December 2009 Archives

Third cousin Rick Stedtnitz has been working diligently on the Luckert family history, finding out much fascinating background, but recently got stuck on Andrew Jackson Luckert, the father of John Christopher "Captain John" Luckert and husband of Henraett[a] Luckert, both buried in the Bloomfield (NE) Cemetery.  Rick found a ship's manifest that had Andrew arriving on the R. Jacob in 1856 (from Saxony, Germany) and Henraett[a] and two boys, Johann and Kaspar, arriving the next year, and then some later Newark (NJ) electoral ward records for them. 

I knew that once a Helmut Luckert of Winnenden, Germany, had a 2001 posting on Ancestry.com researching Andrew Jackson Luckert, whom he claimed was "borne [sic] 29 September 1804 in Pasu [sic--Passau?], Germany, emigrated [sic] to US, married Henriette Wagner and died 13 June 1877 in Hooper, Nebraska."  I also knew that Lawrence Luckert, now deceased, had written to my sister Sue that he had a death certificate for his grandfather:  "the place he is buried is at a Lutheran Church cemetery in Hooper, Nebraska."

Anyone tracing families, especially immigrants, can quickly tangle with conflicts, but this seemed straightforward, except that nearby Hooper is in Dodge County and all the Dodge County cemeteries are supposedly posted online, as Rick and I went through them looking for Andrew J., nowhere to be found.

As I've said, I find country cemeteries fascinating (Grandma Fern Koftan's influence) and quiet places for contemplation, and am always reminded of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard":  "Each in his narrow cell forever laid,/The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep./........../Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife . . . ."  So I promised Rick I would double-check by walking likely candidates after first checking at the Dodge County Courthouse in Fremont for any possible records (none).  I had no success but wanted to honor the work done by the living for the dead pioneers at two cemeteries near Hooper, as I walked them on the last nice day we had a few weeks ago, a bitterly cold front coming in as I was at the second.  (And the next week we got our 10-12" of snow.)

Just east off U.S. Hwy. 77 north of Winslow, with a sign, "Historical Cemetery," directing me up a rural road, was Logan Cemetery, one of the best-kept country cemeteries I have ever seen.  (Logan Valley View High School is just a few miles farther on, as is Uehling, a town named for another of the cemetery's pioneer families.)

  

 

Besides the wild turkey that fled into a corn field, in the pergola of the right photo was a three-ring with transparent covers for all the pioneer family data, the grave listings, and photos that are found online, for those who don't have computers or want to check closely.

Going out Hooper's Main Street three miles north, I found St. John's Lutheran Cemetery--which had seemed the likeliest candidate, given what Lawrence Luckert had claimed--at the corner of roads and cornfields. 

The left-to-right photos look west (as that cold front was moving in and the wind came up briskly) and cover the cemetery from south to north.  Like the Logan, many of the inscriptions are in German, clearly using German abbreviations for "born" and "died" as well as the illustrations below.  "Vater" is Father, and "Mutter" is Mother.

At the far western side is a row of close-set white gravestones, seen below, very touching, for they are all for children, very young children.   

I may have walked all those rows, recognizing names I'd seen online and not serendipitously discovering Great Great Grandfather A.J. Luckert, but the day did end with a glorious sunset.

We just had 10-12"--that's inches, not feet--two weeks ago and now are to get 1-2'--that's feet, not inches--of snow in a powerful blizzard for Christmas, so I thought it would be perverse fun to look at swimsuits.  I can't explain the circumstances, for Mom (Velma) is in the background talking to Aunt Betty Koftan in this one, with Penny Ellingson (then) in the foreground, but my sisters are nowhere in evidence.  The writing on some of the backs is Grandma Fern Koftan's.  It's at Larry's on a river the Koftan trio will have to identify.  I've forgotten, unless it's the Clinch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both of these photos show Linda and David Koftan and Micheal Ellingson "on Larry's fishing dock/private dock here," the lower photo including Ryan Koftan, who is with his mother in the next photo with Linda in the hazy background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we end with beefcake and cheesecake, David Koftan and Penny Ellingson above, Mike and Lindsey Ellingson (and Ryan's head, I think) below.  Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

 

 

