Heritage

My mom and I are putting together a scrapbook for my Grandma Finck's 80th birthday. It's been quite the process and mom has done great work getting all the info organized...first Grams handed us about a bazillion pics so mom got them all categorized and then she thought well, it'd be neat to have a story to go along with all the pages so we put together "work sheets" for Grams to fill out. Granted it took some work to read her handwriting but we made it! Tonight we started on her parent's page...

Christian Krosberg Jorgensen son of Peter and Sophia Jorgensen, was born at Alborg, Denmark December 27, 1891 and passed away August 31, 1977 at the age of 85 years 8 months and 4 days. Chris was baptized and raised in the Danish Lutheran faith. He came to the United States at the age of 15, first going to Whiting, South Dakota where he worked for a farmer. He later went to Brainerd, Minnesota where he worked in a lumber camp. In 1911 he came to Cass County, Iowa and started farming near Massena. On July 4, 1912 he was married to Winnie E. Matthews. To this union were born ten children, eight of whom survive. They continued to farm in Cass County until 1972 when ill health of his wife forced them to quit and move into Fontanelle. He enjoyed frequent visits from his children and grandchildren and he loved to go driving around his farms. It was on one of these drivers that he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Winnie Matthews Jorgensen, daughter of the late William Jackson and Nettie Morgan Matthews, was born December 5, 1891 in Cass County, Iowa and passed away October 18, 1973 in the Cass County Memorial Hospital, Atlantic, Iowa at the age of 81 years, 10 months and 13 days. Winnie attended public schools and grew to young womanhood in the Cass County area. She was united in marriage to Chris Jorgensen on July 4, 1912 in Corning, Iowa and to this union were born ten children: 5 sons, Neal, Gerald, Ted, Merle, and Wayne; 5 daughters, Roberta, Helen, Agnes, Wilma and Edna Mae.

Although it's a lot of work, it's fun to do something like this for my Grandma and even more neat for me to learn of my heritage. Sadly, my great grandparents passed away before I was born...I'll post more of our completed pages as they get done -- we estimate they take about an hour per page! Wish us luck to getting it done by October 13th!