The History of a House

It was spring of 1917 when Will and Elvirta Knutz and their two little boys moved to their farm southwest of Huron, South Dakota, on the Virgil Road.  Many things happened on that farm - most notably it was where their son Bill met the love of his life, Lillian Christensen, who lived on a farm around the corner.  The Knutz family moved to the farm in March and were able to purchase it in June - a big step for the young family.  

Life must have been lonely - busy, but lonely - for Virta.  But it was under these circumstances that her creativity came out.  She wrote about her life, the events she witnessed, and her children.  She drew pencil sketches as well which recorded their family's history.  And that leads us to the history of this house.  Their home.  Their dream, and the death of that dream exactly eight years later.

Above is a sketch of the house, done by Virta, and unfortunately undated.  This, along with sketches of their other homes were done on the back pages of an autograph album with the earliest entry in 1904.  The last of the house sketches was from their home they move to in 1930, their last farm before moving to town in 1958. 

Above, Virta is pictured in their neat, tidy home with her two sons, Howard (left) and Bill (then called "Willie.") In this photo, she would have been pregnant with their third child, Richard. 

Above, Virta with Howard and Bill.

Below, Will enjoys a quiet evening with his sons.

The 1920s had set the stage for what was to come in the Great Depression.  Volatile farm prices, drought, locus infiltrations... it all took its toll.  In March of 1925, Will and Virta lost their farm and the life they'd built there.  After that, they lived in a series of rented farms throughout the area.

In the early 2000s, I was in Huron and decided to look for the old house that was such an important part of their lives.  It sat back off the road quite aways, the path to it overgrown with weeds and heavy brush.  The beautiful trees that once provided the family with welcome shade were overgrown and half-dead, almost hiding the structure behind them.  The house itself was rife with rotting wood and unstable flooring, the door partially off its hinges, the interior hit hard by vandals.  I stepped inside and took a look around and noted the small size of the front room compared to what we're used to today.  By the time the Knutz family was forced to move to another farm, they were a family of six and imagining them in that space was a little overwhelming.  Yes, it was small - but it was theirs.  Until it wasn't.

Above - the Knutz farm as it was in the early 2000s.

In walking away from the deteriorating house and taking one long look back, I could almost see Virta's pretty curtains in the windows, with her standing there waving goodbye as was her habit when her visitors left.  

While losing their farm on the Virgil Road must have been devastating, and the hard situation of having to move to several new, rented farms in the next few years, the story does have a happy ending.  In 1929 they were able to buy a new farm fairly close to their old neighbors and friends.  While times were still financially challenging through the Depression, they were able to keep their farm until they retired in 1958 and moved to town.

Just Me = Not Them

Aunt Lulu Graves... there aren't too many of us left who remember her.  She was my great-grandmother's spinster sister, and a woman of idiosyncrasies.  She led a colorful life, and not necessarily in a good way.  At one time in my early life I recall that she used to sell greeting cards as a side hustle - the kind where you order them pre-printed with your name on them - I'm sure quite a concept back in the 1960's.  I remember them because every Christmas we all got the outdated proof samples in place of a regular Christmas card.  "Merry Christmas from Tom and Gertrude Forrester."  Who??  Apparently she was not a customer herself, as we never saw one with her actual name on it.

A Pilgrim Story

Tracing my family history led me back four centuries to a pilgrim named Edward Bangs, the man said to anchor every Bangs family line in America.  Young Edward was born in 1592 in Panfield, England. He was a shipwright by trade and apparently had some education as he had signed his name on several documents over the years.

What exactly made Edward want to pull up stakes, get on a cramped wooden boat and sail over the Atlantic ocean to a completely foreign place is beyond me.  A sense of adventure? Tired of the lack of religious freedom in England?  We’ll probably never know but he tried three times to do it so we can say with some certainty that he really wanted to be here.

First, a quick and oversimplified explanation of the situation. The pilgrims, before leaving England, had an arrangement with investors who put up the capital for the soon-to-be-formed colony. The pilgrims, or “planters” as they were called, were to establish a settlement (Plymouth Colony) and build it up for seven years and at the end of that time the assets would be divided between colonists and investors.

Under the agreement, three ships brought these “planters”: the Mayflower in 1620, the Fortune in 1621 and the Anne in 1623.  No other ships brought passengers under this agreement for the next seven years.  It was the third ship, the Anne, that arrived in July 1623 with 32 year old Edward Bangs aboard.  Legend has it that in England, shipwright Bangs had been called upon to get the ship seaworthy for her voyage across the Atlantic, and decided to join them.

