Our Family Search Began in 1983

The following email was written prior to our trip to ND, SD, and MN to meet our new cousins the Sletten and Opheim families.  After my visit with cousins in 1983, I wrote to all of my known family and listed everything I knew about the family.  I asked for help.  I only got two responses.  My father gave the most detail in a letter written on 6 November 1984.  A lot of things have happened, but this is the earliest beginnings.

9 June 2011

The Special Visit to MN in 1983 and the Mystery of the Shoeboxes of "stuff" about Ben Peterson and Emily Olivia Larson Peterson

I got to thinking about the upcoming trip and remembering a very, very special visit I had there with my family in 1983.  Erik was 16 and Leif was 15.  The Oshkosh, WI Airshow was the event and was very important to the boys, both of whom flew with two guys in Richmond who owned WWII combat aircraft.

I had an inspiration when I thought to call Shirley Arlene Erickson Molnau and ask if we could come and visit them.  It was 275 miles "out of our way" but I really wanted them to meet my family after being away from them for too long.  Shirley's mother Mildred is my father's sister.

Shirley said "yes" under one condition --- we had to stay awhile and get to know her sisters and her family.  She wanted to drag out the shoe boxes full of "stuff" about our family.  We laughed about crazy family lore about where we came from and what our ancestors were like (lots of stories there, but another time).  Shirley and her husband, DuWayne Edward Molnau, could not have been nicer to us.  I have no memory of how long we stayed.  I think we had a pop-up camper with us.  It could have been 8 hours or two days, but it was a good visit and a lot of fun for everyone.

My best memories are of an rhea, a South American version of an emu, taking one look at me from the fence and racing off down a row of corn with his body going "whack-whack" on the corn stalks.  Then there were the beautiful fancy chickens of all varieties.

That is where I got some of the letters between my father and my grandmother and my great-grandmother.  They even waved grandfather Emanuel Bernhart Peterson's death certificate in my face to prove that he did not have a hunting accident in Twin Falls while Emily was on holiday with the children in MN.  I wish I knew whether those shoe boxes had his actual full birth date in them.  All we need to crack the mystery of his family origins in the DAY of the month he was born in Sept 1870.

If anyone has a clue about where those boxes of mementoes reside today, please let me know.