Pride of the Hansons

George Evenson talks to the Hansons during the dedication of the Hans Hanson home on Saturday, June 26.

Family is a powerful thing. Individuals may die and their influence fade away, but families go on and on and on.

Take, for example, the descendants of Hans and Bertha Hanson.

Hanson descendants from 12 states gathered at the ancestral home on Utah Street in Sturgeon Bay on Saturday, June 26, for a family reunion and dedication of the newly restored home that Hans built in traditional Norwegian style. Family members were able to walk through the home built by their ancestor, and after a dedication ceremony, planted a maple tree with a plaque.

“It’s an awesome story,” said Lynette Thonne, a great-great grandchild of the Hansons and the descendant who took the lead in organizing the June 26 gathering of Hansons. “It’s amazing to me that this house existed, especially after all the stories I’ve heard from George.”

“Isn’t this something?” Evenson said during the gathering. “All these people gathered together because of this house. If we hadn’t discovered the house, they would never have known about it.”

The history of how the Hans Hanson home was discovered in 2008 and restored was told in last week’s Peninsula Pulse (Unknown Home, Vol. 20, Issue 26). The gathering was all about family pride. One side of the Hanson family was dressed in purple t-shirts, the other side was in blue t-shirts.

Thonne said Hanson descendants have been tracked down in 27 states, but 12 states were represented at the gathering. She said nine generations have descended from Hans and Bertha Hanson, and the oldest living relative is 89, and the oldest attending the gathering was 85.

Mike Gallagher was the man responsible for helping to track down the Hanson family.

“I’ve been doing genealogy for about 60 years. I guess they call it sleuthing,” Gallagher said.

It was George Evenson who told Gallagher about Hans and Bertha Hanson and the idea of tracking down modern descendants.

“Because of where they lived, I thought they would be buried in Bayside Cemetery. I did a tombstone inventory and they were there. That gave me the dates of their death so I could look up their obituaries. That gave me their family members,” Gallagher said.

That led him to the Hanson’s son, Hans Jr.

“He lived in the house and had five children here. About 1911 or ’12, he disappears. He’s not here anymore and he’s not in the cemetery,” Gallagher said. “I found a clue that he had moved up to Daggett, Mich. My research focused up there.”

He decided to drive to the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and do some poking around there.

“I tried to find Hans’ grave, but I was in the wrong cemetery,” he said.

Then he tried Googling Hans Hanson Jr.

“And here one of his daughters, who was 91, 92, had died a week before, and her obituary was in the Menominee paper,” he said. “I pulled that up, and she had four or five sons or daughters. One of them was Lynette (Thonne). I decided to contact this person and see if she was interested in her family history.”

“I was the closest living relative in Stevenson (Mich.),” Thonne said. “The other ironic part of that whole thing, I’m probably the one who knows the most of the genealogy. I was the youngest of the first daughter of Hans Jr.”

A large portion of the Hanson family continues to reside in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so word spread quickly of the need to track down other Hanson family members for a reunion and dedication of the Hans Hanson home.

The family started meeting monthly last August to plan for the June 26 gathering. As an icebreaker for family members who have never met, part of the goodie bag for each family registrant included a photo of another family member that the recipient had to track down among the many people there.

“We wanted people to mingle with family they’ve never met before,” she said.

Well, now that the family reunion has been held, what is next for the Hanson family?

“That’s a good question,” Thonne said. “I know the barn will be restored at some point in time. Not sure if I’m up to doing one this full-scale. But the groundwork has been done, so there may be other reunions.”

 The Hans Hanson home is part of Heritage Village at Big Creek. It is located at 2022 Utah Street in Sturgeon Bay.