Aaah How I've Missed You!

My posts have been scarce this past week.  In fact I think this has been the longest I've gone without posting, but this past week and weekend have been truly hectic!  I'm the PTA President and we had our Fall Carnival on Friday.  The chairperson and committee put on a spectacular event, but we were all more than a little tired by that evening!  The very next day it was time for Cub Scout camping with a haunted hayride thrown in.  I didn't camp, but I did go out for the day and then came home so my beagle could go outside!  Monday evening was the Pack awards ceremony and I'm the Awards Chair, so more work!

With all that finished I can get back to what I love.  And just in time since my blogiversary will be on Wednesday!  Until that post (and I can catch up on the 1000+ items in my Google Reader)...

Follow Friday - The News Edition (More or Less)

CNN posted about a trend that people will most likely see when researching their trees in the future in an article titled, "More Latinos Identify as Native American, Census Shows."  An interesting article, but I didn't consider it unexpected.  I was actually surprised it wasn't happening much sooner.

Genealogists/Family Historians tend to travel...a lot.  What apps do you use when you travel to make your trip run smoothly?  Brett Snyder has a blog "The Cranky Flier" which may interest many, but he also writes for CNN occasionally and his post on their news site, "Travel Apps That Really Help" was very good.

Jenn Woods at "Climbing My Family Tree One Branch at a Time" always has such great posts.  She recently posted about a murder that her ancestor gave testimony about.  Always interesting to read and very exciting!

Researching German ancestors?  Then you'll eventually need to dealing with German script and handwriting.  Nancy over at "My Ancestors and Me, and other relatives, too..." has a post for you!  A German genealogical must!

And wrapping it up are two videos.  The first a friend shared with me.  It was posted on Yahoo! News (it was from KCCI News in Iowa) and it was about a couple that were married for 72 years and they died holding hands.  Not to be morbid or anything...I just found it sweet.

The second just happened to start playing immediately after the previous story and was also from KCCI.  It was a story about Oak Grove Cemetery and the damage time has caused by eroding away a hillside and the graves ending up in a ravine.  Tim Schultz (an area landscaper) is looking to help rectify that situation by building a retaining wall, but the red tape is hard to get through.

Wedding Wednesday - Martin Blanchfield and Anna Boyle

As I wondered what I was going to post on this evening, I received an email from a cousin (thanks for the post idea, Rebecca!) with a great article published in the New York Times, published on February 26, 1875.  Why was this significant?  It was a story on a horrible collapse that occurred at St. Andrew's Church in New York City.  The same church that our ancestors, Martin Blanchfield and Anna Boyle, were married in less than a year later.

So I figured I'd post the marriage certificate that was sent to me a few years back from Saint Andrew's.  It's a transcription as you can see from the "19" being crossed out in the year and "18" being written.  I may transcribe the article at some point as well, but not today.  It is a tale of panic, and not something for a wedding!

Sacrament of Matrimony (transcribed from church records)

Martin and Anna Blanchfield nee Boyle were my 2nd great grandparents.  Martin was born in Ireland.  Anna in Pennsylvania.  Married in New York City at Saint Andrew's Church on January 9, 1976.  They would have twelve(-ish) children:

Mary, Alice (my great grandmother), Annie, William, Josephine, Lillian, Catherine, Joseph, and 4 children of unknown name/gender that are remembered as numbers in censuses.  We don't know if they were stillborn or died young, but they didn't live long enough to have their names recorded in a census.

Anna has always been dear to my heart, but what ancestor isn't?  You love them all, right?  As I approach my first blogiversary, I have been preparing a series of posts on what started my world of blogging and it happens to be an incident that took her father's life.  Anna is dear to me because she was born after her father left America to mine for gold in Australia, and he died on his way back.  A great sacrifice made by a man that wanted to bring a better life to his family.  Years away from his family in a great effort to try to escape the coal mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania.  That sacrifice was not to benefit them, however, and his youngest daughter would never know the arms of her father.

Amanuensis Monday - The Long Lost Dennis Dugan

I've blogged before about Dennis Dugan and his first wife, Bessie Dugan nee Quirk.  Bessie was my great-great aunt and she died shortly after giving birth to a daughter.  I've often wondered what happened to that daughter, but so far (despite previous moments of inspiration on the subject) I have been unable to figure out if she died young, moved away to live with other family, or if she grew up and simply got married and led a normal life.

