| Taming North Dakota So many Manns, so little time |
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| One of the more unsual highlights of 2003's summer vacation in America was attending a big family reunion (of my mother's father's side) in Dickinson, North Dakota. The Mann family (yes, my father married "Miss Mann") emigrated from the German region of Silesia (now southwestern Poland) to Chicago in 1881. Just two years later they left the fast-growing city for new opportunities and cheap land on the empty sea of grass that was then the Dakota Territory. They helped develop the town of New Salem (west of Bismarck) and started building a family empire complete with all the refinements expected of a solid, respectable German family. 120 years later, the descendants of this one famly gathered together in Dickinson. No one still lives in New Salem, and as several of the more cynical "Left Coast" generations noted, the Manns had been stupid enough to get off the train before reaching the coast, and their descendants were stupid enough to go back there in the middle of August! The North Dakota summer is more like Saudi Arabia than Silesia. At least we, the spoiled generations, have air conditioning. |
| After much hard work on the part of the organisers, it was quite an event. Big family wurst bar-b-q complete with a local band that could have stepped out of German Shützenverein were it not for the baseball hats. Raffles with church cookbooks as prizes and family back- yard receptions under a marquee. Can you get more all-American? While I've seen my 9 first cousins on a regular basis over the years, here there were people I barely knew. But as I started putting the pieces in place as to whom was the son or daughter of whom, many of the old stories also started coming back. And also started making sense! No family it would seem is without its share of scandals. What surprised me was how the family "scandals" that happened 50 to 100 years ago were still in the collective subconscience. |
| The great flag of the State of North Dakota. And the largest Holstein cow in the world (I kid you not) in beautiful New Salem |
| Wilhelm Heinrich Mann and his family. That's my grandpa Fred on the left. |
| Surprisingly, the current family "scandals" seem pretty tame and harmless in comparison to the sort of things that went on before. Almost everyone who left Europe for America in the 19th century had real reasons to do so, and it would seem the Manns were no exception. While great-grandpa told the historical society he had come to America to "repair his health" after a stint in the German Navy, family research dug up some more interesting theories as to what could have been motivating factors to start anew. So why didn't these show up in the otherwise impressive and thorough family history? Maybe everyone has the right to some secrets! |
| The "slogan" of the reunion was "Mann Alive!", but for me it was "so many Manns, so little time". I needed a road map (back to my Grandfather's generation) to keep people straight. Of the 10 Fred Mann grandchildren of my generation, only two were missing. Farmers and mechanics, doctors and lawyers, businessmen and truck drivers and housewives. What a typical 19th century German-American family, now happily evolving as part Japanese, Italian, Thai, Belgian, Chinese, English, Korean. In a word: all-American. |
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