Haktor Olsen Wicks Lineage

I received a nice tip via email recently in regards to the Wicks family line.  A Mr. Glen Larson has suggested I look up "Arnes Telles Slekt" to find out more about the Haktor Olsen Vika family.  Glen says that the Arnes Telles Slekt tree contains the complete line of Haktor Olsen, which indicates he has 10 children by three wives.

Here's one link I found:
http://www.tjellbjorn.net/phpgedview/indilist.php?surname=VIKA&ged=tjelle.ged

Just browsing through it quickly, it sure looks like the same line as our Haktor T Wicks and Haktor H Wicks line to me.  (See posts on Connecting Haktor to Haktor.) I'll have to take some time and go through it more thoroughly though.

Mystery Monday: Blanche Workman in Greeley, Colorado

In Grandma Leola's collection of treasures, are a couple of pieces that beg for a few more answers.  

The first piece is an envelope addressed to Mr. Jesse Workman in Brookings, South Dakota and has a postmark dated Oct 7, 1939 from Greeley, Colorado.

Flip the envelope over and we see an address for Mrs. Jesse Workman (aka Blanche).  The address is 303 11th Ave,  Greeley, Colorado.

Intrigue sets in here. Jesse and Blanche were married in her hometown in Iowa and raised their family, including their daughter Leola, in Brookings County, South Dakota.  I don't know much about Blanche's family, but I'm pretty sure they all stuck fairly close to home in Iowa.  Therefore Blanche likely doesn't have relatives in Colorado. Jesse had relatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin - none that I knew of in Colorado.

After a little more digging through grandma's treasures I found a calendar, one of those complimentary calendars from businesses.  This calendar is from "Workman Pine Tree Service Station" on the corner of 11th Ave and 5th St, Greeley, Colorado.  The calendar attached displays the November 1941 page.  A note hand-written on the back of the calendar reads: "Dear, Kids will drop you a line or two.  Mrs. Scoop".

Okay, so we now have Workmans in Colorado.  Now the sleuthing begins: Who?  Why was Blanche staying there?  How long was Blanche there?

To find the answers, I started with Ancestry.com.   The 1940 U.S. Federal Census would be the best place to find the answers, but that isn't available yet.   Unfortunately, Ancestry.com was providing too many possibilies for directories in Boulder, Denver and other larger cities not much for Greeley.   So I wandered over to the Weld County, Colorado Rootsweb site.

Guess what I found!!  .. That's right - several directories, including the1940 directory, transcribed and indexed!!

Among the entries were "Workman Auto Works, Leslie Workman prop 1103 5 st Greeley"   and "Workman Leslie (Mathilda) Prop Workman Auto Works r 1103 5 St Greeley" both in the 1940 Greeley City and Rural Route directory. (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cowcgs/contents-dir.html)

So it appears the Blanche was likely visiting her oldest child Leslie in 1939.   I know that Leslie and Mathilda had 4 children, though I don't have their birthdates. However, Leslie would have been about 35 at the time. 

Is it possible that Blanche went to help care for a new grandbaby?  I guess it's time to find some decendants of Leslie Workman and Mathilda Krosska.

2010 in Review and the Ancestor Approved Award

I am a little slow posting this, but I'd like to thank Travis over on TLGenes for the Ancestor Approved Award he passed to me in early December.  This may also be a good time to reflect on 2010.

The Ancestor Approved Award comes with two requests:

1. List ten (10) things that you have learned about your ancestors that surprised, humbled, or enlightened you.
2. Pass the award to ten (10) other genealogy bloggers.  (I'll do this in 2011, after I've caught up in my blog reading.)

In 2010 while tracing my ancestors I have learned:

1. Roots run deep!  I'm constantly amazed at how geographically close my family lines have lived and continue to live.  I have cousins from different sides of my family that knew each other growing up.  (Check out the map in "It's a Small World After All" post)
2. Label all pictures!  While boxes of unlabeled photos elicit some pretty neat conversations and lots of memories, labeled photos provide a much nicer collection of family treasures.  Grandma Leola (Workman) Crapser had a nice collection of family photos and treasures. Even after several rounds with my grandpa and his cousins, the subjects of many of the photos are still unidentified.
3. Neighbors Aren't Nosy!  They're just detectives in disguise. You may find that a former neighbor may be able to provide clues to the lives of your ancestors.
4. Read All About It!  Small town newspapers are notorious for sharing little bits of information about all the people around town.  You may find your ancestors visiting a cousin or friend and this information may just lead to more research for you.
5. Readin' and Ritin' weren't as Important in the Past!  Check all possible variations of a name's spelling.  Was that "Jorenby or "Gorenby"?
6. The Informant is as Important as the Information!  Take note of the sources of the information you are collecting.  The census and the church baptismal record are guaranteed to provide you with different birth dates.  And the census taker's informant may not have remembered all the details with precision. 
7. Running in Circles Can Be Fun!  Elusive ancestors need to be found. While researching those elusive ones sometimes the only data you can find leads you to data you already know in a different format.
8. Back Up Your Data!  After losing my data in a computer disaster, I learned the hard way to back up the data.  Also store a copy of the data in another location or in a fire-proof safe.
9. Keep in Touch!  When meeting cousins for the first time, be sure to trade contact information to share future discoveries.  The wave of social media - Facebook, blogs, instant messages, and even Ancestry.com - should help genealogist keep tabs on cousins.
10. Give and Take! I mean SHARE!  Share your research with your cousins.  Take research shared by others, but give credit where credit is due and double check the facts. Give of your time and talents to aid other researchers.  Opportunities exist everywhere to do a little discovery for the good of genealogy.  Join us over at the Ancestry World Archives, if you have some time to spare.

