Tag: Smith
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Notes from the heartland (Part 4: Nebraska)
Starting out from Fort Worth yesterday, my canine companion and I traced the Chisholm Trail up to where it peters out near Salina, Kansas. From there we headed due north on a lonely stretch of US 81 into the endless plains of southern Nebraska. Between the Platte and Elkhorn rivers, the terrain changes to gently…
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Notes from the heartland (Part 3: Texas)
Happy Rudesgiving! I can’t remember when Rudesgiving originated, but with such a geographically dispersed family — and with each of my brothers having their own families and in-laws — we needed to come up with our own convenient time to gather. So, for several years we’ve been finding an off-peak weekend to meet up. This…
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Notes from the heartland (Part 2: Kansas and Missouri)
It’s our second day on the road to Fort Worth, and Spence and I are traveling through the rolling hills of the Kansas and Missouri borderlands. Yesterday I told you a little about my 3x great-grandmother’s brothers, John and George Hitz, and how they settled in Iowa with their mother Maria Tontz Hitz after the…
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Notes from the heartland (Part 1: Iowa)
I’m on a kind of pilgrimage through America’s heartland with my trusty companion, my six-year-old Golden Doodle, Spence. This isn’t your average road trip; we’ll be traveling through time as well as space. We have a destination — my brother’s home in Fort Worth, Texas for our family’s off-schedule Thanksgiving (what we call Rudesgiving) —…
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O Christmas Tree
Christmas trees look even more out of place in Costa Rica than I do. Michael and I don’t have one at the AirBnB that we’ve rented, and it’s probably for the best. Christmas itself seems slightly out of place here. Back in our Minnesota living room, our own Christmas tree is undoubtedly bone dry by…
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Gene Smith’s Signal Corps service: Part 2 – England (February – July 1944)
On the morning February 28th, 1944, Cpl. Eugene Smith woke aboard the RMS Aquitania. He had heard the ship’s anti-aircraft guns fire a couple of times during the night but the word that morning was that it had just been a test. He and the rest of Company C took their turn in one of…
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Gene Smith’s Signal Corps service: Part 1 – Camp Crowder and Camp Wood (March 1943 – February 1944)
My grandma Phyllis described in a letter the heartbreaking moment when she and the family dropped my grandpa Gene off at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. They wandered the premises for about two hours, watching some recruits do target practice and hoping they might catch a glimpse of Gene. “When we got back to the car frozen…
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Gene Smith on the eve of World War II
Think of World War II and, if you’re like me, you probably imagine it a bit like a movie. And thanks to compelling movies like Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk, we might picture men doing heroic deeds in the face of uncertain odds. Don’t get me wrong – this kind of heroism did occur and ought to be…
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A mystery solved – the Wackrows of Müggenburg
Hartmut has saved the day — again! If you’ve read my prior post about the Schmidt family of Müggenburg, you’ll know that my knowledge about this branch of my family (my mother’s father’s father’s side) is wholly thanks to the efforts of one local historian, Mr. Hartmut Wegner of Mönkebude. When Hartmut read that post…
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The Hahn and Sahr families of Woltersdorf
Today I visited Woltersdorf, Wartin and Blumberg — small villages that were home to my great-grandpa Frank Smith’s mother’s families — the Hahns and Sahrs. (For information about Grandpa Frank’s father’s family, see this post.) The region is home to sprawling farm fields — mostly wheat and hay, but occasionally corn and sunflowers. In some…
Deep Roots 