You’re going to think that I never finish anything that I start. But I will. However, two things have happened. First, Andrew told me that perhaps I should break up the Poland stuff a little bit. (I’d been wondering that myself, frankly.) Second, I have to get ready for Mountain Lake.
Yeah… did I tell you that we’re going to Mountain Lake? We are. Do you know the significance of this place? You’re about to. Ha.
I had heard about Mountain Lake all my life, just peripherally, in two very different ways. First, it’s the birthplace of the FEBC, which is the denomination I grew up in. Second, it’s the birthplace of my great-grandmother Helena, who was the only “great” of mine that I had ever known. (I’m not sure what, if anything, Helena and the FEBC had to do with each other.)
Mountain Lake is in Minnesota, and that’s not far from where I live. It’s just… not much of a destination, you know? So visiting is very possible and easy — I just have never done it. So, Andrew and I are going to go on September long weekend, which is soon. I won’t finish posting about Poland before then.
Okay, so great-grandma was a Buhr. Her Buhr grandparents are buried in Mountain Lake, so I will visit their graves. But who were they and how did they get there? This is the rabbit hole I fell into last night. And in my unscholarly, haphazard, imaginative, bent toward the fantastic mind… somehow this led me to reading all about a grisly murder, which honestly has nothing to do with Mountain Lake, nor the Buhrs. It’s just the path I took to get there.
Using the Grandma Online database, I’ve been trying to unravel the background of this family, the American piece of my own story. (I acknowledge that it’s just as imperfect as the records and humans that have created it, but at the same time WOW this database is amazing!)
I was trying to figure out the story of Helena’s parents. Her Buhr grandparents seem to have arrived in Philadelphia and stayed in Mountain Lake, never coming to Canada. Her Buhr parents had their family (Helena and siblings) in Mountain Lake, but then immigrated to Saskatchewan. But what about her mother’s side — the Bergmans?
This was my rabbit hole.
I have previously fallen into this trap, in learning that Helena’s Bergman grandfather, Johann David, is actually buried in Reinland, so I need to go back and spend much more time in that village.
Johann was an interesting fellow, but that’s another post for another day. The thing that distracted me this time was tracing his story in terms of marriage. He was married four times. His first three wives died in South Russia. I am descended from his second wife, Gertruda, with whom he had most of his children. Gertruda passed away in 1869. Johann married his third wife, and she too passed away. He married a fourth time to Anna Wiebe in 1876. Together they immigrated to Canada in 1877 and settled in Reinland.
As far as I can tell, he only lived until 1886, and passed away when he was 61. All I know is that at this point I lost the thread. I was looking at Anna Wiebe’s profile and noticed a reference to an article in Preservings. Wanting to learn more about Anna Wiebe, I hauled out my copy and turned to the prescribed page. I had assumed it’d be a profile on pioneer women or something… but no. The headline that jumped out at me was ALTONA SHOOTINGS, OCTOBER 16, 1902.
Hmmm, a typo, I figured. But naturally I was curious about these shootings, so I read on.
I read the whole grisly story about the teacher Heinrich Toews, who shot and killed a 7-year-old student and wounded two other students, and three trustees.
How awful. Also not a great thing to read before bed. I’m so sad thinking about those little girls who were shot in their schoolhouse.
And then at the end of the article, there was mention of the murderer’s mother… Anna Wiebe. Johann’s fourth wife, with whom he had immigrated to Canada.
So… this murderer… would have been Helena’s step-great-uncle. I’m not sure if this means anything. I’m not sure how to learn more. And anyway, what was Helena’s connection to the West Reserve anyway if she was born in Mountain Lake and moved to Saskatchewan as a teenager four years after this murder in Manitoba had taken place? It really had nothing to do with her. Her maternal grandfather Johann Bergman passed away six years before she was born… but what was Helena’s mother’s relationship with her stepmother? And her stepbrother? From what I could read, Anna Wiebe was 82 when her youngest child committed this horrible crime. And I can’t help but think, what happened in Reinland?
From here you can see how I’ve certainly lost the plot. Deviated from my original intent of learning about Mountain Lake. This business of learning about a family’s past is fraught with dangers and distractions of all kinds. (And tangents. And erroneous assumptions.)
My “research” is only beginning.