The 1909 Tenney Cyclone

This past Spring, I had the opportunity to speak at the state Medical Assistant conference. It was a unique speaking engagement. I mean, what does THE TENNEY QUILT have to do with Medical Assistants? Well, as it turned out, it was one of my best events ever in terms of book sales, and it received great reviews. The gist of my presentation was to relate the characteristics of many of my Tenney women to the characteristics that these Medical Assistants needed as part of their jobs and in the process, told the stories of the Tenney women.

Some days after that event a young woman named Holly, who had purchased a book after my presentation, sent me an email and told me an interesting story. She had purchased two books, figuring that her 78-year-old mother would be interested in reading the book. When Holly presented the book to her mother as a gift, her mother thought that the name “Tenney” sounded familiar. A while later that day as Holly was still visiting at her mother’s home and her mother had been paging through the book, Holly heard a gasp. Her mother had just come upon the “Voss” name in THE TENNEY QUILT. She quickly went and rifled through her father’s (Holly’s grandfather’s) postcard collection and returned with two old past cards.

The two postcards contained photos of a debris-strewn Voss farm, both with identical inscriptions: “BUILDINGS ON VOSS FARM WRECKED BY CYCLONE MAY 20, 09. TENNEY, MINNESOTA.” Apparently when Holly’s grandfather was a boy, he collected postcards. That boy’s father (Holly’s great grandfather) traveled the state as did so many young men, working the fields at planting or harvest time or both. He sent postcards to his young son when he was away from home. He had most likely worked at the Voss farm during the 1909 time frame. Holly’s mother had looked through this postcard collection many times, so the names “Voss” and “Tenney” had stuck in her mind. Have any of you heard stories of this storm? There are several members of the Voss family on the quilt and if I remember correctly, some of them lived somewhere between Tenney and Tintah. Or was it Nashua? Members of the Voss family who appear on the Tenney Quilt are Mathilda/Tillie (Kath) Voss, who was the wife of Herman Voss, Tillie's two sons, Harry and Ed Voss, Harry's wife Anna (Ann) and son Delmer.

I thank Holly for sending me images of the postcards, accompanied by this fascinating story. (I was not able to post the photos to his blog due to the format in which the photos were sent to me). I am amazed at the number of people whose lives are connected in some way to Tenney. Even those folks with no apparent connection to Tenney sometimes find a connection, such as Holly did, in a most unusual way!

We All Need A Break Once In Awhile

Pardon my hiatus from writing recently; after a crazy winter and spring season of book events, I enjoyed a few months off but am now ready to ramp up the schedule and hit the road again. With that will come more Tenney connections and more stories and more blog writing.

Not that I have been sitting around painting my toenails all summer….I enjoyed a trip to Hawaii with my husband, daughter and two-year-old granddaughter in June, visiting our son and daughter-in-law who live in Honolulu. We just returned from our annual Grand Marais camping trip. Nearly every weekend in between, we have had a family event of some sort, with lots of visits from our sweet little granddaughter and her mom and dad. Oh – and I work full-time, too.

I was very excited to hear a song on the radio at some point this summer entitled, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” It sort of captures the essence of my life and my schedule over the past year. Well OK, over the past 52 years. I’ve decided that’s my theme song. Truly, when I get home from work late in the afternoon, there are so many fun things to do that I don’t know where to start. Unfortunately, I also don’t know when to stop. Staying up is way more fun than going to bed.

The break in the book activities over the summer allowed me to reflect on a very satisfying year. When I published THE TENNEY QUILT, I really didn’t know what to expect. I figured I would have no problem selling the book to those who have a direct connection to our little town of Tenney. But beyond that, I really had no clue—though in my humble opinion I felt that the book did indeed have an appeal beyond the confines of Wilkin County. As it turns out, no matter where I go or to whom I speak, people are interested in the stories of Tenney’s early women and their lives.

I’ve done about 25 book signings and speaking events since the book was published last November, from church groups to college groups to women’s groups to libraries to quilt shows. I am aware of about 30 libraries that circulate the book. It is available for sale in several retail outlets as well as online at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders Books, and a host of other websites. I considered it a victory to get the book in to the Bookstore at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, and am now getting some speaking engagements in the Twin Cities and beyond. Later this summer and fall I will be speaking to groups in Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. So the circle of interest is widening. Sales have been good, but books aren’t flying off the shelves like they were in the beginning, and I’m definitely not getting rich. I keep putting gas in the car, I speak at no charge, and can’t resist the temptation to give books away now and then. But whenever I get a chance to show people the Tenney Quilt, tell its story, and talk about the women who made it, people are interested. They love the story, and they think about their own mothers and grandmothers and the small towns where they grew up. And they buy books. What fun it has been!

While it is a kick to take the Tenney Quilt on the road and talk about it to anybody who will listen, by far the best part of this whole experience has been the connections I have made with people who have a soft spot in their hearts for the little town of Tenney. People tell me that the book brought back so many memories—a treasured childhood, a cherished grandmother, a simpler place. Roller skating in the Town Hall. Hearing the sound of the train whistle on a hot summer night. Getting a drink of water at the town pump. Buying a penny gumball out of the machine at the Larson Store. Bringing the cream to town.

And at many of the book events, I have seen people with a common past making connections with each other. The Tenney Gathering on May 10 still defies words for me. Yes, the weather was miserable and yes, the old Tenney Church was not exactly the Holiday Inn Conference Center. There was more nose-dripping than at a pre-school sledding party. But I still get such a warm feeling when I think of the looks, the conversations, and the embraces that I witnessed that day. In Elaine (Manthie) Streyffeler’s words, “I still get shivers thinking of that day in the old Tenney Church…all the people that I hadn’t seen for years….” To think that the words that I chose to put on the pages of that book brought people together that hadn’t seen each other for years…and talked about things that were so pleasurable to them…wow, I wonder if the wonder of that day will ever diminish for me.

I want to thank those of you who have told me stories about picking up the telephone and calling your cousin in another part of the country and saying, “You gotta read this book!” Or telling me about a guy who hardly EVER sits down a reads a book, but who sat down and read THE TENNEY QUILT from cover to cover, and then couldn’t stop talking about it. Or telling me about reading the book to an elderly friend or family member and trying to describe to me their words or the look on their faces as they listened. Can you imagine how good that makes me feel?

So……..it’s been a good year. This time last year I was putting the finishing touches on the book and getting things all set up with the publisher, sweating bullets about getting the darn thing published prior to the Christmas season. A lot has happened, and THE TENNEY QUILT has had an effect on an awful lot of people. Thank you for letting me transport you to a place that was good to think about for awhile.

In my next blog entry, I’ll talk about a few of the Tenney stories I’ve received from my readers over the course of the last several months.