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Voiss Family History Styrlund Family History Enright Family History Bushee & Genereau Family History O'Connor Family History My Family History Database My Family Maps My Family History Photos Grand Forks History
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Some of what you are about to read is speculation on my part. But having spent the time on this project that I have I believe th information contained herein to be accurate. Where I am not sure on a point of history I have stated so in every case. Peter Voiss arrived in the US through the port of New York on Tuesday
Despite much effort I never was able to determine much of Peter's life in Germany. Peter was born in Söven, Germany on April 2, 1882. Söven lies in the Eastern part of Germany near the Rhine River. It is approximately 10 miles east of Bonn and 20 miles SE of Köln (Cologne). When he was 3 years old his parents were killed in a train crash and Peter and his sister, whom Elsie believed was named Elizabeth, were raised by their grandparents. At some point during his time in Germany Peter went to Holland to study to be a florist. According to his sons Alan and Adrian, Peter eventually left Germany to avoid service in the army of Kaiser Wilhelm. Alan said he desserted but Adrian wasn't sure if he desserted or dodged the draft. Based on the facts that I have obtained I have developed a theory about this. It is only theory so please do not accept it as fact. It is exteremely important to me that I not corrupt the integrity of this history by presenting things to be facts which are, in truth, only theories based in fact. I believe Peter recieved his draft notice in early April 1902, shortly after his 20th birthday. This was probably not his first notice but it is a practice in some countries that young people must enlist in the service by a certain age. So Peter gets a notice saying he must report by his 21st birthday and realizes the moment he has been trying to put off cannot be put off much longer so he decides to leave rather than stay and fight. His immigration papers list his age at 24. I believe he did so to avoid detection by the military who were assigned the duty of checking potential emigrants. Peter arrived in New York and went to Carroll, Iowa where his Daughter Ethelyn tells me an uncle lived. His immigration papers list this person as Wilhelm Schenkelburg. No relationship between he and Peter has been established by me. This is where Peter enters what I like to refer to as his "lost years" I say lost because I can't find him until 1910. I believe he may have done migrant farm work in Minnesota. His obituary mentions that he ran a power plant in Blackduck, Minnesota for a time but he was not there in 1905 according to the Minnesota State Census taken that year. This was the only Census taken between 1900 and 1910. In 1910 he was living and working on a farm in Bygland Township, Polk County, Minnesota. Bygland Township is located on the banks of the Red River of the North 3 miles south of East Grand Forks, MN. The farm was owned by a James and Mary Powers. James was a Canadian immigrant of Irish descent, his wife was born in Rhode Island. I do not know when Peter arrived there but he was not in Polk County in the 1905 Minnesota State Census. At some point between 1895 and 1900 Mary Styrlund, the oldest surviving daughter of Frederick and Johanna Styrlund,married Emil Peterson and moved to East Grand Forks where Mary ran a boarding house and Emil ran a saloon. This information came to me through the 1910 US Census. Elsie's daughter Ethelyn tells me that her mother moved to EGF to help her sister in the running of the boarding house. I don't know when the move took place but in June of 1910 Elsie, then 19, was still living with her parents on the family homestead in Marshall County so the move certainly took place between then and 1914 when she and Peter married. It was then that Peter and Elsie met. Exactly how and when the meeting took place I am uncertain at this point. But I believe, given the facts I have, that they were both living in or near East Grand Forks at the time of their marriage in 1914. The marriage took place at the First English Lutheran Church in Crookston, Minnesota in Nov. of 1914. Crookston, the Polk County seat, lies about 25 miles southeast of EGF. I determined the place of marriage by tracking down the minister who performed the ceremony. The chuch burned to the ground in 1917 and the records went with it so there are no chuch records of the wedding. At the time of their marriage Peter was 32 years old, nine years older than his new bride. After the marriage Peter and Elsie moved into a house on Walnut Street in Grand Forks, ND. Peter took a job as a lineman for the telephone company where he worked until 1918. In May of that year Peter bought the property he and Elsie had been living on for the price of \\$1 and other considerations. I believe they had been renting the property and bought it from the landlord by taking over the mortgage. He then built 2 greenhouses on the property in an attempt to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a florist. In 1917, in what his daughter Irma tells me was an attempt to avoid being placed in an internment camp for German citizens, Peter filed a Declaration of Intent for US citizenship in Grand Forks. He filed in November of that year, 6 months after the US declared war on Germany. A Declaration of Intent is required for people who intend to file for citizenship at some future date but is not an actual application for citizenship. According to the North Dakota State Historical Society he never filed for citizenship there. A check of the records in Crookston, Minnesota shows he never filed there either. The only indication I have that Peter ever gained citizenship is the fact that Elsie stated on his death certificate that he was a US citizen. I believe, barring further evidence to the contrary, that Peter died a citizen of Germany. It is my opinion that the only reason Peter filed in the first place was because he didn't want to be placed in the internment camp. Once he had avoided that he didn't bother to go any further. Why else would he have waited fifteen years after arriving in the U.S. to file? This was hardly the regular practice. Peter and Elsie had 12 children ( 7 boys, 5 girls) born between 1915 and 1938. At the time their last child, Jerry, was born in 1938 Peter was 57 and Elsie was 48. In 1940, 2 years after the birth of Jerry, Peter bought a 40 acre plot of land on Belmont St. in Grand Forks. He built 3 greenhouses there and continued in the floral buisness at that site until his death in 1954 from heart trouble. He was 72. Elsie survived Peter for 13 years before sucumbing to a pulmonary embolism in June of 1967 at the age of 76. Both Peter and Elsie died at Deaconess Hospital in Grand Forks. They both suffered from artheriosclerosis for years before their deaths. Peter and Elsie are buried together in Sunnywood Gardens Cemetery in Grand Forks.
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