Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Minnesota: Santa Claus, a Corn Cob Pipe, and Nellie Oleson (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 87

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Minnesota: Santa Claus, a Corn Cob Pipe, and Nellie Oleson (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 87 · Stories That Live In Us

0:00
Lisa Elzey: Yay, sorry, I got so emotional.
0:01
Crista Cowan: I'm sorry.
0:02
Crista Cowan: Welcome to my podcast, Lisa.
0:05
Crista Cowan: It's what we do.
0:06
Lisa Elzey: I'm just like, I'm over here, my heavens going, oh, we're crying again.
0:09
Lisa Elzey: And then I'm here going, I'm talking about my mom and about Sanitary Bob.
0:16
Crista Cowan: Stories That Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
0:23
Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
0:27
Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
0:38
Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
0:47
Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
0:53
Crista Cowan: When I was a kid, maybe like you, I always looked forward to Monday nights.
0:59
Crista Cowan: Because Monday nights was when Little House in the Prairie came on TV.
1:04
Crista Cowan: Now, of course, back then in the 1970s, we didn't have VCRs, we didn't have streaming, we couldn't watch it later.
1:10
Crista Cowan: We had to watch it live, or we missed it.
1:12
Crista Cowan: And I was not about to miss those stories of Laura Ingalls and her family.
1:19
Crista Cowan: My guest today is a familiar face to some of you and a familiar voice, and it is that of my producer, Lisa Elsey.
1:28
Crista Cowan: She is a colleague with me at Ancestry.
1:31
Crista Cowan: She is a dear friend.
1:33
Crista Cowan: And if you've listened to her previous episodes, you know that through DNA, she made a discovery that her mother's father that raised her was not, in fact, her biological father.
1:46
Crista Cowan: Well, today we're going to shift gears a little bit to uh Lisa's mom's mom's side of the family.
1:54
Crista Cowan: And so you'll be able to follow along, I hope, with that little pedigree in your brain as we talk about German immigrants to Minnesota.
2:05
Crista Cowan: Now, what does that have to do with Little House on the Prairie?
2:08
Crista Cowan: I think you'll get it as you listen to Lisa talk about this particular ancestor in her family tree and some of the things he went through.
2:17
Crista Cowan: It might feel like you're back huddled in front of your little black and white television on a Monday night.
2:22
Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Lisa Elsey.
2:25
Lisa Elzey: Yay! Here I am again.
2:27
Lisa Elzey: I know, but new set.
2:29
Lisa Elzey: I know.
2:29
Lisa Elzey: I have it this is my first time.
2:30
Lisa Elzey: Right?
2:31
Crista Cowan: And I think you're now tied with this will tie you with Nika for the most frequent guest.
2:37
Lisa Elzey: Well, of course, because you know, we're all besties.
2:40
Crista Cowan: Love that.
2:40
Crista Cowan: Okay.
2:41
Crista Cowan: So back in episode 58, you and your mom came on and you told a story about your new grandpa, which is really great.
2:50
Crista Cowan: If people haven't listened to that, they absolutely should go listen to episode 58 and then episode 59, where you tell the rest of the story.
2:56
Crista Cowan: Yes.
2:57
Crista Cowan: But I just want to do a little recap for the people who haven't heard those episodes.
3:01
Crista Cowan: In that episode, you talk about your first exposure really to family history.
3:06
Crista Cowan: Tell us about that.
3:08
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
3:08
Lisa Elzey: So my mom really got into family history in the 70s, late 70s.
3:12
Lisa Elzey: I was about eight.
3:13
Lisa Elzey: And I remember sitting at the big dining table with all the stuff.
3:17
Lisa Elzey: If anybody remembers like the suitcases, I don't know why they kept it in a suitcase, but that was how they did it.
3:22
Lisa Elzey: But suitcases filled with books of remembrance and things.
3:24
Lisa Elzey: And she had me fill out a pedigree chart.
3:27
Lisa Elzey: And that was my first real introduction to what family history was.
3:30
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
3:31
Crista Cowan: And so at eight years old, you're not going out to research.
3:34
Lisa Elzey: No, no.
3:35
Lisa Elzey: In fact, I had to have her help me with some birthdays because I think that's the first time I learned the actual birthday of my parents, like consciously, the date of that versus just happy birthday, you know, but knowing what the date was.
3:47
Lisa Elzey: So yeah, no, I wasn't researching, but I felt like I was.
3:49
Lisa Elzey: I would get the mail.
3:50
Lisa Elzey: That's the other thing.
3:51
Lisa Elzey: I would go get the mail because that's when the letters came that were responding to inquiries my mom had sent.
3:56
Crista Cowan: So tell us about that.
3:57
Crista Cowan: Tell us about the process your mom was going through at that time.
4:00
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
4:00
Lisa Elzey: So, you know, this is late 70s, roots was all the rage.
4:03
Lisa Elzey: Uh, the the genealogy fever had kind of taken over the United States a little bit.
4:08
Lisa Elzey: Trying to find your family history was a series of writing letters to archives, to local societies, to libraries.
4:19
Lisa Elzey: Uh, my mom even at one point wrote a letter to the postmaster of a town asking for help finding a person with this surname.
4:28
Lisa Elzey: And then if you had any family that was outside of the United States in a country that didn't speak your language, that's a whole nother thing.
4:36
Lisa Elzey: Language barriers, who's translating for you?
4:39
Lisa Elzey: Uh, who do you send it to?
4:40
Lisa Elzey: Where?
4:41
Lisa Elzey: They had to really work hard.
4:42
Lisa Elzey: The kind of way we did in high school.
4:44
Lisa Elzey: We had encyclopedias, had to do reports.
4:46
Lisa Elzey: We didn't have Google.
4:47
Lisa Elzey: So it's even worse, I think, for our parents.
4:50
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
4:50
Crista Cowan: So your mom was digging into her family history.
4:53
Crista Cowan: Um, and last time you were on, we talked about her new, her new biological father.
4:59
Crista Cowan: Yes.
5:00
Crista Cowan: And her dad that raised her.
5:02
Crista Cowan: Um, but she also was looking into her mom's side of the family tree.
5:07
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, she was, and she was actually, my mom is really close with her grandmother, and that's my my her mother's mother.
5:13
Lisa Elzey: And her name was Amelia Augusta Claudefelter.
5:16
Lisa Elzey: And that's that is a very German name.
5:19
Lisa Elzey: I think you're correct.
5:21
Lisa Elzey: Yes.
5:22
Lisa Elzey: Amelia Augusta, and her maiden name was Seba, S-E-E-B-A.
5:28
Lisa Elzey: So my great-grandmother, who I knew is great-grandma, great-grandma Amelia, she was quite old when I was a kid that could remember.
5:36
Lisa Elzey: I remember going to her apartment there, her condo that she had kind of retired to for Easter egg hunts during Easter.
5:43
Lisa Elzey: Like, you know, I think it was a retirement community and they invited all the grandkids and we'd have our baskets.
5:48
Lisa Elzey: And I then I later remember going to the convalescent hospital because my great-grandmother had had a series of strokes and going and visiting her.
5:56
Lisa Elzey: And she loved C's candy.
5:59
Lisa Elzey: And she always, my grandmother always made sure she brought her mother, Amelia, C's candy box because she loved giving C's to visitors.
6:07
Lisa Elzey: And she couldn't really talk.
6:09
Lisa Elzey: She had had so many strokes.
6:11
Lisa Elzey: So she would just like point and and to my grandma and and point to her, like, get it's in the it's in the drawer, go get the candy for the girls for me, my sister and I.
6:19
Lisa Elzey: And and we get the candy.
6:21
Lisa Elzey: And I think that was when I first really had C's candy introduced to me.
6:25
Lisa Elzey: My mom really didn't buy it a whole lot at that time.
6:27
Lisa Elzey: And but I remember those moments with my great-grandmother as her being my favorite, I think my favorite thing is she would just have this space.
6:36
Lisa Elzey: She had to share a room with uh another person in the hospital.
6:39
Lisa Elzey: They, it was a my my grandmother couldn't afford a single room.
