Family History is Full of Blessings!

August 9, 2017 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / Leave a comment

I have been taking a journey through the annals of time, through photocopies and photographs hidden in dusty filing cabinets, almost forgotten. I have delved into old family papers to try and answer the questions: Where did I come from? Who were my ancestors? Who am I? I have just scratched the surface, but I found some pretty great stuff!

My Mother’s Family

My mother’s father (Harold Gisselman) was born to Erik and Anna Gisselman in Iowa after they immigrated from Sweden. They later settled in Wisconsin. I wrote about Harold in “Will I See My Papa Again?” Harold was such a wonderful story teller and I wish he was still here to tell me all about his wonderful family and what his parents remembered about their lives in Sweden.

My mother’s mother’s side of the family holds a rare treasure called “Shilling Genealogy and History” by Anna Schilling Wichman. She tells the story of her grandparents, Johann and Justina Schilling. Johann was born in Brandenburg, Germany. I was very excited to learn that fact since that is my husband’s family name and now my name as well! He was a wine maker and barrel maker. That fact also excited me since we have a son named “Cooper” which means “barrel maker!”

They immigrated to Wisconsin in 1858 where he became a farmer. When wheat raising declined, “With the help of his son, Frank, driving teams hitched to sleighs loaded with the family belongings, they came north through the state which at that time was almost unbroken wilderness, with only a few rough roads blazed through the jack pine and scrub oak.”

Johann purchased an 80 acre tract of land in the vast forests of Marathon County and built a farm that was sold to his son, Frank in 1894 for $1.00. Frank Shilling was described by the author (who was also his daughter) as, “Always an industrious farmer and always a humble, faithful Christian.” His wife, Anna, was “one of the sweetest, noblest women whose life has ever brightened this earth.”

This lovely couple had 8 children, one of whom was my great-grandmother Amelia. Amelia was, “an industrious woman, strong in character, had an unwavering trust in God, which was her strength and shield, and enabled her to meet the adversities of life with calmness and fortitude.” She became Amelia Seipp and had two children, the firstborn being my grandmother LaVera, “a woman of grace and dignity.” I wrote about LeVera in “Happy 100th Birthday Grammy!” LaVera married Harold Gisselman and had one child, Dana. Dana married George Beyer and had two children. That is me and my brother!

I am very thankful to know of my trailblazing, hardworking, God-fearing ancestors from Sweden and Germany who settled in Wisconsin.

My Father’s Family

My father’s side of the family is more of a mystery to me. My father was a historian and a writer, but he never compiled a history of his own family. How I wish that I could talk with Dad again about all that he knew of his past. How I wish that I had more interesting questions to ask of his parents (Leonard and Edna Beyer) back when they were alive, more important than, “Where are Dad’s old Lincoln Logs?” or “Can I watch TV now?”

I have to piece together their lives with the papers and photographs that my dad had saved. A pile of matted photos, faded and yellowed with age, taken by Leonard Beyer tell me that he was an amazing photographer. His photos of plants, animals, and landscapes were taken in Utah, Montana, Wyoming, England and Italy. My daughter Areli has inherited his love of both traveling and photography (and his talent as well)!

Leonard’s father was Andrew Jackson Beyer, who I know nothing about except that he perhaps owned an ice cream shop and possibly served as a judge.

His mother was Virginia Keyser. I have extensive paperwork on the Keyser family, generated when they held a Bicentennial Family Reunion. It was Dirck Keyser of Amsterdam, a prominent dealer of silk goods, who first immigrated to what is now Pennsylvania in 1688. He responded to an invitation from William Penn because he was, “desiring to worship God in all freedom.”

The Keyser family was quite proud of their earliest known predecessor, Leonhard Keyser of Bavaria. He broke from the Catholic Church, of which he had been a priest, to become an Anabaptist. The Reunion states that “he put aside the mystery and absurdity of the Latin tongue, and went among the people talking to them in their own language…what they should do to be saved.”

An account of his martyrdom was recorded in Martyrs Mirrors from two separate but very similar reports. “…in the year 1525, and forthwith continued his ministry with great power and zeal, undaunted by all the tyranny which arose over the believers, in the way of drowning, burning and putting to death. Acts 9:20 In the second year of his ministry, Leonhard Keyser was apprehended at Scharding, in Bavaria, and condemned by the bishop of Passau…to be burned…When he came out into the field, and was approaching the fire, he, bound, as he was, leaned down at the side of the cart, and plucked a flower with his hand, saying to the judge, who rode on horseback alongside of the cart: ‘Lord judge, here I pluck a flower; if you can burn this flower and me, you have justly condemned me; but, on the other hand, if you cannot burn me and this flower in my hand, consider what you have done and repent.’ Thereupon the judge and the three executioners threw an extraordinary quantity of wood into the fire, in order to burn him immediately to ashes by the great fire. But when the wood was entirely burned up, his body was taken from the fire uninjured. Then the three executioners and their assistants built another great fire of wood, which when it was consumed, his body still remained uninjured…and the flower in his hand, not withered, or burnt in the least, the executioners then cut his body into pieces, which they threw into a new fire. When the wood was burned up, the pieces lay unconsumed in the fire. Finally they took the pieces and threw them into the river Inn.”

