I have written about my husband’s great-great
grandparents before. Marcel and Julia
(Talbot) Balthazor have always intrigued me and I have done more work on that
family than any others. Partly because
they interest me so much, partly because they were close and the research is
easy for me but mostly because of the mystery of their missing children. When I first started researching, other
researchers knew that Julia had given birth to 14 children, but they only had
the information on the six children that stayed local and lived to
adulthood. I spent years looking and
finally came up with the names of all fourteen and their baptisms. One of the missing was Georgianna, who
married Frederick Dandurand and moved to Marshall, Minnesota with her
husband. Georgie died in her thirties
after childbirth.
Family lore said that Marcel and Julia were the parents
of twins that were accidentally drug to death by horses at their homestead near
Clifton, Kansas. I never could find any
evidence locally of this and there were no twins born to them.
 |
| Mary Balthazor, taken in Marshall, MN in 1897 |
After years and years of a dead end, I stumbled on to a
clue. I went to a Talbot family
reunion. Julia was a Talbot and her
siblings lived in the Greenleaf area.
Their descendants all gathered once a year to have a wonderful potluck,
share stories and talk about ancestry. One of the family members brought a box of
unidentified photos and laid them out on a table, hoping someone could put
names with the faces. I went through the
photos and was able to name a few. But
one photo took me by surprise. It was
Julia and Marcel’s daughter Mary, a beautiful full portrait. It was a cabinet card and I was taken by
surprise when I looked at the studio.
This photo had been taken in Marshall, Minnesota. Someone had written “Mary” and “1897” on the
back. Had Mary gone to visit her older sister?
That’s all I could find for a while. And
then came Newspapers.com. I decided to
search for Marcel and Julia in Minnesota.
Maybe the family had taken a trip to see Georgianna and her family. That was when I hit pay dirt.
 |
| St. Paul, MN Globe Wed. 15 July 1896 |
Apparently Marcel and Julia and their seven youngest moved
to Marshall for a year or so. They lived
very near Georgianna and her family. On
July 13th 1896, their two littlest girls, Anna, who had just turned 6 and four-year-old
Celia were playing with their niece, Georgianna’s oldest daughter Rosanna, who’s
fifth birthday was only five days away were playing. One of the Balthazor boys was working for a
neighbor, herding his cattle. The
article did not mention the boy by name, but it said he was around eleven. Scott’s great grandfather, Philip, had just
turned twelve. Philip and the girls played a game where he
tied a picket rope around each of their waists and hooked the ropes to the
saddle of a tame pony. Philip would
mount the pony and ride slowly and the girls walked along behind. This
time, something went horribly wrong.
Before Philip could mount the pony, something scared it and it took off
at a run. The girls were dragged along
behind the fleeing horse. Philip tried
to catch the pony but was unable to. It
ran over rough ground until it got the neighbor’s home and he caught the
pony. He and his wife untied the girls. They sent for a doctor. Anna, the oldest of the three was slightly injured. The two little ones didn’t fare so well. Their arms and legs were broken and their
skulls crushed. One of the girls died
before the doctor arrived, the other shortly after. Rosanna and Celia are buried together in the
Catholic Cemetery at Marshall.
In the next year, Marcel and Julia packed up their family
and moved back to their homestead in Kansas.
Through the years, the story of the deaths of the girls was told and
word of mouth changed the story to twins dying at the farm. The short time the family lived in Minnesota
was forgotten. It took years of research
and subtle little hints to find any traces of it at all. Now the family knows the true story and
Rosanna and Celia will not be forgotten again.
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