This branch of the Austrian Hesch family is descended from Johann Hesch and his wife Marya (Schlinz) Hesch, who came to America from Oberschlagles, Bohemia with three sons: Paul, Mathias, and Anton. +++Johann & Marya settled in Buffalo County, Wisconsin but moved to Pierz, Mn in about 1885. .+++Mathias settled in Waumandee, Wisconsin and moved to Pierz in 1911. +++Anton never married but farmed with his dad in Agram Township, where he died in 1911.+++And Paul, my great grandfather, settled five miles away, in Buckman, Minnesota. He died there in 1900.

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Sunday, January 25, 2015

"The hammer brigade" and a little 'schputt'

There must have been especially vocal dissent in Pierz about something in the fall of 1914.  I like "you can hear them knowing away..." in particular.  Dr Ed Kerkhoff was publisher and editor in 1914, so I'll attribute this to him.  
From the September 17th, 1914 Pierz Journal:


 "The hammer brigade are always in trim. Listen and you can hear them knowing away upon every side.  They work without pay, furnish their own rations, and never take a layoff.  They are the most persistent people on earth.  Every one of them has an idea that his own little carpet-tack driver is a maul. But I have observed that woodpeckers seldom harm a living tree.  They always make their big noise upon a dead branch".

John Dombovy married Martha Otremba (according to a 1930 obit for Mrs Jacob Niesius, "Mrs. John Dombovy of St. Paul and Mrs. Theo. Stumpf of Genola are sister of the deceased and Charles Otremba of Golden Valley, N.D., is a half-brother of the deceased") but I'm posting this because the article is snarky so it caught my eye ☺.  John Dombovy was the son of Florian & Johanna Dombovy, and was 31 in 1914.  He must have been a good sport and was probably well liked in Pierz for this kind of teasing "news", ya know?

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