6:43
Lisa Elzey: So she had to share a room that had like a drape or something that they'd pull.
6:46
Lisa Elzey: And um, my grand, my great grandmother would, again, just kind of point over here, and and my grandmother would go shut the drape.
6:53
Lisa Elzey: And my mom were all visiting together.
6:55
Lisa Elzey: My mom would say, What's going on?
6:57
Lisa Elzey: And my grandma would go, she doesn't like her roommate.
7:00
Lisa Elzey: Okay.
7:02
Lisa Elzey: So she was a very strong woman, my great-grandma.
7:06
Lisa Elzey: She um raised her children during the Depression.
7:09
Lisa Elzey: So my grandmother was born in 1925 in Spokane, and my great-grandmother was born in Minnesota, and her parents were German immigrants.
7:19
Lisa Elzey: So she came from German stock.
7:22
Lisa Elzey: Go out, do the thing in the wilderness, like cut down the wood, make the log cabin.
7:28
Lisa Elzey: Like she came from that.
7:29
Lisa Elzey: And then her husband, my great-grandfather, left her during the depression.
7:34
Lisa Elzey: And so she's raising three kids on her own.
7:37
Lisa Elzey: So she just wasn't fussy about things.
7:40
Lisa Elzey: She just got in and did it.
7:41
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
7:41
Crista Cowan: Well, and you think about so many of those German immigrants.
7:44
Crista Cowan: My German immigrants ended up in Texas, which is an entirely different experience than German immigrants who end up in Minnesota.
7:52
Lisa Elzey: Yes.
7:52
Lisa Elzey: I know the Homestead Act is what brought a lot of Germans to the United States, the idea of having something of their own and a better life and all of that.
8:00
Lisa Elzey: And but they went everywhere.
8:01
Lisa Elzey: Texas, they went to Minnesota, they went um Kansas, Iowa.
8:05
Lisa Elzey: I know some of them even California.
8:07
Lisa Elzey: So I just knew my grandmother was from Spokane, my great grandmother was from Minnesota, and that's all I really knew.
8:14
Lisa Elzey: But I knew she was really from Washington because that's where she raised your family.
8:17
Lisa Elzey: So yeah, that's all I kind of knew until I started digging.
8:20
Crista Cowan: So what stories?
8:23
Crista Cowan: Like, did your mom before you started getting into the research of great grandma Amelia's family, were there stories that were passed on to you or lit up your imagination as a kid?
8:33
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, I think so.
8:34
Lisa Elzey: I love Christmas.
8:35
Lisa Elzey: That's um my kids will laugh because they call me the Christmas Christmas Queen.
8:40
Lisa Elzey: Um, I just love Christmas.
8:41
Lisa Elzey: I'm I'm not crazy, but I just I love being together as a family.
8:46
Lisa Elzey: And I know that's not horribly unique, but I love Christmas.
8:48
Lisa Elzey: My mom loved Christmas, and my grandmother loved Christmas, and my great-grandmother loved Christmas.
8:54
Lisa Elzey: She loved singing Ottannenbaum.
8:56
Lisa Elzey: Uh her dad would sing that to her in German when she was young.
9:00
Lisa Elzey: And um, they would have lots of Christmas uh foods that were very German in kind of nature, and some of those got passed down.
9:09
Lisa Elzey: They're a little bit not kid-friendly foods, you know, where the kids were like, I don't want to eat that.
9:14
Lisa Elzey: But my mom loved those kind of things.
9:16
Lisa Elzey: Uh, we had German potato salad a lot.
9:18
Lisa Elzey: That was a recipe that my great-grandmother had made.
9:21
Lisa Elzey: Um, again, I don't know the story of the recipe.
9:24
Lisa Elzey: I just know we have it, and it was great grandma's recipe.
9:26
Lisa Elzey: Cookies, we had cookies that she'd make that were um a recipe.
9:30
Lisa Elzey: Again, my mom had the card with her handwriting on it.
9:33
Lisa Elzey: So lots of those kind of stories.
9:34
Lisa Elzey: And then I remember my grandmother, my grandmother telling me the first time she met her grandpa.
9:40
Lisa Elzey: Now, she grew up in Spokane, and my great-grandmother, her mother, grew up in Minnesota.
9:46
Lisa Elzey: So she really didn't see her grandparents.
9:48
Crista Cowan: Oh, so your great-grandmother's family stayed in Minnesota.
9:50
Lisa Elzey: Yes, they stayed there.
9:51
Lisa Elzey: So my great-grandmother, Amelia, and her sister Mary moved to Cutbank, Montana.
9:58
Lisa Elzey: And my my I know Cutbank.
10:00
Lisa Elzey: As you do, yes, because they were homesteading up there.
10:02
Lisa Elzey: There's just great, you know, big sky.
10:04
Lisa Elzey: And my um, her sister, so my grandmother's Aunt Mary struck oil in her land.
10:10
Lisa Elzey: And I know, right?
10:11
Lisa Elzey: She became very, very wealthy.
10:13
Lisa Elzey: And my uh great-grandmother was married at the time.
10:16
Lisa Elzey: And in fact, her first two children were born in Montana, my grandmother's older brothers.
10:20
Lisa Elzey: And so Mary never married, though.
10:23
Lisa Elzey: She kind of had a relationship with this guy, it's really complicated with this guy.
10:27
Lisa Elzey: But you know how you're you know how people, when you're writing a story about somebody, you don't want to really disparage them.
10:32
Lisa Elzey: And so my grandmother was writing her her memoir and was writing about her Aunt Mary and her chauffeur.
10:39
Lisa Elzey: Her chauffeur.
10:41
Lisa Elzey: I know, and the chauffeur who had a child who had a daughter, and that her Aunt Mary would also take care of the daughter, and and it's like, wait, she's she's the mistress.
10:50
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, I think the kid.
10:52
Lisa Elzey: It's kind of.
10:53
Lisa Elzey: But here's the thing it says in the history, it it was told to me, that's what she how she worded it.
10:59
Lisa Elzey: It was told to me that his wife was in a mental institution.
11:02
Lisa Elzey: So maybe he couldn't get divorced.
11:04
Lisa Elzey: He maybe couldn't do divorce.
11:06
Lisa Elzey: Then, you know, later on I went and researched that.
11:08
Crista Cowan: Oh.
11:10
Lisa Elzey: I don't know if she was.
11:11
Lisa Elzey: Oh, okay.
11:12
Lisa Elzey: But we're gonna let that alone.
11:13
Lisa Elzey: Okay, not the story.
11:14
Lisa Elzey: Not my story, but still kind of cheeky.
11:17
Lisa Elzey: Okay.
11:17
Lisa Elzey: So my great-grandparents moved from Cutbank to Spokane, and that's where my grandmother was born.
11:23
Lisa Elzey: So they moved kind of far away from Minnesota, and the family mostly stayed there, the rest of the family, aside from Mary, obviously, and um Amelia, my great grandma.
11:33
Lisa Elzey: So my grandmother never really met her grandparents.
11:37
Lisa Elzey: She'd heard about them.
11:38
Lisa Elzey: So the first time she met them was when she was about in fifth grade, fourth or fifth grade, and they went on a trip to Minnesota.
11:47
Lisa Elzey: And so the story I remember my grandmother telling me was I remember saying, Tell me about your grandpa.
11:53
Lisa Elzey: She says, Well, he looked like Santa Claus.
11:56
Lisa Elzey: What?
11:57
Lisa Elzey: And I was like, Santa Claus.
11:59
Lisa Elzey: And again, I love Christmas.
12:01
Lisa Elzey: My great-great-grandpa is Santa Claus?
12:03
Lisa Elzey: That's what I heard.
12:05
Lisa Elzey: So as a kid, I remember being like, my great-great-grandpa is Santa Claus.
12:09
Lisa Elzey: And he sings Otaunobaum in German.
12:11
Lisa Elzey: And he loved Christmas too.
12:13
Lisa Elzey: So um it that was my really first story and foray into that side of the family.
12:19
Lisa Elzey: But again, really didn't understand what that they were German, didn't know anything about Minnesota until I started watching Little House on the Prairie.
