Clay County Histories

Markus Krueger | Program Director  HCSCC

Left to right: Russ Stabler, Jimmy Johnson, Vern Barker, Diane Olson, Chub Olson

Our museum got a letter from the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. As part of their nation-wide Last Union Veteran Project, SUVCW members are performing ceremonies at the graves of the last surviving Union veteran in each county. They invited us to Moorhead’s St. Joseph’s Cemetery to honor Joseph Uebersetzig on September 23. 

We at the museum know Joseph Uebersetzig well. His descendants donated his rifle and sword to our museum long ago and we featured him in a recent exhibit about Civil War veterans in Clay County. He was an orphaned immigrant kid from Germany growing up in Wisconsin. At age 14 he met Caspar Wohlwend, a Swiss immigrant kid, and they became fast friends. At age 20, they volunteered for the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry together, served together in the Western Theater of the war, and came home to Wisconsin at war’s end. They both married and had kids. In 1880, the friends bid each other goodbye as they both went west in search of better land. They lost track of each other for a few years. To their surprise, they discovered that they ended up with farms in Clay County, Minnesota, just 20 miles apart. 

Both “Cap” and Joseph were among Barnesville’s first generation of active community leaders. They became even closer as they grew older, leaving their farms to their children and moving near each other in Barnesville. Cap died at age 92 and Joseph died four years later at 96. Each man was honored with a parade in Barnesville, flags flew at half mast, and kids were let out of school early. The people of Barnesville did this to honor these individuals, but they were also honoring the passing of the great generation that saved the United States of America and ended slavery. We know that feeling today with the passing of the World War II generation. An 18 year old soldier in 1945, the final year of the war, is 96 today – the same age as Joseph Uebersetzig when he died in 1938. 

I also know Joseph Uebersetzig as the great-great-grandfather of my close friend Derek Olson. We met at age 14 at Moorhead High and over a quarter century later we live just a few blocks apart. I’ve also become friends with his brother Brad and his father Chub over the years, and I let them all know that the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War was performing a ceremony for their grandpa. 

Rain kept the crowd small for the Saturday afternoon service at Joseph Uebersetzig’s headstone, but the veterans of the Fargo Memorial Color Guard were there. SUVCW members Vern Barker and Jimmy Johnson, dressed in Civil War uniforms, led the ceremony. In the audience were Joseph’s great-grandson Chub Olson, his great-great-grandson Brad Olson, and his great-great-great-grandson, little Sven. Chub brought the flag that covered Joseph Uebersetzig’s casket in 1938. Maybe Sven can do this again in another 90 years or so.