Week 39 Road Trip

“I love a good road trip! Have you ever taken an ancestral road trip? What did you discover? Maybe you have stories of an ancestor who took to the open road. Share the stories this week! Feel free to share your links and stories in the comments.” prompt from Amy Johnson Crow for Week 39.

Last summer I talked my husband into traveling back to his roots in North Dakota. We timed our trip to coincide with the Icelandic Festival that happens every August the Deuce. I had never been but had heard about it many times. We watched the parade, ate some food and bought a few mementos. We stopped at the beautiful little church. It is the oldest Icelandic church in North America, built in 1884 and remains an important part of the Icelandic community. My husband’s parents had their wedding reception at Vikur church. His great grandfather is supposed to be buried in this cemetery. We couldn’t find a stone for him, but they believe he is buried there. He was Thorfinnur Johannesson (1838-1900).

I took a few photos during the parade. Mostly I watched the cute kids who were deciding which candies were worth picking up. It was a candy parade.

We spent a great deal of our time wandering around cemeteries looking for relatives we knew and a few we didn’t realize we knew. Yes that is possible.

We drove around and he reminisced about his childhood as he pointed out his school, the different places people lived, the farm they lived on for a number of years, his grandmothers trailer, his dad’s bar, places he had adventures. In this picture my husband is standing where his childhood home was and remembering his dad planting that tree in their front yard.

On the last day we were there we discovered the Pembina County Historical Museum. The very nice woman working in the museum knew my husband was a Hartje just by looking at him. I’d have to go back and look up the connection but her husband and mine are somehow connected. She helped me quickly find a few interesting things in the building. If I have a chance I would definitely go back to look for more and maybe get better pictures of what I saw.

The majority of our time was spent in the cemeteries. I told him if the last name was Hartje, take a picture because I could figure out the relationship once we got back home. The Hartje families tended to be large. I have figured out all but about five, still working on those.

Hein Hartje is buried in southern Minnesota. The cemetery where he is buried or my Koch family in Wisconsin will probably be our next relative trip. The year before we hopped around cemeteries in Iowa to find many of my relatives. Trips like this give me a whole new perspective in the lives of my relatives. I know when we found my 3rd great grandfathers grave in a tiny cemetery way out in the middle of fields in Iowa, it made me wonder if they had been along the same drive. It was still a gravel road and I think must have been close to their farm, it gave me chills.

Have you taken a road trip to help with your genealogical research? Where would you like to go? I want to go to Scotland one day and Iceland. Hopefully it will happen.