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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Friday, January 8, 2016

More newspaper curiosities

Interesting, isn't it?  We've always assumed that Paul was the real estate wiz, but here's Mary buying 40 acres eleven years after his death.  A deal too good to resist?
 This little smear piece was under the "North Prairie" news heading.  Having read hundreds of pages of the Little Falls Herald, I realize this kind of oblique jab was truly unusual.  Some woman from there was really pissing people off.  Wow.

Knowing our relatives and ancestors in Buckman and Pierz, doesn't it surprise you that a palm reader and phrenologist was even allowed in town?





When I read this clipping in the Little Falls Herald, I'd never heard that the St Germain bridge had ever been "crashed", especially by an "injured" block of granite.  I remember that the bridge was rickety to drive across, and that we were told just to walk across, not march, in the Drum Corps once...but this granite incident would have been some 65 years earlier.  I wonder what the final outcome was. Was this considered a frivolous law suit? Did the city pay?




And here's proof of half the family legend about the two bells in the tower of St Michael's Church in Buckman:
that Anton Otremba bought a bell for the original church, and it rang for the first time at his funeral in February 1883; and when Catherine died in January 1902, this bell rang for the first time at her funeral.

Not all the settlers in Buckman and Pierz came from Bohemia or Germany.  Many came from what we'd think of as Poland, so this article was probably well read and rejoiced over!

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