Memories

By Edward A. Nelson and Ronald Goodman Nelson

This is a memoir written by my father after he retired from dairy farming in Brainerd, Minnesota, when he was sixty-seven years old. It covers the first thirty-three years of his life before he returned to his father’s farm in Brainerd, Minnesota, where he spent the rest of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889435310

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Memories

Edward A. Nelson and Ronald Goodman Nelson, Son and Producer

ISBN 979-8-88943-530-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88943-531-0 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Edward A. Nelson & Ronald Goodman Nelson, Son and Producer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

My Parents

Some Statistics

Life on the Farm

Memories of Travels in North Dakota in 1920 and 1921

The Goodman Family

About the Author

My Parents

I would like to say a few words about each of my two parents, particularly how well my father adjusted to life in these United States and what his neighbors thought of him personally, also as to his character and his ability to handle community problems. First and foremost, he was a deeply religious man and thoroughly honest in all his dealings with his family and in all business transactions with his fellow man. This was attested to by the many important offices he was chosen to hold. He helped organize the first Finnish church organization in the city of Brainerd in the mid-1880s. He taught Sunday school as long as the family lived in Brainerd. He was named baptizer in the church until a resident minister could be found. He was one of the church's council members until the time of his death.

In the township of Oak Lawn, he was road overseer for several years. He was township treasurer until his death. He served as election judge in all township elections. He helped organize the Farmer's Co-operative Creamery Association and was its treasurer manager from its inception. In 1927, he was named one of the master farmers of the state of Minnesota. He was always in the forefront of all new and advanced farming practices. This was all the more remarkable when one takes into consideration that he never went a day to formal school in his life, and also, he came to this land penniless and had no knowledge of the English language. He learned to read it, speak it, and write it so well that often his articles to the various farm magazines were held in high esteem. He could express himself so well in talks that his influence was greatly enhanced.

My mother did not have the opportunity or the necessity of taking an active part in community doings. She confined herself in caring for a large family under rather primitive country conditions, and to her beloved church. She took an active part in all its affairs and aims. She was one of the charter members of the Ladies Aid and always subscribed to several religious magazines and saw to it that her children put religion prominently in their thoughts and actions.

Idleness was an unknown word to her. She was always busy at something—knitting socks or mending them, making clothes for the children to wear, such as dresses for the girls and shirts and pants for the boys. The large family Bible had a prominent place on the living room table. She taught us the confirmation articles and prayers at home, as for many years, we had no resident pastor in our church. The women of the church did not let this hamper the religious instruction for their children.

She told us children many stories of her life in the old country and her experiences there. She had a fine sense of humor and laughed a lot. It made for a merry house, and we were all happy in our home. How thankful we all are to have had such a fine homelife during our growing-up years.

Some Statistics

My dad was born June 17, 1860, in Săivis, Sweden, to Nils Henricksson and Eva Kreeta Johansdottir. He died July 25, 1937, at Brainerd, Minnesota, at seventy-seven years of age. He emigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-three years, arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on August 20, 1883.

My mother was born in Săivis, Sweden, on February 7, 1862, to Per Isaksson Frankki and Margareta Andersdottir Juhojuntti. Mother died on November 29, 1933, in Brainerd, Minnesota. She emigrated to the United States at twenty-five years of age, arriving at Brainerd, Minnesota, on August 1887.

They were married in Brainerd, Minnesota, on October 1, 1887. Eight children were born to this union, two boys and six girls.

* * * * *

My parents were born and grew up in the village of Săivis in northern Sweden, at the upper tip of the Gulf of Bothnia. This was a tiny fishing and farming collection of homes on the seashore close to where the Tornio river empties into the Gulf of Bothnia. At some time in the dim and distant past, this area had been settled by Finnish settlers from the nearby country of Finland. Then for about five hundred years, Sweden controlled this area until she lost a war with Russia in 1809, and then this area was split away from Finland, with the Tornio river forming the boundary between Sweden and Finland. The language, customs, and inhabitants were entirely Finnish, so my parents could not even speak or understand the Swedish language.

Nils August Nilsson, my dad, was born on a farm near Săivis on June 17, 1860, to Nils and Eva Greta Henricksson. Although the family name was Niemi, because of the many generations of living under Swedish rule, the family had adopted the Swedish custom of designating the family name by adding the word son to the father's first name. My father was the first of three sons born to this couple. Nils Henricksson died at the age of fifty years from a stomach disorder, very probably cancer. My father was nineteen years old at this time. As none of the boys cared to continue farming, it was sold, and the boys built a small house for their mother in Săivis and sought work in the area for themselves. Dad had to serve a year in the Swedish army because of the compulsory military training law. After this was done, he decided to emigrate to America. He was single and twenty-three years of age. He boarded a steamer in June for Liverpool, England, and then America.

So at six in the morning of August 20, 1883, Father stepped off a train in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He had only $3 left in his pocket, did not know a soul there, and certainly could not speak or understand a word of English. He was directed by a Swedish man to a nearby Finnish boarding house, and the next day, he went to a railroad hiring hall. He was sent to Livingston, Montana, where a car shop was being built by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. It closed down in late fall, and not finding any work there, my dad came to Brainerd, Minnesota, another railroad town, to seek work there, but none was to be had. By spring, his savings were gone. And so it went. Dad could get work during the summer months but not in the winter months. Finally, in the fourth year in America, he got a year-round job in the carshops in Brainerd. As he had been engaged to be married to a woman in Săivis, now he sent her a ticket to come to Brainerd, Minnesota.

