Plahn history update June 27, 2020:
Obituaries can have such important clues in them that very few people even notice or appreciate.
When I read William Plahn's obituary, it mentioned a large house: "When he first came to Pierce County 43 years ago, he bought the old C-C Ranch south of Pierce which came to be known as the Plahn Ranch. On it was a large 19-room three-story home and Mr. Plahn supervised having it cut in half, moving one section to an 800 acre plot east of the original home to be known as the second Plahn Ranch. It was quite an engineering feat at that time."
As soon as I read the part about the 3 story house in the obituary it immediately solved a mystery I had about a picture I scanned in Bernice Schroeder's collection. This is the picture and on back was this caption.

Before I had the obituary I assumed this was a house moved in this area but I couldn't place it and assumed it was torn down...since Emil Karsten is listed I also assumed it must have been something he was involved with in this area.
Well I am now 99% sure this picture shows half of the house that was moved where William Plahn was living in Nebraska after moving there in 1910.
Emil Karsten married William's daughter, Caroline, (Bernice Schroeder's parents) so he probably road a passenger train out to Nebraska to help his father-in-law with the house project.

Linda, who is a Plahn descendant and sharing information with me sent this information she knows about that house: The story goes that when son Herman and Esther were married, William had the big house split in half. It was then moved about 1/2 mile from the main house, put on a foundation, and that is where Herman and Esther lived for a period of time. The ranch was about 10 miles west of Pierce. By the time I joined the family by marrying Dick in 1961, the buildings were gone. Someone went for a walk where it all stood, and only found cement steps. There was once a huge barn/stable that burned to the ground at one time.

Splitting and moving this house is another testament to the Pioneers before us who were "Recyclers" & "Builders" and not people who tore things down out of ignorance like we see going on in the big cities today.


Plahn history June 26, 2020:
When I visited with my neighbor, Bernice (Karstens) Schroeder over the years, I remember her telling me about her mother who was a Plahn.
When I first heard her say that name, I asked her to spell it because it sounded like the way we say the name Ploen which is another old family name that has disappeared in the Manning area...with Herman & Harry Ploen being the last 2 in the area who carried that name.
Bernice spelled it for me and as I recall she said it was originally spelled Plaehn, in other words a German umlaut name - Plähn...but this hasn't been confirmed.
I scanned the Karstens/Schroeder collection in 2012, unfortunately after Bernice had passed away, so I wasn't able to work with her on IDs and other information.

What got me going again on the Plahn name is when another Plahn descendent (Linda) recently e-mailed Pam Kusel, who then forwarded the message to me.
Linda is looking for information about the Plahn family here in Manning.
It wasn't until reading Linda's e-mail that I found out there were a "ton" of Plahn siblings who I was not aware of. Bernice may have mentioned it but we only talked about her mother, Caroline.
Everyone in the Plahn family, except Caroline, moved to Pierce, Nebraska, in 1910.
Because of Linda's help, she told me about a website that had the Pierce newspaper digitized so I was able to find all of the obits for this Plahn family.
I now have all of them added to my memorial web page.
Below are some pictures that Bernice had and I'm now finally figuring out who some of them are because there were only first names on some of the pictures and even the ones with the last names, I did not know where they fit in until just now getting these obituaries.

It is interesting that now I'm getting more information from distant relatives of Manning people who never lived here, than I'm getting from those families who live/d here.
Many of these people find my web pages and e-mail me, and then in many cases I'm able to convince them to send me their old pix and history connected to Manning so I can scan them.


Emil & Caroline (Plahn) Karstens - Bernice Schroeder's biological parents.
Read Bernice's obituary to find out the details of why she was raised by Emil's twin brother August and his wife Bertha.


Back: Ann Altwine, Henry Plahn, Caroline Karstens, Herman Plahn, Emelia Miller, Hattie Miller
Front: Hilda Zauner, William Plahn, William Plahn, Jr., Emma (Koenekamp) Plahn, Emma Sattler


William & Emma Plahn with Bernice Karstens

For this next picture I had one set of couples listed as the Karsten grandparents, but they died before Dave was born.
I'm guessing the oldest man is William Plahn, Sr.
I have no idea who the other 3 people are but they must be on the Plahn side of the family.


Back: Unknown, Anna (Hagedorn) Karsten
Front: William Plahn, Sr., Tom Schroeder, Dave Schroeder, probably Henry Karsten


Emil Karsten (right) on the newly built Karsten farm place - later the Bernice & Harold Schroeder farm.

I'm always writing about how my family history, which goes back to the early 1870s in this area, has connected me to a lot of the area families...my mother just reminded me that her godmother was Olga (Plahn) Hansen-Schultz.

Olga Plahn - Dorothy (Ehrichs) Kusel's godmother.
According to William Plahn's obituary, he had a brother August, who remained in the Manning area when William's family moved to Nebraska in 1910...
The connections go even further through the Sievertsen & Ehrichs families.
Olga's niece was Elda (Ewoldt) Ehrichs - Elda's husband John was a cousin to Dorothy Kusel.
Olga's sister married Gib Sievertsen...Frank Ehrichs (uncle of Dorothy Kusel) married Mabel Sievertsen.
Then it gets even more connected - Harold Schroeder's mother was Hilda Sievertsen. Harold married Bernice Karstens whose mother was Caroline Plahn.

If it weren't for all of the decades of my gathering and digitizing Manning area history and pictures, I wouldn't be able to make all of these remote connections between area families.

The more history and pictures people get to me to scan the more I can make even more connections.


LeRoy & Edna (Plahn) Schumann
OLGA SCHULTZ
Olga Schultz, 82, died Friday, October 19, 1984, at the Manning Plaza Nursing Home. Funeral services were held at 10:30 a.m. Monday, October 22, at Zion Lutheran church with the pastor, the Rev. Paul Krumm, officiating. Dorothy Kusel was organist and the church quartet sang. Burial, under the direction of the Ohde Funeral Home of Manning was in the Manning Cemetery. Serving as casketbearers were Melvin Renze, Gary Witt, Garnett Sievertsen, Marvin Wiemann, Harold Schroeder, John E. Ehrichs, Wayne Schultz and Dale Vollstedt.
Mrs. Schultz is survived by two sisters: Mrs. Gib (Mamie) Sievertsen, Manilla, and Mrs. Lee (Edna) Schumann, Manning; two nephews: Garnett Sievertsen, Manning, and William Lorenzen, New Berlin, Wisconsin; two nieces: Mrs. John A. (Elda) Ehrichs, Manning, and Mrs. Russell (Marcella) Koepke, Lincoln, Nebraska.
She was preceded in death by her parents and two husbands.
Mrs. Schultz was born May 20, 1902, on a farm north of Manning, a daughter of August and Maria (Ehlers) Plahn. She attended rural schools near her home and in 1922 was married to William Hansen. They lived in Aspinwall where she was a homemaker and a seamstress. He died in 1946.
On July 10, 1949, she was married to Marvin (Max) Schultz at Denison. They farmed west of Manning until he died in January of 1979. A short time later she moved into the nursing home.
She was a member of Zion Lutheran church and was a charter member of the Ladies Aid of Aspinwall which is now the Zion Lutheran Ladies Aid.

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