2014.05.22 Thursday
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| Townships of Mitchell county, 1917 |
Today I completed photographing the tract indexes for the areas of interest in Mitchell county, except I decided not to photograph the tract indexes for the cities of Beloit and Tipton. Specifically, I worked with the sections in these townships:
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| Beloit township (T7S R7W), 1917 |
Beloit twp (T7N R7W)—sections 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, and 29. The property owners of interest are Anton Deneke, his wife Mary Deneke, their sons Henry, George, Will, Tony, and Joe in the sections northeast and east of Beloit and Peter Deneke in sections 20 and 29.
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| Custer township (T9S R10W), 1917 |
Custer twp (T9S R10W)—section 30. The property owners of interest are the brothers Stephen and Peter Schandler and John and Urban Steichen.
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| Pittsburg township (T8S R10W), 1917 |
Pittsburg twp (T8S R10W)—sections 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33. The property owners include Peter Reinert, the Arnoldy brothers, and the Streit brothers. These sections surround the town of Tipton.
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| Carr Creek township (T7S R10W), 1917 |
Carr Creek twp (T7S R10W)—sections 10, 14, 15, and 25. The property owners include William Schwinden, John Schwinden, and John M. Kohn.
The work took about four hours and produced about 200 images. All transactions in each section are included, from about 1870 to the present. [From my experience later in the week in Osborne county, I realize that I should not focus on specific sections. Photographing all the sections of a township goes almost as quickly and is more likely to pick up the transactions of the same or other relatives throughout the township history. Even working on full townships of Osborne county, I later realized that transactions from about 1940 and later could very likely lie in another township, with the development of farm machinery that can travel faster from field to field.]
I began searching through the
probate records also, and I completed photographing four files (for Anna F. Deneke, Anna Butler-Deneke, Louis Livie Bulthaup, and Elizabeth Ottley-Kohn. I was able to work directly in the probate vault, photographing in the same room. I could have worked beyond 5 p.m., when the offices typically close. Tomorrow, I will need to ask help in bringing some files to the photography area, as they are not accessible in the vault I've been working in.
Afterward, I drove out to the Peter Deneke farm, where I found the old post rock barn still standing but the rock house was replaced with a new building from about the 1980s. On the drive, I photographed several post rock fences and distant views of Beloit.
Charlotte Gengler-Campbell had made reservations for several classmates at Plum Creek Café. The group included Charlotte and her husband Terry, Becky Davies, Brian Doyle, and his wife Alice. The food was better than the soggy sandwich I had there the day before, but it wasn't memorable. After Brian's eyes glistened from a couple whiskey-sevens, he said, "Ya know, we didn't have any meanness in the things we said back then in high school. I think everybody knew it was all in good fun." From his position as a lanky jock and farm kid, that's an easy attitude to take. Charlotte and Becky, being once members of the same tight clique, objected and remembered the girls who were excluded, with more than some little remorse.
I haven't dwelled on slights and taunting from teenaged classmates, likely because I've had stronger bonds made in college and later years. Perhaps because of a retained focus on Beloit and those who stayed, several classmates still remember the bonds and slights of 1969 much better than I. It's my hope that this weekend is a chance to reset connections to some of my class, and together to bypass the earlier history.
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