Imsdalen – A Story about Norwegian Immigration to Minnesota

they came for a variety of reasons they came to escape population pressure religious persecution poverty and famine America was the new world a place with new jobs she planned a chance for a new start in life a place where they could be free the new steam powered ships made the voyage faster and cheaper from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s nearly 25 million Europeans made the voyage about eight hundred thousand immigrants came from Norway representing about one-third of that country's population at the time no single country in Europe contributed a larger percentage of its population to the United States than did norway norwegian immigration was primarily motivated by economic concerns compounded by crop failures norwegian agricultural resources were unable to keep up with the population growth the u.s. homestead acts were laws that gave an applicant ownership of land at little or no cost provided the homesteader settled on and farmed the land for at least five years in europe it was usually the firstborn son who inherited all of the land leaving his siblings dependent on their older brother for support land represented money and power and passing all of the property to the oldest son meant keeping the land and power intact generation after generation as a result most Europeans were tenant farmers growing crops for a land then was simply too expensive to buy for those who are not fortunate enough to be the firstborn son of a landowner the u.s. homestead acts were a way to break free from this cycle of dependence to farm your own land and not have to labor for and share your produce with a wealthy landowner to a Norwegian born into a sharecropping family advertisements for free or cheap land in America would have been very tempting all that was needed was to save enough money to buy a ticket for the voyage after the American Civil War Norwegian immigrants began to settled in the Upper Midwest especially in Minnesota where land was taken from the Dakota Sioux natives Norwegians settled all over the state today some eight hundred sixty thousand people in Minnesota or 16.5% of the Minnesota population is made up of people who claim to have Norwegian ancestry making it the state with the highest number of Norwegian Americans Wisconsin has the second highest number of Norwegian Americans at four hundred sixty thousand of particular interest to me is the small farming community of bruton Minnesota located in west central Minnesota this is my father's hometown this is the town where my grandparents lived this is where my aunt Joanne and some of my cousins live established in 1886 by an extension of the Sioux Line Railroad it is a community where many Norwegian immigrants settled [Music] so these are my grandparents men Ville and Mabel install my grandpa menville grew up on a farm just a few miles south of here and after getting married they moved to town and they raised their family and a house just a few blocks from here my grandparents were descendants of Norwegian immigrants and the thing I remember most about my grandpa was his thick Norwegian accent I used to think grandpa talked funny when I was a kid but it wasn't till later when I started doing family ancestry research I realized he had a thick accent because he was the son of Norwegian immigrants and they only spoke Norwegian at halt as he was growing up and speaking of his parents in their home they're buried right next here let's take a look so these are my great-grandparents Peter and Merritt install they both died before I was born so I never knew them Peter immigrated to America on May 9th 8th 1884 leaving his wife and their firstborn child behind in Norway he worked on as a farmhand for a few years until he had enough money to buy his own farm and then he sent for his wife and therefore their daughter Isabel and they lived on a farm Oh few miles south of here my grandfather menville was born about 15 years after they immigrated so let's go take a look at their farm now as we drive out to their farm we drive past thousands of acres settled by other Norwegian immigrants u.s. homestead acts had few qualifying requirements a homesteader had to be the head of the household or at least 21 years old they had to live on the designated land which was usually 160 acres build a home make improvements and farm it for a minimum of five years the filing fee was $18 or $10 to temporarily hold a claim to the land immigrants could qualify provided they file a declaration of intention to become a u.s. citizen I do not know for sure whether or not Peter M's doll was the original homesteader for his land or whether he bought it after somebody else failed their homestead claim regardless of how he got the land it was for cheap because he only had to work for two years at 50 cents per day to save up enough money to buy the land and pay for the tickets to bring his wife and daughter to America as you can see the buildings are gone it's just fields now and it may not look like much when you compare it to the scenery that we see back in Norway with the beautiful fjords in the mountains and so forth but to a farmer before the age of farm tractors and modern farm equipment this must have seemed like paradise with the flat fields in the rich soil compared to what he would have had back in Norway it's also interesting that he wasn't called Peter M's doll back in Norway our allegiance had a different way of naming their children than the rest of Europe he was actually called Peter Gunn Branson or Peter gull Branson depending on which immigration documents the spelling that you believe so to better understand why they left Norway and came here and how they name their children back in Norway we need to go back to Norway we start by