Friday, August 26, 2011

Lars P. Moe - Short Biography

Lars Moe, Minnesota Pioneer

Lars Moe was born on July 14, 1844 in Norway. He came to America in 1864 with his parents, Peter Olsen Moe and Anna Augundsdatter Lad and a number of siblings. They first went to Black Earth, Wisconsin and then settled on Section One in the northeast corner of Town of Blue Mounds.

Lars and Ingeri about 1890

Friday, August 19, 2011

Wilderman Family (2) - Colonists & Pioneers

Part 2 - West, Into the Frontier
Find Part 1 of the story here . . .

Note, this post has been revised. The original 2-Part Wilderman Family series has been updated and more information has been added. The series has been expanded to 3 Parts with most of the new information found in Part 3.

In 1751 Jacob Wilderman and Johann Meyer left their small village in Baden, Germany and came to Colonial America. Among the 20 or so in their party were Johann's wife and four children, including daughter Elizabetha, who would later become Jacob's wife. They lived in Pennsylvania and Maryland. This was the home to many of the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers who came to the new world from the Rhine Valley in southern Germany. Jacob and Elizabetha's oldest son George grew up in this colonial environment and came of age right during the American Revolution.
Maryland about 1780; Baltimore and Ann Arundal Counties are in the upper center of the map.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Wilderman Family (1) - Colonists & Pioneers

Part 1 - German Colonist is the New Word

Note, this post has been revised. The original 2-Part Wilderman Family series has been updated and more information has been added. The series has been expanded to 3 Parts with most of the new information found in Part 3.

There is a lot of German ancestry in my blood, on both my mom and dad's side of the family. They are from many different parts of Germany and most settled in the Midwest in the middle of the 19th Century. The Kahl, Ostenberg and Bilse families were in Blue Mounds; the Goth family in Middleton, the Hermann family in Verona; the Goldner family in Chicago (possibly via Michigan); and the Pazel and Ebersold families, also in Chicago. These are typical of the ethnic Europeans that came to American in waves from the 1840s right through to the first World War. There is, however, another German family in my ancestry that came to America much earlier. They arrived before the country existed and settled in the British Colonies in the middle of the 18th century.