For our penultimate new theme we are taking a look at church records available for our family. Specifically, today we will examine the confirmation record for Grandma Blanche (Wilson) Montgomery. We’ve covered the basics of Grandma’s life several times here before, but in case you’ve missed them, I’ll provide a brief synopsis. She was born 17 December 1908 in Bradish, Nebraska, to Carl Ozro and Sophie Christine (Roberg) Wilson. She was the oldest surviving child of ten; her older brother Anders Clarence, born in 1907, died on his second birthday. She also had a younger brother Woodrow who lived only two days in 1917.
Grandma was a lifelong Lutheran, so it is no surprise that she was confirmed at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Albion, Nebraska. What is a little more surprising to me is Grandma’s age at the time. Confirmands tend to be around 14 years of age, so I would have expected Grandma to have been confirmed around 1923. Instead, her confirmation took place on 30 May 1926 when she was 17. The Immanuel Lutheran confirmation record lists the birth and baptismal dates of Grandma’s entire confirmation class of 13.1
From this list you can see that Grandma was the oldest in her class. One other confirmand was born in March 1909; all the others were born between 1911-1913. Of particular interest is the name right above Grandma’s: her cousin Louise Christine Roberg, born 28 March 1911. In an interview with Grandma I conducted around 1988, she shared some details about her confirmation class. In addition to her cousin Louise, Grandma also mentioned a pair of Greek siblings, brother and sister. I can see #7 on the list, Helen Irene Christo (the confirmand born in 1909), with her birthplace listed as “Grekenland,” though I don’t see any likely siblings for her.
In addition to Grandma’s confirmation record I found online, this is one time when I also have relevant photographs. Not only do formal confirmation portraits of Grandma survive, but also a confirmation class photograph. In that same 1988 interview, Grandma told me how her (and Louise’s) grandfather Anders Roberg paid for their matching confirmation dresses. Which means (I believe) that Louise is second from the right in the top row; Grandma is all the way on the left in the same row.
Obviously, this group portrait shows more individuals than the 13 who were confirmed together on that day in May. Maybe Helen Christo’s brother is in this photograph, even if he ended up being confirmed at a later date. Though I have no evidence of this confirmation actually taking place. I’ve found the Christo family in census records (as in Grandma’s family, there appear to have been 10 surviving Christo children), and the next Christo confirmation took place in 1933 and was for Johnnie, who was born in 1919. Maybe George, Thomas, Peter, and James all failed at memorizing their Bible verses?
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Archives; Elk Grove Village, Illinois; Congregational Records ↩︎