Milwaukee, WI

Place: Milwaukee, WI

Weather: AM Showers, 59/65F

Route: From Taliesin 118 miles east on US-14 E and I-94 E.

Population: 590,157 (2019)

Nicknames: Cream City, Brew City, The City of Festivals.

Places to Visit: Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Public Museum, Grohmann Museum.

Images:

City Hall (from jsonline.com)

Skyline from Reservoir Park (taken by me)

Milwaukee Art Museum (from fox6now.com)

Taliesen, WI

Place: Taliesen, WI

Weather: Mostly Sunny, 56/80F

Route: From Froelich 79 miles east on US-18 E, WI-60 E, US-14 E.

Significance: My mother must have trained me well to always stop at a Frank Lloyd Wright attraction if there's one nearby.  From 1911 until his death in 1959 this was his main residence and studio. After 1937 he spent winters in Arizona - but he would return with his design team back here every spring.  

Website: Taliesen Preservation

Images: 

Main building and surrounding landscape (from franklloydwright.org)

Interior (from franklloydwright.org)

Froelich, IA

Place: Froelich, IA

Weather: Partly Cloudy, 64/81F

Route: From Omaha 345 miles ENE on I-80 E, I-35 N, US-20 E, IA-187 N.

Population: less than 10?

Genealogy: Today is the last family day for awhile. This is where my great-great grandmother Anna (from Marysville, PA) came to marry Frederick Froelich. Fred was born in this town, but his parents Henry and Katherine were from Germany and Switzerland respectively. Fred's brother John was a farmer and a tinkerer.  In 1892 he did something nobody had ever done before - he used a gasoline powered tractor to plow a field of wheat.  I know it seems unlikely that this small town in northeast Iowa would produce the man to father the modern tractor, but it's the truth.  Unfortunately for John (and all Froelich descendants)  he wasn't much of a business man.  He simply couldn't make machines that people would buy. In 1895 he sold his shares in the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company. The company actually didn't make tractors for some time - until 1911 - and none were sold successfully until the Waterloo Boy in 1913 - well after John had left the company.  In 1918 John Deere Company bought Waterloo - which were the first gasoline tractors made under the John Deere name.  John Froelich eventually moved to St. Paul, Minnesota - where he died in 1933 - without even enough money for a headstone.

The general store in Froelich has been turned into a museum and every September they host the Froelich Fall-der-all to celebrate John Froelich's accomplishment.  I haven't been to the Fall-der-all, but my mom has.  I have stopped by the museum many times - being a Froelich descendant you kind of get the royal treatment - which is always fun, but a little odd.

Images:

Me, my sister, and my mom at the plaque commemorating John Froelich's accomplishment

Me, my sister, and my dad in front of the general store in Froelich. It has actually since been rehabbed and has a museum inside.

Omaha, NE

Place: Omaha, NE

Weather: Partly Cloudy, 69/84F

Route: From Louisville 27 miles NE on US-50 N and I-80 E.

Population: 478,192 (2019)

Nickname: Gateway to the West

Places to visit: Henry Doorly Zoo, The Durham Museum, Lauritzen Gardens, Joslyn Art Museum.

Personal note: Another place Kendra and I have lived. Omaha will always have a special place in our hearts. It's where I went to PA school and Kendra earned her MBA. We met great people through triathlon and in our neighborhood.  Although it can feel a little isolated sometimes we really enjoyed living there. Lots of good restaurants and plenty of activities to do.

Images: 

Heartland of America Park and downtown (from sparefoot.com)

Joslyn Art Museum (from nebraskatravelerguide.com)

Louisville, NE

Place: Louisville, NE
Weather: Partly Cloudy, 70/88F
Route: From Otoe 25 miles north on US-50 N

Population: 1,295 (2018)
Genealogy: Just 25 minutes north of Otoe is Louisville (the "s" is not silent), where my grandpa Gene was born.  His mother Mabel's maiden name was Ward - the same Ward's that I wrote about back when we were in Newark.  My grandpa was the 3rd generation of Ingram's to be born in Louisville. His great-grandfather Adam came over from Scotland in the 1850's. Adam started one of the first farms in the area in the late 1850's just after Nebraska became a territory.  Land ownership was a little sketchy back then.  It appears that he worked the land that had been given to veteran of the War with Mexico who lived in Louisiana.  However, these land grants were dependent on the beneficiary improving the land - which apparently this guy never did.  So, in 1864 the land was then given by the U.S. government to Adam.  The cool thing is that these land grants or patents had to be signed by the president - so, the image below shows Adam Ingram's land grant - signed by Abraham Lincoln.

Images:

Land grant to Adam Ingram signed by Abraham Lincoln.

Otoe, NE

Place: Otoe, NE
Weather: Partly Cloudy, 70/86F
Route: From Beatrice 61 miles NE US-136 E and NE-50 N.

Population: 175 (2017)
Genealogy: Three of the next four days will be spent in places related to my family - places that I have visited often over my life.  Each has some interesting stories associated with them. The first place is Otoe, Nebraska - a small town east of Lincoln and south of Omaha. My paternal grandmother Margaret was born in Otoe in 1928. Both of her grandfathers were born near Hannover, Germany - but she was actually the 3rd generation to be born in America through each of her grandmothers.
Otoe was originally named "Berlin", however there was a strong anti-German sentiment in the area during WWI. There were even a series of fires in downtown in 1918 blamed on outsiders. The townspeople decided that changing the name of the town might help it not be such a lightening rod and the name was changed to Otoe (same as the county) in October 1918, just a month before the end of WWI.
The February after the name change my grandmother Margaret's parents Henry and Anna were married.  Henry's job was something relatively new - he was a mechanic.  One story about him, may be apocryphal, but is still worth telling.  In the 1920's the postal service started using airplanes to deliver the mail.  The pilots used highways for navigation - for the Kansas City to Omaha route highway 50 was used, which passed just a few miles from Otoe.
One day an airmail pilot on this route was having some trouble with his plane and had to land on highway 50. Since Henry was one of the few mechanics in the area - he worked on the plane and the nice young man stayed at their house.  Less than a year later the young man, Charles Lindbergh, became one of the most famous people in the world, when he successfully flew from New York to Paris.
My grandmother was only a few months old when Henry died. He was 29-years old and died of a simple infection, that if it would have happened a decade later could have been cured by penicillin. When he died, my great-grandmother Anna had four children to care for.  All four of her children ended up being incredible people.  All the descendants of those four children still get together for reunions - in fact we had one planned for this 4th of July.  There is a picture of me with Anna just two months after I was born - she passed away at the age of 80 later that year.

Images:

Henry and his family (he is top row second from the left) in 1913.

Great grandma Siemers and me in May 1977.

Homestead National Monument (Beatrice, NE)

Place: Homestead National Monument (Beatrice, NE)
Weather: Mostly Sunny, 65/83F
Route: From Pine Ridge 474 miles ESE on US-18 E, NE-87 S, NE-250 S, I-80 E, US-77 S.

Significance: The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed any person who had not taken up arms against the United States to apply for up to 160 acres of federal land. They would receive the land for free in return for a promise to live on the land for 5 years and improve the land during that time.  The first homestead granted was to Daniel Freeman for land that now includes the Homestead National Monument.
Over 10% of the United States would be eventually given away through the Homestead Act. As the land was primarily given to white settlers the act also had the impact of solidifying the loss of land to Native Americans in the west.

Website: Homestead National Monument

Image:

Homestead National Monument museum (from visitnebraska.com)