 Aboard the second ship was the Robert Hicks family.  Hicks had been a successful fellmonger (hide and wool merchant) in England.  Edward married his daughter, Lydia, in 1633 and they had a son, John, shortly after which Lydia passed away.  In 1635, Edward married Rebecca Hobart, whose widowed father came to the New World just two years prior with Rebecca and her brother and sister.  Edward and Rebecca went on to have nine children.

Edward served on numerous juries, and oftentimes acted as an overseer of others.  His name appears over and over in the Plymouth colony records in a number of different capacities. He served on the staff of Gov. Bradford with Captain Myles Standish, Thomas Prence, Mr. Howland, John Alden, Stephen Hopkins, William Collier, Manaseh Kempton, Joshua Pratt and Stephen Tracy.

When the seven years were up, the colony was divided between the men. It was the original settlers, including Robert Hicks and Edward Bangs, that became owners of the Plymouth Colony, in common.  However, there wasn’t enough land to divide. England granted them more land, and new settlements were made and new settlers came in.  There was a lot of fussing about rights, who paid what, etc.  Finally in 1640 an agreement was reached and the Colony was to reimburse settlers who had to pay out their own money to acquire land. Under this agreement the original settlers were to select 2-3 tracts of land that they wanted in specific areas and no one else could claim that land.  What was left over belonged to the Colony and the Colony Court would decide on the disposition of it. 

There was only one problem (well, two if you were Edward Bangs.) (But more on that later) First, the land was not exactly uninhabited.  Indians lived there.  Pilgrims were quick to concede that the Indians were the rightful owners of the land and that they could not just take it from them. It was concurred that they’d need to purchase the land in order to get rightful title.  These colonists were the only ones with a legal right to purchase the land, and there might have been no problem had they done so in a prompt manner.  But since they’d already established homes within Plymouth Colony, there didn’t seem to be any hurry.  The wording of the agreement said that the right to purchase the land was theirs and their descendants’ “for all time.”  And the ones who did promptly purchase the land weren't in a big hurry to occupy it. 

As more and more settlers came to the area, the interest in this “reserved” land was greatly increased. The chief of the Indians in this area was Mattaquason and the new settlers began purchasing this reserve land from him. Meanwhile, this land had been promised to the colonists in the earlier agreement; some had put off purchasing for years because they had been granted the rights “for all time.”  Others had purchased right away but not settled on it.  At any rate, new settlers were buying it.

Unfortunately for Edward Bangs, his land was in this reserve.  And just when you think things couldn’t get any more complicated, enter William Nickerson, another settler from England.  Nickerson was not a colonist but came over independently with his wife, minor children, and adult children and their families, desiring to found a new, private settlement for themselves.   They left England aboard the ship John and Dorothy in 1637.  He was tired of the oppression of the King of England. 

Great, but the only problem was he bought a lot of reserved land from Chief Mattaquason. And some of the land he bought had already been purchased by Edward Bangs.

And so began years and years of court hearings, trials, fines, and, due to William Nickerson’s extreme belligerence and disdain for the King's law, time spent in the stockade and jail.  Edward Bangs was found to be the wronged party, but his land was already settled by others so the Court awarded him land elsewhere and he eventually settled in Nauset, which was later renamed Eastham, Massachusetts. 

I mentioned before that if you were Edward Bangs, you had two problems. And the second problem? Edward’s granddaughter, Mary Bangs, married William Nickerson’s grandson Thomas Nickerson. That would have made for some interesting family reunions.

In the end, Edward Bangs lived a good and profitable life filled with community service in Eastham, as he had in Plymouth Colony.  And William Nickerson spent most of his life fighting for the land he believed was rightly his, and also a life filled with civic duty.  Edward died in 1678, at the age of 86 and William died about 1690 at about age 84 and is buried on the land he fought so hard for.

 

**Note: This is oversimplified and severely edited because no one wants to be here reading this into next week. :) Plus, all the "goings on" were complicated.  All images used were generated by CoPilot and are copyright-free.

Tom Graves, Master Carpenter

 

Tom Graves could make just about anything.  In his home near Princeville, Illinois and later in eastern South Dakota he built numerous homes with his son Delbert.  In Esmond, South Dakota he and Delbert built a large, two-story brick building known as “The Big Store” with a double store front on the main floor and the Graves Dance Hall located on the second story.  He built many pieces of furniture for his family members, including the rocking chair I rocked his great-great-great-great granddaughters in.  But when he wasn’t busy building these items, he liked to whittle and carve. 

