Notes: Geneastory

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Matches 15,771 to 15,780 of 22,423

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15771

Or Johannesdatter

MOE, Sigrid Øysteinsdatter (I35599)

15772

Or Johansson.

JOHNSON, Carl (I27105)

15773

Or John Harlan. Or Bergloff.

In the 1940 census, he was living with Peter, Jennie, and Roberta in Wyanett Twp, Isanti County, Minnesota. He was working as a clerk in a hardware store.

He and his family moved to Harlan’s family farm on Spectacle Lake in 1947.

BERGLOF, Harlan John (I27944)

15774

Or John Leo.

His father, and the parents of his mother, were born in Ireland.

In the 1940 census, he and his wife and daughter lived in Huron, South Dakota. He was a cashier in a bank.

MANNING, Leo J (I19253)

15775

Or John Obert.

In the 1900 census, he and his family lived in Wanamingo Twp, Goodhue County. He was a school teacher.

In the 1910 census, he and his family live in Kenyon. He was a rural mail carrier. By this time, Christina has had 12 children, only 11 of which are still living. Agnes is not listed with the family.

From the Dalby database, which takes this from the book “We Give You Kenyon” by Harold Severson published in 1976:

THE LITSHEIM FAMILY John Obert Litsheim, born Aug 8, 1863 in Vose, Norway married Christine Strand, born Oct. 24, 1872 in Vangs, Minn. near Kenyon. Fourteen children blessed this marriage, 13 of whom grew to adult life. From oldest to youngest, the children were Christine, born 1890, married George Bates, one son Luverne; Annette, born 1891, married Herbert Gibson, one daughter Corrine; Edward, born 1893, married twice, two sons, Dewey and Richard; Theresa, born 1894 in Vose, Norway, married Harry Wolters, two children, Lloyd and Violet; Selma, born 1896, married Ben Whitmore, children Dale, Fern, LaVon, Wanda, Dean, Shirley; Inga, born 1897; Anna, born 1899, married Hiram Broin, children Lowell, Harris, Darlene; Theodore, born 1902, married Margaret Sorenson, children Patricia and Joan; Agnes, born 1903; Carl, born 1905, married Ruth Maxim, one child Sally; Earl, born 1907, married Ruth Curray, children Mary and John; Obert, born 1909, married Eileen Emmons, children Eileen, Jeanne, James and John; Robert, born 1912; Doris, born 1914, married John Gibson, children Joan, Jacqueline, and Craig. John Obert Litsheim came to America at the age of 19. He continued his education and was ordained as a Lutheran minister. After serving a variety of parishes, he went with his family of four to spend a year in his Norwegian homeland. Returning to the United States, he quit the ministry and found his life’s work as a rural mail carrier at the Kenyon post office. John was an eloquent speaker and had a fine baritone singing voice which he used in Kenyon on different occasions. Christine Strand Litsheim was the daughter of a pioneering Norwegian family which settled near Dennison. Having 14 children was quite an accomplishment, though for those days not unusual, and her children and grandchildren gave her a rich and blessed life. “Ma,” as she was affectionately called, was a wonderful mother, and a strict disciplinarian. She lived to see many of her offspring go on to varied and useful lives. All the Litsheim girls were fine athletes, good scholars and waged many a baseball game on the Bullis’ Zumbro baseball field just below the Litsheim and Erick Williamson homesteads. The Zumbro river played quite a part (romantic, athletic, and recreational) in the lives of so many of Kenyon’s families...that is, the children. There was a skating, swimming, boat-building along that famous Kenyon landmark. The damming of the Zumbro River by the Mogrens for their ice-making aided the youths in their hockey and other games. Skiing in that area added to wonderful rich memories of the Litsheim and other family groups. The Litsheim boys excelled in athletics in Kenyon High School and for thirteen years (from Ted to Bob) at least one or more played on all teams in football, basketball , and baseball. Four of the six boys became college graduates, but only Bob continued in athletics. He starred in football and baseball for Carleton college of Northfield. Three of the boys became, at first, school teachers: Ted, Earl and Bob. Of the girls there were five school teachers. So education played quite a part in the life development of the Litscheim children. The Litsheim clan is spread around the country from Florida to California. Once in a while reunions are possible, the largest one being in 1972 held at the Kump home on Lake Mazaska near Faribault. Most of the living original group were there with many of the grandchildren also. A somewhat smaller reunion was held on the occasion of sister Theresa’s 80th birthday when all but one of John and Christine Litsheim’s children attended. One of the grandchildren remarked at that time about the novelty of having over sixty active and alert members of the Litsheims who were present at the reunion. Norwegians are a hardy lot and so were John and Christine Litsheim’s children.

