RESOURCES USED AND CONTACTS MADE

Special thanks to Sister Charlotte Dusbabek email Dusbabek.Charlotte@mayo.edu

COURTHOUSES (VITAL RECORDS SECTION): Blue Earth, Mankato MN LeSueur County, LeCenter,MN
Olmsted County, Rochester, MN Rice County, Faribault, MN
Ramsey County Waseca County, Waseca, MN

HISTORY CENTERS
• Olmsted History Center- archives and genealogical library- Rochester, MN.(Microfilms of state and federal censuses as well as local papers.)
• Faribault Public Library, historical section.
• LeSueur Historical Society, Elysian, MN.
• Rochester Public Library, Rochester, MN. (Obtained on loan the 1889 Waterloo Journal, Wisconsin.)
• Waseca History Center, Waseca, MN.

WATERVTLLE .KILKENNY and ELYSIAN, MINNESOTA
• Calvary Cemetery caretaker, Kilkenny, MN.
• Cedar Hill Cemetery caretaker, Brad Atherton, Elysian, MN.
• Office of the Lake Region Life, local paper to review editions of the early Waterville Advance. They have editions for many of the early years but there isn’t an effort to protect the bound copies from deteriorating.
• Waterville City Hall records.
• Waterville Public Library for Minnesota history books.

PEOPLE
• John Dalby, 1723 Colonial Circle, Faribault, MN. Visited and contacted via emails. He and his wife have walked all of the cemeteries within a 50 mile radius of Faribault, plus doing genealogy work for the Minnesota Historical Society. He is a very distant cousin by of a Dawald-Dusbabek marriage.
• Carolyn Roessler, RR1, Box 143, Elysian, MN 56028. Not a known relative of Thomas Roessler.
• Robert Prokopec, 2467, 118th SL SE, Blooming Prairie, MN, 55917. He is related to Thomas Roessler but of no help

COUSINS
Norman Knish, 15962 State Highway 60,Waterville, MN.56096-4177. Jerome Knish, P.O. Box 447, Morristown, MN, 55052. Mary Jane (Clemons) Braziel, 420 E. Main St., Waterville, MN, 56096-1554. Loretta (Hager) and Vernon Schwartz, RR2, Waterville, MN, 56096. Carol (Davison) Sheehy, 19164-460th St. Waterville, MN, 56096. Bernadine (O’leary) Hildebrant, 510 N, Waterville, MN, 56096. William Stangler, RR4 Box 95, St. Peter, MN, 56082. Lois (Stangler) Pettis, 120 Hugo Drive, SL Peter, MN, 56082-9440. Lewis Roessler, Rochester, MN, who provided most of the pictures and documents regarding Thomas Roessler. Bern ice (Dusbabek) Tolbers, 1420 Frank Hall Drive, Albert Lee, MN., 56007-3140. Francis Hamele, Faribault, MN, was phoned in 2001 but was unable to provide any helpful information because he didn’t know his Hamele ggrandparents. Leo Hamele, Kilkenny, MN., brother to Francis, was unable to verify anything relative to the Hamele history because he didn’t know his ggrandparents or cousins very well. Edward Dusbabek, (organized the 2000 Dusbabek reunion at Faribault) is a decendant of Anton Dusbabek, a brother to Paul Dusbabek. Dr. Frantisek Dusbabek (PhD in microbiology), is a descendant from a brother to Paul and Anton Dusbabek, and lives in the Czech Republic.

COUSINS “FOUND” THROUGH GENEALOGY MESSAGE BOARDS ON THE INTERNET Robert Trehearne, 122 East McKellips Road, Tempe, Arizona, 85281, is a ggrandson of Josephine (Dusbabek) Tobias, Zorn.,who was a daughter of Paul and Mary Dusbabek. Dan Smith, Rt 1, Box 125, Kilkenny, MN, 560-521, is a ggrandson of Frank Schmidt, brother to Adolph Schmidt. Melanie (Cassell) Nederhood, 704 So. Skogit St., Burlington, WA, 98233, is a ggrandaughter of Edith (Dusbabek) Cassell-Suess. Sharon Cairns, 1357 So. 101 East Ave. Tulsa, OK, 7412-4627,whose ggggrandfather was Frank Dusbabek, a brother to my ggrandfather, Martin. John Arnold, 12750 Canario Way, Los Altos Hills, CA, 94022-2507. His ggrandfather was also Frank Dusbabek, son of Paul and Mary Dusbabek. Gerry Postier, a cook/baker at the correctional facility in Oregon;5033 Daniel St. South, Salem, Oregon, 97306. He is 7ggrandson of Paul and Mary Dusbabek.

Trying to reconstruct a personal history for Thomas William Roessler has been difficult because of my limited resources as well as injury related memory impairment of Esther Anderson’s’ daughter-in-law. I’m not aware of any written accounts describing the personality or character of Thomas. However, one can conjecture that the decision to immigrate took courage, naivete, dreams of a better life, a bit of wanderlust, and the need to escape conscription into the Austrian military service. It is unknown what the level of schooling Thomas completed or who taught him to play the violin, guitar, mandolin, and piccolo. His musical talent was of a quality that he became a member of the Rochester orchestra and Mandolin and Guitar Club. According to Anderson’s chart, Thomas was also a stone cutter for cemetery markers in Bohemia. “Musician” was the professional trade given on his death certificate. To supplement the variable income of a musician, Thomas seems to have found work as a cigar maker (according to the 1900 census) and as a janitor—the trade listed on the 1920 census and the employer as “state house”. I don’t know if that refers to the Capitol but Thomas and wife did live in Saint Paul when the census was taken. In the late 1890’s there were two cigar factories in Rochester. It seems likely that Thomas worked there as well as his son, Louis, and earned twenty-five cents a day. The connection Thomas had with making cigars explains why a recipe for chewing tobacco and addresses regarding cigars were listed in his black notebook. Since he was of Austrian-German decent, I was not surprised to find a recipe for beer, too. Copies of most pages from that book can be found in the Roessler Appendix. The picture of Thomas with other members of the mandolin and guitar club is the source for the enlargement of just Thomas on this page.

Sister Charlotte Dusbabek

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