As I mentioned, I’m working on an illustrated story of Grandma and Grandpa Brown and their lives.  But one much shorter document I have from Grandma Dorothy is one she wrote in 1992 that summarizes some of the stories she told. I thought those who love her like I do would enjoy reading it, so here it is.

“Grandma, tell has what it was like growing up on a farm in Montana.”

This is what I have been hearing over the years from my five granddaughters—who only know city life. They have an idea that it was like “Little House on the Prairie,” I think.

Kristi, our sixteen-year old, gave me a little blank, fabric-covered book for Christmas and asked me to jot down some of my memories. I have been doing that lately. As I was doing this, I came across my old autobiography written in 1935 for an English class. That helped, too.

They liked to hear about the big threshing machine, and what an event that was when it came to our place! They heard about all the cooking my mother had to do for the twenty or so threshers and the many pies and cakes that she baked.

I told them about what happened when my dad butchered a pig and the process that it takes to put pork chops on the table. I also told them how at an early age I would wring the necks of chickens and get them ready to cook; they say “Ugh!” to that.

They heard about our wonderful neighbors and how they helped each other. In the winter time, they would all go to the like and cut enough ice to last all summer and pack it away with saw dust in the ice house.

I told them what it was like to live without electricity and how we heated the irons on the wood stove to iron our clothes (REA changed that). Since she had to have a hot fire, that was the day my mother baked loaves of bread and always a few cinnamon rolls, and the good smells when we came home from school.

They learned about the little one-room school house where I went to grade school and how the Burton girls rode their Shetland ponies to school.

I told them about the new barn that my dad had built and the barn dances that he had before he filled the hay mow with hay. My dad played in a little dance band off and on over the years—so they provided the music. I told them about how we kids went out the next morning and found beer bottles all over the yard where the cars had parked. We hard that “old Lady Fordham” had been selling home brew while the dance was going on. My dad decided he would use those bottles and make a little brew for himself—to have after a hot day in the fields. I remember how scared we kids were since that was against the law!

I told them about my mother who graduated from Flathead High in 1913 and started teaching school when she was 18 for $50 a month. They learned of the fun we had at the country school house dances, where young and old came from miles around and we never missed a dance.

I told them about Lake Blaine and the big family picnics when we got together with my aunts and uncles and cousins and how some of my girl friends and I went camping there. That was where we all learned to swim and where I had my first boat ride. I told them about the depression.

Finally, I told them about their Grandpa Bill who died when our three sons were 8, 11, and 22. I told them how he traded our new 1939 Nash car for a commercial flying license or 200 hours of flying time. That was what gave us our start and led us out of Montana and eventually to the San Francisco Bay Area where he became an airline pilot and helped to start an airline.

What a fantastic time to have lived! I wonder what kind of stories my granddaughters can possibly tell to their little ones 50 or 60 years from now and what it will take to top this period of time.

I have been hard at work on a project for several weeks now–establishing a timeline of my grandparents’ lives based on my Grandma Dorothy’s journal. I finished transcribing the journal while I was in California this summer, and then began illustrating it with photos from their lives–which has also meant trying to establish when the various photos were taken.  My dad and I had a chuckle when we discovered that you could often date the photos by the cars in them–the Browns and Gortons did love their cars! My dad’s age is also a good indicator–Baby Jim in the photos in Phoenix or Redlands, a toddler in California, a little older back in Phoenix, a little older in Montana, then back to California. And then there is my grandmother’s writing on the backs of the photos–even a name and a date can place the photo so perfectly in the story.

I suppose that one of the driving factors in this project is the fact that I never knew my Grandpa Brown, who passed away a decade before I was born.  But thanks to this project, I feel like I am getting to know him more and more.

I love this photo of him with his basketball team when he was a senior in high school in Circle, Montana. I can’t get over how much my Uncle Jeff looked like him.

And then I look at this photo from my Grandma Dorothy’s senior yearbook (1936), which I found online–and realize that I take after her more and more every day.

Sweet treasures from the past.  Can’t wait to share more of my discoveries.

 

 

When my great-grandfather met a charming young woman at the opera and borrowed her opera glasses, I wonder if he knew what a departure he was about to take from generations of tradition.

Frédéric Auguste was born in Illkirch, a town in Alsace near Strasbourg, on August 28, 1882.  His beloved Toni–born Theresia Antoinette Lordemann–was born on April 7, 1880, just outside of Münster in Germany. That they met at the opera in New York City and married and lived their lives does not seem particularly remarkable in our American melting pot. But for Alsatians at the turn of the twentieth century, it was troubling at best.

