52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 12 "Membership"

My great-grandfather Frank J. Kain (pamapa) was a member of the Knights of Columbus in Creighton, NE. I know this thanks to the book "Knights of Columbus - Nebraska State Council Proceedings, 1905-1926." This book has been transcribed and appears on the Nebraska GenWeb Resource Center site under "Religious Information" and "Catholic Church." As far as I can tell, this is the only place in the universe that you can find it. Neither Worldcat nor Family Search has any mention of it. This mystery book contains the proceedings for each annual Nebraska Knights of Columbus state council held in May between 1905 and 1926.

Francis J. Kain (1861-1930)

According to the book, the Creighton Council sent its first delegates in 1907. Frank Kain attended for the first time as a delegate from Creighton in 1913. He went that year with his brother-in-law J.J. (John) Kennedy, who was also attending for the first time. They had known each other since childhood, having grown up together on adjacent farms in Clinton County, Iowa. In the following year of 1914, J.J. went as a Creighton delegate but Frank did not. 

Frank then attended in 1915, 1916, 1918, and every year of 1920 through 1929. J.J. and he attended together as the Creighton delegates in 1915 and again in 1927. Frank was on the Committee on Resolutions in 1915 and was also an alternate to a member of the Supreme Council that year. In 1916, 1918, and 1920 he was on the Credentials Committee. In 1924 and 1925 the other delegate from Creighton was B.J. Huigens, brother of Frank's son-in-law Joe Huigens (my grandfather). 

The book only goes through 1926. However, I did find Creighton newspaper articles from 1927, 1928, and 1929 that show he attended those years. In the 1930 US Census, Frank and his wife are living with their son in Yankton, SD. Frank died in December 1930 so 1929 was his last state council. 

1927

1928

1929

Frank is listed as a Grand Knight (the highest elected leader of his council) in 1921 and 1924 and as a Past Grand Knight in 1925.

But his shining moment appears in the 1921 proceedings:

Among the meritorious activities of Nebraska Knighthood must be included the courageous effort of Grand Knight Frank J. Kain of Creighton, unanimously supported by the entire membership of Count Creighton Council, to enlist the Supreme Officers in [sic] behalf of suffering Ireland. The correspondence on this question has been printed and circulated by the Creighton Council, and it shows upon its face that this council, in the interchange of letters and arguments with the Supreme Advocate, had decidedly the best of the controversy. And it bore fruit, for no sooner had the last letter of Brother Kain been received at headquarters, than telegrams from the Supreme Knight were despatched [sic] all over the country calling upon the state officers to enter vigorously into the campaign for Irish relief, In my opinion, the thanks of this State Council should be expressed and recorded toward Brother Kain and his council for their determined and successful efforts on behalf of the heroic victims of the most heartless and damnable militarism that has ever yet cursed the earth.

Both of Frank's parents were Irish immigrants, so this must have been an issue close to his heart. In May of 1921, when this state council was held, the bloody Irish War of Independence, begun in 1919, was nearly at an end. "Brother Kain" may have even known of cousins back in Ireland who were involved. For him, this "courageous effort" was personal. Good on you, great-grandpa. Good on you.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 4 "Education"

Esther Louise Johnson in about 1920

 On the 1940 US Census, they asked for each person's Highest Grade of School Completed. For my maternal grandmother, Esther Louise (Johnson) Ogden (1902-1984) the entry is "H3" meaning that she only completed three years of high school. You might wonder why she did not finish high school with only one year to go. Luckily I don't have to wonder because my mother shared her mother's story with me.

In the summer of 1920, after Esther's junior year of high school in Gordon, Sheridan County, Nebraska, her parents, Swedish immigrant Gustav Johnson (1867-1941) and Rosabell (Strayer) Johnson (1872-1955), decided to move their family from Gordon to Henning, Otter Tail County, Minnesota. When my grandmother went to register for high school in Henning, she was told that she would have to complete two years of high school there rather than just the one. Something about a difference in education standards between where she came from and Henning. My grandmother said nuts to that and never enrolled in her new high school.

Several years later she went back to Sheridan County to visit her cousins. A young man there named Emery Ogden was dating one of her cousins. After meeting Esther and getting to know her, he dropped the cousin and began courting Esther. There were married in Rushville, Sheridan County, Nebraska on 19 March 1929. 

Their first daughter Ardis Rosemary Ogden was born in Sheridan County on 20 September 1930. She died only two days later. My grandmother was so frightened by that experience that when it came time for my mom, Shirley Ann Ogden (1931-2014) to be born, Esther went to back to Henning to be with her mother for the birth. That is why my mother was born in Minnesota and not Nebraska where her parents were living. 

