Ole's Blog

Dear readers: I apologize for the long hiatus, but I am now back from three weeks in Norway with enough good stuff for at least a half-dozen articles.

The centerpiece of our journey was a four-day “roots” tour of the valley Gudbrandsdalen, from whence came all of my paternal ancestors, that is, all ancestors of Isaac Larson and Anna Moen.

As with most photos in this series, you may click on the image for a full-screen sized version.

With a lot of help from two extremely generous and knowledgeable local friends, we visited and photographed the farms where all of my great- and second-great grandparents were born, as well as some third- and older generations. Some, but not all, of these farms are listed on the map below.

Each of these farms, and others, will be featured in upcoming posts, grouped according to the associated ancestors. Of course, on many of them, there were no buildings or features old enough to have been around in those days, but on others, there were ruins or old structures that may very well have been there that long.

So keep in touch. Subscribe to the blog if this interests you, and please make any comments that may come to mind. I promise the first substantive post will be up within a few days. I will only be posting material of genealogical interest here. For lots more photos and comments from the rest of our Norway trip (where we were ordinary tourists), see my Facebook profile.

In the previous post, I told of  my acquisition of four laying hens, and my ruminations over the prospect of butchering them for the stew-pot when they get too old to lay eggs. As I was steeling my resolve,  I began to notice ads for free roosters. It seems that some backyard chicken-raisers would rather give away their surplus roosters than butcher them. The prospect of free meat, not just free of cost, but cage-free, pastured poultry, was appealing, to say the least. When an ad appeared for six young, full-sized roosters, I could no longer resist. I rigged up a temporary holding pen of straw bales, a tarp, and chicken wire, and that night, filled it with the six doomed birds. I left a phone message for my friend Kevin, an experienced home butcher, asking if he would help me with my first butchering project.

The next morning around 6:45, there began a chorus of cock-a-doodles and doodle-doo’s that was loud and continuous. I don’t know if all six were crowing, or if it was only two or three, but it didn’t let up for the next 15-20 minutes. After that, they would be silent for varying periods, then unleash another barrage.

Now, 6:45 on Saturday morning is not so early for me; I was already on my second cup of coffee. But I couldn’t get my mind off the neighbors. Were they cursing the unknown jerk who brought the creatures into their neighborhood? Were they gathering in secret to storm my garden? This is the city, for God’s sake. Mercifully, Kevin called me later in the morning. He agreed to help me butcher the chickens at his place, that afternoon.

Before noon, my wife, Thiel, had to leave. I was nervous about boxing the roosters for transport by myself, so decided to do it a little early, with her help. She followed me to the holding pen. I unfastened one corner of the wire, climbed inside, and with some difficulty caught the first bird. I placed it in a cardboard box outside the enclosure. Thiel held the box shut while I turned back to catch the next one.

That was when things got hairy. While we were busy, the remaining chickens had squeezed between the front of the bales and the wire, which it turns out was not fastened securely enough. All five of them were pushing slowly, single-file, through a 4-foot tunnel toward freedom. It was like a big, squirming conga line. Thiel moved to try and stop them, which allowed the boxed rooster to escape. Before Thiel could halt the tunnel traffic, the first bird in line had made it out.

We managed to get the four remaining captives back into the enclosure and better secure the wire. I captured one of the escapees with a fishing net, but the other one had flown from the garden enclosure, something the hens (whom I occasionally release from the “tractor”) had never even attempted.

Thiel left for her appointment, and I was on my own. Net in hand, I chased the vagrant around the neighborhood for an hour, never getting closer than about 30 feet, before deciding that approach was hopeless. With an improved enclosure and a better technique (I remembered that you catch them by the feet, not the body), I got the five roosters into two boxes to haul to Kevin’s farm.

The butchering itself was uneventful. Kevin and two other friends did most of the work, while making sure I performed each step at least once under their supervision. In less than an hour, all five birds were freezer-ready, and I knew first-hand how it was done.

Before dark that evening, I walked the neighborhood hoping to catch a glimpse of the lost rooster, or to hear him crow. Nothing. The next morning, I was outdoors early, in hopes he would begin crowing at first twilight (as they all had done the day before), while it was still dark enough to approach and catch him. Nothing. Oh well, maybe a skunk, raccoon, or coyote had made a meal of him during the night. Easy come, easy go, and at least the neighborhood was quiet again.

But oh, no, after it was fully light, the crowing began. He crowed three or four times over the space of about a minute, was silent for several minutes, then repeated the cycle. This made it easy to locate him, in a tiny wooded area right next to a neighbor’s house. He was in the low branches of a juniper tree, but when I approached within 30 feet, he became extremely nervous. It was obvious that if I came any closer, he would fly out into the open, or higher up in the tree. I gave up any hope of catching him in broad daylight, walking away from him still in the tree. The intermittent crowing continued until mid-morning, then stopped.

That afternoon, an acquaintance from church, who had somehow found out about my hens, telephoned to ask if any of my birds were missing. She had come home, a good quarter-mile from my house (across a busy street), to find the rooster in her backyard, scratching around under a bird feeder. I rushed over with my net, sneaked quietly around the house, but as I feared, at the first glimpse of me from across the yard, he bolted out of there, into a large, overgrown pasture. My friend said maybe he would find his way home, but I had my doubts. I took another walk before dark, listening again, but apparently roosters mostly crow during the morning hours.

