More about the Glaeves in (West St. Paul)

 

Reynold Otto Glaeve: Personal Time Line

· 1917 Birth June 22, Cass Lake, Hubbard Cnty MN

              Lora Amelia Glaeve dies October 24, 1917

· 1922, Age 5 The family moves off the farm to town of Cass Lake   

                                               Martin, Martha and Reynold in Cass Lake

· 1925, Age 8 The family moves to West St. Paul MN. 

· 1925-1926, grade 3 at Crowley Elementary

Crowley Elementary 

· 1926-1931, grade 4-8 at Emanuel School

Emmanuel Confirmation Class of 1931

Reynold Glaeve top right

 

    Martha Lydia Glaeve 

dies Dec 23, 1929  Age 16

· 1931 -1932  Roosevelt Jr. High School

· 1933-1934 Vocational High School

 

     The family first lived on South Robert Street.  It was named after Captain Louis Robert, a French voyageur and later river boat captain who plied his stern-wheelers on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and St. Paul.  The street was paved in 1923 from Annapolis down to Arion.  The remainder was paved shortly thereafter.  And then in August of 1926 the new Robert Street Bridge opened and the street soon became the main business and recreational venue for the West Side.

Robert Street Bridge

Travel would have been primarily by streetcar. The old horse drawn cars were replaced in 1921 by the new electric ones. The Robert Street line stopped down at the corner and, with a few transfers, you could make it all the way to Excelsior and the Glen Lake Sanitorium. 
                                                             Glen Lake TB Sanitorium

Speculation is that Martha and possibly Martin were suffering from TB. Marie Glaeve,sister of Reynold, lived and was a nurse at the facility

 

Dad went to Roosevelt Junior High School, at 150 East Congress Street, from 1931-1932.  We know that Martha was also in attendance and assume that Martin attended as well. This postcard shows the building with students ca. 1930.

The choice for high school was between Humboldt High or Boys Vocational School.  He chose "Vocational" and I know he was happy with the machinist training he received during the years 1932-1934.  The new building which opened in 1923, was at 651 Jackson between Jackson and Robert.  It was across the street from Mechanic Arts High School.  The street car probably stopped at the corner, but most likely he walked when he could, to save the nickel

We know little about Martin, other than his vital statistics. We are happy to have this photograph taken after the family moved to St. Paul. 

                       Martin Glaeve

 

Birth: 1914  Kingsbury Co., South Dakota

Death:   April 2, 1934  Age: 20, (West) St. Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota 

Burial: Riverview Cemetery, (West) St. Paul

 


Martin is buried beside his sister Martha in Riverview Cemetery. At a later date his older sister Marie, was also buried next to him.

Riverview Cemetery is located in St. Paul. It is just across the street from West St. Paul (Dakota County). It is East of Robert Street  and on Annapolis Street the border between St. Paul and West St. Paul.

 

The Glaeve Family Moves to West Saint Paul

 

Grandpa left Cass Lake for St. Paul sometime in 1925.  His intent was to find a job and a place to live before bringing the family. Did they sell the farm?  Were they renting or did they own the house in Cass Lake? Many questions remain, including why and how he chose West St. Paul.  Did he hear of a job? Did someone he knew live there?  My hunch is that it may have been a suggestion made by his pastor.  One of  the pastors serving their congregation was a Siebert and one of Dad's playmates was a Siebert.  Check on Siebert in Cass Lake and one of the famous sons of Cass Lake is Dick Siebert who became quite a baseball player at the University of Minnesota.  Dick later played professional baseball and followed his professional career as a much celebrated coach of the Gopher's baseball team.  So celebrated that upon his retirement, they named the baseball field after him, and to this day it is known as Siebert Field.  So there is much we don't know but hope to find out. 

 

Fred is listed in the St. Paul city directory for 1925 as boarding at 18 West Indiana Ave. The address was in the West Saint Paul Flats, a low-lying area near the river that was prone to flooding.
 

The neighborhood attracted those of limited means, and where many new immigrants of German, Lebanese, Syrian and Jewish ethnicity first lived.   Fred initially sought a job at the South St. Paul stockyards but there is no indication that he found work there.  Instead we find him listed in 1925  as an employee of the Collis Co.

The family in 1925-1926 was living at 402 South Robert Street. Family members in that directory are Fred, Ella, Martha, Martin and Reynold. The others must have established their residence elsewhere.

