Do you know how your great-great-grandmother came to marry your great-great- grandfather? Does your family have a story about the past, handed down for generations, that would make a great romance novel?
If you are a writer, you might look to your family histories as sources of material. If you are a reader, or a history buff, perhaps you'd consider sharing one of your family stories?
One of my favorite family tales is the romance of my German great-great- grandfather, Edgar Boessen, and the courageous young Danish woman, Mareia Bruhn who married him. Edgar grew up on a farm in Schlieswig-Holstein, in northern Germany. Mareia grew up on a neighboring farm just across the border, in southern Denmark.
Mareia's mother, so the story goes, had been a countess of the Von Brodenfelt family who fell in love with her chauffer and ran away to marry him. Mareia was born a year later.
Despite the national border separating their families, Edgar and Mareia became acquainted and fell in love. When Germany imposed compulsory army service for young men over the age of 18, Edgar decided to emigrate to America rather than go to war. The problem was how to escape. Together, he and Mareia devised a daring plan.
Every afternoon, the young woman drove her horse and buggy across the border into Germany to visit Edgar's mother. After tea, she drove back across the border, waving at the guards as she passed. Since her travels were a daily occurrence, the guards paid her scant attention.
On a prearranged day, Mareia drove across into Germany as usual, but when she returned she successfully smuggled Edgar back into Denmark, hidden under the voluminous skirts she spread wide over the buggy seat.
Edgar then traveled to Copenhagen and took ship for America. He apprenticed as a brickmason in Illinois, then came to Oregon by wagon train along the Oregon Trail. He settled in the town of Langlois, in Curry County, sent for Mareia, and the two were married.
In Langlois, Edgar constructed a two-story house using bricks he made himself, where over the next two decades, he and Mareia raised 8 children (one of whom was my grandmother, Leora Marie Boessen).
As testimony to the skill and spirit of Edgar and Mareia Boessen, the house still stands today, and their descendents number in the hundreds.