Great great grandmother Nancy Ives Jackson
(1830-1881) of Belle Plaine, Minnesota.
Flipping through scrapbooks yesterday with Mom, Stan was thrilled to discover a photograph of a photograph. It was of Nancy Ives Jackson, an honest-to-goodness Minnesota pioneer settler who is also Stan's great great grandmother on Mom's (Beverly's) side.The scrapbook had tons of other interesting photographs as well, but none of a woman who died before 1881. Nancy was born in 1830, and married Peter, age 44, when she was 27, so it looks like this could have been taken around the time of her wedding in 1857. What do you think? Photography was rare in those days before the Civil War so maybe it was taken later than that. No date on this photo of a photo.
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| Jessie Wendelken, age 5 Photo taken in Belle Plaine in 1891 by C.D. Baucroft |
Hmm. Our great grandma Ella Mae Jackson Wendelken must have brought her daughter Jessie Wendelken back from Elkton to Belle Plaine to mourn her father's 1891 death, and then had Jessie's picture taken at the Belle Plaine studio. All the dates would match that speculation.
Here's a recap of some of the Peter and Nancy Jackson history that appeared earlier on this blog. We're proud to repeat it, because it is hard to have much deeper roots in Minnesota. . . unless you're a native.
PETER JACKSON (JOHN, ADAM) was born March 05, 1813 in RICCARTON, SCOTLAND, and died April 28, 1891 in BELLE PLAINE, MINN. He married NANCY IVES May 10, 1857 in BLUE EARTH TWP. MINN, daughter of JUSTICE IVES and DEBORAH CONGDON. She was born February 15, 1830 in RUSSELL NY, and died August 05, 1881 in BELLE PLAINE, MINN.
Peter Jackson was born on Gadshaw Farm, Riccarton, Foxhorshire, Scotland, 1813. He was a salesman in Stratford, England for an Edinburgh firm. He saw Queen Victoria on her coronation day. He followed his parents to New York State about 1840. Later, in Wisconsin, he met his future bride. In 1855 he got land in Blakely Township in Scott County, Minnesota, adjacent to Belle Plaine. [Near where Stan and Kathleen live today, coincidentally] He and his brother, James, spent their first night in a hollow log on the hillside beside what is now Highway 169 near the edge of the Big Woods. He bought more level land in the Northeast quarter of Section 10. He built a cabin and cleared the land for fields. Travel was by foot or by oxcart. The first Steamboat on the nearby Minnesota River was the Minnesota Belle. Trips were irregular. On May 1, 1857, he married the newly arrived Nancy Ives at the home of her sister Sarah and husband Alvin P. Davis in Lake George, near what is now Mankato.This was the first marriage in Jamestown Township, Blue Earth County. He brought the minister from St. Peter by horse and buggy, returned him there and took his bride on the steamboat back to Belle Plaine.
Nancy Ives Jackson was highly regarded as a nurse and was often called upon.
Peter and Nancy's daughter, Ella Mae Jackson Wendelken, who died in 1919, is Beverly Brown Rolfsrud's grandmother. Ella Mae died the year before Mother was born.
(There's more stuff on this blog, including a poignant letter back home written by a lonely Nancy. Use the search box to find it.)