In an attempt to try to find out what happened to her I finally tracked down some obituaries for her father, Dennis, and his 2nd wife.  Sadly, there was no mention of her in the obituaries, so back to square one.  Her not being mentioned does lead me to believe that her life was most likely cut short.  Perhaps she even died prior to her father remarrying.  Who knows.  I'd like to avoid Pennsylvania doing a broad search for her death record, but it may come to that if I keep banging my head against this brick wall.

Dennis' daughter, Betty/Elizabeth (named after her mother), did have some half-siblings though.  I do often wonder if they ever knew her.  Was her name even mentioned after she passed?  Ah well.  On to her father's obituary:

The Globe Times - 17MAY1954, pg8

"Dennis J. Dugan

Dennis J. Dugan, 711 Pawnee St., a former employee [sic] of Bethlehem Steel, died unexpectedly at 8:30 a.m. today in his home.

A resident of Bethlehem for 45 years he was born in Audenried [sic], Pa.  He was a member of St. Ursula's Church in Fountain Hill, of the Protection Hose Co. and of the South Side Fireman's Relief Assn.

His survivors include his wife, Rose (King) Dugan; two sons, James of Bethlehem and Francis, at home; two daughters, Sister Rose Dennis Dugan, SSJ, Church of the Ascension in Philadelphia, and Mary wife of James Phillips at home; and two sisters, Mrs. William O'Donnell and Margaret Dugan of Washington, D. C. Three grandchildren also survive."

The Peshtigo Fire - A Miracle From the Ashes

The statue of Mary inside the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help

As promised I'm ending my posts on this historic tragedy on a miraculous note.  I'm not speaking figuratively.  I'm not saying "It's a miracle my husband's ancestors survived".  I'm grateful that they survived, and it could be viewed as miraculous, but I'm talking church acknowledged miracle! This miracle didn't happen in the town of Peshtigo.  It was across the bay in a town called Robinsonville that was also under attack by the series of fires collectively known as the "Great Peshtigo Fire"....and it's the sort of story that makes you believe in miracles if you didn't already.  A little history...

Adele Brise (also spelled Brice) was a young Belgian immigrant who came to America with her family and settled in Wisconsin.  She had originally wanted to stay behind in her native Belgium and join a convent with some other girls, but after talking with her priest, he advised her to do what any good priest would...to follow her parents wishes and go to America with them.  He told her that if she was meant for a religious order that she would no doubt find one in the United States.  So instead of a convent Adele found herself in a heavily wooded area of Wisconsin.

Mary as Adele described

Adele was very religious.  She would walk to church every week...ELEVEN MILES to church every week!  In October of 1859 Adele experienced not one, but 3 Marian Apparitions.  The first was as Adele was walking to a grist mill 4 miles from Robinsonville with a sack of wheat on her head.  She saw a lady in white standing in her path on the trail she was walking.  She stopped, frightened and remained still until the lady disappeared before her eyes a few minutes later.

The second time was that Sunday as she walked to church.  Her sister walked with her and in the exact same place, Adele saw the lady before her in the distance.  She stopped, again afraid.  Her sister could not see the woman.  Eventually she disappeared and they continued to church.  After Mass Adele spoke with her priest about what she saw.  The priest told her that the spirit would not hurt her, but to ask in God's name what she wanted.

On the way home from mass that day, Sunday, October 9th, 1859, Adele again saw the apparition before her.  The people with her stopped as she knelt and asked the apparition , "In God's name, who are you, and what do you want of me?"  The response that Adele got was that the apparition was the "Queen of Heaven" and she commanded that Adele teach the children their catechism, how to make the sign of the Cross, and how to receive the Sacraments.

On that spot Adele's father (Lambert Brice) built a ten by twelve foot structure to mark the spot of the visions.  Not everyone believed in what Adele saw, but that did not deter her.  Over the years, as people began to make pilgrimages to the spot and as Adele began to fulfill the promise she made to teach the children, the structure grew and the land that held the school and chapel was consecrated.  The Chapel became known as "Our Lady of Good Help."