Marie we know was studying for her Practical Nursing degree in Sioux City, South Dakota. She is listed in the Sioux City Directory as a lodger at the home of Olive and William Krug.   Most of her fellow lodgers were of German parentage. 

Eleanore may have lived briefly on Robert Street, but at age 17 was probably living elsewhere and working as a domestic. We did not find a residence for her in 1925, but in 1930 she is employed by the family of a Polish-American Rabbi at 1290 Goodrich Ave.

Emil at age 19 or 20 was also living on his own. He may aleady have been working as a Motorman for the "Street Railway."  In the 1930 St. Paul Directory, he is listed as living with a friend.

 

 

More on the Glaeve family and Cass Lake Minnesota

More on the Glaeve family and Cass Lake Minnesota

At some point, I discovered that Cass Lake was not only where my parents chose to spend vacations but also the birth-place of my father.  Reynold Otto Glaeve was born on a farm in rural Cass Lake, Hubbard County Minnesota.  The date was either June 21, 22, or the 23rd.  Grandma Glaeve, Ella Emelia nee Swartz, said it was the 22nd and Dad always said, with a sly grin, that even though the doctor recorded a different date he would go with his mother’s recollection.  The doctor may not even have been there.

His parents, both born in Illinois, still clung to their German language and traditions.  They wanted  to name him Reinhold Otto.  But this was 1917 and these were sensitive times for people of German ancestry in this country.  The local Lutheran pastor cautioned them against the name because it sounded “Too German” and thus Reynold was their next choice.  The conflicting birth dates and the naming were two of Dad’s favorite, and oft repeated stories.  

Cass Lake's main business street, 1910 

Cass Lake was named by Henry Schoolcraft when he returned to the area known by the natives as “land of the Red Cedars”.  The Whites called it Upper Red Cedar Lake.  He re-named it in honor of the Michigan Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass.   Until the early 1850’s the area was covered with dense forests but with the organization of Cass County in 1851, lumbermen moved in, and logging camps and saw mills were built.  The Cass Lake settlement grew, and the town was platted after the arrival of the Great Northern Railway in 1898.  Various treaties with the Natives and Federal legislation had opened up some of the land to settlers.  The timber companies had clear-cut many of the trees and since they were not interested in the land, it was often forfeited for back taxes.  The land became the property of the county and was either auctioned or sold outright.  It is very possible that one of these parcels of land was what the Glaeves purchased.    We can see the name “Gleave” on the 1920 Hart township map.

Reynold was the last child born to Fred and Ella and the only one born in Cass Lake, or Minnesota for that matter.  Marie, Eleanore, Emil “Freddie”, Martin and Martha were all there to welcome a new brother.   Photographs show the children in their hand-me-down clothes.  Dad was the third boy to wear the “boy clothes” and appears to have dipped into the girl’s box at times to complete his outfits.

Times must have been hard and the work of clearing stumps from logged-over land a back-breaking undertaking.  In the winter many of the men worked in the lumbering camps to provide some needed income for their families.  We assume that Grandpa also worked in the camps.    Dad told of him working at the local Cass Lake saw-mill.  It was German tradition that the whole family, including the women and children, help in the fields and garden.  It is doubtful that the farm was profitable enough to provide much, if any, additional money.  When Marie and Eleanore were old enough, they were employed, probably as house-keepers, at a local town hotel called the Endion.

Endion Hotel Cass Lake, Minnesota

The photos of the farm house and out –buildings show a very humble place. The family still used horses for field work and for transportation.  With Grandpa at the reins they made trips to the neighbors, to the lake for fishing and to worship services at the Lutheran Church.  In the winters, the children were huddled together in the back, under buffalo robes.  Stones would have been heated in the wood burning stove for the trip and re-heated where-ever they were visiting for the return trip.  

                                                                                            Trinity Lutheran Church in Cass Lake

 

from some written memories of Reynold Glaeve

"The home of my birth was located out in the country, eight miles southwest of the town of Cass Lake, Minnesota.  A Farm of one hundred twenty acres.  It had been built by a pioneer settler of native logs. There was the house, a two story structure, three rooms down stairs, kitchen, parlor, and bedroom. The upstairs was more of a loft separated by a curtain, boys on one side, girls on the other.  A ladder was lowered from the ceiling for access."  The bathroom: - a path out back!  And that was a scary place to go at night, especially if it was a cold winter night.  One could sometimes hear the wolves howling and the house would seem a long ways away."
 

