Joseph Andreas Dalsin

Joseph Dalsin was a very humble man, according to Russel Dalsin, on tape who knew Joseph.
Joseph was a cobbler, but also worked for Burlington Northern Railroad, picking rocks off the railway tracks. At some point he worked at a Foundry after his wife died. It was a friend at the Foundry who felt sorry for Joseph after his wife died and made a simple iron cross for her grave.

Joseph was a doorman for Holy Rosary Church in his last years. He never went to school.

Russel said that Joseph loved to tell stories of ghosts in the cemeteries in Prussia when he was a boy. He spoke Polish, but was definitely German. When he visited friends in St. Paul they conversed in Polish. At some point he went to live with his daughter Anna and her husband Tony in Wenatchee, Washington. Later moving to live with John Dalsin back in Minneapolis.

Joseph's wife Anna (Langer)Dalsin was born in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. Her parents were immigrants from Austria.

When Joseph and Anna married, Anna's father gave them a cow for a wedding gift. After the wedding, they walked the cow from Ellsworth to Hastings, Minnestoa, having to cross the Mississippi River, probably by ferry. They lived in Hastings and two other towns before Mendota.
Anna is buried in Mendota, in St. Peter's Church cemetery - the N.E. corner most grave, marked with a plain iron cross.

1862 (29 July) Johann Dolzzn (born 1802 Prussia), Marianne Dolzzn (born 1810 Prussia), Joseph Dolzzn (born 1840 Prussia), Carl Dolzzn (born 1843 Prussia), Victoria Dolzzn (born 1846 Prussia) & Pauline Dolzzn (born 1850 Prussia) arrive in New York from Bremen - Bremerhaven, Germany on the ship Orpheus.