Laura's Letters - 4 - 1912-13

Christmas 1912

Dearest Laura, Nick, and Chet (I shall call you that, even if the others don’t),

I am enjoying being out here in Montana. I live at the nursing school, and Oscar has come out here now, and he lives in a boarding house near by the place where he got a job mining coal. Mary is
thinking of coming out and starting her nurses’ training in September.

You asked what it's like here.

Butte began as nothing more than a bunch of mining camps back in the early 1870’s. Then, silver and copper were discovered. It was copper that truly put Butte on the map. Following the development of electricity, the demand for copper mushroomed. Indeed, it is estimated that Butte supplied around 1/3 of the copper for the United States in the late 1800’s.

Butte lies in the Southwest portion of Montana. Helena, the state capitol, is about 80 miles to the north of it. The location of Butte is both beautiful and, well, rather ugly, all at the same time. On the
good side, Butte is located right on the western edge of nearby mountain range so that makes a nice, scenic backdrop. The whole area itself is also a nice mix of open fields and wooded hills.
As such, lots of various outdoor activities can be done in Butte – hiking, hunting and fishing.

Yet, detracting from this whole thing are two big ugly scars that won’t be going away anytime soon, unfortunately, the legacy of active strip mining can be seen from everywhere. These strip mines
essentially take apart a small mountain and with the wasteland it makes that part ugly.

The population of Butte is nearly 100,000 people but of course that is small compared to Chicago where I lived for the last few years.

 

Love

Ida

*****

Christmas 1912

Dear Laura,

I’m pleased to hear that you are having another baby. But I still haven’t managed to see Chet yet (ha,ha, that rhymes) so perhaps when I come I will have several nieces and nephews to get
to know.

I need some help if you would again, Laura. I know you are the one who knew most about our Norwegian background. I am doing a project on Norway, and want to add in some personal details about who our great grandparents were and where they came from and what they did and
stuff like that. I asked Ida first but she knows only what Aunt Bertha told her when she was living there as a young girl, and she says she has forgotten most of it. But I know you are the one in the
family who likes to keep track of things, so you are my best source of information. I know you are busy too, but just think how much busier you'll be when you have another baby, so best make use of your spare time now. I expect you are keeping going with your knitting. Have you done pink baby clothes for the new one to come, or are you sticking to white or yellow?

Love from Agnes

Farming is hard work. After we have a few acres broken I drive the wagon up and down the field, Chester asleep at my feet, while Nick broadcasts the seed from the back. Then he harrows it, walking behind. There was a cold rain and sleet falling part of the time while we were seeding.

We stack all of our first crops. We never know how long it will be before a threshing machine comes around. Mr. John Fisher has a small threshing machine run by four horses. They drive around in a
circle. He threshes for himself and then near neighbors. The Scott family have the first large outfit run by steam. Then Mr. Benderick got one. I had 21 men to cook for when they threshed our wheat.

The first tractor near us was bought by our near neighbor, William Vogel. It often sat in the field while William drove around with his horse and buggy trying to find some one who could start his tractor, and the neighbors were getting on with their seeding with horses. It was not a good recommendation for tractor farming. It sat in the corner of his field for a long time.
January, 1913

We have again started out this new year with several record low temperature marks about -40° on January 12th.

February, 1913

Dear Agnes,

I have spent quite a bit of time working out stuff to tell you about our Norwegian relatives. I hope it isn’t too late for your project. You already know as much about Grandmother Kari's family as I do.

I thought you would like to know the scandalous bit first - to put that in your story to make it more interesting. Our ggggggrandmother on our mother’s side was a woman called Barbro Rognaas. Her first husband was called Ole Olson Tildheim, and he was murdered in a wedding in 1688. But I don’t think they thought she had murdered him.

Anyway, the farthest back we have records of is from a man called Ulrik Fodnes, who was born in 1580. His son was called Ulrik Tomasson Fodnes (1618 to 1695) and he was the one who married Barbro whose husband was murdered. I also heard that she got 40 silver ounces as compensation for her murdered husband.

They had a daughter called Berit and she married Erik Trondson Kjorstag in 1726. They lived in a place called Valdres in the Jotenheimen mountains. I have found a picture in a school book which I will send to you. It is of the Valdres River, so I expect they lived nearby there. From what Ida says, the mountains in Montana seem to be almost in the same setting as they were in Norway.

Anyway, progressing to the more modern ones, our mother Ingeborg, came from a family of eight children, and they all emigrated to America. Ole went at the age of 17 in 1870. Our mother who was 15 at the time, and Aunt Bertha, whose real name was Inger Bertine, was nine and their brother
Knut who was 12 and their parents came in June 1873. They lived in Wisconsin to start with and then some of them went to South Dakota.

Here is what I remember Mother talking about when I asked her about the trip across.

“Our water on the boat was very bad. When it was drawn out of the casks it was no cleaner than that of a dirty kennel after a shower of rain, so that its appearance alone was sufficient to sicken one. But its dirty appearance was not its worst quality. It had such a rancid smell that to be in the same neighborhood was enough to turn one's stomach.

