A few days ago I did a search for Joseph Kappes on newspaper.com. There was around 70 results and most were for the Joseph Kappes I was looking for. The first result was from 1896:
From the above I got the idea that in the 1890’s Joseph Kappes gave up his land and sold his equipment because he was retiring from farming. However later that day while reading some of the story of his daughter, Rosa, I found that Joseph Kappes appears to had taken up farming in Minnesota. At least Rosa’s story indicates that she followed her parents there. How that enterprise turned out for him I don’t know. I do know it didn’t go well for Rosa and her husband since they returned to the area in 1898. So now I have the mystery of what happened in Minnesota. All I know now is that for some reason Joseph Kappes went there sometime in the mid-1890’s and that he was in Pesotum by 1903.
My dad, Alvin, went to Minnesota to work with the Kappes family living there in the 1930s. However his dad, our grandfather passed away and he being the oldest son had to return to Illinois and take over the farm
I figured we must have some kinda connection to Minnesota since Grandpa and Grandma got married up there. Before now I had thought the connection was through the Labert’s.