"The barn was really two in one, a cow barn with stalls for our twelve cows and a little pen for the calves, and a horse barn for our three horses.  Hay was also stored here, short term. The bulk of the hay was stored in a loft above the barn, and in hay stacks in the field.  A shelter was attached to the barn a couple of years before we moved to town."

 

"There was also a chicken house for about twenty five or more chicken[s], boxes fastened [to] the wall for egg production. We also had a granary, the only building of dimensional lumber. for storage of corn and oats, feed for the animals.  A small pump house built of stones and set down in the earth with a water tank were milk w[h]ere milk cans could be kept before it would be picked up  and taken to town for sale."

 

"For a little kid, town was a long journey, a two hour ride one way in a buggy drawn by one horse....In 1920 it was unusual to meet more than one car on the road in only two hours, and when you did, the horse would go crazy, and it was difficult to prevent it from running away"

 

At some point the family moved off the farm into the town of Cass Lake.  We have not been able to establish these dates nor have we been able to find an address or the land transactions.  The village was smack in the middle of the Cass Lake Indian Reservation and many of their playmates were  children of the local Ojibwe families.   When not at school the children found fun at the mill pond where they swam, fished and skated.

Street Scene Cass Lake Minnesota

More Boyhood Memories

Some Sundays, when we didn't go to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Excelsior, we would drive over to West St. Paul and visit with friends of Mom and Dad.  To get there, you had to go through downtown St. Paul and cross the Mississippi River on the Robert Street bridge.  When we got on the bridge Dad would always point out the place where he used to work, which everybody called "The Hoist.” Only later did I learn that it was the American Hoist and Derrick and that it was where he got a job after getting out of something called the CCC's

Those visits were usually with Babe and Mabel and their kids, Nancy and Billie, who lived on Robie St.  They said Robie just like something  you would do with your bath robe.  I always thought it was a funny name for a street. Also, I could never figure out why they would call a man a babe, especially when other people called him Henry.  Their last name was Schmahl. Nancy always wanted to hug me so, even though Billie was a couple of years younger than me, I preferred to play with him.  The adults would say you just go out back and "run around" so I guess that is what we did.

                                                                Picnic with Schmahls

Sometimes we went to the Englemanns who lived in the same neighborhood as the Schmahls.  It was more fun to call them the Angleworms though Mom and Dad didn't want us to use that name.  The adults were Art and Bernice and their kids were Jimmie and Janie.  Jimmie was a little older than me and Janie was about my sister’s age.  They didn't get to "run around" as much as Nancy and Billie and so it usually wasn’t as much fun even though they had some neat games.

  Jim Englemann high school graduation photo 1957

These people were kind-of like aunts and uncles and cousins, but they really weren't.  Both West-Side families were the ones we also saw on New Year's Eve, which was sometimes at our house and sometimes at theirs.  Often another Angleworm family came for New Years. They were John and Maud and their daughter Roxie.  Roxie wore thick glasses that made her eyes look big.  I always wanted to look through her glasses.  

John and Maud Englemann

New Years was just a longer visit with more food on fancier plates.  All the adults played a card game called 500, and because there were so many adults, they needed an extra card table.  Sometimes we brought our table.  I really liked our card table because it had horses and men in red coats and dogs running all over.  The other tables were just plain.  The problem with New Years was you had to wear your "good clothes" and you didn't get to run around and you had to play games in one of the kid's bedrooms.  You ate real late and then you fell asleep in the car on the way home.  


When we were a bit older Dad would take a week vacation and we would go up north and live in a cabin at Cass Lake.  I never really knew how or why they chose that lake since the car license plates said there were 10,000 lakes to choose from.  I can remember that the trip up there took a long time and sometimes we would have to stop because Kayleen got sick of the car and Mom said we had better pull over.  When we got to a place called Brainerd we were getting close and soon could start looking for the other B town called Bemidji where there was a big Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox. We often had to stop there and have our picture taken.  Not too long then and you came to a dirt road and the sandy  driveway that led to the cabins.  I think Hultgren was the name on the wood sign.

We took walks along the beach and made things out of the sand.  One summer I built a drive-in movie place with sticks and weeds and a drift-wood movie screen and made places so people in the toy cars could watch the movie.  Sometimes in the evening we took a row boat out to fish for perch. There was a special fish cleaning place about the size of the outdoor toilet. You had to keep the screen door closed and you put the fish guts and heads down a hole in the cleaning table. 

