Looks like Lou will be coming soon to an NPR station near you. Author Amy Reading will be on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon this coming Saturday, March 24th, to talk about her new book The Mark Inside (Random House Digital, Inc.). For what it’s worth, she will also be on a Denver noontime TV news […]
Killer Kate Blonger Apprehended at Last!
Killed By a Woman Back in 2003, one of the very first items we found when we began searching the Internet was an article about a prostitute by the name of Kitty Blonger. On February 22, 1888, in the mining town of Peach Springs, AT, Kitty was arrested for the murder of blacksmith Charles Hill. […]
Joe Finally Shows His Face
Well, new information has been scant in recent months, but yesterday Scott turned on the spigot. Several new items from genealogybank.com are now in the pipe, and one in particular that solves a longstanding mystery. But first, since we were just talking about him behind his back, let’s briefly get back to Little Big Joe […]
Grandpa Mike
For those of you who are unfamiliar with our website and version 1.0 of our blog, we’re starting out by taking a brief look at each of the Blonger brothers. In that spirit, let’s continue with great-great-grandpa Mike Belonger. Born in 1841, Mike was the only brother of six that never adopted the Blonger spelling. […]
Little Big Joe
Now let’s talk about Joe, the Quiet One, the Lone Prospector, Joe Straight-Tongue. Born in 1847, Joe was eight years Sam’s junior, and two years older than Lou. Joe enlisted in the 125th Michigan Infantry just shy of his fifteenth birthday. The 125th saw more than its share of action in the Civil War, including […]
How Bout Sam?
Lou’s older brother Sam was born, like Lou, in Swanton Falls, Vermont, in 1839. Though no photos of Sam are known to exist, it is said that in many ways he was Lou’s complement; where Lou was short, stout and affable, and prone to rely on his personality to get his way, Sam was tall and imposing, with […]
Pronouncing the Name
When we first saw the names Belonger and Blonger, we assumed, as you may have, that they were pronounced like the word “longer“. It’s hard to tell because the name is very nearly unique, but the evidence suggests three options: We use what we believe to be the Americanized pronunciation, which rhymes with conjure. If […]
Meet Lou Blonger
Born in 1849, he enlisted in the Union Army at age 15 as a fifer. He only served a few weeks, until a fall injured his leg, which left him with debilitating “varicose veins” that served as a good excuse for a lifetime of avoiding real labor. After the war he hooked up with his […]
The Blonger Bros. Investigation Continues
A few words of introduction to new readers: The previous incarnation of this blog began in 2003, shortly after we first discovered our connection to history: great-great-great-uncle Louis Belonger, from rural Wisconsin, had grown up to be the notorious Denver gangster and confidence man known as Lou Blonger. Blonger’s arrest and conviction has been extensively documented, […]
Hello Twenty-First Century
We’ve finally made the obvious move and created an actual blog. Please subscribe, so you’ll know that something new has been posted! All new information will appear here. Just for the record, though our updates have been few and far between of late, our work continues. and — most importantly — we’ve been doing some […]