Le Ville de Beaufort

Before I begin, let me make an apology to those of you who rely on the now ancient discovery of dial-up internet.  Pardon moi. 

Again, these next two posts are primarily intended for those members of the Bartholome family or anyone who might care where my great-great’s came from.  And they’re primarily of old buildings and corn fields.  So, if you don’t care about Luxembourg’s corn fields, don’t know a Bart, and have dial-up… feel free to not keep your internet on for the next five hours waiting for pictures to load!  I hereby release you from your reading obligations.  Tune back in a few posts from now!

Now, for those of you who do care about and love me… even if you don’t know a Bart or even where Luxembourg is…  Whether this is you or not, let me encourage you to look back at a previous post from last summer of the burial plots in the Bellechester cemetery.  I think it may help to jog your memory and set the stage a bit.  Here’s the link…Where I Come From.  Go there now.  Before reading on. 

Did you do your review?

Okay, then.  Let me introduce you to Catherine Jacobs, the woman who would become Catherine Bartholome and, ultimately, my great-great grandmother.  Also, before proceeding, allow me to say thanks to Carroll Bartholome for passing on all of the information that has been collected on the Bart family over the years! 

Catherine Jacobs was born on May 4, 1853 in Beaufort, Luxembourg.  Her father, William Jacobs, and mother, Catherine Plein, farmed a small plot of land outside of Beaufort and raised Catherine, as well as four other daughters and a son.  William Jacobs also worked on boats that travelled up and down the Rhine River in order to supplement his income.  At the suggestion of Catherine’s older sister, Anne, the Jacobs family moved to the Bellechester/Lake City region when Catherine was 14 years old.  Previous to this, she had had only two years of schooling, but spoke German and Luxembourgish, and would eventually learn to speak English.      

Le Ville de Beaufort is in a region of Luxembourg referred to as ‘Little Switzerland’ because of the lush green rolling hills. 

The town itself is said to be between 1000-1500 people.

I tried to select pictures that give some indication of what Catherine experienced in her life in Beaufort as a child.  In those days there were, of course, no paved streets or street lights (at least not electric), and most of the buildings have been replaced.  There are, however, a few buildings and sights that remain now as they were then. 

One such building is the Catholic Church of Beaufort, the only church in Beaufort, built in 1734.  Given as such, this is most-likely the church in which Catherine and her siblings were all baptized and celebrated their first communion, and probably attended mass regularly.  It may be the place where her parents were married and baptized, communed and confirmed.  Unfortunately, due to the timing of my trip and the fact that I needed to take an early bus back to Luxembourg City on Sunday morning, I was unable to attend mass there. 

Next time.

Like most of the small villages throughout Luxembourg, Beaufort maintains a cemetery that dates back only to the mid-1800’s.  Unlike our cemeteries in the States, each person does not receive their own headstone, but is placed in a family burial tomb with the only designator often being the family name. 

Since her parents and siblings emigrated to the States with her, the only Jacobs that would be buried in the Beaufort cemetery would be her grandparents and any aunts, uncles, or cousins.  I found one gravestone engraved with the name, ‘Jacobs’.  Could it belong to the same historical family?   I think so, but certainly can’t confirm it.  Had I had more time in country, I would have tried to track down the Jacobs family that maintains the plot.  Alas…

I won’t put the pictures up, but in the Beaufort cemetery were also tombstones engraved with the names: Gilsdorf, Buckholz, Klein, Arendt, and numerous Wagner’s.  Did anyone in our region not come from Luxembourg?  Another familiar name was discovered in the cemetery I searched on the other side of the country… but you’ll have to wait until the next post to find out what it is!

The land surrounding Beaufort looks much like the land throughout Luxembourg: rolling rills, bluff lands, pasture lands, corn fields, alfalfa fields, and foliage.  I kept thinking to myself, ‘I’m in Whitewater.  I’m in Winona.  I’m in Wabasha.  I’m going through Wind Valley’.  I did not think to myself, ‘I’m in Hammond, Millville, La Crosse’ or any other place that does not begin with the letter ‘W’. 

Well, perhaps just a time or two.

