52 Ancestors (2020) – Week 7: Favorite Discovery

This is my third year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

This post is about a small discovery but it made me very happy.

My great-grandmother, Julia Sievert Hork, was born in Joliet, Will County, Illinois on 31 October 1854 to Vincent Sievert and Susanna Raduntz.[1] When she was born, her father was a farmer.[2]

Julia was the oldest surviving child and on 6 June 1872, she married Johan Anton Hork, a tailor, at St. John’s German Catholic Church in Joliet.[3] She stated she was eighteen years old, though her eighteen birthday would not be for a few more months. Anton was twenty-eight.

For the next eight or so years, she and Anton lived in the area near her parents, either in Joliet or Aurora in Kane County, not that far certainly by train at twenty-three miles. So it would be expected that she was able to visit with her parents.

However, in the early to mid 1880s, they had moved to St. Louis, Missouri; Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan; and then to Stuart, Iowa. City directories document Anton’s moves and one can assume that his wife and children accompanied him. One son was born in Grand Rapids, and two other sons in Stuart. By the 1890s, they were in Portland, Oregon where their youngest daughter was born. And in 1899, my grandfather, William Cyril was born in Hamilton, Montana, where Julia finally put a stop to the moving. It would be the place she settled until her death in 1928.

It is sad to think that with the winding move out West, she probably never saw her parents again. Her father died in 1890 when she was probably in Iowa.[4]

Yet, I found evidence that she was able to visit with her mother. Newspaper articles chronicled her trip out east to visit her mother.

“Mrs. J. A. Hork departed this morning for Joliet, Ill., for a visit of two months at the home of her mother. Mrs. Hork has not seen her former place of residence since she came west, seventeen years ago. She was accompanied as far as Missoula by her youngest son, Cyril, who will visit his sister, Mrs. A. E. Hart.”[5]

The newspaper in Joliet also gave some news of the trip.

“Mrs. J.A. Hork, of Hamilton, Mont., is the guest of her mother, Mrs. V. Sievert, of Hickory Street.”[6]

And then two months later, the Joliet paper added more news.

“Mrs. A. J. Hork, who has been the guest of her mother, Mrs. V. Sievert, of North Hickory street for the past two months left today for her home Hamilton, Mont.”[7]

It was good that Julia had a chance to travel to Joliet to visit her mother. Susanna would live a few more years and she died in 1911.

http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/will/postcards/ppcs-will.html

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[1] Montana Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, Ravalli County, Julia Ann Hork, 1928,  RAV 940.

[2] 1860 U.S. census, Will Co, Illinois, pop sched, digital image, Ancestry, (ancestry.com), NARA microfilm publication M653, roll 238, Joliet, pg 377, p 612 (penned), household 2791/2721, Vincent Sever.

[3] St. John's Catholic Church, Joliet, Illinois Marriages, p. 13, 1872, Anton Hork & Julia Sievert.

[4] State of Illinois, Board of Health, Certificate of Death, Will County, no. 3419, Vincent Sievert, 1890.

[5] Butte Miner, 16 Jul 1906, p. 3.

[6] “Personals,” The Joliet Evening Herald, 18 Jul 1906, p. 3.

[7] The Joliet Evening Herald, 20 Sep 1906, p. 5.

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.