As we reflect on 2010, let us dream for 2011!

Wordless Wednesday: The Small Cowboy

Here's another photo from Grandma Leola's collection:



I have no information about this photo. Who might this boy be? Where do you think this may have been taken? What do you suppose this youngster is up to?

1955 Fire at the Jorenby Farm

I was recently given a news tidbit from the Brookings Register dated November 6, 2010.  The article "Memories from Brookings Past", notes:

55 years ago 1955
... The farm home of Mrs. Stella Jorenby on the west side of Lake Campbell was destroyed by fire.  ...

The intersting part of this is that cousin Shari, from the Laabs side of my family, recently mentioned this fire at the farm.  Here's what Shari remembers:

When [Stella] first moved to the Lake Campbell farm, the house was an old structure that had once served as a hotel and post office for the town of Lake City, a town that did not survive. Her house was the last remnant of the town, though the farmhouse I lived in had an addition that was said to have come from a house in Lake City. Sometime in the mid fifties, the Jorenbys installed an oil or gas furnace in the basement. The sons were doing the work themselves and unfortunately did not vent the furnace. The first time it was fired up, it burned the house down in the middle of the night. They replaced the house with a prefab ranch house that was not completed on the inside. They spent many years completing that house.

Shari's brother Doug remembered the fire a little differently:

According to [Doug] the fire occurred in the daytime, and the Brookings fire truck drove into our yard looking for their farm. Although our farms abutted, they were not connected by a road, so the firetruck had to go about four miles farther to get there and of course were too late to save anything. Doug says that the Jorenbys had bought a wood-burning furnace, not an oil furnace, and that they intended to burn corncobs in it. For that reason they had had the cornsheller deposit the cobs in their basement, rather than in a pile in the yard. Of course the basement full of corncobs was great tinder for the fire.

To my Jorenby cousins, can anyone verify the details of this fire for me?

Stumbling over the Crapser Brick Wall

My family, like many others, contains a brick wall - a point at which all record sources provide no further information or only provide inconclusive evidence.   My brick wall is my great-great-great-grandfather, Timothy Crapser, who according to all reasonable record sources has no parents.

I have heard we are descended from the one and only Crapser who came to America, a mister Johannes Krapsen von Rotenflau. But after searching, I still find no definitive record of Timothy's parents to tie us to Johannes. So here I sit, trying to find the connection between what I've been told and what the records say.  I've documented everything I know about Timothy on my Brick Walls page.

I know that Timothy and his wife Louisa J. Lane had three children: two daughters Rosa Eveline and Lizzie Jane and a son Melbourn Washington Crapser (possibly also be known as Melvin). The girls died fairly young; Rosa at 8 years and Lizzie at 21 years. Melbourn married at least three times and had 15 children between 1877 and 1915.

My records also indcate that Timothy was born on May 27th, 1825 in New York and died on July 23rd, 1898 in Boone County, Illinois.  With the birthdate being the date listed on his headstone.  The 1850 U.S. Federal Census for Catskill, Greene County, New York lists a Timothy Crapser aged 25 living with Charles and Catherine Crapser.  

However, looking for "Charles and Catherine Crapser" is right up the same alley as looking for "John Smith".  Every time I run into documentation for a Charles Crapser, I find a spouse by the name of Catherine/Catharine/Katrina.  

I'm inclined to believe that we may be descended from Charles Crapser and Catharine Helander.  Another genealogist has listed Charles Crapser and Catharine Helander as parents to a Timothy Crapser born about 1826.  Additionally, there seem to be very few Crapsers that came towards the Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota area; though many stopped in Michigan.  One of those that came farther west to Iowa is William Harris Crapser, son of Charles and Catharine (Helander) Crapser.

Time to connect with potential cousins ... we'll see what the connection brings.