     On the same day as the previous entry, I revisited this well-restored Italianate house on the west edge of the Fort Omaha campus.  General George Crook was most famous for his success in containing the Plains Indians, the complete opposite of arrogant Custer in treating them honorably, most notably in the case of the Ponca chief, Standing Bear.  Standing Bear left their Oklahoma reservation to bring his young son's body back to be buried in the Ponca homeland, west of Niobrara along that river where it runs into the Missouri.  Crook testified for Standing Bear and also secretly got newspaper support, the outcome a famous decision in declaring Native Americans citizens with all those constitutional rights.  (Standing Bear was secretly buried with other family members in the Ponca cemetery, now restored, south of the equally restored Ponca Agency along a road south of Niobrara State Park.  The fine bridge over the Missouri to South Dakota at the old ferry landing site is named for him.)

     Crook was not only the Commander of the Department of the Platte, which territory ran from the Missouri to Montana, from Canada to Texas, with headquarters at Fort Omaha--through which my great grandfather, John Christopher Luckert, had to pass to be stationed in Arizona and northeast Nebraska--but he was also a good friend of President Hayes and entertained both ex-President Grant and his wife and, later, the Hayes family at this house.

This is the east side partway up the long steep north-south ridge.  I wish I had taken a side shot, because the house is quite long/deep, running east-west.  I was fascinated with a very old print of Fort Omaha because it so clearly portrays the Omaha hills in our earliest years, bare of all the trees we have now (a very wooded city).  Fort Omaha is in the south part of Florence, the north end of riverside Omaha, where the Mormons had their 1846-47 Winter Quarters and their hilltop cemetery, now with a visitors center and new tabernacle.  Metropolitan Community College was deeded the fort in 1975, and it's now a branch campus, becoming famous for its Cuisine Department.  

This is the Reception Room where the Grants and Hayes were entertained.  I played a couple of pieces (with permission) on the square rosewood concert grand piano.  At the right is a very old coin-operated music box set diagonally in the corner. 

None of the furnishings belonged to the Crooks, but everything is authentically from that period.  Ordinarily I prefer streamlined modern, not all the fussiness, but this is a handsome house.  Besides the quality of the restoration, what I was most impressed by were the many, varied wallpapers, also authentic reproductions and visibly Victorian in their intricate patterns.

  

The special-effects version highlights the patterning.  Even the kitchen has busy wallpaper, at the left.  The right shows the care with ceilings and corners (a hallway).  The stairway paper is stamped to look like embossed leather.

 

 

 

 

I missed the U.S. Treasury Seal on the outside doorknobs and backplates but did notice the specially made brass hinges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The old Knox Hotel in Center had a horsehair sofa like this. 

I think my favorite room was the elegant dining room.

Decorated trees are everywhere, including in the bathroom, often decorated with dried hydrangeas, roses, and other flowers, peacock and ostrich feathers, scallop seashells.

General Crook's own bedroom has a dresser that looks exactly like my great grandparents' sitting in my bedroom, except for different drawer handles. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What one hears at the annual poinsettia show is trains, model trains.  My photos didn't always stop them in their tracks, but it's a big attraction for youngsters, along with the model buildings that are taken up every autumn from the outdoor Model Railroad Garden, allowing me to get some close-ups.

As always, the focal point is the giant tree of poinsettia rows.

One of the tracks circles it from the exhibition room into the entrance lobby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is Joslyn Castle, also seen in the larger photo, with the Cathedral in the background.

A little streetcar much like the old Omaha streetcar in the basement of the Durham Museum (formerly Union Pacific Station) travels back and forth in front of several major buildings.  The Durham is immediately behind it.  Left to right are the First National Tower, our tallest now, the new Union Pacific building, and the old Union Pacific headquarters, now razed for a glass condominium tower.  I might add that the U.P. Museum is now excellently installed in the beautiful old Council Bluffs library at the southeast corner of Bayliss Park, which I finally saw last week.

An artifical koi pond has been built in the middle, besides the regular large koi pond south of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year's Durham Museum tree, 40 feet high, I think, with enormous ornaments, those twisted cones between two and three feet long.  Downstairs is another charming show of miniature rooms and buildings by several Iowa crafters and a wonderful traveling Smithsonian show of Nashville's Hatch Letter Press Printing (1879), with a video showing the old, narrow store cluttered full with shelves of wooden printing blocks and lead fonts to use on its many old presses, the exhibition have several posters across the decades, including early Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley, plus a small display of print objects done at UNO by various artists.