Truly though, it was uncanny how utterly similar the two regions are: the bluff lands of the Mississippi and the bluff lands of the Rhine.  The Jacobs’ family moved from one country to another, but found exactly what they left. 

The roads in Luxembourg are well paved and wind around and around, taking the traveler from high upon hills overlooking crop lands and forests for miles on end, to low in the valley, surrounded by hills on all sides and a small river meandering through the middle.  Some villages are at the top of these bluffs, but the majority are nested in the valley below, close to the water and, but for the protruding church steeple here and there, hidden from view. 

A cow, however, is rarely hidden from view.

This is a farm about 1/2 mile outside of Beaufort.  Notice the church steeple of another town in the distance sticking above the trees on the far left of the picture.

And then, only 1/4 mile later, the road begins its descent down through the forests into the valley below, literally via a series of switchbacks like can only be seen on mountainsides and in the Mississippi bluff lands… the places I like to call ‘home’.

Back in Beaufort the church towers above the skyline on a sunny afternoon.  Isn’t it a nice picture when it is the church that one sees as a ‘skyline’ rather than a cluster of ugly, metallic looking, window reflecting office buildings?  In the foreground of the picture below stands the Beaufort Castle, Le Chateau de Beaufort.    

Built in the 1000’s, the castle has experienced its own series of rises and falls. I’m not sure what it looked like in the mid-1800’s when Catherine may have played in and at least around it as a little girl with her sisters. Perhaps much like it does today?

The picture below is not a part of the castle, although it looks rather castle-esk.  It’s actually just a stone fence lining a yard that is designed to look like a castle wall.  I’m not sure how old it is, but its stones give it a look of being old enough to be around when Catherine was a child.  Perhaps this is where her family lived.  Perhaps…

And here’s a video of the farm land just outside of Beaufort. 

The people passing me by on the road probably thought I was insane taking pictures of fields and farms, but the places that I stood, especially this spot on the top of this hill overlooking the entire region, just felt so much like home. I couldn’t help but think about whether Catherine and her siblings or parents ever stood in this same spot and looked into the distance in awe, or perhaps whether this is part of the land that her father farmed.  As I stood there I couldn’t help but wonder what in the world would inspire them to move to the United States when this was their front and back yard.  Lake City is certainly beautiful, and goodness, what isn’t there to like about Bellechester?, and Lake Pepin offers the inhabitants something that Beaufort doesn’t have, but still… a move across the ocean when they would be leaving this behind?  It’s hard to imagine.  Nevertheless, the move they did make when Catherine was 14 years old.

Sometime between the age of 14 and 20, whilst working as a maid in Lake City, Catherine met Nicholas Bartholome, also a native Luxembourger who had been in the United States for 18 years at that time.  On February 9, 1873, at the ages of 20 and 40, respectively, Catherine and Nicholas were married and moved to Bellechester. 

All the information I have on her from that time forward includes this:  1)  Catherine and Nicholas had eleven children; 2) Catherine was barely 5 feet tall; 3) one son became the Right Reverend Monseigneur John Bartholome; 4) one son became the Bishop of St. Cloud, Peter Bartholome; 5) one son (Dominic) had a son (Luverne) who had a daughter (Nancy) who had a daughter (ME!); 6) Catherine was chosen as the first ‘Catholic Mother of the Year’ in 1942; 7) Catherine was awarded the Papal Medal, ‘Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice’, in 1952, which a monk from Iowa in my French class here tells me is a very big deal in the States; 8) in 1956 she received the Catholic Action Medal; 9) after Luxembourg, she lived in Lake City, Bellechester, Goodhue, Mazeppa, and then St. Cloud with her son, Bishop Peter Bartholome; and 10) Catherine died in 1956 at the young age of 103, having outlived all of her siblings.  Luxembourg probably seemed like a distant memory of another life by that time.  

And there you have it… the life story of great-great grandma, Catherine Jacobs Bartholome, originally from Beaufort, Luxembourg!  Stay tuned for the life story of great-great grandpa, Nicholas Bartholome, from Colpach-Haut, Luxembourg!