driving to the hollom farm located north a Lillehammer in just east of fove anga up into the mountains the hollom farm is believed to be where my great-grandfather was born there is an old saying there are three ways to do things there is the right way there is the wrong way and then there is the norway norwegian naming traditions confirm this the first name for the firstborn son was usually that of his maternal grandfather's first name the first born daughter was named after her paternal grandmother the second born son was named after his paternal grandfather and the second born daughter was named after her maternal grandmother after the first two sons and daughters first names could be anything the second name reflected whose son or daughter you were if Peters father was gun brron then Peters second name would be gun births in which means an English son of gun Briand a daughter of gun brron would be called gun burns daughter which means an English daughter of gun brron if my grandfather menville would have been born in Norway instead of Minnesota he would have been called man bill Peterson because he was a son of Peter to illustrate Olie marries Lena Fenn marries Ingrid Lena's father is named Hance Spence mother is named Lena orally and Lena's firstborn son is thus named Hance after his maternal grandfather his second name is oldest son because he is the son of Olie spin and Ingrid's firstborn daughter is named Lena after her paternal grandmother her second name is fence daughter because she is the daughter of Sven hence Olesen marries Lina's Finn's daughter they have two sons and two daughters the firstborn son is named Sven Hansen because his maternal grandfather is fen and because he is the son of Hance the second son is named Orly Hansen because his paternal grandfather is only and he too is the son of Hance the firstborn daughter is named Lena Hance daughter because her paternal grandmother is Lena and she is the daughter of hands the second born daughter is named Ingrid hence daughter because her maternal grandmother is Ingrid and she is the daughter of Hance now assume the second son only Hansen marries Merritt Peters daughter who is the daughter of Peter and Mari they have two sons and two daughters the first son is Peter Alison named after his maternal grandfather and father the second son is Hansel listen named after his paternal grandfather and father the first daughter is named Lena old daughter named after her paternal grandmother and father and the second daughter is Mario Louis daughter named after her maternal grandmother and father assume Hansel listen marries Martha John's daughter if Martha's parents are named John and Ingrid then their first two sons and first two daughters are named John Hanson Olli Hansen merit hands daughter and Ingrid hands daughter named after their paternal and maternal grandparents and their father with this naming tradition comes an unusual outcome the name for the second sons of each second generation repeat themselves with hands Oleson and Olli Hansen appearing in every other generation tracing family trees becomes a challenge to make tracing even more difficult if a son were to die before the next son were to be born the next son would receive the name of his deceased brother the same four daughters making tracing family lines even more confusing the third name identified the place or farm where the family lived and was more an address than a name thus if Olli Hansen lived on the hollom farm his third name would be hollom if one of the Hansel lessons were to move the family to the M's dalan farm his name would now change the hands olice and ins Dolan to reflect his new address the third name did not necessarily stick with the person for life once they arrived in America Norwegian immigrants were required to follow the established male line surname conventions typically the male patronymic or the name of the last farm on which he or she resided was chosen as the last name during their first few years in the country immigrants might change their last name a few times from patronymic to farm name or farm name to patronymic and Americanized norwegian spelling or pronunciation once they became citizens they had to stick to the name that appeared on their citizenship documents and that became the final and formal family name when we got to the hollom farm two ladies noticed our interest we got out and explained who we were one said that she was married to a hollom so we suspect her husband could be my distant cousin they could not speak English very well so it was hard to communicate they were very nice to us and invited us in for coffee but we couldn't stay because we still had a ways to go to get to em Stalin they also showed us some history books written in Norwegian about farms in the gut Bryn Stalin area including the history of the hollom farm they also had a book on em Stalin we exchanged contact information with them before leaving [Music] I'm standing here at the hollom farm where my great grandfather Peter was lived as a young child as you can see the terrain is quite a bit different than the flat farmlands that we see in western Minnesota according to the 1865 ring of Baux census Peter Gunn Branson was living here eh 9 with his parents and siblings his father's name was gud Bryn Johnson so Peters name would have been Peter gud Brinson column column for the farm that he lived at to understand though how he changed his name to install we need to go to the install and Valley a short distance away from here as you can tell I was starting to lose my voice at this point in time during our trip due to a cold or virus that I probably picked up early on during our cruise it was rainy and cold and windy for the first few ports we visited you can't control the weather and you can't completely avoid