History
History
The places where the family lived, from the Schwenkfelder villages of Silesia and the farms of western Jutland to the prairie towns of northern Nebraska. Each page tells the story of the place and lists family members who lived there.
Nebraska
Boyd and Holt counties in northern Nebraska, where much of the family homesteaded and farmed.
- Boyd County, NebraskaBoyd County is a narrow strip of hills and river valleys on Nebraska's northern border, opened to homesteaders in 1890 and organized as a county in 1891. Our family came here in those first years, farmed the land for generations, and rests today in the cemeteries at Monowi, Lynch and Spencer.
- Holt County, NebraskaHolt County is a big stretch of north-central Nebraska where the Elkhorn valley meets the edge of the Sandhills, a land of grass, hay meadows and cattle. Our family came here in the 1870s and 1880s, while the county was still being organized and the first towns were rising along the new railroad.
- Bristow, NebraskaBristow is a small village in the Ponca Creek valley between Lynch and Spencer. It began as a homestead-era post office in 1890 and became a railroad town in 1902, with strong Swedish church roots in the country around it.
- Gross, NebraskaGross is a tiny village on a ridge in northern Boyd County, founded in 1893 on land from the old Fort Randall military reservation. It grew quickly and then nearly vanished after the railroad passed it by, yet it is still an incorporated village today.
- Inman, NebraskaInman is a small village in the Elkhorn River valley of eastern Holt County, east of O'Neill, that grew up around a railroad station in 1881. It carries the name of the county's first recorded settler and has been part of our family's story since the early settlement years.
- Lynch, NebraskaLynch is a small village in the Ponca Creek valley of eastern Boyd County, founded in 1890 by one of the very first homesteaders. For more than a century it has been a trading town, a school town and home to the county's only hospital, and members of our family are buried in its cemeteries.
- Monowi, NebraskaMonowi is a railroad village on the eastern edge of Boyd County, platted in 1902, that grew to about 150 people and then dwindled to become famous as America's one-person town. Members of our family are buried in the countryside around it.
- O'Neill, NebraskaO'Neill is the county seat of Holt County, founded in 1874 by an Irish colony led by General John O'Neill and still proud to be the Irish Capital of Nebraska. For our family it was the courthouse town, the place for land records, trade and church gatherings.
- Spencer, NebraskaSpencer, laid out in 1891, is the largest town in Boyd County, a crossroads village on high ground near the Niobrara River. It grew from a homestead-era post office into the county's main trading and school town, and members of our family rest in its cemeteries.
Iowa
The German Catholic settlement in Shelby County where the Schiltz, Blum and Schwarte families farmed.
Denmark
Western Jutland, home of the Gransgaard, Nielsen and Pedersen families before they came to America.
- Danish Emigration to AmericaBetween the 1860s and the First World War roughly 300,000 Danes left their homeland, and about nine in ten of them went to the United States. This page explains who left, why they went, how they traveled, and where they settled in Nebraska, the state where branches of the Gransgaard, Nielsen and Pedersen families made new homes.
- Ferring, DenmarkFerring is a small village and parish on the North Sea coast about 11 kilometers southwest of Lemvig, where an 800-year-old church, a red lighthouse and a high, eroding cliff look out over the water. Karen Marie Pedersen was born here in 1859.
- Lemvig, DenmarkLemvig is a small harbor town tucked into a steep-sided bay of the Limfjord in northwestern Jutland, the market town for the farming and fishing parishes along this stretch of the North Sea coast. Karen Marie Pedersen, born in nearby Ferring in 1859, spent her last years here and died in Lemvig in 1942.
- Ringkøbing, DenmarkRingkøbing is an old market town on the shore of Ringkøbing Fjord in western Jutland, and for more than two centuries it was the seat of Ringkøbing County, where most of the Gransgaard, Nielsen and Pedersen family records were kept. The town, the fjord and the dune coast beyond it frame the world the family knew before some of them left for Nebraska.
Germany and Silesia
The homeland and refuge of the Schwenkfelders before they sailed for Pennsylvania.
- Görlitz and Upper LusatiaGörlitz, an old trading city on the Neisse River, and the nearby estates of Count Zinzendorf at Berthelsdorf and Herrnhut gave the Schwenkfelder refugees a home from 1726 to 1734. It was a place of safety, but never quite a place of freedom.
- Silesia and the SchwenkfeldersFor nearly two hundred years a small circle of farming families in the hills of Lower Silesia kept faith with the teachings of Caspar Schwenckfeld, despite fines, prison, and secret night burials. In 1726 they finally fled, and their journey led a few years later to Pennsylvania and to part of our family's story.
Pennsylvania
Where the Schwenkfelders settled after 1734.
- Lower Milford Township and the Hosensack ValleyLower Milford is a rural township at the southern tip of Lehigh County, and its Hosensack valley was one of the places where Schwenkfelder families put down roots. Here, in 1790, they built their first house of worship in America.
- The Schwenkfelders in PennsylvaniaOn September 22, 1734, about 170 Schwenkfelder exiles stepped off the ship St. Andrew in Philadelphia, free at last to worship as they chose. They made new homes in the Perkiomen valley and the townships around it, and their descendants have given thanks for that day every September since.