52 Ancestors: #12 Beryl Imogene Swanson and Some Not-So-Wonderful South Dakota Memories

Mom’s Young Years
In 1925, my mother, Beryl Imogene Swanson, was born on the rented Gardner farm in Broadland, near Huron, South Dakota. After her family moved to another farm in the surrounding area, she and her younger brother, Wendell, would play hopscotch in the dirt. They lived there until 1934 when they moved to northern Minnesota.

Back Row - Maxine, Teckla,
Georgia
Front Row - Beryl, Thelma
Wendell
 

When my mom was just a baby, her sister, Thelma, who was seven years old, wanted to hold her and my grandmother said it was okay. Thelma was trying to go down a flight of stairs at the time, but she lost her footing. My mom, who was in a blanket, fell out of her sister’s arms and tumbled the rest of the way on her head to the bottom of the stairs! My mother always said that she had a head injury that day and that was why she wasn’t as smart as her siblings. She always said that she couldn’t understand why her mother would allow a seven-year-old child to hold a baby while going down the stairs.

Gypsy Fears
In the South Dakota years, gypsies roamed the countryside. As a form of fear and punishment, my grandmother would tell my mother and her siblings that if they didn’t listen to her and do what they wanted, she would “sell them to the gypsies” when they came through the town.

The gypsies would have large wagons filled with what they were selling, along with their own worldly belongings, a team of horses in front, and straggler horses, dogs, and children lagging behind. They were considered an inferior group of people, and it was rumored they drove through cities and farmlands and snatched children from their families to sell them and make money. As a young child, my mother didn’t know any different and she was fearful when the gypsies appeared on the roads. In her later years, she finally found out that these stories were untrue.

End-of-the-World Fanatics
Even in the early days on the South Dakota plains, there were those who believed that the world would come to an end on a specific date. My mother told me of several times when complete families, with their so-called faith leaders, would go to the highest point in the area, a mound, or a ridge, and claim to be ready to “meet their maker.” The group would then stand and pray that they would be taken to see their God because they were ready to go.

After a few hours, however, no light appeared, no clouds parted, and no voice came from heaven. With heavy hearts, they dispersed and went down the hillside to wait for another day. My mother said that over a short period of time, the group would be there again, in their designated places, and pray for the end to come, but it never did!

School Day Taunts
My mom wore flour-sack dresses to the one-room country schoolhouse outside of Huron. Her mother used to get cotton flour sacks which happened to have a flower design. When she could afford it, her mother ordered material from Sears so that she could make mom’s dresses with straight seams. She remembered that her schoolmates used to say about her - “Here comes the girl with the flour-sack dresses.”

Mom’s sister, Georgia, sent clothes back home which were former “flapper” dresses that she had from nightclubs. Mom sometimes was embarrassed because these “flapper” dresses had sequins which did not go over too well at the one-room school house with the schoolteacher.

Depression Years

She and her parents lived through the Depression which was from 1929 through 1940 and was known as the “Dirty 30s.” Her mother was never able to really clean  because when the dust storms came through, lasting for several hours at a time, there would be an inch of dust on everything in the house. She remembered that the as the storm hit their house, she would see the dust “sift through” cracks in the wall. What made it worse was that there was no electricity or running water, but they did have an artesian well.

Even though my grandmother was a good cook, during the Depression, sometimes there was only oatmeal or raisin-sauce on bread slices that they had for dinner. Thank goodness there was a garden because that supplied much of the needed vegetables. If you were lucky, you could have meat or your own chickens or turkeys and have a nice Sunday turkey dinner.

With her hand-me-down clothes from her sisters, mom always tried to hide the pictures of her in her “snuggies” that fell around her ankles. Then to her surprise, one of the relatives would go through their photo albums and bring out the same picture!

52 Ancestors: #11 Rocks, Weeds, Grass, and Stone

Rocks, Weeds, Grass, and Stone

I went back to find my life in the past

Safe in the thought that memories last
But with the setting sun where there once was a home
I could find only rocks, weeds, grass, and stone


Steps are all that remains of Zaiser School 
Bigfork, Minnesota
 

Silence surrounds me there all alone

I remember the places that I’ve always known
 Just like the wind, once here then gone,
They’re now filled with rocks, weeds, grass and stone

My ancestor’s graves lie there on the hill

Marked reminders of time that just seems to stand still
I can only imagine the wind carrying their souls
Up to heaven from rocks, weeds, grass, and stone

I try hard to find just what life somehow means

I close my eyes and think of lost dreams
Just like their graves and their homes that are gone
I now only find rocks, weeds, grass, and stone

If all of those souls came back here to earth

They’d probably smile and question life’s worth
Had they made a difference before being called home?
Or were they just memories in rocks, weeds, grass, and stone

I went back to find my life in the past

Safe in the thought that memories last
Those memories are with me, they’re all that I own
Till I’m buried beneath rocks, weeds, grass, and stone

Copyright © 2014 Deborah I. Welte Gosa. All Rights Reserved

52 Ancestors: #10 Three Different Ways of Getting Around - The Welte Way

It’s great to know how our ancestors traveled from one place to another, and I know that this is the case for all generations. In the first example, family gatherings brought everyone together and before cars and trucks, there was “horsepower.” The next example is that having a nice car said much about how successful a man was in order to provide for his family and to be respected in the community. Lastly, it was not always about getting to a destination that mattered, but the interesting story about “who was driving what” that made for a good laugh.

