Frances, age 5.
Genealogy Report - Frances Louise Hagen
1. FRANCES LOUISE1 BERLIN (Herman, #2);
Birth to Marriage
Frances Louise Berlin was born December 5, 1885 in the township of Ludington,
Eau Claire County, WI. Frances Louise was named after her maternal grandmother,
Frances Darrow Webber and Louise Berlin. Louise was a sister of her father. She
died in 1864 at the age of 15 in Stillwater, MN
When mother was born and during the first five years of her life the family
lived in a log cabin that had been built by her grandfather and father when they
first came to Eau Claire County, WI sometime between 1860 and 1870. The location
of this house was on the farm just south of Ludington, WI.
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Frances, age 5. |
In 1890 there were 8 people living in her grandparents log cabin. Her grandparents, parents and their four children. About 1890 her father decided that the time had come to build another house. The house was used for many years. I can remember visiting there as a young boy in the 1930"s. There is different house that stands on the Berlin farm today. It is owned by Milton (Choppy) Berlin and his family. Choppy is a son of Albert (Joe) and Carrie Berlin.
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This is house built by mother's father in about 1890. |
"When I was a young child, I became very sick with some kind of sickness. My dad was working in the woods and only came home on weekends, if he could get off work. My mother sent someone for the Doctor. He came, said there was nothing he could do and pronounced me dead. I was placed in a room that was built off the house. This room had no heat and I was placed there until my dad would come home. He came home that night and my mother told him what had happened. He came into the room and as he was standing there he knew that I was breathing because he could see my breath in this cold room. He picked me up and carried me into the house. My mother told me that he fed me some whiskey from a spoon and from that moment I started to get better. I guess it wasn't my time to go."
Of course, none of us thought about asking her how old she was when this
happened nor did any of us question her about the type of sickness.
The 1900 Federal Census, (95 % of the 1890 Census is unavailable because it was
burned), for Ludington, Eau Claire, WI indicates that Frances was born in 1884,
and her age at the time of the census was 15 years. This is in error. She was
born in 1885 and would not be 15 until December of 1900. In my research there
are several instances where it was found that there were errors on the census
reports. These errors happened because of how the information was received. The
census workers would take information about members of a family from whomever
was available to give it. This might be the children if the parents were not
home when the census taker came to call or, in some cases, even close friends or
neighbors. Many times they were dealing with people who could not read or write
and who knew very little English. It is not surprising that errors showed up in
the reports. The 1900 census also showed that Frances had spent 7 months in
school during the past year.
In 1903, Adeline Webber Berlin the mother of Frances died suddenly. Mother was
17 at the time, the oldest daughter, and the second oldest in the family. She
became the homemaker for the family. It must have been a very busy time for her
just after her mother died. There were ten people in the family counting
herself, her father, grandfather, and seven children. The youngest child at the
time of her mother's death was 4 years old.
Mother told the following story about a happening just after her mother died:
" It was shortly after the funeral. I was the oldest girl in the family and took on the responsibility of housekeeper. I was walking home from the neighbors just at dark. A white figure came out of the woods and walked ahead of me down the road. If I slowed down the figure slowed, if I went faster the figure went faster. Just before I got to the house the white figure turned off into the woods. I ran into the house to see if it was one of my brothers who was playing a trick on me but they were all there in the house. As I thought about it seemed like the figure was trying to tell me that every thing was going to be all right."
(Note by the author: Mother was superstitious and believed that dreams meant
something about life. She had a dream book that she consulted whenever she had a
dream that bothered her.)
How long she remained as a homemaker in her father's household is unknown, but
by 1910 she had moved to Pleasant Valley, Leon Township, Monroe County, WI where
she was a housekeeper for her older brother, Louis Berlin. He was renting a farm
in the same Pleasant Valley that we spoke of in Volume I. It has not been
determined when he actually moved there but it must have been between the time
period of 1903 and 1910. Archie Berlin, a younger brother of Frances and Louis,
is also a member of the family living on the farm.
It was while working on this farm for her brother that mother met her future
husband, Oscar Hagen. Virginia Snowberger Hagen, wife of the author, tells the
story that Dad told her in 1952:
"I took a girl to a dance in Leon, and Frankie was there. I dumped the other girl and took Frankie home that night (to her home not his), and never let her out of my sight again."
Frances Louise Berlin and Oscar Melvin Hagen were married April 3, 1912. A description of that marriage and the continuance of my father and mother's lives will be continued in - "The Family of Oscar Melvin Hagen and Frances Louise Berlin."
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