getting sick while on vacation after leaving the hollom farm we headed north to the town of ring abou then eased to the M Stalin Valley ring a boo is where Peter and Merritt were married and where their firstborn daughter Isabel was christened it is also the town where our good friend sue Perkins ancestors live before immigrating to America we stopped for hamburgers at a convenience store before heading up the mountain to cross over to M Stalin the drive took us to a plateau about 3,000 feet up which was above the tree line on the way we stopped to see the Rondine mountains off in the distance einar talked about how Peter would have had to make the journey on foot to get to M Stalin and back from ring a boo after finally getting to the entrance to M Stalin we stopped for pitchers in front of the highway sign that marks the entrance this was something I had been waiting for years to do stand next to the sign burying my family name after a while taking pictures we headed down into the valley to the M Stalin North farm where my great-grandparents lived before immigrating to America he had to farm this hill yes how do you farm this hill it's a very good hill it's a very good hill you see there are no rock piles ok so I had this house on top here because then you didn't have to haul things up so here we are at the M Stalin North farm about 20 miles from the hollom farm that we just visited now we know that Peters family moved here because the 1875 bring abou census has Peter's father Ben Bryn Johnson and his wife and their children living here at the at the in Stalin North farm now Peter Gunn Brinson is not listed on the 1875 census because he would have been 18 or 19 years old at the time and probably living on his own on some other farm closeby probably still in this M Stalin Valley we know this is where Peter and Merritt met because they were living at the hollom farm and now they move here to the M Stalin North farm and this is where Merritt is listed as age 13 living with her parents in an adjacent M Stalin North farm so this is where Peter and Merritt met and this explains why they changed their name from Peter gun Bernsen hollom to Peter Gunn Brinson M's Dolan when he immigrated to America because this would have been the last farm that he lived in in Norway before coming to America you can also see that this is very very rough terrain to try to farm in its fertile soil but imagine trying to farm this steep slope here before the age of modern farm equipment I asked Einar who knows a lot about the history of em Stalin why people left and why it was so hard to live here because it's very isolated it's very far to everything you have to go up to come down and there is no there was no communications you had to walk or go by horse for hours and hours the road that we have today wasn't there the road today is a gravel road the road then it was no Road there was a track and and the inseong Valley was it's it's fertile I mean you can grow grass and stuff like that there's wood in the forest and but time passed by and this little valley was left [Music] coming here makes it very clear in my mind why my Norwegian ancestors left Norway and moved to Minnesota even today driving by car it takes over an hour to get to the closest gas station or grocery store in Stalin is a long way from everywhere some of the buildings in the valley have been preserved the schoolhouse where all of the children and the valley were educated has been well maintained the who sit farm is still standing where Merritt's sister Mari married Mattias Johanneson who sit and raised their family this is where mary's firstborn son hands who sit along with his wife gunda raised their family a great grandchild of Mari would be my third cousin we did not make any contact with the current owners to see if someone from the family still owns it today I a nurse said nobody lives in the in Stalin Valley year-round anymore I wonder what it was like to move away from family and friends to cross the ocean and go to a strange land while some relatives stayed behind in Norway others also emigrated to America Peters brothers aunts M's doll in Christ install emigrated as well while his parents and other siblings stayed behind in Norway Merritt's brothers Olli in style enhance M Stahl who also took the name M's doll emigrated to Minnesota as well as her father hands Inga Brits and in Stalin hands died in 1900 and is buried at a country cemetery south of Bruton his headstone shows the main in Stalin which means the family was still using the Norwegian spelling years after they had emigrated my dad said his grandparents never talked about Norway there was never any talk of the relatives left behind it is as though a Norway was in a different lifetime for them Minnesota was now their home it is sad when you think of entire families being split apart by mass emigration Peter died in 1949 Merritt died in 1956 she lived 70 years in Minnesota but never learned to speak English she like many first-generation immigrant Americans continued to speak the language of her birth until the day she died my dad said that as a young child all of the old timers and bruton spoke Norwegian it wasn't until their children went to school that English was spoken I suppose it was the one thing that lived on from their former life the one thing that reminded them that they came from Norway you

Channel: Catbox Studios

Views: 46,678

Keywords: Brad Imsdahl, Immigration, Norway, Minnesota, Einar Odden, Hallum, Homestead Acts, share cropping, Brooten, Menvil Imsdahl, Peder Gudbrandson, Fåvang, Norwegian immigrants, patronymic, Rondane Mountains, Ringebu, Gudbrand Johnson, Matias Johannesen Huset, Hans Huset, Mari Huset, Hans Engebretsen Imsdalen, Imsdal

Id: jJ8d5ksCkEY

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2017