Twelve years later, almost to the day Adele spoke to the apparition of Mary, the fires erupted.  This is the account of what happened that night as printed in the book "The Chapel:  Our Lady of Good Help" (Sister M. Dominica, O.S.F, 1955):

Stained glass windows in the Shrine

"We do not propose to pass judgment on the reasons for this catastrophe, but we know that twelve years later almost to the day, October 8, 1871, the great calamity fell.  The Belgian colony which embraced a large part of the peninsula,  was visited by the same whirlwind of fire and wind that overwhelmed Peshtigo.  Here, as across the Bay, the forest fires had crept on for weeks and months, and on the same Sunday night came whirling over the Lake and Bay counties.  The Wisconsin peninsula, too, was the scene of an awesome drama.  A terrible, ten-fold wind sprang up from the southeast and fanned the smoldering fires into a mighty wave, submerging the whole peninsula into a raging sea of fire and smoke.

After weeks of fear and suspense, the hour struck and the great forest rocked and tossed simultaneously.  In one awful instant, before expectation could give way to horror, the black-curtained sky burst forth into great clouds of fire.  The day had been prophetically [sic] still; smoke and gases filled the air.  An ominous dread gripped the minds and hearts of every living creature, even the wild beasts of the forests mingled with men as both fled in terror before a great consuming roaring fire circling all within its fiery grasp.  At first the roaring blaze thundered like great cataracts among the tree-tops, but as it gained momentum, it sounded like the distant roar of the sea giving place to thunderous fury mingled with a tornado of fire.

A survivor wrote that if one could imagine the worst snow storm he ever witnessed, and each flake a coal or spark of fire driven before a terrifying wind, he would have an idea of the atmosphere at the time the fire struck.  Hundreds of families were driven from their homes, many being overtaken by the rain of fire.

Adele Brise's photo at the Shrine

'This is judgment; this is the end of the world,' was uttered by a frenzied mob dashing wildly for means of escape made impassable by fallen timber and burning bridges.  Land and sky in flames, wild confusion of the elements, while men looking on, stupefied [sic] with horror, were withering with fear.  It was indeed a terrifying spectacle.

The wide spreading track of ruin covered the greater part of the peninsula from Green Bay to Lake Michigan, and from the neighborhood of Green Bay on the south to 'Death's Door' on the north.  In the town of Green Bay, the fire entered at the southeast corner and swept on the wings of the wind to the north east.  It extended into parts of Outagamie, Kewaunee, Door, and Brown counties.  The towns of Humboldt, Green Bay, New Franken, Casco, Brussels, Rosiere, Lincoln, Robinsonville and many others were scathed with a whirlwind of flame which devoured the woods, leaped across clearings, and lopped everything inflammable in its path.  The area burned was not less than fifty miles in length and twenty average miles wide.  The burning belt widened as it advance.  Nothing could be done to stop its forward march, and the Chapel of Our Lady of Good Help lay in its path.

The crucial hour had come, the hurricane of fire broke in all its fury.  Adele and her companions were faced with a momentous decision.  They were determined not to abandon Mary's shrine, and their faith in Mary's protection never faltered.  The children, the Sisters, and the farmers with their families, drove their livestock before them and raced in the direction of Mary's sanctuary.  They were now encircled by a raging inferno with no means of escape.  Looking back, they saw their buildings literally swallowed by the fiery monster.  By this time the surrounding territory was one vast sea of fire.  Awe-stricken, they thronged the Chapel grounds.  Already the Chapel was filled with terror-stricken people beseeching the Mother of God to spare them, many wailing aloud in their fright.  Filled with confidence, they entered the Chapel, reverently raised the statue of Mary, and kneeling bore it in procession around their beloved sanctuary.  When wind and fire exposed them to suffocation, they turned in another direction, and continued to hope and pray, saying the rosary.

Statues of children kneeling on the grounds of the Shrine

'Thus passed for them the long hours of that terrible night.  I know not if, supported only by nature, they would have been able to live through that awful ordeal, ' so wrote Father Pernin, hero of the 'Peshtigo Fire.'