12:28
Lisa Elzey: Because we all did when we were kids.
12:30
Lisa Elzey: Because this isn't that the best show.
12:31
Lisa Elzey: Yes.
12:32
Lisa Elzey: Like that was our Game of Thrones.
12:34
Lisa Elzey: Our our very age-appropriate Game of Thrones.
12:36
Lisa Elzey: Think about it though.
12:37
Lisa Elzey: Like, you were so excited for the next episode.
12:39
Lisa Elzey: It would build on each episode.
12:41
Lisa Elzey: You're like, oh, that Nellie Olson, and she's doing this, and there she's gonna get that beehive's gonna fall on her head, or you know, whatever.
12:48
Lisa Elzey: Like, I loved that show.
12:50
Lisa Elzey: And I hated the Olsons, I hated Harriet.
12:52
Lisa Elzey: I thought she was the worst person on the planet.
12:54
Lisa Elzey: And I love Charles Engels.
12:56
Lisa Elzey: I thought, oh my gosh, he's like the coolest dad ever.
12:58
Lisa Elzey: He does it, he just loves his kids and he beats up the bad guys and he chops the wood and kills the bear.
13:04
Lisa Elzey: And I just thought it was the coolest show.
13:06
Crista Cowan: And and you know Jen calls it little H on the P.
13:09
Lisa Elzey: Little H on the P, because you know because we all watched it.
13:11
Lisa Elzey: We did.
13:12
Lisa Elzey: It was our series.
13:13
Lisa Elzey: It was and it was age appropriate.
13:15
Lisa Elzey: It was family, and it was, it was a lot of it was actually super progressive if you think about it.
13:20
Lisa Elzey: If you go back and look at those stories, super progressive for its time.
13:23
Lisa Elzey: But anyway, as a kid, I mean, that's how I learned history.
13:26
Lisa Elzey: I don't know, probably because of television.
13:28
Lisa Elzey: We were kids of the 80s, but I learned about World War II watching, you know, Guns of Navrone or The Great Escape with my dad and uh Fiddler on the Roof, Jewish programs, right?
13:38
Lisa Elzey: I mean, yeah, they're singing and dancing.
13:40
Lisa Elzey: But still, I asked the questions like, well, why do they have to leave?
13:43
Lisa Elzey: Why are they kicking them out?
13:44
Lisa Elzey: And then my parents would talk to me and tell me uh, you know, moon landings and things with right stuff.
13:49
Lisa Elzey: And the list goes on.
13:50
Lisa Elzey: So um, for Little House on the Prairie, that was really learning about like pioneers moving west and and kind of the land and and trying to make it out west, you know.
14:01
Crista Cowan: And I loved one of the things I loved about that show was the concept of yes, that like making it, but making it as a community.
14:08
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, for sure.
14:09
Lisa Elzey: And I mean, we loved Walnut Grove.
14:11
Lisa Elzey: Walnut Grove.
14:12
Lisa Elzey: I mean, I thought Walnut Grove was so beautiful.
14:14
Lisa Elzey: And then I found out it's Simi Valley on the back lot, you know.
14:16
Lisa Elzey: It's it's a studio.
14:18
Lisa Elzey: It's a studio in Simi Valley, which I lived in Simi Valley later, but that's another story.
14:22
Lisa Elzey: So, but it's what didn't look anything apparently like what it looked like.
14:26
Lisa Elzey: It was way more wild, way more dense, way more wooded area, uh, and a lot harder.
14:32
Lisa Elzey: The reason I mentioned that is because that all of a sudden tied into my story.
14:37
Lisa Elzey: And so when I really discovered, I think it was probably around junior high, which seems late if you think about it.
14:43
Lisa Elzey: But I put together, wait a minute, they're in Minnesota?
14:47
Lisa Elzey: My family's from Minnesota.
14:49
Lisa Elzey: Wait a minute.
14:50
Lisa Elzey: And then my mom showed me, I would think I was in high school, like junior, maybe, maybe, maybe a sophomore in high school.
14:56
Lisa Elzey: She showed me a story that was written by Amelia, my great grandmother's youngest sibling.
15:03
Lisa Elzey: So my great-grandmother Amelia was only about 15 months when her mother died.
15:07
Lisa Elzey: Oh.
15:08
Lisa Elzey: Her mother died of sunstroke picking berries at the neighbors.
15:11
Lisa Elzey: What that's not a thing.
15:13
Lisa Elzey: That is the report in the newspaper.
15:15
Lisa Elzey: I know it's really horrible.
15:16
Lisa Elzey: And her name was, you want to be ready, Albertina Eichstatt.
15:20
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
15:21
Lisa Elzey: The German just keeps rolling.
15:22
Lisa Elzey: And there's just, it's pretty, pretty consistent.
15:25
Lisa Elzey: So Albertina Eichstatt, z it's Zeba, but Seba, uh, she passed away.
15:30
Lisa Elzey: So a year later, my great-great-grandfather remarried.
15:34
Lisa Elzey: Because he had how many children?
15:35
Lisa Elzey: He had five.
15:36
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
15:37
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
15:37
Lisa Elzey: And the youngest was 15 left.
15:38
Lisa Elzey: Yes, yes.
15:39
Lisa Elzey: So a year later he married another neighbor person within the community, the Wenstroms, and then had they had a a daughter, Alice.
15:47
Lisa Elzey: So Alice is the baby, but her mother is a different mom.
15:51
Lisa Elzey: But her mother raised my great-grandmother.
15:53
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
15:53
Lisa Elzey: Like that's who my great-grandma remembers as her mother.
15:56
Lisa Elzey: So they were very close, Alice and Amelia.
15:58
Lisa Elzey: And uh, but Alice wrote a memoir about her father.
16:02
Lisa Elzey: I know.
16:03
Lisa Elzey: And it was printed, if you remember the day the ditto copies, like the purple ink.
16:07
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
16:08
Lisa Elzey: I don't even know what that's called.
16:09
Lisa Elzey: I just call them ditto paper, but it's the purple ink where you had to ch ch chunk, ch chunk, ch chung.
16:13
Lisa Elzey: And it was on the purple ink paper, kind of little like smidgey little bit, you know.
16:19
Lisa Elzey: And uh, but she had typed it out and had made copies for the family.
16:22
Lisa Elzey: And so my mom gave that to me around my freshman, sophomore, junior year in high school, maybe 15 to 16.
16:28
Lisa Elzey: And I read it and I realized my great-great-grandpa was Charles Ingalls in the flesh, not the actual, like, not, you know, Michael Landon or not Laura Ingleswilder's actual father, but he embodied everything about that.
16:46
Lisa Elzey: And I said, is this how all the men in Minnesota were?
16:48
Lisa Elzey: Is this just the standard issue?
16:51
Lisa Elzey: You know, like this is how they came out.
16:53
Lisa Elzey: They just they went and built things and killed bears and talked to indigenous folks and made, you know, made friends with everybody.
17:01
Crista Cowan: Lived in a dugout until they built their cabins.
17:03
Lisa Elzey: Yes, he really did.
17:04
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, so he it was crazy.
17:06
Lisa Elzey: So at the beginning of the very beginning of the paragraph of the story, it talks about how his name is John Siba, again, Santa Claus.
17:14
Lisa Elzey: That's who it really was with Santa Claus.
17:16
Lisa Elzey: Um, so the one that my grandma thought was Santa Claus.
17:19
Lisa Elzey: John Siba is born about 1850 in Germany.
17:22
Lisa Elzey: He came to the United States when he's 18 through New York.
17:26
Lisa Elzey: By himself?
17:26
Lisa Elzey: By himself.
17:28
Lisa Elzey: And um, that's all it says that you know, came to the United States and then came over to Minnesota and was finding a homestead.
17:36
Lisa Elzey: But at the very beginning it says he was born in, and I'm like, okay, where is he born?
17:40
Lisa Elzey: And I thought, is it just gonna say Germany?
17:43
Lisa Elzey: No, it said in a town called Hanaral or Hagnau near the Elbia River and the Kel Canal.