To my surprise, the bird did find his way back to the previous night’s roosting area, where he again began crowing, well after daylight. All morning, I monitored his crowing, which seemed to move around only a little. My plan took shape. After it was fully dark, I came with a light, locating him in the very same tree, knowing that he would be virtually helpless in the dark. With Thiel’s help, the fugitive was captured, with a lot of squawking but no apparent injury. The peace of the neighborhood was restored, but now I had another butchering job on my hands.

I set things up in the backyard the next morning, and plunged(!) into the project all by myself. It took me a full hour, during which I definitely broke a sweat, but the results were acceptable, with no mishaps worse than a shallow finger cut.  Two days, later, we cooked the bird, and if I do say so myself, he was delicious. Not quite as tender as a cage-raised, commercial fryer, but incomparably tastier, and far less fatty. All’s well that ends well (for us, not for the chicken). Chicken-killing is not something I would want to do every day, or even every week, but I may try my luck again in next year’s “free rooster season.” The image below is from backyardchickens.com.

Similar to my lost & found rooster

Next: forward into the past (back to genealogy).

First, let me make the genealogy connection, weak though it may be. When I was a child, my parents kept banty chickens, mainly for their eggs. As Mother fried them, she would observe, “Look how those yolks stand up and salute,” a humorous compliment she probably learned from her parents. Even so, she must have been contrasting them with eggs from the 1950′s supermarket. Our eggs were small, but very tasty, as I remember.

Of course, as a side project, Dad also butchered chickens for eating; both “stewing hens” (past their laying age), and “fryers” (surplus young roosters). I am not too clear on the details, but I think they normally took the birds to my grandfather’s house, about a mile away. Grandpa Larson also butchered his own chickens to sell to neighbors. Sister Bonnie and several cousins have commented on these memories. I remember some of the killing sessions, also the pedal-powered sharpening stone Grandpa used to sharpen his hatchet and probably his butchering knives as well. We children were not required to do any of the work; I mainly remember the chickens literally “running around with their heads cut off.”

Now, 63 years old myself, I have plunged into backyard chicken culture. First it was the coop and the hens. I was tired of caged-chicken eggs, and craved the “real thing” of my childhood memories. The recent Salmonella scare was also a consideration. I began “stalking” Craigslist in the farm-and-garden section. Before long, I bought a used “chicken tractor” from one seller, and four young hens from another. Chicken Tractors are all the rage. Just Google the term to see what I mean.

After a couple of weeks, the first hen started laying. Even before then, though, I started thinking toward the future. Hopefully, all four hens will be laying soon, but in two years or so, they will stop again due to “old age.” What then? The obvious answer: stewed chicken and dumplings, another favorite food of my childhood. Also obvious: the need to kill and butcher the birds in that event. So, I began reading up on backyard chicken butchering. There are a lot of “how-to’s” on the web, and it didn’t look too hard. Not pleasant, mind you, but I could hardly continue to eat meat in good conscience, if I could not stand up to the reality of the pasture-to-plate transition. I resolved that when the time came, I would be prepared to do the deed. As luck would have it, things happened much faster.

Next: The Renegade Rooster

I have not been idle since my last posting. In mid-October, I attended a genealogy seminar in Medford, Oregon, my first “formal education” in the field. I got a lot of good ideas for new ways to poke around at the several dead-ends I have been griping about. At the same time, I met cousin Gail Myers at his home near Medford. It was our first face-to-face meeting, after several years of lively correspondence. Long-time readers will recognize his name as a key contributor to my work, and consequently to this site.

Gail’s niece from South Carolina, cousin Paula Aldous Howell, used my visit as an excuse to fly to Oregon to see her uncle, and also to meet me for the first time. Paula has unearthed a lot of important documents, including some on the Wyoming Valley, and some military records of Henry B. Myers and Stephen B. Myers.

But after the conference, events intervened to slow down my work quite a bit. First, a visit to California for several family functions. And since then, I have been immersed in a project quite far removed from genealogy, except for one important link. I will “spill the beans” within a couple of days. Stay tuned.

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new “room” on the website, entitled “Descendants.” It appears in the navigation section above and throughout the site. However, it is a “private” area, since unlike the rest of the site, it includes many living individuals. I have sent the username and password to my email list of extended family. If you have not received it, and are a relative of mine, or think you might be, or feel a need for the information to further your research, please email me, or post a comment and I will get back to you.

At present, there is only one item in the category, but it is a big one: “Larsons & Slettens 1985″ by cousin Aline.

For those of you not familiar with it, it is a book of 160 pages, covering all the descendants, down to 1985, of not only Ole Larson, but also his sisters Mari and Marit (Larsdatter), and all the Slettens (with whom the Larsons are so intricately intermarried). I haven’t counted up the descendants in it, but there must be a good thousand. The book is in PDF format, with searchable text and lots of navigation links. I hope to post much more content in the coming weeks, to include descendants in other branches of my (very) extended family.