I cannot even comprehend what a legacy of devotion to God and courage I have inherited from Leonhard!

My father’s mother, Edna Specht Beyer, I also know very little about. A few stories written by Edna give a peek into their lives. “Something Very Personal” was an article about how they met and married. “My Grandfather’s Place” was written about her paternal Grandparents who came from Germany. Something wonderful happened to me as I read my grandmothers recollections. Previously I had only ever seen her as a very proper, old woman. As I read her writing, I realized that she wasn’t always old. She was actually once a young woman very much like me, with a love for reading, writing, and teaching. The way she viewed her grandparents and their home was very similar to how I had always seen her and her home. In fact, I had written sentiments so similar to her own, years prior in my article, “The Term is Over.” She describes her grandparent’s house as a special place where nothing ever changed. Her grandparents’ yards was like a magical fairy land to her as a child.

Edna and I also shared the same sorrow when we returned years later to see the place very much changed by new ownership and the wonder stripped to the barren look of any, common subdivision. I feel so much closer to Grandmother Beyer now and want to know more about her heritage. She actually felt that same way about her grandparents.

In fact she wrote, “It seems strange to me now that I remember Grandfather’s place so well but know so little about my grandparents. How I would love to visit them again and get them to talk of their childhood in Europe, of their parents’ decision to come to America, of the long trip over in a sailing vessel, of the hard years in a new country… But of important things about their lives, I know very little except that they had always been honest, hardworking, God-fearing.”

It is a shame that neither Edna nor I thought to ask the really interesting questions while our grandparents were still alive. Yet God holds all our past in His hands, and will reveal what is important in His good time.

It is also true that written accounts usually highlight the good and minimize the bad. Exodus 20: 5b-6 (NLT) says, “I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands.” We have all observed how the bad decisions and weaknesses of the grandparents and parents have a negative impact on the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of the children. We all have those negative influences in our families. Yet Jesus died to set us free from every curse! His blood brings healing from every destructive thing in our family lines.

God is such a loving Father that His blessings extend down family lines, not just for three or four generations, but for a THOUSAND GENERATIONS!

I have been asking for all those blessings to fall on my generation, on my children, and on my grandchildren. I think God loves those kind of prayers, because He carefully chose the specific details of my lineage, and He would delight if I lived in the fullness of all that He had placed there! I can also feel His joy as I discover those blessings, one by one. May my children also experience that joy as they read my writing, years from now, when they remember all that they wished they had asked me.

Happy 100th Birthday, Grammy!

October 18, 2014October 18, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 5 Comments

La Vera Gisselman, Senior Picture

If my grandmother, La Vera Gisselman were still on this earth, she would be 100 years old today. She was an extraordinary woman, and I remember her with such fondness.

John and Amelia Seipp

She grew up in Wisconsin. Her small family lived in the second story above a store that they owned. She was full of love and admiration for her sainted mother, Amelia. She had much respect for her father, John, although she described him as being strict and favoring her younger brother over her. She told me her father was a very handsome man, always attracting the attention of the ladies. Yet he had a certain smell about him, being very opposed to the overuse of precious and expensive water. (La Vera was one of the most cleanly people I have ever known, almost to a fault. As a child, I would wait on her heels and beg her to play with me. Yet, she could not settle down to play a game or read a comic book until she felt that she had sufficiently cleaned my parents house. This included taking the mattress off of my bed and vacuuming underneath it!) Well, as a young woman, she described sneaking around when her father wasn’t home, filling up the wash tub with the rationed water and taking many forbidden baths.

When she was 16 years old, she met the love of her life, Harold Gisselman, at the ice skating rink. He was immediately taken with her and offered to walk her half of the way home.

She thought to herself, “What kind of a guy is this, that he would only walk me part of the way!”

