Julia Anne Hare

When I went back to Florida to say goodbye to my grandma a few months ago, my cousin and I started to go through a box of ancestry information that she had in her house. Sadly, we had very little time to actually go through it. My cousin was very kind and said I could take back what I wanted with me to NZ. But I was traveling with my baby and wasn't really able to carry much more than I had. I was very sad to leave all of it behind as I am extremely interested in our family history. It is something that I had been going through with grandma for a few years before she died. A huge amount of sadness overwhelmed me when I looked at that box and had to choose to leave it behind. I feared that a part of us, who we are and who we have become would be lost, possibly forever.
I decided to play the "the lucky dip," and randomly grab a folder of papers to take with me. This folder had copies of handwritten stories, and something about it seemed familiar. It turned out to be filled with interesting stories that I am sure my grandmother had once told me on those occasions where we would stay up until 2:00am talking about "everything."

• Above is a photo of Julia Ann Hare, who is my great, great, great, great grandmother. Her grandson Ernest Henney learned her story and recorded it to be passed on. It goes like this:  Julia's parents came to the US from Germany during the time of the Napoleonic wars. They left four children behind in Germany and brought one with them. When they landed in New York, their one child was kidnapped and taken back to Germany. They intended to go back to Germany one day, but their land was taken and destroyed by the French, so they never did. They later had four more children, one of which was Julia. Julia was around one year old when her father, Christopher Hare died. So her mother, Anna (Hanna) Ersila Howe became a school teacher. She left Julia with the neighbor during the week to look after her while she taught school. At the time, they were living in Pennsylvania I believe. The lady who looked after her, kidnapped Julia at a very young age and moved to Ohio. No one knew what happened to her until one of the boy's from the family that took her, wrote to Julia's older brother, Conrad to tell him where she was. By then she was fourteen years old. They treated her very badly. She was not allowed to eat at the table like the rest of the family. Instead she had to eat out of the frying pan with her hands. She only wore a "gunni sack" with hear and arm holes to keep her from leaving the house. They made her spin wool and would give her tasks that would keep her busy all day so that she would not be tempted to leave. If she didn't finish her jobs she would be "severely punished." Conrad went to get Julia. When he found her she was drawing water from a well. He told her that she was not their child and she began to cry because she said she had always felt that she wasn't. He stayed with the family for a few days before taking her back with him to Pennsylvania. The old woman was very angry with them when they left, and was said to have reached for a butcher knife. They walked 300 miles back home and slept on the ground. When recounting the story, Julia remembers her brother making a fire all around them to keep the wolves away and getting food from the Indians. 

I think this is an Amazing story. Looking back at the world during that time period, it just feels like people did their own thing. When leaving behind the old world and coming to a new, people were bound to meet others who lived by their own code, rather than shared morals that were taught by close knit communities. There wasn't the infrastructure that there is now. So they couldn't just go to the police and tell them that she was missing. And to think that Julia's mother had already left four children and had one kidnapped. What a crazy life. She must have become a pretty detached mother who was just in it to survive. All of this information helps me to form opinions about my family and why we are the way we are. I have always felt that it was strange how the mother's and daughters on this side of the family struggled in their relationship with one another. I know bits of information about each one of them, leading all the way back to Julia that that illustrates stories of friction. I can't help to wonder if this is where all of it started. I personally feel grateful that I don't have to live under this curse and believe that God has brought me above it. I believe it is so good and important to look back and try to create understanding so that we can learn and grow from our past.

Identifying photos with Grandma Karen

A few years ago before my grandma got sick for the second time we started identifying images. So I thought I would just go through and copy and paste them along with the emailed description that my grandma gave me. Its random. But one day when everyone on this side of the family has copies of all the photos, they can look back on the blogs and get a little back story to go along with some of the photos. Here is the first correspondence:

22/09/2013
The lady is Helena haenke. She is my grandpa Haenke's sister. She was always called Lena. Even my father did not know that her real name was Helena. Lena was born in Germany. She changed her name to be more American. I spent hours with my grandpa Haenke who gave me lots of family stories. The man to Lena's right is my grandpa whose real name was Reinholdt Emil Heinrich Haenke. He changed his name to Henry Emil Reinholdt Haenke. I remember when I was a little girl that my grandpa went back to see Helena in Michigan . They visited their one room schoolhouse and other places they knew as children. The other two men in the picture I am not sure about..... The man on Lena's left is her husband I believe  . he did not have a hand. You can see he is hiding his hand behind his back. He had a hook . I do not have his name in the family tree. Wait and see if I can find it . I don't recognize the other man . He does resemble my grandpa but I don't know.

Here is the photo of them at the schoolhouse that she was referring to also.