Norway makes an appearance....

 I have Norwegian in me. Have I mentioned that? It might have been easy to miss with all the SWEDISH SWEDISH SWEDISH dispersed through out this blog, but, I am!

   In fact, I found that my SWEDISH great grandfather's own grandfather was Norwegian! (Gasp!) ... But that is for another time....  ; )

      The maternal side of my mother is Smith and Olsen. (Can you guess which is Norwegian?). The Smiths, I've had a ball with, finding treasures and stories and photos.... The Olsens? Well, I have found that there are a lot of Hannahs. And that my great grandmother's father was Ole Olsen. Beyond that, sadly, I've not had much luck.

       Lo and behold Ancestry.com has made some connections, yet again. I received an email from a kind woman who told me that one of her (great) grandfathers came over from Norway with his best friend, Ole Olsen. MY Ole. What a surprise to receive in your mailbox! 

       To confirm, she sent me photos from her aunt's album, of my great grandmother, Ole's daughter.

      She had more information and stories on Ole than I did! I was so happy to hear and see whatever she had to share. We began to pass photos around in hopes of identifying some from her albums that had never been labeled. I had high hopes of finally laying eyes on my great great grandfather. We haven't been able to confirm him yet, but I still have hope!

     One day, she sent me a photo of a house. In the email, she said she had been told that this was Ole's house, but it wasn't confirmed. She wanted to know if I had any opinion on it. I sent the photo to my mother, not telling her what it was, but only asking if she recognized this house. She replied,

     "Yes. This was where your grandma lived, It was your great grandmother's house. I was born in this  house." 

      .... Not what I expected!!!

    I wrote back that I had received this from someone who was told this was Ole's house. He is believed to have built it. My mother was surprised. She had no idea that house belonged in the family beyond her grandmother.

   And I wonder, how do things like this get lost? It wasn't that long ago, how did we not know this already? How am I receiving this from the family of my great great grandfather's best friend?

   My answer? Because some families talk, and some families don't. Some families cherish where they came from, and some might prefer to forget. Whether by dysfunction, or general disinterest, some families just DON'T TALK.

   This side... They didn't talk. And how sad this is to me. But how happy I was to receive this information from someone who was searching through their own family, and kindly reached out. 

   We have shared a lot of tidbits and stories through our emails, this kind woman and me. In the future, with her permission, I will have to share some of those stories on this blog, and give my Norwegian roots a little air time. Lord knows they've been stuffed away for far too long.

Sepia Saturday - Hunting Mutts

Sepia Saturday: Theme - Dogs.

   This is my Smith family at their homestead in Hiawatha, Schoolcraft County in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The photo was given to me by one of AJ's other great grandchildren.  I love this picture!
   I'm guessing the dogs in the picture are sitting by their own owners.  Quite a mixture of mutts for hunting dogs! (If that's what they did indeed use them for.) The first on the left looks like a terrier mix belonging to Ray Allen Smith, a great great uncle. The next pup is at the feet of my great grandfather, A.J. Smith. The last one is sitting between the legs of my great-great grandfather, Adoniram Judson Smith (Aka, A.J.) who was Sheriff of Schoolcraft County about the time this picture was taken.
   All the pups look pretty relaxed for their photo shoot, except maybe Adoniram Judson's dog. It sort of looks like he's trapping him to make him stay in place. lol.      

 

The next is just a bonus picture of my Dad when he was a boy. I actually think this is the dog that has a pretty tragic boyhood story attached to it, and I believe it was his first dog. 