After hours of horror and suspense, the heavens sent relief in the form of a downpour.  The fervent prayers to the Mother of God were heard.  The fire was extinguished, but dawn revealed the ravages wrought by the conflagration.  Everything about them was destroyed;  miles of desolation everywhere.  But the Convent, school, Chapel, and the five acres of land consecrated to the Virgin Mary shone like an emerald isle in a sea of ashes.  The raging fire licked the outside palings and left charred scars as mementos.  Tongues of fire had reached the Chapel fence, and threatened destruction to all within its confines - the fire had not entered the Chapel grounds."

A fire so fierce that it destroyed most everything in its path did not destroy Our Lady of Good Help.  It was 151 years after the apparition of Mary to Adele, 139 years after the miracle at Our Lady of Good Help occurred that the Roman Catholic Church finally acknowledged the visions of Adele Brise.  On December 8th, 2010 Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay announced, "I declare with moral certainty and in accord with the norms of the Church that the events, apparitions and locutions given to Adele Brise in October 1859 do exhibit the substance of supernatural character, and I do hereby approve these apparitions as worthy of belief (although not obligatory) by the Christian faithful."

Candles lit by visitors inside the Shrine

That declaration made Our Lady of Good Help the first and only approved Marian apparition/shrine in the United States.  You can read more about the Churches declaration and the Shrine, by going to the Diocese's website here.

Within 2 weeks of the announcement my family and I were back in Green Bay visiting for the Holidays.  It is hard to convey the feeling of knowing that this happened so close to where my in-laws were.  The first Marian Shrine in our backyard.  I took my boys and my mother-in-law and we visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help.  I didn't know what to expect.  The grounds were pretty, but looked like any other church.  The crypt where the statue of Mary is located, and the site of the original vision, is in the basement.  The Church built on top of it.  It is small, but I thought it beautiful.  I lit a candle to my father-in-law who had passed away earlier in the year, and to my cousin who was killed by her husband earlier in the year.  I finally lit a candle in honor of all my family's ancestors and prayed for awhile.

Crutches left behind

When I was done, and without disturbing the few others that were in the Shrine, I took out my camera and took some flashless photography to remember this place.  I took pictures of the crutches that people left behind.  Those that since 1859 came to the Shrine using crutches and left them behind as they walked away.

Our Lady of Good Help was being visited by newspapermen from the New York Times the day that we visited.  They asked my mother-in-law if she believed.  Without hesitating, she replied that she did.  A bit ridiculous if you thought about it.  Why would you visit if you didn't?  We weren't offended though.  We were glad that it was being reported on.  Glad to see that after so many years and so many people thinking Adele Brise was lying or demented that the Church acknowledged what she always knew to be true.

With everything that happened during the Great Peshtigo Fire, how could I or anyone not view what happened on that spot as anything other than miraculous!

The cemetery at the Shrine

Peshtigo - Why Did it Happen?

Click on map to be taken to Rootsweb's Peshtigo Fire page

Who knows?  There are lots of guesses, but it's hard to determine which is correct. Some believe that it was the work of a comet.  Others due to fires intentionally set to clear the area as a fire prevention measure.  Still others believe that there was one fire and that it jumped the bay.  So who is right?

Well, I've got no scientific proof, but I really don't think it takes much to figure out at least part of it.  No one debates the fact that there was an extreme drought that took place that year in Wisconsin and parts of Michigan.  Naturally, with dry conditions there are bound to be fires.  Some were man-made (as a part of manufacturing, clearing large areas to ready for farming/building, to prevent fires, etc).  Some may have been nature-made (lightning).  Sorry, I'm not a big comet-theory believer.  Show me the rock, baby! That one just seems like there has to be someone trying to become a member of the Who's-Got-The-Oddest-Theory-Club.

The bottom line (to me) is that there had been fires.  The inhabitants of the various towns and of the country-side had been fighting them for awhile.  If you've ever been camping you get absolutely nagged to make sure your campfire is completely out.  What if it's not?  Fire.

Moving on a bit.  A strong frontal system moved through the area the evening of October 8th.  What usually occurs when a weather front comes through?  Wind.  In this case the winds were described as almost hurricane force and many survivors described being thrown to the ground several times by the wind.  Think about that one.  How strong does the wind have to be to throw an adult to the ground?