My grandfather, William Welte, was an early homesteader in the northern Minnesota area of Bigfork. Here is a picture of the William Welte Rivernook Farm and the house in the middle of the picture where my dad grew up. In 1913, it looks like there was a family gathering or a holiday that brought everyone to the farm. The horses in the picture were, of course, one of the ways to get from Point A to Point B in the early days. I tell my grandchildren that there were no cars and that horses were very important to each family. The horses are covered with "fly covers" because with the northern Minnesota heat and humidity, the horses needed extra protection against big deer flies, horse flies, and mosquitos. Their eyes opened wide when I told them how big those insects get and that they really bite!

The next picture is William’s 1923 Willys Overland touring car. My uncle, Harold, pictured here as the eldest of William’s boys, sitting on the running board, had written on the border of the photo that this car was a “Red Bird” touring car with “maroon buff top Red wheels, 4 cyl” and the car was a Model 92 which boasted a “…rich Mandalay maroon finish, khaki top, nickel trimmings…” according to an old postcard[1]. His dad, William, who was a very influential person in the Bigfork, Minnesota area, died about six years later.

The Welte bus, driven by William, was another example of how important each vehicle was to transport children to the area schoolhouses in and around the Bigfork area. It even looks like him in the driver’s seat! But William was not the only one who drove that old bus. My own dad, Irving, had a frightening experience according to the story that his mother told me. My dad had turned up missing and she couldn’t find him anywhere. There was a river behind the Rivernook Farm and a wooden pile bridge that connected one piece of farm land to another. She pointed to the remaining pilings in the river of where the bridge used to be located and she said the next thing she knew, she saw the bus coming across the bridge. She knew that it wasn’t her husband, William, because he was in the house. She saw the bus slowly and gingerly cross the bridge at a slow speed, and she had a suspicious feeling that she knew who was driving the vehicle. It was my dad! He was about 7 years old and she figured out very quickly that he had to have a little help with reaching all of the controls. He had put a wooden block on the accelerator pedal so that he could push it down and drive the bus over the bridge. He did quite well, but he did get into trouble for it and he never did it again!

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[1] Alden Jewell, http://flickriver.com/photos/autohistorian/5432252001/

52 Ancestors: #9 The Importance of Keeping Family Treasures

How sad it is when family members want to clean out their desks, closets, or attics, and then they quickly throw away memories such as letters, receipts, pictures, etc. without knowing that others think of them as treasures. These pieces of family history may never be seen again. It is very important that you let other family members know of your interest in these items so that they will not be thrown away.

I remember my mother told me about the time when her family was cleaning out her own maternal grandmother’s home after she died. They came across a phonograph player that was in the attic. My mother said that her mother didn’t see the importance of keeping such an ornate machine as the phonograph because it wouldn’t be needed anymore. My mother said that they just threw it out with the rest of the unwanted items and pieces of furniture. She said that she wished now they had not thrown it away because that machine would be priceless today in regard to our family history.
 

The phonograph was probably played quite a bit out on the South Dakota prairie because my grandmother, Teckla Esterberg Swanson, liked to play the piano, especially for church socials and dances. There was no electricity, so kerosene lamps were hung on the walls of the church where couples danced by the light’s amber glow. My mom not only remembered her mother playing uplifting ragtime tunes on their upright piano, but also mom closed her eyes and envisioned her mom’s wavy curls bouncing up and down, in time to the beat. I close my eyes and I can see that vision in my own mind’s eye and I can almost hear the music!

52 Ancestors: #8 Everything is Relative

You’ve heard the statement that “Everything is Relative.” Well, that is correct as far as searching for family history is concerned.

I compare family history as when you go into a restaurant and sit down for a meal. As you sit there and wait for service, customers will start to get up and leave the restaurant after paying their bill. You then notice that when everything is set up again for the next group of people, they sit down and wait their turn in the process of being served. And again, when they are done, they leave and the next group comes to sit down.

I look at this at the same way as life itself. You are born, wait to be served by your parents, get schooled by teachers, learn all there is about what life has to offer, and then you “eat of the ‘fruit of life’ ” and learn from it. You also enjoy what you have in life just as you would a superb meal on the table.

Along the way, people you know will “visit your table” and enjoy your company. You marry and have children, and then grandchildren. In the end, after everyone is gone from your table, you are ready to “pay back” what you have received. You pay “what you owe” and for what you have received as if what you get has a high value. You will pay anything to show that you appreciate the “service” given by God and His greatness for this wonderful life that you are living.

