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|  Pioneers
and Their Sons: One Hundred Sixty-Five Family Histories, Vol. 1,
1963 and Pioneers and Their Sons: One Hundred Family Histories,
Vol. 2, no date.
Book review by Edna Boardman, Bismarck, North Dakota
These two books contain essays that record the histories of individual
families. They are a treasure trove for genealogists whose families
settled in western North Dakota in the St. Joseph parish at Dickinson.
Msgr Aberle is a conscientious workman. Beginning with individual
men, he notes occupation, place of origin in Russia, a bit about
their lives there, and their family's coming to America. He continues,
in each entry, with lots of family names, each man's parents, spouse(s),
and children, and the name of the officiating clergyman and witnesses
at each wedding. He notes the men's business and achievements and
identifies some individual quality about each of them. He endeavors
to set each family into its historical context. Finally, in each
sketch, he records their politics, religion, and the size of their
families.
Volume II is undated, to the user's considerable frustration,
but is intended as a next-generation follow-up to Volume I. It begins
with bio sketches of the priests who served St. Joseph parish, and
the most recent date of their service is 1965. 1968 is mentioned
in some entries. One is bemused by some of the entries--again written
before politically correctness. Female children's husbands' names
are given, but not the names of the wives of male children. He recalls
events in his book of history as he tells their individual stories,
and feels free to make subjective judgments. "To their children
they gave a good parochial elementary and public high school education
and fine Christian training." He clearly respects and admires the
persons of which he writes. A strength of these bio sketches, as
of his book of history and the first volume of biographies, is that
Msgr. Aberle carefully puts his families into their historical context.
There is a name index in each volume.
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Permission
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by contacting Michael
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