Good luck in Luck

My father was born near a small town in northwestern Wisconsin named Luck. He was actually born on the farm of his parents near a community of Danish immigrants called West Denmark. I had only been here once before in 1960 when my family came back here to visit. We camped that summer on the farm of a long time friend of my father named Kris.

Before we left on this trip, we mentioned our travel plans to a fellow resident of Solvang whose husband's family had also come from Luck. She was very excited and told us that her husband had several cousins back here and that several members of the Danish Lutheran Church have traditionally organized an event for the 4th of July and that we should try to attend.

Since we wanted to spend the 4th in a small town environment, we managed to arrive in Luck, Wisconsin on July 3rd. From some previous genealogy research, I knew that my grandfather's second wife was buried in the West Denmark Cemetery (my grandmother was his third wife). I was also sure I had determined the location of the farm my father was born on. So on the morning of July 4th we set off to see what we could find.

The first stop was the West Denmark Church to find the cemetery. On the way, I pointed out to Barbara the farm where we had camped, and wondered if it was still owned by anyone in that family. Finding nobody at the church, we drove back to the parish hall we had passed on the way to the church where we had seen some people. The first person we asked didn't know the location of the cemetery, but said "Ask that tall fellow over there. He'll know!". That tall fellow was one of the cousins our friend back in Solvang had talked about. I asked if he knew Kris and Doris. He said that he sure did, and they should be at the potluck happening there a little later and invited us to join them. We told him we'd be back and headed off to visit the cemetery.


The grave we were looking for is unmarked, and all we had was a listing of the graves near the one we wanted. We are sure we found the right part of the cemetery, we just are not sure of the exact location of the grave.





The next stop was to find the farm where my father was born. We drove to where I expected to find it, but did not see the house I had pictures of from 1960. We parked and walked up to the house that was there, talked to a young man working in the yard, and explained why we were there. We then went to the house to talk to his father, who it turned out had been born in the old house that we were looking for. He had torn it down a few years earlier and had built the current one. Recently the local bank had cleaned out their files and sent him a document which listed every change in title to the property since it was a homestead. After his wife located the document, we read through the pages looking at the history of my grandfather's ownership of the property. They offered to make copies and mail them to us, and we offered to send them copies of old photos of the place from when my father was a child.

House my father was born in.
Photo taken in early 1900s.

Time to head back to the potluck and see if we could find Kris and Doris. Not only did we find them, but also found a number of people who remembered my father. We also talked to many people who had visited or lived in Solvang. Others were related to the friends in Solvang who had told us about this same event and encouraged us to visit.

Kris and Doris invited us to go back to their home to talk, but we first stopped at their farm where my family had camped in 1960. Their oldest son and family now live on the farm and Kris and Doris have retired to a small house in town. We talked for a couple of hours and showed each other old photos. We hope we will be as sharp as they are when we get to our 80s.

Here are Kris, Barbara and Doris where my family camped on the farm during our 1960 visit. My father built a canvas walled privy in the trees. We had an advertising sign reading "Trees of Mystery" that we had from stopping in a tourist stop in the Northern California redwoods. My father decided that would be appropriate over the doorway to the privy!

By the end of our visit, we felt that we had had extremely good luck in Luck!