17:51
Lisa Elzey: This is what Alice wrote.
17:53
Lisa Elzey: This is what Alice wrote.
17:54
Lisa Elzey: And she's like, it's should it's she says it sounds more like the first pronunciation, the Hanrow.
18:00
Lisa Elzey: And I'm like, okay, didn't think about that for a minute.
18:04
Lisa Elzey: I'm like, Germany, whatever, moving on.
18:06
Lisa Elzey: So I got to the next thing, and it talks about how he chose a spot near uh he went to Red Wing and worked in Red Wing on a farm, and then he found some land he wanted to homestead.
18:18
Lisa Elzey: And he went to go like put in his ticket to get the thing, and somebody had just done it the day before.
18:22
Lisa Elzey: So when you think about it, it's not like you're hopping on the I-5 or whatever and just go into he had to like travel, find the plot, say yes, come back, and then he had to go back.
18:34
Lisa Elzey: Back, found a different plot, uh, got the land, and then he married somebody that was, I think, the daughter of the farmer he worked for in Red Wing.
18:43
Lisa Elzey: So he married her, not Albertina, Albertina's wife number two.
18:49
Lisa Elzey: Oh, yes.
18:50
Lisa Elzey: So married her, and then they had to hack their way through the woods to get to the place with their covered wagon.
18:59
Lisa Elzey: Because if it was just a horse, which he had before, he could go.
19:03
Lisa Elzey: But he had a whole wagon of stuff.
19:04
Lisa Elzey: And it was two oxen that were pulling the wagon.
19:08
Lisa Elzey: And so we're talking like pioneer organ trail level wagon, right?
19:12
Lisa Elzey: And it there in the story, it says it took him a whole day to go to a mile and a half.
19:17
Crista Cowan: Because they had to chop their they they were building the road as they went.
19:21
Lisa Elzey: Yes, yes.
19:21
Lisa Elzey: But think about a mile and a half, that's not that far of the whole day.
19:26
Lisa Elzey: And so I just can't even imagine how tiring that must have been.
19:30
Crista Cowan: I d uh, that'd been really hard.
19:31
Crista Cowan: So they're living essentially in the wagon as they're making their way to their project.
19:37
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
19:37
Lisa Elzey: So they're working their way there.
19:38
Lisa Elzey: So they get there, and it was lot number 34 in a place that was called at the time Florence, uh, Minnesota.
19:46
Lisa Elzey: And he was the first one to have a homestead there, very first.
19:51
Lisa Elzey: And so later that area became known as Freeburg, and it was named after Freeberg in Germany, because I think everyone there was probably German or at least near German.
20:01
Lisa Elzey: Um, so he was married, but his wife died shortly after.
20:06
Lisa Elzey: So think about it.
20:07
Lisa Elzey: You just got out here, you finally have a home.
20:10
Lisa Elzey: They lived in a like a dugout kind of thing situation.
20:13
Lisa Elzey: Um, I think he cut down some logs and started to create a very makeshift cabin.
20:18
Lisa Elzey: Now, when I say cabin, it's a shed.
20:20
Lisa Elzey: It's just it's four walls and a roof, and it was reeds from the from the lake that was the roof.
20:25
Lisa Elzey: Like it wasn't shingles or and um and then she died.
20:30
Lisa Elzey: And so I thought that's just no children, no kids.
20:33
Lisa Elzey: Um, they just barely were married, right?
20:35
Lisa Elzey: So really sad.
20:36
Lisa Elzey: Uh, but other people were moving in and the neighbors were the Eichstads.
20:41
Lisa Elzey: So Albertina was the neighbor girl.
20:43
Lisa Elzey: And by neighbor, like uh that could still be miles away.
20:46
Lisa Elzey: Yes, neighbor's not like, you know, like it is now, right?
20:49
Lisa Elzey: It's definitely far away.
20:51
Lisa Elzey: Uh, but he married someone from the community, uh the Eichstadts, and uh again from Germany, surprise.
20:57
Lisa Elzey: And that's who he had the five kids with.
20:59
Lisa Elzey: So Amelia did not know her mother, and so I wished I'd knew more about her, but Alice, who wrote this, never, of course, knew her.
21:08
Lisa Elzey: And so we didn't get any information about her.
21:10
Lisa Elzey: But she continued to write about John, the dad, my great-great-grandpa.
21:15
Lisa Elzey: And um, things like he would be fishing in Fish Lake, and I guess the fish were so abundant you could just reach in and grab a fish.
21:23
Lisa Elzey: Like it was just and that's called fish lakes.
21:26
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
21:26
Lisa Elzey: Go get fish.
21:27
Lisa Elzey: And we're fishing for food, not for sports.
21:29
Lisa Elzey: Yes.
21:30
Lisa Elzey: Oh, yes, right.
21:31
Lisa Elzey: But then I guess there were indigenous folks that were also uh in the area that were friendly and they became friends and they didn't really speak the same language, obviously.
21:41
Lisa Elzey: But I guess at one point, and again, this is Alice writing this, there was an indigenous man that was pointing to a rooster that my great-great-grandpa had pointing to it, and was like gesturing about his feather, the feathers of the rooster.
21:53
Lisa Elzey: And just it was like apparently this beautiful rooster.
21:56
Lisa Elzey: And so I guess when the rooster died, my great-great-grandfather kept the feathers.
22:01
Lisa Elzey: And so the next time the man came by, he gave him the feathers as a gift.
22:05
Lisa Elzey: And so, you know, that's just the first thing.
22:07
Lisa Elzey: I'm like, he is Charles Ingalls.
22:09
Lisa Elzey: I it just all these things.
22:11
Lisa Elzey: Um, he built the schoolhouse on his property, the first schoolhouse.
22:15
Lisa Elzey: He was the first schoolmaster.
22:16
Lisa Elzey: He built it on his property.
22:17
Lisa Elzey: He wanted the kids to have a school, he built it.
22:20
Lisa Elzey: Um, he was the postmaster because the road, the main road passed by his home because he homesteaded first.
22:26
Lisa Elzey: So he was the post office.
22:27
Lisa Elzey: In fact, Alice talks about how her house was the post office for about 10 years as a child.
22:32
Lisa Elzey: Can you imagine?
22:33
Lisa Elzey: Like the males coming, you know, we're the males here.
22:36
Lisa Elzey: So he was the postmaster.
22:37
Lisa Elzey: He helped build, I think, five bridges all around, because you know, thousand lakes, right?
22:42
Lisa Elzey: There's so many lakes in Minnesota and lots of rivers and things.
22:46
Lisa Elzey: So he helped build five bridges.
22:48
Lisa Elzey: He helped survey roads and built roads.
22:50
Lisa Elzey: He was one of the founders of the Lutheran church in the area.
22:54
Lisa Elzey: I I mean, you cannot talk about this area without talking about my great-great-grandpa.
23:00
Lisa Elzey: And it's just, it's amazing.
23:03
Lisa Elzey: I'm reading these stories and thinking this isn't real.
23:06
Lisa Elzey: It was like, it was like a movie.
23:08
Lisa Elzey: It was like I was reading a movie script because it just seemed so far-fetched that one human could do all of these things for their community and be so beloved and so selfless.
23:18
Lisa Elzey: It really summed it up when there were many articles written about him in newspapers.
23:22
Lisa Elzey: Um, they lowered the flag to half staff and had a holiday, a day off school when he passed away.
23:29
Lisa Elzey: That's like how revered he was in his community.
23:32
Lisa Elzey: He stood over like six foot one.
23:34
Lisa Elzey: He was very tall, big guy.
23:36
Lisa Elzey: Uh, had a kind of a gruff voice, apparently, and he always had a beard, very long beard.
23:40
Lisa Elzey: I think at the time my grandmother met him, it was a beard down to his belly and it was all white.
23:44
Lisa Elzey: It was white.
23:46
Lisa Elzey: Yes, it was all white.
23:47
Lisa Elzey: And so he lived like Santa Claus.
23:48
Lisa Elzey: My grandmother talks about how she, when she visited that one time, she caught a fish for the first time because she's from Spokane and lives in the city and you know, the city and uh caught a fish.