He ended up walking her the entire way to her front door, and it sounded like they were inseparable after that! He was 20, so he had to wait for La Vera to grow up a bit before they could think about marriage. Yet, they waited more than 10 years before they tied the knot. In the frugal and patient way of their generation, they purchased a plot of land and had a house built before they got married. (I remember looking at pictures of the basement being dug and the piles and piles of rocks that were pulled out of the ground. Some of those rocks were used by Harold’s father to build a retaining wall in the back yard. Many changes occurred to the house and the yard over the years, but 921 Humboldt Ave. remained their beloved home for all of their 50 plus years of marriage. I have such wonderful memories of that little two bedroom, always clean and orderly, always meticulously maintained. I remember picking cucumbers in the perfect, weedless garden. I recall many neighbors and friends commenting on how the yard, bordered and overflowing with plants and flowers, was the prettiest one in Wausau. Whenever an unusually cool breeze blows through Pennsylvania, I am taken back to those cool Wisconsin summers. Whenever our radiators kick on that first cold day of fall, I am reminded of the smell of Grammy and Papa’s radiators that they had to turn on even in the summer!)

Finally, when Harold was 31 years old, he wed his beautiful La Vera on Nov 1, 1940.

Harold and La Vera Gisselman on their wedding day

They honeymooned in Chicago to pick out some furniture for their new home. When they returned to Wausau, they separated to continue living with their own parents until their home was completed. Harold was the youngest of his mother’s four boys, and Anna always told him that when he moved out, she would just die. The day he moved into his own home, which was just up the street from his mother’s home, she did pass away. Much sorrow and joy were woven together in those early years.

Anna and Erik Gisselman

Grammy told me that one day Harold was requested to report for duty. It was WWII, and he had received a summons, but there was a possibility that he could be sent right back home again. Grammy passed the long hours waiting for him to return home by scrubbing every inch of her home. Then she received a call. He would not be returning but would be entering the Army Air Corp! He went to an army base in St Louis, Missouri. They discovered that he was very good at typing, so the army, in their wisdom, decided that he could best serve his country by doing office work in the states. He was never sent over seas to fight, and I was always so thankful for that. La Vera was able to visit him in St. Louis, and she became pregnant with their first and only child, my mother! How very important that child was!

La Vera had to spend most of her pregnancy alone, although she did have the help and company of her mother. When she told her father-in-law, Erik, that he was going to be a grandfather, he would walk up the street to help her as well.

The time came for her to give birth. She entered the hospital and they put her to sleep. She doesn’t remember any of the birth! (She would become very uncomfortable when I would broach the topic of my natural childbirth experiences. She preferred to stay in the dark about the whole mysterious affair.) Harold received some leave and returned to see his baby girl!

After his time in the Army, Harold was hired as a bank teller. He worked his way up the banking ladder until he was eventually the bank president. Everyone called him Chick, and he was known and loved by everyone at the bank and most everyone in town. He was an honest and intelligent man, always ready with a joke and a smile. Years and years after his retirement and even years after his death in 1994, I still heard people around town talk about him with respect and admiration.

La Vera got a job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant at Franklin Elementary. Then she was the secretary at Horace Mann Junior High School and worked there for many years. She was wonderful with children. She gave me a box full of years and years worth of crafty invitations she helped to make, promoting some sort of school event. She would often be a part of the school’s variety show in which she and Harold (along with many others) would deck themselves out in various costumes and perform skits.

Once they both retired, they would spend their winters in Florida and Arizona and their summers gardening and visiting their two beloved grandchildren (myself and my brother Jason) in Pennsylvania. La Vera despised the heat and humidity of PA. She would end up playing games with us in our cool basement to find relief. We would also go to visit them in Wisconsin for 2-4 weeks in the summer. Oh the fun we had playing at Marathon Park, hiking on Rib Mountain or the Eau Claire Dells, and visiting the cottage up north. We would swim in the frigid water until our quivering lips turned purple. Once we all took a trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was one of the best times of my childhood!

Harold and La Vera celebrating their 50th anniversary

My Papa passed away the night that I graduated from High School. La Vera was devastated and heart-broken. He had prepared her for his death, and she knew how to take care of herself. She was strong and self-determined. One of her most memorable character traits was that she ALWAYS knew the right thing to do in EVERY situation, and she NEVER hesitated to speak her mind. She could be taken as rather prideful and bossy at times, yet to me, that was just Grammy.

Several years passed and Grammy moved herself into a retirement community, selling her beloved home and going through all of her belongings. Years after that she moved herself into a new retirement community, because it had a balcony off the living room that she liked better. She loved that place and never wanted to leave. She kept herself busy with cribbage games and a string of adoring boyfriends, always much younger that she was. She lived independently up until two months before her death at age 96. She was a marvel and a wonder to all who met her! Her secrets to long life and vitality? Exercise, fresh air, gardening, and a table-spoon of vinegar and black strap molasses everyday. Her father, who died in his own home at age 96, swore by his vinegar and honey, and she carried on that tradition with a twist.