Don't you think he's raging coolness in his highwaters and skinny turtleneck? :P

      

Surprise! Response from distant Billings cousin

     One thing I love about the genealogy community is the sense of "community". Everyone is always willing to give another researcher a hand. A perpetual pay it forward kind of  group of people. I heart them. <3
    

     I plan on making a "Family History" wall in our living room. Portraits of people and occasionally places. I've been spending time picking photos, searching for others, and fixing them up in Lightroom so I can get them printed. I had none of print quality from the Billings line. (My mother's biological paternal line).
     So I was on the hunt. I went back to the OP of the digital pictures I had found of some Billings grandparents. I didn't want to be a pest, but I explained my need for portraits, and asked if she possibly had the original size scans she could email me. There's a lot of people on ancestry.com who really "aren't on" ancestry.com anymore. I figured this would be no different, but it was worth a shot! I clicked send and figured that would be the last of it. Some time passed. Nothing new. Forgot about it.

    Sometime after I was looking for a different email in my inbox, so I typed "genealogy" in the inbox search to try and locate it. Low and behold, there was the reply to my Billings' picture request. I saw the little paperclip icon.....there were attachments.... then the excitement just boiled over. My husband had to, like any good husband of course, come see what was wrong with me, and why I was bouncing and making all these strange noises. Possibly he feared his beloved wife had become an epileptic. Maybe I spilled my coffee on the computer and had electrocuted myself? No. None of the above. I had just gotten a huge picture load of dead relatives. And I was very...VERY.... excited.

    This wonderful woman had sent me the original scans of the pictures I had seen. And not only that, but she attached others that I had never seen before and some genealogy of her family to add to my tree.... How grateful I was!!! Panic set in when I thought of how I had missed that email, and only found it among the hundreds because it happened to have the word "genealogy" somewhere in it. I was searching for something else. I had no idea it had arrived... a while ago.....and I made a resolution to clean out my inbox and check my email more often.....

    Some of the pictures she included in that email were awesome. My favorite happened to be.....

A picture of the Billing brothers, sons of Henri Billings (b.17Mar1839/d.1Jun1908), goofing off. 

  It's the little details I love in pictures like this. Things like the pipe, the hat sitting casually on the head, or the sleeves of the dress shirt rolled up... I'm a sucker for old pictures.

   At first I assumed the two were dancing. Then I thought, what peculiar thing are they staging here with two boys dancing, one timing it with his pocket watch and the other two exchanging money? hmmm. 

Ok, So they probably weren't dancing. 

I'm not sure from the picture who's who, but based on the look of their ages, one of them is probably  my great great grandfather, Arthur Billings,  (b.14Mar1867/d.31Dec1926).

         The family of Henri Billings has a colorful history involving many different places, both in the U.S., and in Canada. The email I received speaks of how Henry and his 8 children left Canada, and moved to Manistique, Schoolcraft, MI during the logging boom that took place there in 1887.  He settled in Manistique for a while, where his children were encouraged to become skilled in different trades. My great great grandfather, Arthur became a painter. Henry E a carpenter, Antoine a printer. And Henry Billings Sr himself along with his two sons Onesime and George became bakers. Two of his children were married and stayed in Manistique; Emma in 1889 and Arthur in 1890. Both siblings remained there the remainder of their lives.

         Their father Henry, though, left Manistique with Marguerite, and their children Onesime, Felix, Antoine and Henry, and went back to Granby in Canada around 1894. George did not accompany the family on this move, and chose to remain in Manistique with his brother Arthur.

          At 57 years of age, Henry bought a two story home in Rue Principale. He moved his family into the second story and used the first story to open his own bakery, H Billings Bread & Pastry Co. His sons took part in the family business often making deliveries in the Billings delivery cart. The trade of Baking remained in the Billings family for several generations.

 Above: H. Billings Bread Pastry Co.

I'm so grateful to the researchers that have come down these lines before me, and their willingness to share their research and treasures. There are a few family lines I have that have very little to no information to follow. It's a very hard road, and sometimes takes years to get a tiny tid bit fact that can open a few more doors and move you on to the next little bit. And sometimes that little bit opens the door to a whole wealth of information. but often the former rings truer. So my level of gratitude towards those wonderful family researchers that paved the way first, clearing out all the brush and debris, runs very very high. Thank You!