Cousins Uncovered

Finding Stine and her family in Elk Horn was a nice surprise!  Finding her and her husband’s obits in the archived newspaper clippings in the Genealogy Center was like finding hidden treasure!  The obits gave me the names of their children, and from there I found their children’s obits listing their children, Stine’s grandchildren.  What a find!

Stine and Christen had 3 boys:  Jens, William and Andrew.  Jens and Andrew eventually married and had children of their own.  William remained unmarried and is buried next to his parents in the Exira cemetery. Finding the names of Stine’s and Christen’s grandchildren was such a wonderful find!  I excitedly, and a little anxiously, wrote letters to 2 of the granddaughters whose names I found still listed in the Exira directory.  I thought of calling, but felt that writing was the least intrusive way of introducing myself.  And, in my letter, I included my telephone number and email address.  If they didn’t want to have any correspondence, I would not hear from them.  But I had my fingers crossed that I would hear from at least one of them.

A week went by and I heard nothing.  Then another week.  Then another week.  I was giving up hope, but trying to stay positive.  It was possible that, being farmers, they were just too busy to respond right away.   Another week went by, and then it happened.  I noticed I had a voicemail from a number I didn’t recognize!  Could this be it?  I hoped so!  So, with my fingers crossed, I listened to the voicemail and, yes, it was one of Stine’s granddaughters contacting me!

Ardell was one of Andrew’s daughters.  Her sister, Colleen, was the other granddaughter I sent a letter to.  I called Ardell back immediately and we talked for some time.  She, of course, was curious how I found her.  (I love telling people the “how”.  It seems so simple to me, but they always seem so amazed!)  :o)  Once we got past the initial questions, I told her what I knew about her grandparents, more specifically, her grandmother.  Throughout the conversation, I referred to her as Stine.  At a later point, Ardell asked me where I got the name “Stine”.  I told her that all of us had always heard that Great-Grandpa Jens had a sister named Stine who also lived in America.  She said she had never heard her grandmother referred to by that name, which made it an even more special name to me…obviously, it was Great-Grandpa’s nickname for his baby sister. 

Ardell also told me that her mother and my grandmother, Leona, kept in constant contact with one another through letters.  Who knew???  I certainly wasn’t aware that Grandma was still in contact with her cousins in Elk Horn!  Ardell said that, though the letters may have been sent with some time lapsing between, all of a sudden, the letters from Grandma stopped.  She said that her mother always wanted to know why she wasn’t hearing from Leona anymore.  Working out about the timeframe that Grandma quit writing put it about the time that we both thought…that Grandma Leona had passed away.  And, the rest of us not knowing that she was keeping in contact with her cousins, we would not have known to contact the Elk Horn cousins to pass along the sad news. 

The obvious next step was to get my parents to Elk Horn to reunite my dad with his cousins.

To be continued…