                                                                                                               Map of Cass Lake

 

 
A few summers the West-Side people also rented cabins at the same resort. One or two afternoons we drove over to the park at Norway Beach where the sand was cleaner and there was a life-guard on duty to watch that the kids didn’t drown.   He sat up on a tall white wood tower.  He was very tan and always smiled, especially at the girls.

             Horse Shoe Bay on Norway Beach

After supper the mothers and fathers would play cards and drink beer out of the bottle. My real uncles and aunts at my other Grandma’s house also drank beer out of the bottle. I thought it must be what adults did on vacation or when you sat out under willow trees.
 
Back at the cabin at night we would have camp fires and roast marsh-mellows for a sandwich on a graham cracker.  But you could also just let the marsh-mellow burn to black and then eat the goo off the stick.  Dad cut the sticks off of a tree with his pocket knife.  Sometimes Mom would say it was not like a real vacation because you still had to make the beds and cook. But I think she liked it and sometimes would tie her hair up in a handkerchief, which she never did at home.

Boyhood Memories of Dad's Family

During my boyhood years, my grandparents, Fred and Ella Glaeve, lived in a little cottage, really a converted garage, out back of the Keye's nursing home in Excelsior, Minnesota.  I never questioned why they were there and how they got there.  It was oft repeated that on Sunday, after church and a noon meal, this would be our destination.

When we arrived, Grandpa was usually seated in his big chair with his German Bible on one side and his can of Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco and an array of pipes on the other.  Joe, his old, too-many-table-scraps fat, Doberman was usually at his feet.   Grandma, in her apron and hair up in a bun, was most times busy in the kitchen There were sugar cookies or ginger snaps before a game of Parcheesi or Sorry.  

Sometimes, weather permitting, I was allowed to do some exploring down by the lake, while the adults "visited".   After she was old enough, my kid sister Kayleen was allowed to come along.   A mixed blessing at best.

Both Fred and Ella died in the mid-1950's, having spent their last months or years at the Keye's nursing home, and are buried in the Excelsior Cemetery.

Other early Glaeve memories have to do with Dad's siblings.

A brother and sister, Martin and Martha, died while the family lived in West St. Paul.  We visited their graves at Riverview Cemetery.

Marie, Dad's oldest sister, had moved to St. Petersburg, Florida where she worked as a private nurse. She returned a couple of times for family visits.  I remember her as being very tall and talking sort of funny, like she was from a different country.   She also sent the strangest birthday and Christmas gifts. Marie was also buried in Riverview Cemetery.

Emil Fred, "Uncle Freddie," lived in Arizona, and likewise only returned for infrequent family visits. He had been or was still in the military and most of the pictures we had of him were in his military  uniform.  He had married late in life and I don't remember ever meeting his wife or her son from a previous marriage.   He also talked funny but it was different - more like the cowboys.

And last in memory, was Aunt Eleanore who had married Edwin Holt and who lived on some flower named street with their son Michael, who wore glasses.   Uncle Ed talked in short gasps of breath through a tube which he put to his throat.  For me it was always hard to figure out what he was saying.  During our visits he often spent time in the basement fooling with his collection of radios and radio parts.

And So My Blog Began

January 1, 2013

Dear Reader,

It seems somehow appropriate that a new venture begin today and so bear with me as I stumble on. The day began with no hint of this undertaking, although friend Shan was trying to make an appointment with one Bruce Roth. He was a known blogger, a former resident of the community, who had indicated a willingness to share some of his information and expertise on blogging with two neophytes. The time was set for 11:00 this morning at the Mt. Horeb Area Historical Society (MHAHS) Archives that are housed on the 3rd floor of the Mt. Horeb municipal building on Main St.

The more Bruce told of his genealogical activity and as he demonstrated and described what was involved in blogging, the more both of us became convinced that it may be just the ticket for the MHAHS. The society has just initiated a new web site and continues to seek ways to make it a pro-active resource for genealogists and those seeking info on local history. After thanking Bruce for his help, and an afternoon of mulling it over, it was decided that Shan was going to venture forth and see what could be done for the MHAHS.

I also decided to explore this blogging thing for my own personal family genealogy effort which Shan has been helping with for about a year and a half now. And so ended the day. . . and began the Glaeve Genealogy Journal.