In a sense, though, you will have to leave this world behind and assess your life. You will “get up from the table” and start to leave, but not without thinking of how nice it was when you were there.

After you are gone, others will remember you in a kind way for what you have done and get ready for the next group of family that is born. The next group of people will sit down and enjoy what you have enjoyed and think about their lives just as you did and enjoy their circle of friends and family.

As you can see, “everything IS relative” and comes around to complete the circle of life.

52 Ancestors: #7 David Emanuel Nylen

David Emanuel Nylen was a very interesting man. He was my step-grandfather who was married to my father's mother, Martha Hansen Welte, who had been widowed in December of 1929 when she was 41 years old. She married Dave in 1937. From what I heard, at one time he was the manager of King Lumber in Bigfork, Minnesota. He was also quite a violinist who played at the fun events such as parties at local churches and halls. Before they were married to their spouses, Dave and Martha would entertain with his fiddle playing and her singing like the Jenny Lind of her day. I heard that they were very good.

As they had known one another before they married, when they each had lost their own spouse within the space of a few days in December of 1929, it seemed inevitable that they should get together and marry. Dave's wife was Annie S. Larson. They had two children who may have been twins from the birth and death information I found in the online Minnesota Historical Society website, and it appears that they died in infancy. I heard that the children were buried on the family farm, surrounded by a small white picket fence. I know that Annie Larson is buried in the Bigfork Cemetery near where the Rice and Bigfork Rivers come together. He died in October of 1970 and he is buried next to Martha, his second wife.

When I visited them at the house in town near the old Bigfork High School, he would show me around his woodworking shop. He was very good at working with all kinds of wood. I even have several of the pieces that he created.

He also had an old-fashioned toaster which opened up on each side. While he was taking out the toast, he would talk about the Kennedy family and how they made their money running moonshine! He did not like them very much. I would also watch him as he tipped his hot cup of coffee into his saucer beneath the cup. I learned later that this was so that the coffee would cool off as he drank from the saucer.

 

He never talked about his family who lived in Sweden and I never asked. I do know from his death certificate that his father's name was John Nylen and his mother's name was Mary Setterquist. He was born 5 Dec 1885 in Cokato, Wright County, Minnesota. 

 

52 Ancestors: #6 Citing Important Events and Serendipity

It is very important that as you find more names and dates in records, you need to reference where you found them. Not only do you want credibility and proof attached to each find, but you also want the next person to pick up where you left off and be able to find the same thing you did. As I pore through old parish registers from various parishes in Norway, the Norwegian words get to look familiar so I can put the Norwegian-English dictionary down for a bit.

There are many resources online that make it a lot easier to find what you are looking for. However, if you don’t cite where you found them, they will be lost forever. When others want to know more about certain details, it is easier if you can show valid evidence of where you found your facts. You will be more accurate with your continued research and have less conflicting data.

When I was going through the Norwegian “bygdeboks” (farm books) about 38 years ago, I spent a week going through every page, every day, but it was a wealth of information for each region of Norway. For those of us who have Norwegian ancestors, these books not only give us a flavor of the life back then with listings of occupations included next to each name, but it also showed lines going back, it seemed into oblivion, for each family. They were all written in Norwegian, but I was so happy to have found these books that I didn’t care.

I didn’t even know these books existed until I went to Norway and had the privilege of sitting down with my dad’s 2^nd cousin, Arvid, which would make him my 2^nd cousin 1x removed, and he pulled a book out from one of his cabinets in the living room. He sat down next to me and explained that our ancestors’ names, occupations, and other local area history of the Aust-Agder and Holt regions, where our ancestors lived and died, were in this farm book. He told me that I probably could get the same book in local historical societies or university libraries in the United States.

In this book, there were also pictures of area industries and large farms and estates. He showed me a picture of a large estate of the Aall family who owned the Nes Verk iron works. Then he motioned with his arm toward the window, pointing in the direction of the road, and he said that the estate was not too far away, and that one of our ancestors had worked there as a taxidermist. He tried to explain, in his broken English, who that person was and he pointed to his name in the book. He was Peder Hansen, who is my 2^nd great grandfather on my dad’s side, and I could just feel that I was close to really discovering who my ancestors were and what they did in Norway. I remembered when my dad came off the plane, walking down the steps from the airplane door, he looked over at me and said, “We’re home!” and I can still see his smiling face in the afternoon sunshine as he went inside the airport. I was lucky enough to be able to travel with my parents to Norway on that July day in 1983.

I do remember that I had written each detail of our trip to Norway because I knew that my memory would fade over time, and that it would come in handy one day. In my many boxes of papers, books, and pictures, I just came across a 6-year period of notes 40 years ago that I had written down, but had forgotten about, detail by detail, of important events happening at the time. I also found lists of notes for pictures that I had taken back then, over almost the same period of time. We didn’t have Facebook to share pictures, or Flickr or Picasa, to have immediate sharing of memories with others.