So we've got small piles of smoldering ash/pine needles/leaves that people previously fought to put out and a giant wind comes along.  What happens when you blow on something like that...Fire.  Oxygen feeds the fire.  It starts it up again, but it needs more.  It needs something to consume.  To burn.  Wisconsin was (and frankly still is) a heavily wooded area.  Dinnertime.

Aftermath of the Peshtigo Fire 1871

The frontal system just pushed that fire through.  The area was extremely dry to begin with so it didn't take much to ignite.  To spread...and it did.

I don't know why the whole attachment to thinking it all started in Peshtigo and jumped the Green Bay to hit the Door County Peninsula.  It kind of makes me laugh because the Bay is at least 5 miles across.  Jumping rivers?...Yes.  It jumped the Peshtigo River easily and tormented those taking refuge in the water.  Jumping a 5 mile wide bay?  Well, you'd have to prove the possibility of that to me because it's too funny.  Perhaps I'll be proven wrong one day.  Maybe I should call Myth Busters and see if they can figure it out. Until then, I still think it more likely that fires that had been burning were advanced quicker and those that had been incompletely extinguished had been revived.  The name the "Great Peshtigo Fire" is used because Peshtigo was the area hardest hit.

Any way you theorize it the combination of drought, fire and wind was deadly.  Luckily today, we have the means to monitor our weather and to evacuate people in danger.  We know the danger is coming.

I hope we never see another Peshtigo-type fire.  Living in Texas this year has caused me to think of Peshtigo often.  In my neck of the woods we hear about fires almost daily, and the wind in Killeen is no joke.  But we are better prepared today.

Now I have posted about many depressing and down-right scary things this week, but as promised, I will be ending on a positive note.  A miracle.  Until tomorrow...

The Peshtigo Fire - Illustrating an Absence of Ancestors

The Appleton Post Crescent 08OCT1963, pg 12

As I blog through the week on the Great Peshtigo Fire, I am reminded that there were many disasters, plagues, and even small accidents that could explain why we can't find an ancestor we are searching for.  It is always good to know a bit about great disasters and plagues, but don't forget to troll through those reels of newspaper microfilm that may have hints about what happened to ancestors.

This won't solve every problem as this article on the 92nd anniversary of the Peshtigo Fire illustrates in the final paragraph.  If an ancestor was transient during a period, you may never find them.  Many of the transient workforce killed in the Peshtigo Fire may never be accounted for and therefore we may never know the true loss of life experienced.

"Peshtigo Scene Of Devastating Fire in 1871

1,200 Persons Died In Blaze Which Swept Lumber Town

PESHTIGO (AP) - Today is the 92nd anniversary of the great Peshtigo fire, on of the worst disasters in Wisconsin history.

Twelve hundred persons died in the terrible conflagration that destroyed the small lumbering town in northeastern Wisconsin - 800 in Peshtigo, another 400 in the surrounding area.

The destruction was complete.  Flames devoured every building in town save one - a house that was under construction.

An accident of history prevented the Peshtigo fire from receiving the attention it deserved.  For it was on the same day, Oct. 8, 1871 - a Sunday - that Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern to start the great Chicago fire, or so the oft-repeated story goes.  The Chicago fire claimed 250 lives.

Slow Burning Fire

The Peshtigo fire was an outgrowth of a series of slow-burning blazes in pine needle blankets and peat bogs.  The acrid smell was in the air for weeks before and volunteers had been in and out of the woods trying to extinguish them.

Fanned by galelike winds, the small fires merged, forests were soon ablaze and flames roared into the village.  This was a Sunday night.  The time:  about 10 p.m.

Ran for Lives

Within 20 minutes the entire town was ablaze and residents were running for their lives toward the Peshtigo River in the center of the community.  Many made it:  some did not.

The fire raged through the night.  At daybreak when the wind had died down the flames abated, and the heart-rending task of searching for the missing began.

The death toll continued to rise for days as fever and shock claimed additional victims.

Officially, Peshtigo's population was listed at 1,750 at the time of the fire.  But historians say hundreds of transient workmen, many of them immigrants, also were living in the village or nearby.  Many were trapped and died in the flames."