23:59
Lisa Elzey: Her cousin showed her how to do it, and she cooked the fish and he ate it just for her.
24:04
Lisa Elzey: It's just a really lovely tale, this all these pages.
24:08
Lisa Elzey: Um, so I just in my head had this beautiful version of this person I never knew.
24:14
Lisa Elzey: And I had this vision of who he was.
24:16
Lisa Elzey: I guess he had a corncob pipe.
24:18
Lisa Elzey: That's a thing, that's a real thing.
24:20
Lisa Elzey: I I was like corncob pipe and a button nose and twice made out of coal.
24:24
Lisa Elzey: Like, that's no he's frosty.
24:26
Lisa Elzey: I know.
24:26
Lisa Elzey: Christmas, again, it's a theme.
24:28
Lisa Elzey: But I'm like, I again, that's a thing.
24:30
Lisa Elzey: I'm like, that's really he had a corncob pipe that I apparently he always just puffed on, just like puff, puff, puff, and he's sitting in a rocking chair.
24:36
Lisa Elzey: Think of all the stereotypes of out on the planes or and he was all those things.
24:40
Lisa Elzey: And so it was just, I don't know, it was just really awesome to find out the personality of someone I never met through the eyes of his daughter, but also through the eyes of the community.
24:52
Lisa Elzey: Um, and then she talked about at the end of the life sketch, which was pages, by the way.
24:58
Lisa Elzey: She also wrote, she goes, my sister Mary, so Mary, the oil one that has all the money and the chauffeur.
25:04
Lisa Elzey: Um, my sister Mary says I should write about what life was like on the farm.
25:10
Lisa Elzey: So there's three more pages about how they did things.
25:14
Lisa Elzey: And what a treasure.
25:16
Lisa Elzey: Right.
25:16
Lisa Elzey: Like just how they how they got warm or how they cooked, or she talked about inventions that her father, that John Seba, made to help with farm work.
25:27
Lisa Elzey: And um, just little things like this that you just don't think about, you know.
25:31
Lisa Elzey: And um, I'm so grateful.
25:32
Lisa Elzey: It's such a treasure.
25:33
Lisa Elzey: We it we the whole family has it.
25:35
Lisa Elzey: And um, we have a picture of him with this beard and everything.
25:39
Lisa Elzey: But uh, that's all we knew about him.
25:42
Lisa Elzey: My mom, of course, never met him.
25:43
Lisa Elzey: He died shortly after my grandmother's visit.
25:45
Lisa Elzey: He died just very shortly after that.
25:47
Lisa Elzey: So he's very sick when she visited him.
25:49
Lisa Elzey: Um, so we don't know a lot about him.
25:52
Lisa Elzey: So my mom, I know my mom was trying to find out more about the Siba family.
25:57
Lisa Elzey: And now here we you know he came in like 1870s.
26:01
Lisa Elzey: He was in Minnesota in 1870 census.
26:04
Lisa Elzey: So he's working in Red Wing at the time.
26:06
Lisa Elzey: And then he homesteaded in about 1872 when he got married.
26:10
Lisa Elzey: And then later married Albertina, then Albertina died.
26:14
Lisa Elzey: My great-grandmother was born, so she died shortly after that, and then he married Emma Wenstrom, who's his third wife, and then had Alice.
26:22
Lisa Elzey: So, you know, a couple like a year later.
26:24
Lisa Elzey: So we're almost at the turn of the century.
26:26
Lisa Elzey: So all of that, where are you from in Germany is kind of gone.
26:30
Lisa Elzey: Uh, so my mom was trying to find it, and it's this is in the eight 1980, I think, is when she was trying to find this.
26:36
Lisa Elzey: And I don't know how she did it, but she's trying to figure out where Hanau is from or Hanerau.
26:42
Lisa Elzey: And uh, I think she kind of gave up because she had written letters to different places, and uh, she just kind of gave up.
26:49
Lisa Elzey: And so that's kind of where I jumped in right around college and thought, I want to figure this out.
26:55
Lisa Elzey: Where is he from?
26:56
Lisa Elzey: Now, this is about 1997, where I'm thinking, oh, it's 97.
27:02
Lisa Elzey: I could totally do it now.
27:03
Lisa Elzey: Oh, the internet's a thing there, and it's a thing.
27:05
Lisa Elzey: Lexus Nexus, right?
27:07
Lisa Elzey: Or whatever.
27:07
Lisa Elzey: And uh, and I was at school at the time.
27:10
Lisa Elzey: It's a huge library at Brigham Young University, and I thought, oh, there has to be a map, something that's gonna help me.
27:17
Lisa Elzey: So I went to the family history library actually in Salt Lake, uh, and went to a German specialist person that was like a missionary or somebody, and they pulled out this big map.
27:29
Lisa Elzey: And we looked at all of the places in Germany that look like or sound like Hanarau or Hagenau.
27:36
Lisa Elzey: There's about 30.
27:37
Lisa Elzey: But didn't it say something about a river?
27:39
Lisa Elzey: It did, two rivers.
27:40
Lisa Elzey: Okay.
27:41
Lisa Elzey: Kiel Canal, again, I'm probably slaughtering this.
27:44
Lisa Elzey: So anyone who's German or is from this area, I apologize.
27:47
Lisa Elzey: But the Kiel Canal and the Elby River.
27:50
Lisa Elzey: So the Kiel Canal cuts across Germany like horizontally, and the EBay River kind of goes from the northwest and goes down, you know, to they and they intersect?
28:00
Lisa Elzey: They intersect kind of, yeah, one leads into the other.
28:03
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, the Kiel Canal can lead into the eBay.
28:05
Lisa Elzey: So you're thinking, okay, it's gonna be right over here, right?
28:08
Lisa Elzey: So the guy at the counter said, I think it's this place.
28:11
Lisa Elzey: And there was a place called Hano.
28:13
Lisa Elzey: And again, they all sound the same.
28:16
Lisa Elzey: So don't ask me how they're spelled.
28:18
Lisa Elzey: But it was right in that little pocket.
28:20
Lisa Elzey: And I thought, oh, there's gotta be gotta be it.
28:22
Lisa Elzey: And uh, so I just focused all my research on that.
28:25
Lisa Elzey: Like for I think years, trying to figure out where can I get records.
28:29
Lisa Elzey: And I remember going through reels and reels of uh birth records uh at the time.
28:34
Lisa Elzey: From that town.
28:35
Lisa Elzey: From that, uh, from that province.
28:37
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, from that town, from that area.
28:38
Lisa Elzey: And uh, nothing, couldn't find anything.
28:41
Lisa Elzey: And I was really frustrated because I knew his birth year, it'd be his birthday actually, uh like the day in the month, and um couldn't find anything.
28:48
Lisa Elzey: And again, you know, at that point I was graduating or I had a kid or whatever.
28:52
Lisa Elzey: And so it was always something that I was trying to do, trying to figure out.
28:55
Crista Cowan: I love how we talk about I've had this brick wall for 20 years and really we've worked on it for like six hours in those 20 years.
29:02
Lisa Elzey: But boy, it's really strong.
29:04
Lisa Elzey: It's you know, no, I mean, I think, yes, I've had it for a long time, but I think most people can relate.
29:09
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
29:09
Lisa Elzey: So I work at Ancestry, that's no secret.
29:11
Lisa Elzey: It's we have a lot of people who are retired or that have a more time to spend on a brick wall.
29:18
Lisa Elzey: At the time, I was finishing school.
29:20
Lisa Elzey: I had a one, I had one child at the time.
29:22
Lisa Elzey: I was a very young mom.
29:24
Lisa Elzey: And so I my responsibilities and time were elsewhere.
29:28
Lisa Elzey: So I would get involved with family history when I could here and there.
29:31
Lisa Elzey: So I didn't have a lot of time to devote.
29:33
Lisa Elzey: So, but I always was like, I want to know where he's from because that was where it ended.
29:37
Lisa Elzey: Like it was just my great great grandpa.
29:40
Lisa Elzey: That's it.