I found some miscellaneous photos of cousin Dennis Jon (b. 7 June 1939 at Bloomfield, NE), the second behind me as grandchildren of Laurence and Fern Peters Koftan.

The oldest, hence his youngest, seems to be one of those Photo Booth prints, though I've cropped it.  He looks very much like his father, Earl Clarence Ellingson, here.  The one on the right seems to be a small school picture.  

Aunt Audree wrote on the back of this, "Taken the other day Jan 47--Denny--he's 7 1/2 yrs old".  The one on the right is from his Navy days obviously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was in a folder with a naval chain necklace around the photo, "N.T.C. GREAT LAKES," stamped below the anchor.

Aunt Audree wrote on the back of this "Denny & Lindsey - He was 9 in July.  He has on Denny's uniform."

And here he is, on his favorite couch that Mom had of Grandma and Grandpa Koftan's.

These are other photos clearly sent/given us by Aunt Billie, except for the last one with his children.

 

This looks like a birthday photo, but I have no data from it.  The next are  from Rel's high school senior year, the first labelled "April 29, 1961, night of the prom."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Uncle Rich was the third child of George Washington and Anna Jones Luckert, Richard Charles b. 24 November 1900, d. 26 August 1986.  His third wife was Gertrude/Billie Schar, b. 22 October 1914 in Nehawka, Nebraska.  I don't have her death date handy, though their second son, George, let me know about her death and cremation in California several years ago, after we had corresponded in her last years.  They had two sons, Richard Earl, b. 15 June 1943, whom we knew by his monogram as Rel, though he goes by Dick now; and George Washington II but not born on 22 February as Grandpa George was but 1 August 1948.  Rich was a construction foreman, with the Kiewit Company (headquartered here in Omaha) for many years, so they moved around frequently.  Aunt Billie was the most stylish relative I had.  I don't know what these two photos are, perhaps from the time of their wedding?

NOTE:  I would like to remind readers again that, except for my digital camera photos,  my pictures are all on scrapbook pages and must be blocked out to be scanned to enter here.  Those wanting copies have to make their own--and will have better versions than the originals in several cases--by right-clicking, the way they copy any photos on their computer.

  

 A formal baby portrait of Rel:

And two photos when he was five and a half months.  (He was born at Kearney, NE, but I don't know where these snapshots were taken.)

Cousin Judy recently made the local newspaper decorating a Christmas tree, so I've made an entry of all her photos.  (She's worked for two major nurseries here for decades and lives in Papillion.)  I haven't many Luckert family photos but share what I have.  Judy's parents were Joseph and Evelyn Cathryn Luckert Bruhn, who lived at Newman Grove.  Aunt Evelyn was the second oldest after Elizabeth Mae/Lizzie of George Washington and Anna Jones Luckert, b. 23 May 1899.  She and Uncle Joe had two daughters, Joyce, who married Walter Kramer, and Judith, who married Charles/Chuck Masilko.  Joyce and Walter had nine children:  Barbara, b. 30 September 1940; Betty, b. 30 September 1943; Douglas, b. 20 June 1946; Kathryn, b. 8 December 1949; Donald, b. 4 November 1951; Robert, b. August 1953; Debra,  b. August 1954; Scott, b. 27 December 1958; Rochelle, b. 14 December 1961, according to Sue's incomplete record.  I met several of the families a few years ago at Barbara's funeral in Newman Grove.  Barbara, the oldest, was brought up by Joe and Evelyn, a virtual sister to Judy.  She's in just one of the photos I have.

Judith Ann Bruhn at six months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barbara Kramer with Judith Ann Bruhn. 
(The Barbara I knew as a teen was a tomboy in western clothes who loved horses, in contrast to this picture.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going to assume the photo at left is Judy's high school graduation picture.  I have only this small photo of her daughter, Barbara Jo, b. 20 May 1978, at two, apparently eating birthday cake.  Today Bobbi is a polylingual diplomatic liaison in our foreign service, who has been stationed in Europe and Israel and may be back in Washington, D.C., by now, since the last I knew her mother was to go out for the Cherry Blossom Festival with her .  She told me at Barbara's funeral she would like to be posted in Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 You can compare her to her mother with this article's picture.