Happy (Fore)Fathers' Day
Last month we celebrated our ancestral mothers, and this month we celebrate fathers. But more broadly, we celebrate all of our TeSelle Family Forefathers -- those men and women who settled new lands in America, raised their families, and created prosperous lives, far from their original Dutch homeland.
In this newsletter we focus on an industrious group of Dutch pioneers who moved in the mid-1800s from their initial settlement near Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to stake out new homes and farms in Lancaster County, Nebraska. We are fortunate to have a thorough record of this migration and settlement, written by Mr. Gustav Adolph Bade in 1938 as his Master's thesis at the University of Nebraska. As part of his research, Mr. Bade interviewed a number of those early pioneers and their children, in order to get first-hand accounts of their experiences. A 1952 article in the Lincoln Star newspaper (see above) summarized his findings and his comments. In addition to reading the article, you can also read Mr. Bade's entire thesis, entitled "A History of the Dutch Settlement in Lancaster County, Nebraska," on our TeSelle Family website. We encourage you to browse through his thesis to see what your ancestors' lives were like during those early years in rural Nebraska. (Hint: Think dugout homes, little money, frequent illness, and lots of hard work!)
If you are descended from any of these pioneers, or if you have stories, photos, and memorabilia pertaining to them, please share those items with us, so we can include those items in our TeSelle Family website. Go to our Contact Page to tell us what you have, or you can simply open the following link to securely upload your digital photo and text files (e.g., jpg, txt, pdf, doc, etc): TeSelle Family File Uploader
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