Alexis Brinkman, Staff Assistant, North Dakota Horizons
While paging through the latest issue of North Dakota Horizons, I stumbled upon Kelly Hagen's article on the North Dakota state archives. Immediately, my interest was piqued. I have always been interested in the history of most anything at all, and I began thinking about my own family history. I am lucky to come from a family of excellent story tellers. Quite often, the only thing they're better at than telling the story is getting into the situation that the story evolved from.
Most of my great and great,great-grandparents immigrated to the United States between the late 1800s and 1920s. They came from Germany and settle in the southwest area of North Dakota. Most of my family remains in the area today. Those early years on the prairie surely provided ample opportunites to create a good family anecdote - including the the time my grandfather, then just 12-years old and already an excellent mechanic - took his first car for its first drive: down the hill, behind the house, and right into his mother, my great-grandmother Lydia. Thankfully, she was ok, but I would imagine there was no driving for a while.
One of my favorite pieces of family history involves Lydia, too. My great-grandma Lydia was born in 1901 in Amendorf, Saxon, Germany. She grew up in a town called Halle, and immigrated to the United States in 1923. She immigrated as a 'mail-order' bride. The story goes that upon landing at Ellis Island, the trunk that held her wedding dress and other belongings was stolen. After passing through she boarded the train to North Dakota and her future husband with nothing but the clothes on her back and a spare pair of pantyhose in her pocket.
I am amazed at the amount of determination this young woman must have posessed and often wonder what it was like to feel the pull to come to America in those days. To leave your home, your family and everything you've ever known at the age of 22 in order to board a ship to a foreign land, marry a man you've never met, and begin a new life on the harsh plans would require a certain amount of fearlessness.
I regret that I was not old enough to appreciate my family history when Lydia was still alive. Oh, what I would give now to sit down over a cup of tea and discuss that journey with my great-grandmother. Years later, in 1970, she returned to Germany to visit her sisters for the first time since 1923. In the photo to the left, she and my grandfather can be seen just before her departure. She returned to Germany again in 1992, at the feisty age of 91, and somehow managed to convince the customs agents to allow her to bring home the honeycomb she had been gifted.
If we dig deep enough, we all have interesting stories and characters in our family trees. The more I learn about my family, the more I want to know. I hope you'll take take the time to share your stories with your family. If they're too young to listen, write them down; they'll certainly appreciate it later. If you're a younger member of the family, ask your relatives about their early lives or that of their parents and grandparents; they'll be flattered you're interested.
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