LITSHEIM, Johannes Olsen (I29353)

15776

Or John.

His parents were born in Germany.

In the 1920 census, he and Mina and her brother Palmer lived at 2741 Blaisdell Avenue in Minneapolis. Jacob was an elevator operator at a grain elevator.

BROM, Jacob A (I19480)

15777

Or Joseph Clair.

JOHNSON, Joseph Clare (I16883)

15778

Or Judith Mae.

She was the flower girl at her aunt Arlene’s wedding to Leonard Reiland in 1944.

She graduated from St. Paul Central High School in its class of 1959.

At the time of her wedding to Gary Spooner, she was working as a dental assistant.

“Mrs. Judy Spooner” signed Bess’s funeral guestbook. Afterward, Elaine sent a thank-you card to the Gary Spooners at 6408 Hillside Drive, St. Paul Park.

From an article in the Bulletin on October 2, 2013:

Judy Spooner had just finished a Bulletin assignment taking photographs of children at a Christmas program. She walked outside, paused and teared up.

“I’m in the parking lot,” she recalled recently, “and I said, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.’ Just tell stories — that’s all I really wanted to do.”

That realization occurred when she returned to the Bulletin in 1988 after several years away, but she already had worked more than a decade for the newspaper, sharing south Washington County news and community events through stories, photographs and a weekly column.

“I wanted to tell people stories,” she said.

It remained her passion at the newspaper up through her retirement this week. “Judy from the Bulletin,” as she’s known around town, concluded her reporting career with the newspaper on Monday, Sept. 30.

For months she had been planning to retire at the end of September, but her final few weeks of work changed significantly when she suffered a stroke in mid-September. She avoided severe effects from the stroke and is recovering.

Judy’s been at the Bulletin for as long as many people can remember. Her first byline appeared on a story about a school district labor fight in the June 26, 1969, edition of what was then called the Washington County Bulletin.

She has jokingly admitted that she started at the Bulletin “a month before the moon landing.”

She was already married to her husband, Gary, and they had settled in Cottage Grove. He was working as an insurance salesman. Judy walked into the Bulletin office — in its early days the office was in Newport — and got a part-time job helping to put the paper together each week. Gary would join the Bulletin too, first as an ad salesman and later co-publisher and owner.

She was ‘self taught’

Over the years Judy covered just about every bit of local news: cops, city councils, parades, children’s holiday programs, the Washington County Board and the Grey Cloud Town Board, royalty coronations and high school graduations.

However, she gravitated toward feature stories — tales about everyday people in south Washington County — and coverage of local schools and the children in those classrooms.

School coverage fell into her lap early in her career. She had to report on school district news with no formal journalism training.
“I had no idea how to put together a news story,” she said. “I was self taught. It was a pretty amazing process. It really was.”

Her interest in telling readers what’s going on in local schools — and what kids have to say about it — was appreciated.

Becky Schroeder, principal at Oltman Middle School, said Judy is in the school frequently and always is interested to know what students are learning and how they are being taught.

Her daughter Margie Williams said Judy is genuinely curious about what children think, but she also enjoys being around them because she does not have grandchildren of her own.

Judy got to talk to kids for work, and each holiday season for nearly 40 years she has portrayed Mrs. Claus while Gary, in his distinct white beard, has played Santa at community events. It was another way to interact with youth.

“They’re really, really everybody’s grandparents,” Williams said of her mother and father. “She can have a bunch of grandchildren and then she can come home.”

For much of her career, Judy’s home was her office. That arrangement started when she returned after one of two hiatuses from the Bulletin to discover there wasn’t a desk for her.

“It worked out wonderfully,” she said of writing from home. “I could put in pot roast, pet the cat and go right to police news.”

‘The history detective’

Judy and Gary raised two daughters — Margie and her sister, Laura Booth — and the girls spent a lot of time with Judy while she worked. Both are mentioned frequently in her columns to this day.

Often Judy’s Bulletin work intersected with one of her interests — local history.

“She dragged us into the (Cottage Grove) cemetery,” Margie said, recalling an episode many years ago. “(The weeds) were over our heads. It was creepy gravestones everywhere. She’s like, ‘Isn’t this cool?’ And we’re like, ‘No.’”

Judy might have picked up the history bug from Old Cottage Grove resident and local historian Bev Gross. The two have trudged through cemeteries together and poked around in old school buildings.

“It seems like the more we dove into it, the more interest she took,” Gross said.