One point that Grammy was rather adamant about over the years was that I should not be a “baby making machine”, as she put it. She was overjoyed with the first few children we had. Then her excitement waned with the next few. Somewhere around the 6^th child, she acted annoyed when I announced a new pregnancy. Pretty soon I was very hesitant to even tell her that I was pregnant again, almost wishing that I could assure her that we would absolutely have no more children and gain back her approval. Her approval was always something that I highly coveted. Woe to the person who had lost it! Yet I knew that God had more precious babies for me, whether Grammy liked it or not!

My Grammy, LaVera Gisselman

In her final years, La Vera appeared to become less controlling and more accepting of others. I had the privilege of spending the last week of her life by her side. She had a stroke and was no longer capable of making decisions on her own. Chris and I traveled to Wisconsin and moved her into a memory care facility. She was the most talkative, most opinionated, and spunkiest resident in the entire place. She could hold the most lucid conversations, and a few times Chris and I thought we were making a horrible mistake by taking away her freedom, her apartment, and her car. Yet the next moment she would think that Chris was a nurse and that another resident, Leonard, was actually her boyfriend, Harry. She had the most hilarious conversations with Leonard, still believing that he was Harry, even after he refuted that fact in many ways. Yet Leonard was smiling the whole time as though he didn’t mind the thought of being her boyfriend.

She passed peacefully in her sleep on February 4, 2011. I was hard to say goodbye, but I was thankful that she didn’t have to live very long with dementia.

Later, in her belongings I found at least four typed note cards listing the names and birth dates of all her great-grandchildren (including Jason’s two children), as though she was afraid that she would forget one of them. I also found a precious little bundle wrapped in white tissue paper. It was a group of seven silver angels, one for each one of my children that I had at that time. Each one was inscribed with the child’s name and inset with their birthstone. Each great-grandchild was precious to her…I could see that clearly. Now that she is on the other side of eternity, I know they are even more precious in her eyes. I know that she is cheering me on as I am expecting our ninth little one in April. She can now see into the fathomless depths of time; generation after generation, thousands of years upon thousands of years. Every good thing my children accomplish during their lifetimes is part of HER legacy! Their imprint on history is also HER imprint on history! And their love of humanity and their love for God add to HER eternal bliss.

I love you Grammy! I can hardly wait to see you again!

It is Truly Delightful to Have a House Full of Boys

July 10, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 9 Comments

Little boys give the BEST hugs, squeezing your neck so hard with their little chubby arms that you feel like you will burst with the sheer joy of it!

You get to observe how your husband must have looked like as a baby, toddler, and little boy, and it is an adorable sight to behold!

You have the opportunity to learn strange and bizarre facts about many topics including but not limited to exotic animals, superheroes, guns, the world of Redwall, policemen, comic books, history, wars, and heroes.

You are inspired by the intelligent engineering and creative design of the structures that rise and fall, both outside and inside your home.

You are happy that those pesky squirrels have to run for their lives when your boys show up with their home-made bows and arrows.

Boys are enthusiastic eaters! The messier they are, the more they enjoyed it.

Boys love to pick flowers for their moms. “Picking” is a term used loosely to mean stomped on, whacked down, crushed, pulled up by the roots, and then presented with pride to the object of their affection.

Moms, YOU are that object of affection! What could be better than that!

Boys love to follow their Dad around, learning everything that Dad knows.

Boys can lift some of the burden off of Dad as they take over jobs that they enjoy and take pride in, such as yard work and maintenance of the house and cars.

Boys grow into teenagers who are bigger and stronger than you are. They can help in a myriad of ways from carrying the groceries to building your dream home. I have not yet received a dream home from my boys, but I have read a story of a mother of 13 boys who did!

You get to experience all the joys of each stage of their development as described in Wild Things: the Art of Nurturing Boys.

The Explorer (age 2-4) active, aggressive, curious, self-determined

The Lover (age 5-8) tender, obedient, attached to dad, competitive

The Individual (ages 9-12) searching, evolving, experimenting, criticizing

The Wanderer (ages 13-17) when a boy becomes the worst version of himself. Ok, that part isn’t so great, but just wait until you read the next one.

The Warrior (ages 18-22) going from boy to man, finishing, reflective, searching, romantic

We get to watch the little boy grow into the strong and courageous warrior. That warrior will stand up for what is right and defend the weak. That warrior will be motivated by love in everything he does with an authority that comes from knowing his identity in God. A vision of that Warrior, no matter how distant he might be from your reality, will keep you saying, “It is truly delightful and wonderful to raise a houseful of boys!