29:41
Lisa Elzey: I didn't know anything past that.
29:43
Lisa Elzey: And uh, I was just really curious and bummed out.
29:46
Lisa Elzey: So my lesson is patience with this story.
29:50
Lisa Elzey: That's that's my lesson because Ancestry is going to put some records online, but it wasn't until 2016 really that that it broke it open.
29:59
Crista Cowan: Which is Like 20 some odd years later, right?
30:02
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
30:02
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
30:02
Lisa Elzey: And it was 20 years later.
30:04
Lisa Elzey: And um, there were all these stories of where he was from and and what what who his parents might be, and and all where were those stories coming from?
30:12
Lisa Elzey: They're coming, I think, from family search, from at the time, you know, PAF, or people saying, Oh, I think it's this or I think it's that.
30:19
Lisa Elzey: Uh, he had two brothers that came out that had a different last name than him.
30:24
Lisa Elzey: So uh we knew that his mother's name and her they were younger.
30:29
Lisa Elzey: They were younger.
30:30
Lisa Elzey: So she remarried.
30:30
Lisa Elzey: She married, uh-huh, and had a different last name.
30:33
Lisa Elzey: And her name was uh again, I'm ruining the name, but it's I think it's Gasika.
30:37
Lisa Elzey: That's her name.
30:39
Lisa Elzey: Uh that's John Siba's mother's name.
30:40
Lisa Elzey: So my third name.
30:41
Lisa Elzey: Her maiden name or her second last name?
30:43
Lisa Elzey: I don't know.
30:44
Lisa Elzey: I that's her first name.
30:45
Lisa Elzey: And then Oh, that's her first name.
30:46
Lisa Elzey: Yes, that's her first name.
30:47
Lisa Elzey: Oh my god.
30:47
Lisa Elzey: I know, right?
30:48
Lisa Elzey: I don't know how to say it.
30:49
Lisa Elzey: I'm like, God's good, I've never asked.
30:50
Lisa Elzey: So that's her first name, and then her last name was listed as Koch, K-O-C-H, Kotch.
30:56
Lisa Elzey: Catch, right?
30:57
Lisa Elzey: Or Khuch.
30:58
Lisa Elzey: Um, and we knew that was the mother.
31:00
Lisa Elzey: So I had a mother's name.
31:02
Lisa Elzey: I had two half-brothers with a completely different name.
31:05
Lisa Elzey: Wellbrock was the their last name.
31:08
Lisa Elzey: So that was her married name.
31:09
Lisa Elzey: And um, that's it.
31:11
Lisa Elzey: So, okay, now I have a mother's name.
31:13
Lisa Elzey: Great.
31:13
Lisa Elzey: What do I do now?
31:14
Lisa Elzey: So people just didn't know where they were from.
31:16
Lisa Elzey: So the the records came online on Ancestry.
31:20
Lisa Elzey: And I was able to type it in and it popped up.
31:25
Lisa Elzey: Like again, we talk about these letters my mom wrote, all the time she took, me writing out to the mailbox.
31:32
Lisa Elzey: My mom, I even have a letter of my mom writing uh that she wrote at the top.
31:37
Lisa Elzey: I it's a letter coming back from a German archive.
31:40
Lisa Elzey: It's in German.
31:42
Lisa Elzey: At the top, my mom's handwriting, she has beautiful handwriting, handwriting that says such so-and-so interpreter, translator, and the phone number.
31:51
Lisa Elzey: So she can take the letter to go have them say, this is what the German letter says, you know, and then the second page that's stapled to it, because my mom's was meticulous about all of the research, has word for word, like the German word and an English word above it.
32:07
Lisa Elzey: And like she's trying to figure out what is this person saying?
32:09
Lisa Elzey: And essentially it was saying, ma'am, Hanover is a really big place, and you probably need to pay for a genealogist to help you figure this out.
32:16
Lisa Elzey: It was kind of one of those letters, you know.
32:18
Crista Cowan: So the time, yeah.
32:20
Crista Cowan: I mean, the hours and hours scrolling through microfilm.
32:23
Crista Cowan: And sometimes that microfilm we would have to go to Salt Lake to access.
32:26
Crista Cowan: Sometimes we would have to pay to have it sent to our local family history center.
32:30
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
32:30
Crista Cowan: Like people who can just hop online today and type stuff in do not understand the value of that subscription.
32:38
Lisa Elzey: It's it's crazy.
32:39
Lisa Elzey: Like again, I I want to stress it took four seconds to surface.
32:44
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
32:44
Crista Cowan: When you searched it.
32:45
Lisa Elzey: I did.
32:46
Lisa Elzey: Which I put John Siba, mother's name, and I put the year around and the date, and I put Germany.
32:53
Lisa Elzey: I think I might have put Hanover Germany, because in in um the the live sketch it said Hanover, and it popped right up.
33:01
Crista Cowan: So where what was the record collection?
33:03
Lisa Elzey: Okay, it is they are christening records.
33:05
Lisa Elzey: Okay.
33:06
Lisa Elzey: And marriage records, Lutheran church, yes.
33:08
Lisa Elzey: Okay.
33:08
Lisa Elzey: And it is Hano.
33:10
Lisa Elzey: H-O with umlad.
33:13
Lisa Elzey: So I that's an o sound, right?
33:15
Lisa Elzey: Hano, I think.
33:16
Lisa Elzey: Again, totally slaughtering.
33:18
Lisa Elzey: Um, H-O-Umlad N A-U.
33:22
Lisa Elzey: Okay.
33:23
Lisa Elzey: Hano.
33:23
Lisa Elzey: And it is in what is now Lower Saxony.
33:28
Lisa Elzey: That's the word is now.
33:29
Lisa Elzey: Um, but but that was after the 40s.
33:31
Lisa Elzey: Any words near those two rivers?
33:34
Lisa Elzey: Yes.
33:34
Lisa Elzey: But not right there.
33:36
Lisa Elzey: And what says near, you're like, are you near?
33:39
Lisa Elzey: Like it's like two hours near.
33:41
Lisa Elzey: But I've but you think about it, if you're a farmer, rivers are really important.
33:46
Lisa Elzey: So when he's talking to his children about where he's from, he's probably gonna tell you the two main rivers that kind of fed into the rivers that they farmed with, right?
33:56
Lisa Elzey: Near is relative, but it is in that pocket.
33:58
Lisa Elzey: It's in Lower Saxony now, but at the time it was part of Hanover, uh, Prussia.
34:03
Lisa Elzey: And so um that's why he she said Hanover.
34:07
Lisa Elzey: And so, but we were focused on Hanover.
34:09
Lisa Elzey: And we're looking at post-World War II Hanover, which is not 1860s Hanover.
34:15
Lisa Elzey: No, because it's Lower Saxony.
34:17
Lisa Elzey: So all those records are now in the Lower Saxony.
34:19
Lisa Elzey: That's the other thing, right?
34:20
Lisa Elzey: You have to know the history of a county or the history of where these records are, I mean, just West Virginia, Virginia.
34:26
Lisa Elzey: There's just all these things that you need to learn.
34:28
Lisa Elzey: And um, I still learn, I still learn to this day.
34:32
Lisa Elzey: But I, you know, movies don't teach me as much anymore, as much as you, but um, or as much as just doing research.
34:38
Lisa Elzey: But it's it's really fascinating how we're always learning and how we're always improving.
34:43
Lisa Elzey: And there's always something that's going to surface at some point.
34:46
Lisa Elzey: I we don't know when.
34:48
Lisa Elzey: So we found the record.
34:49
Lisa Elzey: So now get ready.
34:50
Lisa Elzey: This is where the like salacious bit comes in.
34:52
Lisa Elzey: I mean, more salacious than Aunt Mary and the chauffeur.
34:56
Lisa Elzey: And the chauffeur.
34:56
Lisa Elzey: Um, but John's mother, last name Koch, right?
35:00
Lisa Elzey: I'm gonna say it the American way.
35:02
Lisa Elzey: Uh, Koch, I found John's in that quick search, I found John's christening record.