NE/SD Family History Road Trip (part 2)

Day 4, Tuesday, Oct. 22

On Tuesday, we drove from Grand Island to Osceola, NE to visit my mom’s sister and her husband, Roselyn and Alan. They have a lovely home that, like ours, is next to a fire station and has freight train tracks running nearby. Their basement walls are covered with family photos of their five children (my first cousins including Nancy who lives in Grand Island), their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. Several years ago they made a trip to Sweden and visited Locknevi, where my great-great-grandparents, Carl Jacob and Christina (Jonsdotter) Johnson, lived when my great-grandfather Gustaf was born. They even have a painting of the house where he was born.

After lunch with them, we drove 122 miles north to O’Neill, NE. This is a photo of a barn quilt square we saw on our drive. 

In O’Neill we visited my cousin Julie, who I had not seen since our Aunt Toots’s funeral in 1976. Julie is the daughter of my dad’s sister, Berneice AKA Babe. She manages a quilt shop in O’Neill, which is where we met her. (The quilt leitmotif to this tale was for the benefit of my wife, who loves all things quilt related. I really appreciate her for making this trek with me and tried to do everything I could to keep it interesting for her.)

Julie and I talked a lot of family history. She says I look like my father, which I get a lot. She shared with me the story of how her parents met. Her mother served in Europe as a WAC in WWII. After she returned from the war, she took a job as a switchboard operator in O’Neill. She used her GI Bill money to take flying lessons out at the airport. One day she met Louis Coker, who was a pilot, and he became my Uncle Louie. Her mother did get her pilot’s license, but never had a driver’s license.

One of our great-grandparents, John and Mary (Fitzler) Huigens, our parent’s paternal grandparents, died 38 miles due east of O’Neill in Creighton, NE during the blizzard of 1949. The roads were impassable, so Louie flew Aunt Babe to the funeral. There are advantages to knowing how to fly a plane.

She also told me the story of how our parent’s mother, our Grandma Julia, came home from church one Sunday, opened the trunk of the car and discovered she had forgotten to deliver the Memorial Day flower arrangements. She uttered a four-letter expletive for manure, a word I cannot imagine my grandmother using. This caused my Aunt Babe and Aunt Sis to laugh until their sides hurt, although my grandmother saw no humor in the situation.

Julie then took us out to the cemetery where her mother is buried, so I could pay my respects. We both had a good cry. Then she showed me the grave of our grandmother’s sister and her husband, Leo and Margaret (Kain) Carney.

After we said good-bye to Julie, we headed to our hotel in O’Neill, NE. That evening I got an email and a phone call from a second cousin from Creighton that found me through this blog. I had let her know that I would be visiting and we made arrangements to meet at a café in Creighton the next morning. 

(to be continued)

NE/SD Family History Road Trip (part 1)

My wife, Anne Marie and I just completed an eight day family history road trip around eastern Nebraska and south-eastern South Dakota.  We drove more than 1100 miles in four states to visit my aunt and uncle, one of my first cousins, a new-found second cousin of mine, three cemeteries and six farm sites.

Days 1 and 2, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19 and 20

We started by flying from Chicago to Omaha, renting a car and driving to Lincoln, NE to visit my daughter and her significant-other/boyfriend, Blake. Over the weekend we saw the flood plain garden Blake works on for the city’s park department and two other lovely city parks near their house, Sunken Gardens and a rose garden. We visited the Quilt Museum on the University of Nebraska campus and saw three great quilt exhibits. We also took a tour of the Nebraska state capitol building. Fun fact: when Nebraska became a state, there were twelve trees in the entire state. Twelve. We toured the impressive new preschool where my daughter works as an Intake Counselor for a Head Start program. We had a very lovely time with them seeing the sights of Lincoln, NE. That makes six state capitols my wife and I have visited together in six years of marriage (Springfield, IL, Des Moines, IA, Madison, WI, Phoenix, AZ, St. Paul, MN and Lincoln, NE). 44 more years of marriage and we’ll have seen all 50 of them (and be 100+ years old).

Day 3, Monday, Oct. 21

My wife wanted to visit Red Cloud, NE where the Willa CatherFoundation has preserved the house she grew up in. We drove the 150 miles from Lincoln to Red Cloud and found the foundation’s headquarters where we watched a 20-minute video biography of Willa. I bought a book of her short stories in the gift shop. We toured her childhood home led by a retired schoolteacher who taught Cather to students for three decades.  The house is an historical treasure. The foundation has tracked down many of the items auctioned off after her parents’ deaths and has restored them to the house. Her attic bedroom still has the wallpaper Willa hung herself. It must be every family historian’s dream to have an ancestor’s house restored and preserved like that. I know it is something that I would love to see. 

We drove five miles south of town to see the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie. It consists of more than 600 acres that have never been plowed and from which they have removed all the non-native trees. We walked the paths around and across the grasslands. My wife had never experienced the Great Plains before and found it all very beautiful.

 Afterwards we drove south for less than a mile so we could cross the border into Kansas and add another state to our list. (Come on, it counts!) We drove north to Grand Island, NE to spend the night. We missed getting to see my cousin Nancy who lives there. Her son had gotten married that weekend in Colorado.

(to be continued)