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Family reunion turns into learning experience

Jennifer Andries, the Lyon County Historical Society director, far left, points out ancestors of the Hughes family, who visited the Marshall area recently. The materials were donated to the museum in 2005.

MARSHALL — Family reunions are great. They are a chance to remember funny stories from earlier days or meet new members of the family.

The Hughes family reunion was a little different this year. Sure, they got together and reminisced, chuckled over one relative always be late, but they also had a purpose. They wanted to learn more about their roots — together.

Their exploration led them to the Balaton and Marshall area. They visited cemeteries, museums and the old houses where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived.

“I can’t believe big families lived in such small houses,” family members remarked after visiting a house in Balaton that belonged to LeRoy Hughes, who was born in Balaton, moved around a lot and died in Balaton.

The cousins have ties to the Thomas, Price, and Hughes family — some of the earliest settlers in Custer and Monroe townships.

The quest started with Patricia Billeb of Fond du lac, Wis., who was dabbling in the family genealogy and got in contact with a seventh cousin.

“She had a rubbing from a grave stone she made in Garvin and sent it to me,” Billeb said. “It just drew me. ‘I gotta go.'”

She invited cousins to make the journey too, before “we get too old.”

Nine relatives came from Washington state to Florida. Billeb gave each family a photo book and a classification folder filled with the other reports.

The family members visited the Lyon County Museum Oct. 7. They toured the museum including the basement which has a permanent display of early settler times. The log cabin looked like one their great-great-grandmother, Ruth Thomas Price, might have lived in, they said.

The museum had many items some of the family members had never seen — letters and photos of their ancestors which were donated in 2005 by Diane Carpentier of Northfield, a “daughter or granddaughter of Rees Price Jones,” said Jennifer Andries, the Lyon County Historical Society director.

The museum also has the diaries of Catherine (Jones) Thomas, a native of Wales who came to the United States when she was 12. She and her husband, Benjamin B. Thomas, had six children: Ruth (Thomas) Price, Margaret (Thomas) Hughes of Garvin, Ann (Thomas) Hughes, Benjamin F., James J. and Joseph B. They lived in a log cabin near Tracy in the 1800s. She tells of the constant hard work and hardships of living on a farm.

The museum has photos of Rees Price Jones in its military history section. Jones was a World War I veteran and the grandson of Benjamin and Catherine Thomas.

Judy Wee of Marshall and originally from Balaton said finding out about the family history is “fascinating. When you’re a kid you don’t care.”

The group made an excursion to the Balaton museum.

“There is a lot on the Olsons there,” said Billeb.

“My dad is their grandpa’s brother,” said Wee. Wee is an Olson cousin as is Nancy Jewett of Washington state.

When you research your family tree, it’s extra fun to find a relative or ancestor who has accomplished something great. Billeb said a Hughes relative who is famous in England — David Edward Hughes, a British-American inventor who lived from 1831 to 1900.

“There is a stamp in his honor,” she said. “He was one of the creators of the telegraph.” In Europe, the Hughes Telegraph System became an international standard, according to britannica.com .

He invented the carbon microphone which was important to the development of telephony. Hughes’s family emigrated to the United States when he was 7 years old.

Family documentation provided by Billeb relates that David and his family moved to Virginia and took a trip through Mississippi where he saw a telegraph machine. He determined to improve upon it and over the next decade he worked out a prototype of a microphone.

Lots of stories were shared such as the tale of the gold coin. A 1902 Liberty Head $5 gold coin was given to Bertha M. Streblow in 1906 by her father in case of an emergency. She kept it but lost it in a tornado near Balaton in June of 1924. Her son, Walter Olson, who was 12 at the time, set out to look for it and found it in the rubble. The coin is still in family hands as Walter passed it on to his son, Larry Olson, in 2011.

“When I was a little kid Uncle Walter would bring it out and show it to me when we visited them,” said Wee. “I’m so glad his son treasures it and keeps it safe.”

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