Ole Peterson & the Peterson Family (3)

Part Three - Olaus and the Next Generation

If you missed Part 1 of the story, go here . . .
If you missed Part 2 of the story, go here . . .

The family of Peter Olsen Moe and Anna Augundsdatter Lad came to Wisconsin from Norway in 1864 and eventually settled in the Town of Blue Mounds. Their eldest child Ole, who went by the name Ole Peterson had come over a couple of years earlier. After a brief stint in the Union Army, he would set down roots in Blue Mounds and would be a founding father of the Village of Mount Horeb. By the turn of the century, large parts of his farm would be absorbed into village limits. After his death, Ole would leave a large family in the Blue Mounds / Mount Horeb area to carry on. One of children, Olaus would build a house just a few doors down from the Peterson farmhouse, operate his own business and raise his family.

Present-day north-central Mount Horeb showing the heart of the former Ole
Peterson farm with the farmhouse (toward the top). Also note Ole's Main
Street house, the Olaus Peterson house and Peterson Plumbing and Heating.

Ole Peterson & the Peterson Family (2)

Part Two - The Petersons, a First Family of Mount Horeb
If you missed Part 1 of the story, go here . . .

The family of Peter Olsen Moe and Anna Augundsdatter Lad were farmers from the fiord's of Norway. They would leave their home and venture to America between 1862 and 1864, settling in the Town of Blue Mounds in south-central Wisconsin. Son Ole came first, but he was not an early settler to Blue Mounds. The first settlers had come as early as the 1830's and were mostly "easterners" that were heading west after America's independence. Later, starting in the 1840's and accelerating in the 1850's and 1860's, European immigrants from Germany, Switzerland, Norway and other places began to populate the Blue Mounds area.

The Peterson farmhouse; built in the late 1870's or early 1880's. It still
stands today on what is now Grove Street in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.

Ole Peterson & the Peterson Family (1)

Part One - Before there was Peterson, there was Moe

The Peterson family, their descendants and allied families have lived in the Town of Blue Mounds, the Village of Mount Horeb and other surrounding communities for about six generations. Ole Peterson, who arrived in 1862 would have a large family and thus the Peterson name would be fairly prominent in the area during the later half of the 19th Century and for much of the 20th Century. In the telling of family history, Ole is often sited as the starting point . . . the immigrant who came to America and started a family in this new place.

Sogn e Fjord and Hafslo are located in west-central Norway. This
is the ancestral home of Peter Olsen Moe and Ole Peterson.

History Page Added - More Stuff

I've been thinking about ways to add more information to this website; specifically, more photos and some of the many documents that reside in my archive. The goal was to add a page (or pages) to display these images. I also wanted to do it in a way that was not too difficult and would not require too much serious HTML work. Blogger can be a powerful tool but when it comes to plugins and widgets, it is not as well developed as WordPress or some other platforms (not that I am complaining). I like things "out of the box" and am not really interested in changing the template, so I needed to look around for some help. Specifically, I was interested in creating a "thumbnail page" that would show many images at a glance. This would contrast with the slide shows that reside at the bottom of the page. After looking around a bit, and reading a lot of "how to" topics, I finally found a way to add a table - of sorts - in a new page. The method looked like something I could handle and the page appearance was "good enough" at least for now.

Francis O'Neil and the O'Neil Family - Part 1

The O'Neil Family, Ireland, Scotland, Wisconsin, Iowa

This post, about Francis O'Neil started off as part of my Short Biography series but is has grown significantly as more information has come to light. For that reason, I have pulled this one out of the Short Biographies and have elevated it to a Family Story.

Francis O'Neil was born in 1812 in County Armagh in Ireland (now Northern Ireland). He is reported to be the son of James O'Neil (b.1785, d.1817) and Nancy (Agnes) Hughes (b.1787). James was born in County Antrim and is reported to have had a least two brothers, John and Barney. Not much else has been found about this or prior generations of the O'Neil family. When Francis was about five years old, his father died, and his mother took the children and moved to Scotland.

Francis O'Neil and Elizabeth Nevin

1940 Census - Once in a Lifetime

Something is about to take place that only happens once and takes 72 years; truly a "once in a lifetime event." In just a few days, on April 2nd of 2012, the individual family records of the 1940 census will be unveiled and made available to the public. It will also be the first census to go almost immediately into digital format.

Reuben Holcomb I - Short Biography

Reuben T. Holcomb - Wisconsin Pioneer

I find Reuben Holcomb to be one of the more interesting of my ancestors. This might be in part because there is some good information available about him but I think it is also because of the times he lived in and the pioneering path he chose. Reuben was born May 16, 1816, on the western frontier in Monroe County, New York. He was the third born of five known children of Apollas Holcombe (b.1791, d.1823) and Mehitable Bunnell (b.1793, d.1853). Apollas was born in Granby, Connecticut and had come west to Bloomfield, New York, with his parents after the American Revolution. Apollas was a veteran of the War of 1812, where he was wounded at the burning of Buffalo in 1814. He would die in 1823 at the age of 32 and leave Mehitable to raise their five young children. Mehitable was the daughter of Jonathan Bunnell (b.1741) and Mehitable Morse (b.1743). The Bunnell family came west from Blandford, Massachusetts and settled near the Holcombe family in Bloomfield.



Rural Green County has changed little since first settled by
Reuben Holcomb and others in the 1840s and 1850s.

David Hermann - Arrived - Part 2

Part 2 - A Life in Wisconsin
If you missed part one of the story, go here . . .

Note, this post has been revised. The original David Hermann article has been updated and more information has been added. Because of its length, it has also been split into two parts with most of the new information in this part.

David Hermann was born in 1838 near the Baltic Sea in the Principality of Mecklenburg. His family and ancestors were of the peasant class and of very modest means. Life was probably very hard for them and advancement in that society was unlikely. In 1860, he married Anna Rohde and two years later, the two of them, along with their firstborn child, boarded a ship and sailed for America. They would travel from New York to Wisconsin and settle in the south-central part of the state.

Farm buildings from the Hermann farm in the Town of Verona, Wisconsin;
they are no longer in use but still standing in this 2011 photo.