35:08
Lisa Elzey: And it's in complete German, of course, and in all the swirly kind of front derflet.
35:13
Lisa Elzey: Ooh, and in German.
35:15
Lisa Elzey: So I needed somebody to help me read it.
35:17
Lisa Elzey: But what's awesome is Ancestry had already indexed all the bits that mention names.
35:23
Lisa Elzey: But here's the kicker.
35:24
Lisa Elzey: His last name wasn't Seba when he was christened, it was Kotch.
35:30
Crista Cowan: He was illegitimate.
35:32
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, I was like, what's going on?
35:33
Lisa Elzey: So his name is Johann Heinrich Kotsch.
35:36
Lisa Elzey: So John Seba, but I'm like, where is Seba coming in?
35:40
Lisa Elzey: But if you look at the record, over on the left-hand margin, in German is written this little like blah blah blah blah blah, and then it says, Johann Dietrich Sieba.
35:50
Crista Cowan: So they had identified the father.
35:53
Lisa Elzey: I get and again in German.
35:55
Lisa Elzey: And so it's like, I don't speak German.
35:57
Lisa Elzey: So I took it to somebody that did, and they helped me figure out what it was.
36:02
Lisa Elzey: So, yes, so she was not married.
36:05
Lisa Elzey: She was an unmarried, so it's like they called you out back then in this record.
36:09
Lisa Elzey: It's like hardcore.
36:10
Lisa Elzey: It's like, you know, Gassica Koch, unmarried daughter of, and they get this.
36:17
Lisa Elzey: Her dad's name was Klaus, as in Klaus.
36:20
Lisa Elzey: Just saying.
36:22
Lisa Elzey: I'm just saying.
36:22
Lisa Elzey: My great-great-grandpa might be Santa Claus.
36:25
Lisa Elzey: So Klaus, unwed daughter of Klaus Koch and Margaretha, you know, it's just like totally calls her out, and then illegitimate son Johann Heinrich.
36:37
Lisa Elzey: Um, and then over on the side, it said essentially, I'm not, I don't know the exact wording, but essentially said that he was recognized by his father, and his father is Johann Dietrich Seiba.
36:50
Lisa Elzey: And I think Johann was married at the time when he had this affair.
36:54
Lisa Elzey: I think.
36:54
Lisa Elzey: So Aunt Mary was just following her father's grandfathers, it'd say.
36:59
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
37:00
Lisa Elzey: I don't know.
37:01
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
37:01
Lisa Elzey: So he was recognized as a as a Seba, um, but I don't think that he ever had him as a father.
37:09
Lisa Elzey: So I think his, I think she was kind of a single mom.
37:12
Lisa Elzey: But he still chose to use that lesson.
37:13
Lisa Elzey: He did.
37:14
Lisa Elzey: He did.
37:14
Lisa Elzey: And I think that I don't, and that was the only son they had.
37:18
Lisa Elzey: They, you know, they didn't have any other kids.
37:19
Lisa Elzey: And that's and then she got married, like I said, to Wellbrock and then had two more sons.
37:24
Lisa Elzey: And so John, Johan, had two brothers.
37:28
Lisa Elzey: But I had no idea there was an illegitimacy going on.
37:32
Lisa Elzey: In fact, my grandmother, um, all the stories were like, oh yes, his mom his dad died when he was really young.
37:39
Lisa Elzey: Like that was what was said in the family.
37:41
Lisa Elzey: His dad died when he was young.
37:42
Lisa Elzey: He didn't die.
37:43
Lisa Elzey: He was very much alive, the the father.
37:46
Lisa Elzey: It also said in that record that my great-great-grandfather, John, finished his catechism.
37:51
Lisa Elzey: And I'm like, Catechism?
37:52
Lisa Elzey: I didn't know Lutherans had a catechism.
37:54
Lisa Elzey: They had a whole thing, and pretty much saying, like, he's well educated.
37:58
Crista Cowan: He knows And that he's connected to the church.
38:01
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
38:01
Crista Cowan: Because a lot of times those children who were deemed as illegitimate, and I hate that label, but but that the shame that was often heaped on them in those communities um sometimes separated them from the church.
38:12
Crista Cowan: Yes.
38:13
Crista Cowan: And so to have that.
38:14
Lisa Elzey: It was and it was put later, right?
38:16
Lisa Elzey: So this is his christening record.
38:17
Lisa Elzey: They're making the priests are making that.
38:18
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
38:19
Lisa Elzey: So they went back in, they're like, he's a good one.
38:21
Lisa Elzey: He's a good egg.
38:22
Lisa Elzey: And he was because, again, Charles Ingel's embodiment, right?
38:26
Lisa Elzey: Like he was just that person.
38:27
Lisa Elzey: And so I like to think that he was taught by his mother because he didn't have a father present, or maybe his grandparents, maybe Klaus.
38:35
Lisa Elzey: Maybe Klaus.
38:36
Lisa Elzey: Uh, or Klaus.
38:38
Lisa Elzey: Um, maybe that's how he learned his work ethic.
38:40
Lisa Elzey: Maybe that's how he learned to serve other people in his community.
38:44
Lisa Elzey: It was a very strong Lutheran community, you know, church and and that that community was very important uh to their culture.
38:51
Lisa Elzey: And he was devout Lutheran.
38:53
Lisa Elzey: My great-grandmother was a devout Lutheran.
38:56
Lisa Elzey: Uh, when she died, uh, we had a Lutheran.
38:59
Lisa Elzey: She died at 98, my great-grandma Amelia.
39:02
Lisa Elzey: And we had a graveside service just with like our family.
39:06
Lisa Elzey: My mom's an only child at the time.
39:09
Lisa Elzey: She knew it's an only child.
39:10
Lisa Elzey: Go watch episode 58.
39:12
Lisa Elzey: Um, and she's an only child, so it's just my mom and my dad and my family, and my grandma, and the pastor or priest or whatever.
39:20
Lisa Elzey: And that again, this is the first time I learned when she died that she's Lutheran.
39:24
Lisa Elzey: Like, oh, wait, what?
39:26
Lisa Elzey: So all these little things just piling in, and then Ancestry just kind of brings it all together with a record.
39:32
Lisa Elzey: Not only did I find his christening record, that led me to her marriage record when she got married.
39:40
Lisa Elzey: That also led me to my third great-grandmother's christening record, and then her parents' marriage record.
39:48
Lisa Elzey: This just opened up two more generations of family in Germany.
39:51
Lisa Elzey: And they were in this place in Hanau-Lindorf.
39:54
Lisa Elzey: Is that that's the name of the place, uh, for like four generations at least.
39:58
Lisa Elzey: So I'm just like, it just blows my mind that I could just open one little thing and it just, it's like a Pandora box, but in a good way.
40:06
Lisa Elzey: You know what I mean?
40:08
Lisa Elzey: Um, I think I cried, I'm pretty sure I cried.
40:11
Lisa Elzey: Uh, and I called my mom immediately.
40:13
Lisa Elzey: I'm like, mom, mom, we know where it is.
40:14
Lisa Elzey: And I have copies of maps from that day at the library with highlights, like this, like with all the little dots of the different cities that sound like it.
40:24
Lisa Elzey: And I'm like, we don't need to wonder anymore.
40:26
Lisa Elzey: We know where it's he's from.
40:28
Lisa Elzey: And uh, she was so excited.
40:30
Lisa Elzey: And it's so weird because we've never met him, but we feel like we know him.
40:34
Lisa Elzey: Yeah.
40:35
Lisa Elzey: Because of the stories that were told to us, um, how he was re was revered in his community, how he really helped build that community.
40:43
Lisa Elzey: And uh that area, it's like a Fergus Falls area, if anyone knows Minnesota.
40:48
Lisa Elzey: But I looked and to see, it's just like two and a half, three hours north of Walnut Grove.
40:53
Lisa Elzey: It's really not that far from where Laura Ingalls was.
40:58
Lisa Elzey: And I was like, he really was Charles Ingalls.
41:01
Lisa Elzey: He really was.
41:02
Lisa Elzey: And uh, so I had my own like movie in my own family that just my own TV show, my own TV series.