Judy has been a member of the Cottage Grove Advisory Commission on Historic Preservation. She jokes that she sought out the role because it was the best way to serve on a volunteer commission but stay out of the news.

That worked, until she was named the 2012 Cottage Grove Preservationist of the Year and received a plaque during a city meeting earlier this year. She had been nominated by Gross.

“She was so excited about that,” Gross said.

John Burbank, Cottage Grove’s senior planner and historic preservation officer, called Judy “quite the history detective.” Burbank said she takes time to research old stories, landmarks and artifacts to piece together local history that otherwise might go untold.

“That’s a big asset to our community,” he said.

Swept into ‘Sweepings’

As other employees came and went early in her career at the Bulletin, Judy picked up more duties and assignments. Another reporter had written a society column — “Cottage Sweepings” — that detailed the comings and goings of people in the community.

When that reporter left, Judy stepped in and continued the column. Over time it morphed from a local gossip column to a mix of small-town buzz and Judy’s own take on everything from community events to household observations.

She dropped the “Cottage Sweepings” title but continued the column throughout her career, one week telling readers about her travel discoveries while visiting relatives out of state and the next week sharing a neat story about a project by students in a local school. In retirement she’ll continue to write an occasional column for the Bulletin.

“I think I just bloomed where I was planted,” she said of the different skills and jobs she learned over the years.

Judy returned to the Bulletin in 1988 after about a five-year separation from the paper. She had a similar stint away from the paper in the 1970s. The return in 1988 would be the start of a 25-year run that ended this week.

In the fall of 1996, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She took a leave for treatment and then returned. Her cancer experience provided context when she would later report on others — adults and children alike — who were fighting the disease. It also was the source of column topics over the years.

While Judy remained at the paper, its ownership changed. Gary Spooner and a business partner sold the newspaper to Red Wing Publishing Co., in 1994. Gary spun off the Bulletin License Center as a separate business. The Bulletin newspaper was part of a group of regional newspapers that was purchased in 2001 by Forum Communications Co., which still owns the Bulletin.

Judy said she wanted to stay in the same job at the Bulletin over the years because the assignments were always different. She recalled memorable stories she worked on — from the quirky to the emotional. Among the most difficult, she said, was the October 2007 story of Katherine Ann Olson, a Park High School graduate who was murdered after answering a nanny ad on Craigslist. The family lives near Judy, and after initially thinking it would be too emotional for her, she said she decided that was the reason she should write the story. She wanted readers to understand the family’s grief.

Judy also recalled battling city governments over meeting and public record issues, and she laughed when remembering some of the unusual animal stories that somehow found her. There was a woman whose attic was full of pigeons, and a cow whose birthing of a calf became public interest because of its close proximity to a highway. And then there were the phone calls from people who found strangely shaped produce in their gardens and thought it should be in the Bulletin.

Judy said she could find a story in anything.

“Every now and then,” she said, “something would happen and you’d say, ‘This was so fun.’”

Judy Spooner had her third major stroke in June of 2015 which left her unable to move or speak. She entered hospice care in November of 2015. She improved in late March of 2016.

Her obit:

Judith "Judy" Spooner (nee Booth), age 75, of Cottage Grove, MN was born April 3, 1941 in Minneapolis, MN and died November 3, 2016 in Cottage Grove, MN from complications of a stroke.

Judy was preceded in death by her mother, Marjorie Booth (nee Havier) and father, George F. Booth. She is survived by her husband of 55 years, Gary; daughters, Marjorie (Eric) Williams and Laura Booth; special niece, Karen (Steve) Balcom; grandniece, Emily; and grandnephew, Ryan. Also survived by her best friend, Ruth Voights; nephew, Stephen Booth; sister, Connie (Roger) Spooner; and brother, George R. (Pat) Booth.

Judy was a photo-journalist for the Bulletin Newspapers who published the South Washington County Bulletin and the Woodbury Bulletin weekly newspapers. Her beat was mostly School District 833, but she also wrote weekly columns, features, and photographed sports and other events for the newspapers. Judy was also an assistant golf coach for the Park High School of Cottage Grove girls' golf team. Judy had over a 45 year association writing with the newspapers making her a very popular person in the South Washington County area. She won several state and national awards for her writing and photography. People in the area would supply her with news tips that she followed up on and wrote stories about people; who have thanked her over the years for the publicity.

BOOTH, Judith May (I955)

15779

Or Julia. Came to America with her parents in 1911.

VALGREN, Juliet (I368)

15780

or July 16

SVERDRUP, Georg (I12267)