A Confusion of Oles

Family history research is fraught with misunderstandings, clues that lead to nowhere, and surprises that lead to illumination. I have sometimes encountered all three within an hour’s time spent on Ancestry.com! Inspired by a recent stint of detective work related to the Crookston Juvenile Band, I have coined a term describing a collection of these frustrating but ultimately rewarding research experiences: A Confusion of Oles.

I will explain. But first, if you are interested in the origins of collective nouns – terms like a gaggle of geese, and a murder of crows –I have a book recommendation: The Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton. The book contains hundreds of terms that English gentlemen in the 15th century were expected to know, plus modern ones that Lipton invented, like a slouch of models, and a lurch of buses. It’s a fun read and can inspire some creative wordplay, like the term I just made up.

OK, back to the Oles. In June 2010, I wrote a blog post about the Crookston Juvenile Band called Summer Concert Season Kick-Off and included a list of names of all of the members, on the chance that it might aid anyone researching their Crookston ancestors. To my surprise and delight, last March I heard from Marni Fylling, who found my blog post while searching her family name on Google. The band list included the names of Ole Fylling and Peter Fylling, which attracted Marni’s attention because she had a great-grandfather named Ole and a great-uncle named Pete.

The Crookston (Minn.) Juvenile Band in 1916.

I corresponded with Marni and learned more about her own musical family: her grandfather Oscar went to St. Olaf College, where he was a student conductor, and he became a teacher; her great-uncle Pete played with Anson Weeks and his famous San Francisco-based dance band in the 1920s and 30s; and her father, Robert, who grew up in Crookston, was a well-known composer and pianist in Sacramento, Calif.

Following our email conversation, I wrote another blog post called Band Boys and Genealogy Karma, and then put aside research on the Crookston Juvenile Band to focus on other G. Oliver Riggs-related topics. But strangely, I had just been thinking about Marni and her family two weeks ago when I heard from her again. She had read my second blog post and was confused by what she saw in the photo; she had expected to see her great-grandfather, Ole (perhaps as an adult helper to the band), but the Ole in the picture was a little boy. Who was this other Ole?

Pete Fylling, No. 45, is on the upper left; Ole M. Fylling, No. 68, is on the far right.

I went through my notes and realized I had made a mistake; I had misread the names and was thinking when I wrote the blog post that Ole was Marni’s grandfather, not her great-grandfather. Her great-grandfather Ole would have been in his 40s at the time of the photo, so he was clearly too old to be in the band, and her grandfather, Oscar, would have been about 19 years old and also too old for the boys’ band – although Oscar’s younger brother, Pete, is indeed in the photo.

Intrigued by this mysterious Ole, I searched census and city directory records on Ancestry.com for the Fyllings. What I learned was this: there were two Fylling families in Crookston in the early 1900s: brothers Ole and John had immigrated to Crookston from Norway within a few years of each other; their widowed father, Erick, also immigrated.

Ole Fylling (Marni’s great-grandfather) operated a hardware and furniture store at 123 Main St in the early 1900s; in 1930, he was the proprietor of a wallpaper store in Crookston. Ole’s older brother John E. Fylling held a few different jobs after moving to Crookston, including confectioner and carpenter. In 1930, he owned a grocery store.

John had a son named Ole Magnus Fylling, who was born in 1902. He must be the Ole in the band photo – he would have been the first cousin of Marni’s grandfather Oscar, and Oscar’s brother, Pete.

You can see now why this post is called a Confusion of Oles! If you have made it all the way through this without too much head-scratching, let me further complicate things: there are more than two Oles in the Fylling family if you expand the definition of Oles to include graduates of St. Olaf College. Counting that type of Ole, we also have Marni’s grandfather Oscar and Marni’s sister Catherine. Plus, during my Ancestry.com searching I found another Fylling who graduated from St. Olaf – a Carl J. Fylling who attended the college in 1902-03, then attended the United Church seminary in 1906 and became a Lutheran pastor in Bismarck, North Dakota.

I don’t know whether Carl Fylling is related to the Crookston Fyllings – I will leave that mystery for Marni or other Fylling relatives to solve. We can only hope that one of Carl’s descendants is also named Ole.