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Once again, now that I am done with school and find myself with a crap load of free time, I am doing the family research thing.
Last summer, we had three family picnics on consecutive weekends with the Brogans, the Brehmers, and the Prokaskys. For the Prokasky clan, it was the first time in decades. I know you know this because I blogged about it at the time. Get ready, because my plan is to do that same thing again this year!
Meanwhile, I also dusted off my copy of the Benike genealogy that my uncle, Jerry, gave me years ago. As I dug in harder on that one, I discovered a couple of really cool little tidbits of family history.
I have said before how my Grandma Clara Prokasky was a live-in maid for Dr. and Mrs. Plummer and my Grandma Clara Brehmer was a day maid for Dr. and Mrs. Judd. Well, it turns out that two of my Grandma Clara Brehmer's relatives...either cousins or uncles, I'm not 100% clear on that...each worked as a chauffer for Dr. Charles W. Mayo! I bet they had stories they could have told at the time!
On a sadder note, I just went to the funeral of my mom's cousin, Richard Prokasky. That only leaves four remaining people from that generation still around to tell the tales: my mom's sister, Donna; my mom's cousin, Pauline; my mom's cousin, Mary; and my mom's cousin, Ginger. Look out, ladies, I'm going to make time to pick your brains about family lore and legend!
On a related note (see what I did there?), I recently had cause to visit the Rochester Public Library to renew my library card. While there, I went up to the reference desk and asked the nice young man behind the counter what resources were available via the library for genealogy research.
He was very helpful and gave me a quick overview of links on their website to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and the Olmsted County History Center. Then, joy of joys, he led me to a section in the very back of the second floor that had hundreds of books strictly on genealogy and local history.
Out of curiosity, I pulled out a thick, hard cover book on the history of Olmsted County from the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s. I didn't find any Brehmers, Prokaskys, or Benikes in the alphabetic index of names, but I did find a couple of Brogans.
Specifically, James Brogan, son of Anthony and Kate Brogan, Irish immigrants circa 1853. Anthony and Kate settled on 160 acres in section 35 of Elmira Township and lived long, productive lives. James took over the--I'll call it a homestead--in 1891 just a year before his father passed away. James eventually married Myrtle Lane, and they started a family, having a son, Boyd, and a daughter, Vera.
When I came home and told Captain what I'd discovered in this history book, his first question was "What happened to that farm?" Huhn...good question. We looked in a recent Olmsted County plat book and there was nothing to indicate a Brogan had owned land there in recent years. Strange...
Later that evening while visiting Gammy, Captain mentioned it to her. She couldn't think of having ever heard or seen any evidence of that particular parcel of land being Brogan land, either. So, she called her brother-in-law the next day to find out more.
G-Rod couldn't remember finite details either, but he did add to the picture. James and Myrtle had two other children, a son, Lawrence, and a son, Paul. Paul is Captain's paternal grandfather. The history is sketchy because the family was fractured during the 1918 flu epidemic when both Myrtle and Vera passed away from the illness. James, in his grief, was not able to care for the children and because his late wife's parents were either unable or unwilling to step in as care givers, the three boys ended up being taken in by other family members. Sadly, it appears he was not able to maintain the homestead, either. I think I remember someone saying he ended up working for the county highway department maintaining Highway 52 or something like that.
These are the sad details that are inherently part of the research. It's all well and good to think every story is "all because two people fell in love" with exponentially greater number of people in each generation, but the reality is that life is messy, sad, and sometimes tragic.
I've talked about how Cubby always gets a little frown and teary-eyed when we are at St. Michael's Cemetery in the spring putting out veteran's flags and she finds a headstone of a child. The same thing happens to me when I'm researching records of ancestors and find records for "Baby Boy So-and-So" or "Infant Such-and-Such." I am thankful that infant and/or maternal fatalities are much less common than they used to be!
Anyway, short story long, I'll be boring you to tears with family nuggets of legend, myth, and lore I dig up. If nothing else, it will be a good documentation of our family history for Cubby to--hopefully--treasure some day.
Blessings, my friends!
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