My mother was born on February 7, 1862, in Săivis to Per Isakasson Frankki and Margareta Andersdottir Juhojuntti, both from Vuono, Sweden. Her parents had four sons and eight daughters, Mother being their sixth child. She was named Hilda Briita Sofia. She worked out as a dairymaid. There was no school to attend, so her parents taught her to read and write in Finnish at home. Milking cows and caring for them was considered to be women's work, the men putting up the hay, which was cut by hand with a scythe. The men also worked in the woods, in the iron mines up north, or fished. Most buildings were of log construction. The cow barn was a long narrow building with only room for a single row of cow stalls its length. Summers, the cattle were not housed at all but sent to graze on the mountainous area beyond the fields and milked there by the dairymaids.

I heard the following account on a visit to Săivis in 1962. Our parents never mentioned it to us children. At the time Dad left for the United States in 1883, he was engaged to the oldest daughter of Per Isaksson and Margareta Juhojuntti, named Kreeta Vilhemina, and three years older than dad. When she got the ticket to come to Brainerd and marry Dad, she was thirty years of age by then and afraid to cross the Atlantic Ocean, so she decided to not use that ticket but return it to my dad. Her younger sister, Hilda, aged twenty-four, said, Give me the ticket, and I will go to America. This was done, and no doubt, Dad was surprised at this turn of events, but two months later, he married Hilda on October 1, 1887. During those two months preceding her marriage, Hilda worked at a hotel as a cleaning woman. I never heard if Kreeta ever married.

I was born on November 3, 1895, in Brainerd as their third child. My parents at that time lived at 416 B Street in northeast Brainerd. Then this street was known as Farrer Street. This home was only a small one-story frame building set on the back end of the lot. In 1897, the family moved into a new and larger frame house at the front of the same lot, with an alley along the west side.

Some five years earlier, Dad had to quit working at the railroad carshops on account of a worsening rheumatism. He enlarged the cow barn so that it had room for six milk cows and two horses. Dad did draying and plowing of gardens in town. He bought forty acres of wild land five miles east of Brainerd on the Oak Street road for $200. It had no buildings on it, and he never built any on it. He cut hay for their cows and horses from it, grew potatoes and garden truck on it, and cut firewood for the dwelling. He later sold that forty acres for $500 and bought a 160 acre farm for $960 two miles east and one mile north of northeast Brainerd. Its legal designation was the NW¼ of Sec. 22 T. 45 and R. 30 West of Oak Lawn township, Crow Wing County. It had a four-room two-story log house on it and a small horse barn and a blacksmith shop and about fifteen acres of cropland open for field crops. He built a frame addition to the house on the north, which served as a kitchen. He also added a small log cow barn with a log chicken coop attached to the south side of the existing cow barn. This last was partly underground for winter warmth, but it usually flooded during the spring melt. The family moved to the farm on November 20, 1899. I was four years old at the time and do not remember anything of this move. Besides Jennie, my oldest sister, and myself, there was Louis, a year and a half younger than me, and Hilja, a six-month-old baby sister. I can remember her sitting on a stool in the barn while Mother milked the cows. She died of summer complaint at age two and a half years. I can recall the hurried trip to town Dad made to get medicine for her but to no avail as she died the next day. It was the first and only time I ever saw Dad shed tears, and it has stayed in my memory ever since. Three more daughters were born while on this farm.

John R. Pegg had filed on this land on May 10, 1879, twenty years earlier and had proven up on it on July 25, 1882, so we were the second legal owners of it. After John R. Pegg hung himself in his blacksmith shop, the family moved to Brainerd and rented out the farm.

There was a thirty-foot-deep dug well southeast of the house with a rope through an iron pulley that hung in an overhead frame. A wooden bucket attached to the rope could be lowered to the water and then hauled up hand over hand. It was five miles to the main business section of the city. In 1904, Dad sold the south eighty acres to iron ore mining speculators for $75 an acre. He had paid only $6 an acre in 1899. This extra cash enabled him to build a new house on a low knoll some distance to the south. He also could now acquire more and better farm machinery and improved livestock. For years, we still cut the hay on this south eighty.

Jennie went one year to the District 4 country school, two and a half miles away. Then it was moved a half mile south and another half mile to the east. As there was no road to the south of our house along the section line, we three older children attended the country school of District 5, usually called the Aspholm School. It was three years before the road to the south of us was opened through the woods so we could attend our proper school, District 4 school, known as the Angus Murray School. It was still two miles away. This Aspholm School was two and a half miles from our house. It was of log construction, with the plaster in between the logs falling out, leaving open cracks between the log siding. It was heated by a long boxstove, which took four-foot cordwood sticks for heat. The blackboards were just that, smooth boards nailed to the walls and painted black. The seats were double, so two students sat together, two girls or two boys. The greatest punishment a teacher could give to a misbehaving boy was to make him sit with a girl. There were no storm windows. The entryway or cloakroom had no heat, so our lunches froze on cold winter days. We carried our lunches to school in a cloth shoulder bag made by our mother, leaving room in it for books as well as leaving our hands free. The school term was for six months only each year. The schoolteacher usually boarded at the closest neighbor. Early fall and spring, the attendance was about thirty-five pupils, but during the winter, it zoomed up to sixty-five pupils, when the larger or older boys attended. They were held back to assist their parents with the fall work. Many of these were full-grown men. It was odd to see them in the same classes with quite young children just learning to read, write, or figure sums.

We all took pride in not missing a day of school