner was: Brynhild Enersen, son of Ener Bj~erva (Huset). He died in 1742
and was married twice. First to Anne Pedersdatter. Children: Peder 19. Then to
widow Maren Christensen Klevsgate. Children: Lars 11, Anne 7.
Assets
amounted to 15 Riksdaler. His son Lass took over the farm. Lass Brynhildsen
lived there until 1803. He was a teacher married to Maren Andersdatter. Children
living at home in 1801 (census): Anne 13, Jens 10 and Peder 6. The farm was sold
in 1803 to Thor Andreas Jensen.”
The
parts of Nordre Brekke was joined with Skien in 1854, so I checked the parish
registers of Skien for the birth of Johan Marthinius: and found:
Born
5 oct 1857 (bapt 29 nov) - Johan Martinius Parents: worker Amund Brynhildsen and Maren Amundsdatter, from
Brekkejordet
It
seems these three persons you are referring to are brothers all right, so you
now have plenty of more cousins in America.
Phyllis Haber has been researching Clara Kelly, and a while back she requested information on Crookston Normal School, The Children’s Home, Crookston Women’s Relief Corps, Grand Army of the Republic, Argyle Hail Storm of 1886 & 87, and the Red River valley Old Settler’s Association.
It was easy enough to say that we didn’t have such
records; but, in a recent letter she said that she’ll be going down to St.
Paul shortly, because she found out they have much information that she desired.
http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/personal/guide.html
you’ll find 33 pages of information, and these paragraphs
just begin to show what’s available:
DISASTER RELIEF RECORDS
Information about the Argyle hailstorm, 1886–87; seed
grain program distribution requests (grasshopper relief), 1874; Chisholm fire
relief, 1908; the Hinckley, Milaca, New York Mills, and Sandstone fires, 1894;
snowstorms, 1871–73; and drought relief, 1933; hail relief, 1930–34. May
include name of person requesting relief; locality; legal description of
property; marital status and number of children; nature of loss; plight of
surviving family members; crops and livestock destroyed; photographs, plans, and
specifications for replacement buildings; relief registrations; donations;
amount of relief allowed; date of payment; in what manner paid; remarks.
Central office files of the Minnesota Department of the GAR, an organization of men who served in the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War, plus records for many of the almost 200 individual posts established in the state between the 1880s and the 1940s.
Central office files include post charters and organizational records, departmental correspondence, membership information, encampment (reunion) files, and death reports (incomplete, 1889–1920) received from individual posts. The records of posts include minutes of meetings, registers of members, personal narratives, descriptive books detailing the war service of members, correspondence, and post financial records.
Minnesota (1881–1947), with miscellaneous reports for other states and national encampments. The reports describe activities of member posts, list officers, and note deaths occurring during the year, giving name of person, date of death, residence, and post, with an occasional biographical sketch. Publications of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic auxiliary are also available. Access: State Archives
Indexes to many printed passenger lists, some of which are in Reference Collections. Since Minnesota was not a first port of arrival, there are no federal records of passengers arriving at Minnesota ports. Steamboats arriving in Minnesota were not required to deposit passenger lists with any governmental agency; however, some steamboat passenger arrivals are listed in newspapers published in the cities where the passengers debarked. About 10 percent of the available passenger lists are indexed in Passenger and Immigration Lists Index: A Guide to Published Arrival Records of about 500,000 Passengers Who Came to the United States and Canada in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries, edited by P. William Filby (3 vols., 7 supplements; Detroit:Gale Research Company, 1981-88. Location: Reading Room CS68 .P362). Many of the published books and periodical articles indexed in Filby’s guide are available in Reference Collections. Scholarly Resources Inc. is continuing to work on publishing lists of many ethnic groups’ arrivals. They include Germans to America (Location: Reading Room E184.G3 G38 1988), The Famine Immigrants (Location: Reading Room E184.I6 F25 1983), and Migration from the Russian Empire (Location: Reading Room E184.R9 M54 1995). The books include information on the individual immigrant, port of arrival, name of ship, and other information.
Most Minnesota counties operated poor farms. Some farms date from the 1860s (although most began later in the 19th century or early in the 20th) and continued up to the 1950s. Some became nursing homes or tuberculosis sanatoriums, usually no longer operated by the county. Records of several poor farms are in county records in the
(“inmates”) that give date and cause of application
and some or all of the following information: applicant’s name, nationality,
marital status, age, birthplace, length of residency in state or county,
occupation, health status, and death date. A Historical Directory of Minnesota
Homes for the Aged, by Ethel McClure (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society,
1968), HV1468.M65 M24, may be useful in identifying records of poor farms and
municipally owned nursing homes. 916-