THE HANSON AND GLYNN FAMILIES
Part I: PREFACE HISTORIES OF THE GLYNN AND HANSON FAMILIES.
© Copyright January 3, 2006 by Richard S. and Doreothe A. Hanson. All rights reserved. Revised March 26, 2006
This use of this material is subject to the laws governing copyrights. We have used copyright materials with permission or under the terms provided in the copyrights. You may make copies for personal use but may not sell, distribute or use material from this document without permission and citation. We have copyrighted the material to prevent its use for sale by vendors or individuals who might wish to use it in their name, or copyright it in their name for profit or otherwise. We will willingly grant permission to geneological societies and others who wish to distribute it at cost to others at their discretion. We hope to deposit it with geneological services and historical societies so that it will be readily available to interested persons. If you wish to use cited material, you should consult the original documents to ensure accuracy and to obtain proper permissions.
Our purposes in writing this document include our curiosity about our ancestry and a desire to have our children, grandchildren, and their antecedents become acquainted with the rich histories of their families who were involved in the development of the frontiers on the Great Plains and continued to contribute in many ways to the development of their country and communities. We also hope to spare those interested in the families whose histories are described and who may wish to search for their family histories in the future the many hours and considerable expense that we have invested attempting to document the family events leading up to the present generations. It has been a project of love, education, and great stimulation for us.
The Hanson’s were early settlers in Iowa County and Doreothe’s ancestors, particularly the Flynns and Bolands were very early settlers on the central South Dakota Frontier. The Boland biographies provide a very rich history of the area before settlement.
The family names whose histories are presented in the parts of these biographies are listed below. Doreothe’s surname was Glynn before she was married to Richard Hanson.
A. Richard Hanson’s antecedents. Hansons, Byrnes, Konechnes, Souleks.
B. Doreothe Glynn’s antecedents. Glynns, Landsbergers, McGouns, Bolands, Flynns.
Combining this written history with a pictorial history with over 2500 pictures has been a challenge. Albums that can be shown on a television DVD player are available. Production of a DVD slideshow on a disc takes a few hours to burn a DVD of 3-4 gigabytes so may have to wait for overnight availability of a computer. The entire collection requires 3-4 DVDs to record all the photos. It is impractical to make many copies at once because the albums change as we get new pictures. The collection is large now and will be much larger when I get all those I now have scanned or have available into my computer. The photos will be provided our children and a few relatives who have contributed many photos to help in the development of the slideshows. If you wish to preserve the material on DVDs or CDs it is best to copy them to a computer because DVD files, particularly photos, deteriorate noticeably in 2-3 years. CDs deteriorate a bit slower but they are not good methods of long-term preservation of pictures or written document because technological changes may make them obsolete and it takes many CDs to hold a few hundred pictures of good quality.
In time, if enough people are interested, I may have them copied by a service, which costs about $15.00 per copy. It may be worth the price because the pictures are more stable on DVDs burned on a commercial system as compared to a computer.
Our slideshows are protected by copyrights as well.
These histories are not complete by any means. It will be a lifetime avocation of ours to fill in gaps and learn more of the lives of our ancestors. It is almost like a search for God, which will not be complete until we arrive at a complete understanding in heaven.
We have limited our histories to the lineages that directly lead to our family, the descendants of Walter and Mayme Konechne Hanson. Mary Lou Kollar has prepared a family tree that is much more comprehensive. Others may wish to add their family histories to ours and we can deposit the more complete history with genealogical societies and historical societies for preservation and distribution.
We have tried to strive for truth and accuracy in reporting of the events. If there is doubt, we have tried to point this out. Some histories do not agree with each other because of interpretations. At the outset of this history is a thumbnail Irish Catholic History of our ancestors. It should not be construed as a history of Ireland. It covers a few events that had the greatest impact on the decisions of our ancestors to emmigrate to America. It differs from some others that indicate that the Catholics had their civil rights well protected by the Accords reached with the Catholic Associations. We did not completely document either version except by reading several books about the history of Ireland, several novels based on Irish history, and online histories of countries, counties, and cities. It is hard without much greater effort to sort out the truth in different versions of Irish and English History but many consistencies seem to be evident. We have tried to limit this history to those events that we feel comfortable with. Neither of us is a professional historian and we have not reached a level of expertise that we describe as competence. We have not searched for complete copies of the Accords but assume that they may be available online. Enforcement of the Accords is even more difficult to evaluate. We admittedly present a version favored by our ancestors who were Catholic and those who live in the Catholic dominated areas of the Irish Republic because those are the only first hand accounts available to us. The basic conclusion that there was persecution of the Catholics is undeniable. I, Richard, now feel an obligation to learn more about the history of the Slavic peoples and Bohemia.
We have documented the events including arrivals of families in America as completely as possible or we have indicated the reasons for our interpretation based on the evidence available when there are uncertainties or we lack proper documentation apart from memories of descendants. Immigration records are becoming available online and a better-documented record may be available in the future. Our sources of information are listed in an addendum to the family histories.
We have decided to divide the history into seven major parts. I Preface. II. History of family migrations from Europe to America and South Dakota. III. The Hansons: including Byrnes, Konechnes, and Souleks, IV. Glynns: including Landsbergers, Bolands and Flynns, V. The most recent generations, the Richard and Doreothe Glynn Hanson family, VI. Richard’s professional history. VII Some Reflections about our lives, and VIII. An addendum with sources of information used in preparation of this history. Each part can be edited and added to independently and we can forward new versions of each section as they reach a stage where this is justified. We will share the histories widely when they reach a point that justifies releasing them. We will try to send updates to some people from time to time for comments or by request.
Readers will note redundancies in chapters. We repeated information so that a reader would not need to return to a previous chapter to find a date or other information as they continue reading in the document.
We sincerely hope that our efforts are found to be pleasing and informative. We are open to all suggestions for change. The project can be improved greatly by editing and additions of data and information that might be available to others. We hope you will be willing to share information of value to all our present and future descendants.
We think it would be wonderful if Hansons of our generation and future generations would complete their histories and make those available to a wide audience so that their families and descendants can enjoy a view of their personal histories. Cultures will change in the future as they have throughout this history and a recording of the changes from a family perspective should be very interesting for many generations to come.
We have had the time, education, and resources in retirement to write a personal view of our family history. My foreparents did not have the same opportunities and cannot be criticized fairly for not having done so. However, new technologies continue to offer us a view into the past that allows the recording of more accurate histories as time goes on.