WEDDING DAY... 1914

I got an e-mail from one of my cousin's daughters recently. She is researching her genealogy and going to make a family tree. The only problem... she knew nothing about her maternal grandmother's family… the Strutz side. It seems someone had filled her head with erroneous information and now it was my job to set her straight. She had had come to the right place.

I went to one of my filing systems, the attic, and found a box of old Strutz Family photos that my father got from his father when he died, and I got from my father when he died, and one my daughters will end up someday. My dad had big plans to go through those photos and put them in order when he retired… the only thing is: he never retired. When he got too old to go down to the jewelry store everyday, I think he was around 91, he was not up to the task of tackling the photos. I don't want to really give the wrong impression here, he didn't really work all that much, mostly just annoyed the hell out of my sister Marja, who dutifully ran the store… and he could have worked on the photos there… I don't think he really wanted to do it. 

  

But now, this treasure chest of memories has been passed on to me, or I was the one who took the box. Unlike him, though, I do have plans to share the photos. When we would look at them, I would say "Why don't you give the photos to my cousins? The ones of their parents." He would say "some day." But that 'some day' only came when he died and I got my hands on the box. I've mailed some off, and have scanned and posted some to my cousins… I'm sure some they have never seen before. It's easier for me than my dad, because he was a little too late to the 'scanner/computer party'...and I maybe feel a little more responsibility to share.

I realize I have a ready source for future stories… and this is the first:

My father's parents Theodore Edward Strutz and Dessa Averill, left Watertown, South Dakota in 1914, and headed to Alberta, Canada. My grandfather had graduated from the Stone School of Watchmaking in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1912, and Canada was giving away free land to attract settlers to help expand their country. They settled in Hanna, about 130 miles east of Calgary. He would be an Inspector for the Canadian National Railway and open a jewelry store. On Christmas Eve of that year, they were married.

Today, I was processing new books at my library for circulation... I laminate the covers of the paperback books to protect them, plus, a lot of stamping, etc.  The first book I picked up was... MASTERING ONLINE GENEALOGY by W. Daniel Quillen.  I thought "Hey, that's a good blog topic!".