The circle of life - 2025 holiday newsletter

This year began with the birth of our youngest granddaughter - Zelda Therese Anuenue in February:

and sadly ended with the death of my brother-in-law, Lynn, in mid-December. Along the way, Arian and Danielle officially announced their engagement:

We didn't often venture far from home this year, a wonderful trip out west in June, where we visited those who remained of my dad's family in Idaho and Montana, and went to Yellowstone.

We took a short trip to beautiful French Lick, Indiana for our anniversary.

Our time at home was spent gardening (great garlic and lavender crops), working on genealogy (Kim), and John's new hobbies of talking to Grok and keeping aquariums. And hosting family - my niece and her spouse, our offspring and their spouses, and grandchildren and their intendeds.

Many blessings from our house to yours for the coming year.

A Genealogical Goldmine

In 1944, my aunt (Gladys) made this scrapbook for her only sister, who was soon to be married. While most of the pages were cut out from magazines, like this one

some held the answers for which I've searched high and low.The first question was about a cousin named Tore, who my mother wrote about in several letters to my father. All I had was a first name, the fact that his parents were Norwegian, and they escaped from Norway in World War II. Hunting through newspapers with such limited information, hadn't yielded an results. But lo and behold, here were four articles about him!

It turns out the little boy was named Tore (Thore) Kvammen, and he was born in the last quarter of 1942 in the Hammersmith District of London, during an air raid. His mother was the daughter of Karoline Antoinette Larsen and Bernhardt Johannesen, who was born in 1918 and married to Mathias Kvammen, a Norwegian army captain. The mother and son left from Swansea, Wales on 11 Mar 1944 on the Grey County, a Norwegian merchant vessel that could carry up to 12 pass. It was involved in various convoys, often sailing between North America, Halifax, St John, New Brunswick and the UK. An article published in the Chicago Tribune - 26 Oct 1944 - p.15 reported the following story. When they arrived in Canada, the mother stayed in Toronto, serving as a member of the Norwegian Women's Army, based at Camp Little Norway. Her 2 year old son, traveled by train in the care of a 20 year old Royal Norwegian Air Force flier, Just Ebesen, and then left with my grandparents, and my mother, who was living at home. My grandmother is quoted as saying "She will keep the child until her niece is able to come for him - in a month or a year." I'm not sure exactly how long he did stay, although I do know that in March 1945, he left from St John, New Brunswick, Canada to return to Liverpool, England. Much more of the story remains to be uncovered.
The other mystery solved by the scrapbook had to do with who was in my parents wedding. I share the sharpened image here:

Before finding the newspaper article in the scrapbook, I could only identify my parents, her siblings, Roy and Gladys, and the flower girl, her niece Virginia. That left the two bridesmaids, two groomsmen, and the ring bearer, who I now know to be Katherine Golden and Edith Streat, mom's schoolmates, and Stewart Grove and William Morgan, who I believe to be dad's friends from the navy. The little ring bearer was a 5 year old named Lee Brink. All those people with stories to tell. Whose stories can I find and share?

The journey of Frank Harris and Minnie Agee to couplehood

 The other day I received a document from the National Archives for my grandfather, Frank Allen Harris (1889-1957) that was all they had on his military service in World War I. From his 1917 WWI Draft Registration card we find out that he was born 9 Jun 1889, in Great Valley, NY. In 1917, he was single, living in Baker, Lemhi county, Idaho, working on a farm owned by Peter Kinney. From various census records, we know that he was in New York in 1905 and in 1910 working as a farm hand for Walter Brown, who was also from New York. (He must be the Walt referred to in the postcard below, which shows Frank (in the sidecar) and his just younger brother Duane in 1917).

On the back: Dear Father, How are you all? Us boys are getting along fine. We've has a pretty snug winter here so far. Has been 24 below. How is Grandma & Grandpa. I suppose Velma is in Franklinville and is Walt still in York. Didn't have any idea he could ever give up the west. I am going to write in a day or two. Will close with best wishes to all. D.H.

From the NARA document, we see he enlisted out of Salmon, Idaho on 27 May 1918 and in August 1918, he was on the Briton, an Army transport as part of the 40th Division, "F" Company 115th Ammunition Train, on his way to France. I was hoping to find more details from NARA about this part, but no luck. More research is required there. What I did find out is that he was part of the Fort D.A. Russell Casual Detachment, in Laramie, WY, mustered out on 30 Apr 1919, given $128.42 in pay, which included travel funds of $41.40. From there he caught the train back to Salmon.

Minnie, Walter, and John Calvin Agee c. 1917

Minnie Agee (1903-2000), came to Idaho from Missouri with her parents James Alexander Stark (Allie) and John Calvin Agee sometime between the birth of her sister Lizzie in 1907, and Virginia Velma  in 1910. I have a letter, written by my Uncle Frank in 1995, that tells the story of her early life. From what I can piece together, the last of October or first of November, 1918 she started back to Missouri with her father but only got as far as Denver and everyone there was sick with Influenza (the Pollard family). Mother stayed there and took care of the family - Jack, Ada, Louie, Freddy and their mother, Mrs. Pollard. She stayed there until Easter [April 20, 1919] and came back to Salmon. Her siblings, Walter, Mettie, and Lizzie were in Salmon by then, and Mettie was married to Richard Evans. Walter sent mother the money to come back. 

It was on the train trip from Denver to Salmon (via Laramie?) that my grandparents met. She was still 15, she would turn 16 in June. He was 29, turning 30 in June. They went to Dillon, Montana four months later, in September, 1919 and were married for 38 years until my grandfather's death in 1957.

This crudely done map represents their journeys. Grandpa Harris is the blue paper/red dots. He started in New York in 1889, came to Idaho around 1910, was released from the Army in Wyoming in 1919. Grandma (yellow paper/green dots) was born in Missouri in 1903, moved with her family to Idaho around 1907, and was coming back from Denver, Colorado in 1919. The pink paper in Dillon, MT where they got married.

You can read more about Allie's story here: https://xbmill.blogspot.com/2025/08/james-alexander-stark-extraordinary.html