Beriah Magoffin
Charlotte Magoffin
Shotgun Honeymoon?
Beriah Magoffin Jr. and Charlotte Bird Mondscheen were married in 1907. “Dad didn’t tell mother she had chosen a date right in the middle of hunting season,” Susan Shelby Magoffin Stoker said in an oral interview. “For a wedding trip they took the train to Deerwood, deposited mother’s wardrobe at the boarding house and went duck hunting for several days.” In some cases, that would have been the end of the romance right there, but for this couple it was just starting off right. “ Mother liked to hunt,” their daughter explained. “He gave her a 10 gauge shotgun and she hunted for some years, and I’ve seen a classic picture of her sitting on a muskrat house in long skirts and a hat with a gun. . . . a hunting family, that’s for certain.”Lethal Language Barrier
"My maternal grandfather was a first-generation immigrant, but not my paternal grandfather. In fact, he was third generation. I don’t know if you want that in this story or not. Magnus Anderson who immigrated from Sweden settled in Iowa, and after he’d been there about a year establishing a farm, he had a family. He had several children. My great-grandfather was in his very early teens, but one night some people came through and wanted a place to stay, so somehow or other, they put them up for the night. In the morning there was a posse there and these people were horse thieves. And back in those days, you know what they did with horse thieves. They strung them up and my great-great-grandfather did not know how to speak English yet. He hadn’t been in the country more than a year . . . and the posse assumed that he was part of the ring of horse thieves and they hung him with the other thieves. So, there was his widow with three children left destitute on this emerging homestead. And that’s something I learned not too many years ago.”Carlton (Carlie) Anderson, Crosby
Lesson Left a Bad Taste
The parents of Fred Petrich and Matilda (Tillie) Berg Petrich wanted the children to become Americanized, so the children were discouraged from speaking Slovanian. “As a result we didn’t do much talking in Slovanian any more,” Fred said. “I first started school as a 5-year-old in January. Couldn’t speak a word of English, and I had a Finnish teacher. And so apparently she understood some Slovanian, the swear words or something. As frustrated as I would get, I must have said some. She sent me out, tied my hands behind my back, and put a bar of soap in my mouth. We live about 6 or 8 blocks from the school. This is January in Aurora, Minnesota, and I have to walk home. Just luckily one of my neighbor friends saw me. He untied my hands, and I was able to take the soap out of my mouth and walk home. Do you think my parents ever went and complained to the teachers? They held them in the same esteem that they did doctors and lawyers, you know. Teachers were gods, boy. But that’s how they treated you."
Elsie Lowder
Elsie Lowder of Ironton
Elsie Lowder’s introduction to the New World was a brutal one, as evidenced in this excerpt from her oral history:“Well, my dad was here two years before my mother. He left my mother pregnant and with two kids--two had died in infancy--so this is the fifth child--in Lubjana, Yugoslavia. We came by way of France. When we got to New York there was an epidemic of some disease real bad--so we were all in quarantine. They took the kids away from my mother and we never saw her for days. And this is at Ellis Island. Then my little brother died in Ellis Island and all this was unbeknownst to my father, who was waiting in Calumet, Michigan. He was wondering what was happening to his family. My mother was befriended by a priest who did all the talking for her as he could speak in Italian and in German. My mother could speak German also, but not enough for conversation, so the priest took over. When they showed the youngster to my mother, my mother didn’t think that was her little boy who had died. But, he was dead. Then we went to Calumet, Michigan, just my sister and my mother and myself. And the baby was buried, of course, on Ellis Island in New York.”
Ironton Ranger June 3, 1948
Work hard, and don’t look for sundown and pork and beans before you start working in the morning,” was advice given by John “Dad” Leighton. Mr. Leighton was born in Calais, Maine, on June 7, 1848. He lived there until 1868, when he moved to New Hampshire. After living there for about a year and a half, he moved to Detroit, Michigan. Coming to Duluth about 1878, “Dad” said there wasn’t much of a town there then. There was just one main street--Superior Street--and when it would rain you couldn’t cross the street without the red clay pulling the rubbers from your feet. An old time lumberjack, “Dad” spent 40 winters in the woods lumbering, and was on 39 spring drives when the logs were floated down to the mills. Quite a few of those winters were spent right around this area. He came to Aitkin in 1882, and when they were logging in the Big and Little Pine rivers area, he used to cut through what is now Crosby-Ironton on his way to Deerwood to catch the train. That was almost 30 years before the two towns or any of the mines were even discovered.An Ironton landmark is the small eatery that started out as Pop Morin's Lunchroom, was later Jim's Lunch, and is now the Miner's Diner.
Pop Morin's Lunchroom
Flu Epidemic Claims Joe’s Eye
In a sense, the Spanish flu pandemic claimed Joe Katzenberger’s eye and left him with the name "One-eyed Joe." Daughter, Joanna Katzenberger Girard, tells it this way. “Well, when my dad was about eight years old, his mother died in the epidemic--the flu epidemic. My dad was actually from southern Minnesota, and he was a farm boy. Evidently they had no supervision, and he and his older sister raised the three younger children without a mother. One day he and his sister were doing something with lye--maybe he was making soap--whatever they were doing. His sister and he got into a fight and his sister threw the lye, and they actually had to remove the eyeball. At one time he had a glass eye. I don’t know what he was doing--probably out having a good time. He had a motorcycle, and he ran into a light pole, and the glass eye popped out. My mother never let him have another one.”
Matt Crosby
From a Charlotte Oberg Column on the Matt Crosbys
While we were massaging our throats with a cup of coffee, Harriett (Crosby, wife of Matt) started to laugh and said, "Oh Charlotte (Oberg), I simply must tell you about the funny thing that happened to Matt the other day. It was one of those busy summer days when everybody was tied up with some meeting except Matt. When it came lunch time, he went into the house to have a lunch. He searched the refrigerator for something to make a sandwich with, finally found a can of potted meat and ate two sandwiches. When I came home and asked him what he had for lunch he said, 'two sandwiches out of the canned meat.' I couldn’t imagine what meat he had found, but when I investigated, I found he had eaten dog food." At that moment Matt did a perfect imitation of a dog and we all roared with laughter. When they left I kissed them goodbye and told Matt the next time he came, I would have a nice can of Kennel Rations for lunch.
Bathing Beauties of Bygone Years
Can anyone tell us who these beautiful people are???
Check this page often as stories will be shared with you on a rotating basis.
Lower Level, Unity Bank of Crosby, Minnesota
P.O. Box 68, Ironton, MN 56455
Office Phone: 218-545-1166
Phones:218-546-5996 or 218-546-5233
E-mail: cchps@emily.net
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Web Site: www.cuyunaheritage.org