In his 1918 book Alsace-Lorraine, George W. Edwards noted, “Should an Alsatian girl so far forget her vows as to espouse a German, henceforth she was disowned by her own people, and considered as one dead. Thus society dealt with the invader in the two inseparable provinces of Alsace-Lorraine.” I suppose that if that Alsatian girl–or boy–left for the New World and was rarely seen again, the effect on her would be lessened, but this quote certainly reflects the depth of antagonism between Alsace and Germany.

What was the source of this deep animosity?  In 1871–only a decade before Gus’ birth– Germany (Prussia) had siezed Alsace and Lorraine.  The next fifty years saw what Alsatians considered to be an unending occupation of their country by “invaders.” Considering that the Rhine had historically been the border between Germany and France, and noting also that this area was long ago settled by Gallo-Romans and not Teutonic peoples, it seems logical that the area in question should be considered more French than German. That was indeed the feeling of the native Alsatians, who saw the Germans only as an occupying force.

All of this got me thinking about August’s Alsatian background. My grandmother was very much aware of her Alsatian heritage, and grew up speaking her father’s French as well as her mother’s German. (And English, once she started kindergarten.)

So, I began to research the family line of August Fels.

And I hit a treasure trove!

It turns out that a French historian by the name of Damien Bilteryst has done extensive research on this family tree.  I began adding the names to my own tree on Ancestry.com, and was amazed to see the family living in the same little town, Illkirch, all the way back to the 1500’s and beyond. Generations being born, living, marrying, and dying in this picturesque spot on the Ill River. Many fishermen, as well as churchwardens, farmers, straw-cutters, bakers, innkeepers and others. Even a mayor or two.

 

 

Some of the earliest in the family lines had their marriages recorded: for example, Jacob Haffner and Maria Heyger, married on 9 February, 1623. He was a weaver.  Maria’s father–my 11-great grandfather–was a baker there in the little town of Illkirch. I love that, because my great-grandfather was also a baker, and a chef, and that was part of what drove him to the new world.  Another baker in the family tree was Mr. Roesch, my 12-great grandfather born around 1510, who was a “Boulanger de pain blanc”–a baker of white bread.  I am currently doing a bit more research on this designation, knowing that there were strict rules governing which bakers could bake which types of bread at various points in history. Another baker was another 11-great grandfather, Wendling Meykuchel, born in 1545. One of his sons, Diebold Meykuchel, born around 1570, was a baker and innkeeper; his other son, Hans Meykuchel, my 10-great grandfather born around 1580, was a “Weißbeck,” a “fancy baker” or confectioner.

The earliest “Fels” ancestor I have traced thus far is Claus Veltz, born around 1547 in Illkirch. (The name changed spelling from Veltz to Fels only a generation or two before my great grandfather, as seen below.) Claus married Susanna Fischer on February 4, 1572, and they had at least three children: Catharina, Sebastian (Nov. 10, 1583- Feb. 3, 1645), and Johannes. Sebastian was my 10-great grandfather, a “bourgeois et pêcheur,” or person living in a town and fisherman.

It is rather amazing to trace the lineage of this one branch of the family tree, and see it going back over ten generations in one town in the banks of the Ill:

 

The Fels line weaves in and out of other family lines–Murch, Sengel, Erb, Meykuchel, Schertzer, and others–but it is still striking to see the generations continuing one after another in the same place, and even to this day among the cousins. August would have inherited his family’s land and businesses there in Illkirch, but his round-the-world trip with its unexpected terminus in New York City changed the course of our family history.

So many more stories to tell.

.

 

 

 

I spent a lot of years of school studying history. And whether I was reading about the American colonies or medieval peasants or Roman soldiers or merchants on the silk road, I wondered where my ancestors were living during those moments, and what they were doing.

We all know that there is a story in which we are characters. The story was being written long before we were born, and will continue after we are gone.

Sites like ancestry.com have made it relatively easy for those interested in their own family history to dig into primary sources such as census data, tax records, land deeds, and wills and probate records. The combined efforts of thousands of other historians have produced an amazing volume of material, available anywhere you can access the internet. When I was home with two small babies, I marvelled at how much research I could do from my own house.

This blog is my contribution to the continuing story–a summary of some of the chapters I’ve discovered, an index of some of the characters and times and places that I’ve researched. I believe that all of these stories are actually telling one Great Story, and I am thankful to be part of it.

Soli Deo Gloria.

This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.