41:08
Lisa Elzey: Uh, and uh it just, I don't know, it really brought it to life for me at a young age and then to have it connected all the way to 2016 when that uh came online, and you know, just kind of crazy.
41:21
Crista Cowan: And the interesting thing is that the discoveries don't necessarily end there, right?
41:26
Crista Cowan: You've taken all these years to discover who he was and where he was from and kind of put together this, you know, built on this foundation that Aunt Alice laid with this memoir she wrote about him.
41:38
Crista Cowan: But there are new newspapers coming online every day.
41:42
Crista Cowan: I know.
41:43
Crista Cowan: There are new archives coming online every day.
41:46
Crista Cowan: There could be more records about him, more stories about him.
41:49
Lisa Elzey: And now we have, you know, and now we have it's incredible.
41:52
Lisa Elzey: I took that letter that my mom had to take to the translator, but it within like three seconds, it translated on Google Translate.
42:01
Lisa Elzey: Three seconds.
42:02
Lisa Elzey: And I was like, oh my gosh, my mom, like, she's 82 now and she loves family history, but she's kind of passed the torch long ago.
42:11
Lisa Elzey: And I wish she could have done that.
42:14
Lisa Elzey: You know, I wish she could have like found it.
42:18
Lisa Elzey: Sorry, I'm getting really stupid emotional.
42:20
Lisa Elzey: But um I love that I could find it for her, and I love that like we could be excited together.
42:27
Lisa Elzey: I mean, 2016 is not that long ago.
42:29
Lisa Elzey: I was here.
42:30
Lisa Elzey: I think I was here.
42:30
Lisa Elzey: Yeah, you will.
42:31
Lisa Elzey: I was at Ancestry, yeah.
42:32
Lisa Elzey: So um as we're filming this on your ancestry anniversary.
42:35
Lisa Elzey: This is my anniversary.
42:36
Lisa Elzey: I know.
42:36
Lisa Elzey: I've been here 13 years, and it's kind of funny because 13 is a lucky number in our family.
42:41
Lisa Elzey: So um I'm really lucky.
42:44
Lisa Elzey: I'm really lucky.
42:46
Lisa Elzey: We are so I love my job.
42:49
Lisa Elzey: I love that I have the joy of discovery every day.
42:53
Lisa Elzey: Um, and sometimes it's for myself, right?
42:56
Lisa Elzey: It's a lot of times for other people because that's my job.
42:58
Lisa Elzey: But once in a while I get to have some joy about my own family that connects me.
43:05
Lisa Elzey: And my mom on her mantle of the fireplace has a steeple clock.
43:11
Lisa Elzey: And that was my great grandfather's.
43:13
Lisa Elzey: And my grandma before she passed, um, she passed in 2019.
43:18
Lisa Elzey: Um she told, you know, she would always tell about her mother telling her, because again, she didn't know her grandpa, but her mother got the clock.
43:30
Lisa Elzey: Um, and she would tell my grandmother, Nida, every night he would go and wind the clock above the fireplace.
43:39
Lisa Elzey: And then he'd get his corn crop pipe and he'd puff on his pipe of the rocking chair.
43:43
Lisa Elzey: But every night he'd wind it.
43:45
Lisa Elzey: And so this this sound of that every night, my great-grandmother remembered.
43:49
Lisa Elzey: And so my grandmother told it to my mother, and my mother has told it to me.
43:54
Lisa Elzey: My mom's getting older, and they start planning.
44:00
Crista Cowan: It's the weirdest time of life.
44:01
Crista Cowan: My my parents just bought cemetery plots.
44:04
Lisa Elzey: Okay, yes.
44:05
Lisa Elzey: Thank you.
44:05
Lisa Elzey: I don't like this.
44:07
Lisa Elzey: I really don't.
44:08
Lisa Elzey: I don't like this moment where it's like, okay, so when I'm gone, and I'm like, eh, she's like, what do you want?
44:12
Lisa Elzey: And I'm like, oh my gosh, we're not gonna be, you know, I feel like it's Christmas Carol rifling through Scrooge's things, you know.
44:18
Lisa Elzey: She's like, well, what do you want?
44:20
Lisa Elzey: And my mom is a collector of antiques.
44:23
Lisa Elzey: She has so many things.
44:24
Lisa Elzey: She sells antiques.
44:25
Lisa Elzey: It's kind of her, it's kind of her hobby/slash side hustle.
44:29
Lisa Elzey: She's very, very good at it.
44:30
Lisa Elzey: Um, and she has collected like depression glass sets that she's for my sister and I, like just beautiful things that she loves, and I love them because she loves them.
44:39
Lisa Elzey: But she has so many trinkety things.
44:41
Lisa Elzey: It's like, what do you want?
44:42
Lisa Elzey: It's like, well, none of that.
44:44
Lisa Elzey: I know.
44:45
Lisa Elzey: I'm like, that's you love that.
44:47
Lisa Elzey: I don't have space, you know.
44:48
Lisa Elzey: And she's like, really?
44:49
Lisa Elzey: Like, no, but you know what?
44:51
Lisa Elzey: I really do want, mom?
44:52
Lisa Elzey: The steeple clock.
44:54
Lisa Elzey: The steeple clock.
44:56
Lisa Elzey: And she's like, of course.
44:58
Lisa Elzey: Of course you get the steeple clock.
45:00
Lisa Elzey: And my sister was like, Yeah, because you need the steeple, you know, there's no, there's no one in the family going, I want the steeple clock.
45:07
Lisa Elzey: And so that will be mine someday.
45:09
Lisa Elzey: And I hope to pass that on to my daughter.
45:12
Lisa Elzey: Um, we come from a line of strong German women.
45:15
Lisa Elzey: That grandma Amelia, who's doesn't like the neighbor because she's too whiny and, you know, and raising her kids in the depression on her own.
45:23
Lisa Elzey: And my grandmother was, you know, divorced at a very young age as well, and had to make it.
45:28
Lisa Elzey: And then my mom with my brother, uh, my brother's my half-brother, and divorced when he was three and was a single mom for a long time.
45:35
Lisa Elzey: Like we just come from a lot of women who've had to just get out there and do it.
45:40
Lisa Elzey: And I come from that.
45:42
Lisa Elzey: And I know part of that is from John Zipa.
45:46
Lisa Elzey: I know part of that is from my Santa Claus.
45:48
Lisa Elzey: And um, and that's Minnesota.
45:52
Lisa Elzey: That's what Minnesota helped bring to pass because the land was hard, but it was beautiful.
46:00
Lisa Elzey: The people could be hard but beautiful.
46:03
Lisa Elzey: A community, again, hard but beautiful.
46:07
Lisa Elzey: And I think that's a lot of that area still to this day.
46:10
Lisa Elzey: I have never been.
46:12
Lisa Elzey: I need to go.
46:12
Lisa Elzey: I have been.
46:13
Lisa Elzey: And I have heard nothing but wonderful things about those communities and those people.
46:19
Lisa Elzey: They're just the most neighborly.
46:21
Lisa Elzey: The, you know, you got the Minnesotan little like thing that everyone makes a joke about, but I just hear that they're wonderful.
46:28
Lisa Elzey: And to know that my heritage is connected to that just really warms my heart, I guess you could say.
46:35
Lisa Elzey: It just really makes me really proud.
46:37
Crista Cowan: Well, thank you for sharing John with us and Amelia.
46:41
Crista Cowan: And um, and the journey that you took as well.
46:45
Crista Cowan: I think sometimes we don't appreciate that the family stories that get passed down have so much value and so much richness, but that there is still more to find.
46:56
Lisa Elzey: There's more to find.
46:57
Lisa Elzey: And who knows?
46:58
Lisa Elzey: Who knows what what tomorrow may bring.
46:59
Lisa Elzey: And uh I just hope that maybe one day I get to go to those places and walk where they walked because I feel like there's a connection there that I don't have yet.
47:08
Lisa Elzey: So maybe that's my next step is not waiting for records, but going to the place and then feeling that connection in Minnesota.
47:16
Lisa Elzey: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.