For those readers who are following this blog in a more general way, stay tuned. Next up: Martha Bennet Myers, Historian.

This is a stitch! In the summer of 1979, my mother, the late Reatha “MeMe” Larson, visited Norway with my Uncle Vernon and Aunt Audrey Larson, also both deceased. She mailed the postcard below to her sister, Esther, in Longview.Nothing too remarkable about the card, except for the postmarks: Norway, some date in 1979, and Portland, Oregon, 10 Aug. 2010. It was then delivered to the Baltimore St. address, 31 years after it was mailed from Norway! Of course in the meantime, Uncle Buck has passed away, and Aunt Esther has moved her residence a half-dozen times. Esther received the postcard from the current resident, and loaned it to me to scan for the archives.

Every so often you hear about this kind of thing, but this is the first time I have been so closely involved. Send in the post-office jokes!

Here is a photo I found on findagrave.com.
Its location is Mt. Olivet cemetery, Frederick, MD, in which also lies the grave of Francis Scott Key, writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

It is a long-shot, but I am investigating the possibility this might be Philip Myers’ brother. According to cousin Paula, Michael Myers (brother of Philip) is the great-great grandfather of Dr. Charles Myers, author of  “A Connecticut Yankee in Penn’s Woods: the Life and Times of Thomas Bennet.” Michael Myers is not my direct ancestor, but I am keenly interested in finding anything out I can about him, in hopes it may lead to his (and Philip’s) parents, who purportedly immigrated from Germany, and settled in Frederick, MD in the 1760′s, but who are otherwise a total mystery, including even their names.

Michael himself is almost as vague; all I have from Paula is his name – no spouse, dates, or residence history. Also on Internet genealogy sites, his name appears (as the father of Madison Myers) with no other information. No Michael Myers is listed bearing the vital information shown on the gravestone above.

The “gravestone Michael’s” birth date is in the ball park, but so far, no other indication or counter-indication, other than geography. Incidentally, I found the marriage record of this couple (6 Oct. 1792) in a printed source, Marriage Licenses of Frederick County 1778-1810 by Margaret E. Myers(!). Despite the author’s name, this is no real help in connecting or disconnecting the gravestone with the brother of my fourth great-grandfather.

The monument in the photo looks relatively new, indicating some interest on the part of their descendants, whom I am trying to identify, locate, and contact.

Information relating to the family’s immigration from Germany is very sketchy and somewhat contradictory – e.g., the purported year of their journey, 1760, falls in the middle of the Seven Years’ War (called the “French & Indian War” in the US). During these years, European immigration to the New World was at a virtual standstill. 1766, the alternative given by at least one printed source, is more likely historically, but without the father’s name, I am pretty much grasping at straws.

Anecdotally, distant cousin Harry Myers, of Port Clinton, Ohio, told me that Philip’s family first arrived in Philadelphia, before settling in Maryland. He did not know the source of that tidbit. If true, it is helpful, as surviving immigrant lists are fairly extensive for Philly, although far from complete. They are all consolidated in the book, Pennsylvania German Pioneers … 1727-1808, by Ralph Strassburger. As already mentioned, the Seven Years’ War pretty much interrupted the flow. Out of a total 324 ships listed between 1727 and 1775 carrying German immigrants to Philadelphia, only one is shown between 1756 and 1763. Of course, cousin Harry may have been incorrect; Philip and family may have sailed directly to Maryland colony. Passenger lists for Maryland arrivals during any of  the 18th century are nonexistent, as far as I currently know. But we can assume that there was a similar dearth of arrivals there during the Seven Years’ (aka French & Indian) War.

At least I think we can. It occurred to me that other ports, such as Baltimore, may have been less affected by the fighting than was Philadelphia. But it looks like the war in Europe was equally responsible. The page I had copied from Eighteenth Century register of emigrants from Southwest Germany by Werner Hacker, contains almost 120 names (all with the surname Mayer – that is how this book spells Myers). Of the 120, only one emigrated during the war years.

And so, the search continues. Stay tuned.

A valuable, if indirect, contributor to our family history research has passed from this life. Cousin Gail Myers informed me that his elder brother, Lawrence, died suddenly of a stroke the evening of July 29.

Larry was born November 27, 1920, in Clark, SD. Like Gail, he was the son of Lawrence Myers and Pauline Engen. The elder Lawrence was a brother of my grandfather Dan Myers; both were sons of Stephen Bennett Myers, whose Civil War service we are currently exploring on this site.

While Larry and I never met, nor had direct contact, I am deeply grateful for the information and documents he has contributed, through his brother Gail. My prayers for comfort and consolation for Larry’s entire family.

Here is Larry’s obituary in the Sheboygan (WI) Press.

I will keep this post on top for a little while, to alert readers that there is a new way to explore some of the archives. In the “pages” section of the sidebar at your right, I am grouping several multi-part series, and some posts that were not serial, but together make up a coherent narrative. There are a few new pictures, and some of the entries are clarified and expanded. Please visit the “pages,” especially if you have not closely followed my “posts” over the past two years.