“Our ship was the old type of sailing vessel. We had none of the modern comforts of travel. The sleeping quarters were cramped and we had to do our own cooking in the gallery of the boat. Mother had provided salt beef and other preserved meats and fish, dried vegetables, and red pickled cabbage which I remember most vividly. We were all seasick except Father, Mother the longest of all. Father had to do all the cooking in the meanwhile and take care of the sick.”

I hope that will help you with your project. That is about all I know.

Love from Laura

 

We had 7.42 inches of rain in one storm in June. Just thought I should make note of that as it is pretty alarming. Everything was flooded out.

September, 1913

Dear folks,

Sorry I haven’t had time to write before. Just to let you know that our new baby is here. We’ve called her Mildred Leona, and she was born on the first of June. Chester is so pleased with his new sister, but also disappointed that she isn’t yet able to play with him. I am glad to have a little girl so I can make her dresses and teach her all the fun things that girls do.

Another bit of family news is that Benjamin is thinking of getting married but can’t do that until she turns 16 next year. His girlfriend is called Caroline Knutson, and they are from around here. Her folks are from Norway too. They homesteaded in 1909 and Caroline was one of my students. They have quite a few sections near to where Benjamin lives at Buckeye.

She comes from a big family - three older children in the family and three younger. Her oldest sister got married real young, and has a child and they all live there together.

It’s nice to see him happy, and she is a bubbly young girl and will make him a good wife, I am sure. It seems a lot that he is 15 years older than she is, but as long as they are happy that is all that matters.

You know that Josephine is pregnant again. Her Agnes is seven already, so it is nice that they are having another one. But William intends that they should go back to Canada to live, but they will wait till this baby is born and the land is officially his - that should be at the beginning of next year. I will be sorry to see them go. Although we don’t get together very often, it is always nice to have
Josephine to chat with and she knows who and what I'm talking about, which nobody else does around here.

And another one is due at Bertha’s house sometime soon. It will be her 7th child. I don’t know how she manages is, but at least the girls, Irene, Alice and Emma are now old enough to do a lot of the cooking and cleaning.

There is talk of Emma and Harry Fisher getting married too. It would be such fun to have her as a neighbor - and of course there is a big age difference between them too, but neither one thinks it will matter. I’ve enclosed a picture of us looking rather cold and tired. Chester thinks he is a big help with his pail to help pick the rocks up.

Lovingly,

Laura

 

I must do a bit of writing while I have time, to keep up my record about what is happening in our State Legislature. They passed a law making bootlegging a crime punishable by penitentiary imprisonment.

John Burke, former North Dakota Governor, became Treasurer of the United States but more important to us, the first North Dakota Farmers' Union local was organized at Bismarck. We farmers think that unless we act together we will not be given a fair deal.

To start with we bought in our groceries from Tappen. But then the Dallman family started a small store in one room of the house they had built in Pettibone. They hauled their merchandise from Tappen with team and wagon. At one time when we were out of money they gave us the necessities on credit for which we were most grateful. We got flour, rolled oats, coffee and sugar. As other things ran out we just did without them.

Of course, we have our own milk, butter, eggs, and sometimes meat and vegetables. Sometimes our only meat is home cured bacon. It becomes very monotonous. We also got some lovely heads of cabbage but they did not keep too well in our cellar, which is just a hole in the ground under a shack.

We sometimes shoot rabbits for food. A roasted rabbit with dressing in it makes a delicious meal.

Occasionally we have a good dinner of wild duck; a day’s fishing sometimes results in a meal of fresh fish. Most years there is a good crop of chokecherries along the river. Many a summer day we take lunch to the river, pick berries till late in the afternoon, paddle in the river, and get home in time for the evening chores. We cook the berries with sugar and vinegar or rhubarb.

Getting new clothes is sometime a problem. Nick had a good strong shirt about the color of coffee. Finally, his elbows wore through and I had nothing suitable to patch it with. The sleeves soon were past mending and the rest of the shirt was still sound. Then I had a bright idea. I took a fifty pound salt sack and boiled it in strong thick coffee until it was close to the right color. I used this to make half sleeves and cuffs and it lasted for months till the color came off.

Handkerchiefs I make of empty ten cent salt sacks, neatly hemmed. Shoe laces are strong string soaked in ink, with the ends waxed. Empty flour sacks are the standby; they can be made into sheets, pillow cases, mattress covers, tea towels and undergarments of all kinds. We could not get
along without them any better than the men could manage without haywire.

The only roads in the country are wagon trails, so much of Nick’s lone traveling is done on horseback. When I wanted to go for a walk to see a friend before Mildred was born, I would do the chores, get Chester ready, and we would set out on foot in good weather. It's half a mile by the road to Len's, but we went across the prairie, a shorter distance but very rough walking. Chester was just learning to walk and had to be carried most of the way. I tried putting him on my back and holding his arms, but that tired him, so I put him in a flour sack which I had on a strap over my shoulder. I would turn him loose and let him walk a while, then put him in the sack again.