Where and when Tom picked up this hobby, I don’t know, yet I can picture him sitting on his back step all alone, as the sun went down at the end of his work day, whittling on a piece of wood.  But the fascinating thing about his carvings is that he worked with any material he could get, not just wood.  He created a number of small items from pipestone, which is also known as catlinite.  This material is a soft sedimentary rock best known for being used by Native American tribes for creating ceremonial pipes, and is an attractive brown/red in color.  The best known deposit of this is in the Pipestone Quarry district in Minnesota. 

Though born in Ohio, Tom grew up just outside of Princeville in Peoria county, Illinois near the Stark county line.  He married a local girl, Nettie Belle Lair, daughter of Lawson and Margaret Lair.  They lived on an 80 acre farm given to him by his father, William Graves.  He also lived in Stark county for a few years before moving to Esmond, South Dakota, and then to nearby Carthage, South Dakota where he lived out the remainder of his life. 

 

Two of his pipestone carvings are dated August 30, 1901, when he and his family went to Pipestone, Minnesota to thresh, hence his ample supply of material.  He made a number of carved pieces during his stay there.

The family may have returned to Pipestone in the early fall of 1912, when it was rumored that they ran a hotel and restaurant for a year before returning to South Dakota. 

Tom gave up building homes and large structures after his son Delbert died in World War I and focused on building furniture and other smaller pieces.  He was not only a master carpenter and woodworker, but a kind and loving man whose family meant everything to him.  I wonder how many of life's problems he solved while sitting out there steps, watching the sun go down.

The Truth About Gabriel Monsen: Tragedy aboard the "Italia"

Gabriel Monsen - a 30 year old Norwegian fisherman, kissed his wife and children goodbye one morning, took his fishing boat out off the coast of Norway, and never returned.  The year was 1890.  It was said that he ran into an unexpected storm and drowned.  That was the "truth" that we all knew for 135 years.

Fast forward 105 years, when my grandmother (his granddaughter) passed away.  My grandfather, knowing I was interested in family history, gave me a box of things she'd saved, hoping I might find "something interesting" in it.  What I found was a small brown wallet that had belonged to Gabriel's wife, Alfhilde.  It contained some photos, a financial register, and a two-page letter handwritten in Norwegian with an official looking stamp at the end. Since I did not read Norwegian and didn't know anyone who did, I folded it back up and put it back in her wallet.

Alfhilde Monsen and daughter, ca 1885

Fast Forward 30 more years to the present. While going through a box of things, I found Alfhilde's wallet.  I thought I remembered everything in it but decided to take another look anyway.   I found the folded handwritten letter again and decided to see if I could find out what it was about.  The only thing I could tell was that the official stamp was from a Consulate, and the year was 1890 - the same year Gabriel disappeared. Turns out this was an official document from the Royal Swedish and Norwegian Consulate in New York, and Alfhilde had kept this with her till her dying day.

What follows is the real story of Gabriel Monsen, at least the last day of his earthly life.

Turns out Gabriel was not a fisherman at all.  He was a sailor.  And he didn't have a small fishing boat, he was aboard the "Italia", powered by a steam engine.  His job was "fyrbøder" - or stoker - and his duties were to stoke the fire to keep the steam engine running.  The "Italia" had pulled into port at Bergen in early April 1890 and was to take a load of timber to the Bahamas.  On the evening of April 11, as the ship approached Watling Island (now San Salvador Island) near its final destination, a fire sparked in the cargo area.  The timber quickly burned despite the efforts of the crew to get the situation under control, and when it was determined that it was not possible to save the vessel nor the cargo, the decision was made to abandon ship and launch the lifeboats. Under the command of the 2nd mate, Gabriel and three other men jumped into a lifeboat which then entered the water.  As they were about to start rowing away a large wave came and capsized the small vessel.  The four men suddenly found themselves thrust into the cold, turbulent water.  The remaining crew quickly entered the second lifeboat and immediately threw out lifebuoys to the drowning sailors.  Every one of the 21 people on board survived the ordeal, with the exception of Gabriel Monsen. The last anyone saw of him he was being cast about by the raging, unrelenting waters of the Atlantic with no one able to help him. 

It took 135 years, but now we know the truth.  

*****

Photo of Alfhilde Monsen and daughter from personal collection

Other images created with Google Gemini for illustration purposes only

The Map

 

Above: an ordinary map of Europe.  Except it wasn't so ordinary to Jennie Kluthe, whose son, Ed, was serving in World War II somewhere in Europe and she had no idea where.  She listened to the radio every day and whenever a town, city or village was mentioned as the location of any sort of war activity, she would find that area on the map and put a pin in it.

Below: The same map, after the war, when held up to the light.

Roots of Resilience

 

Ella Monsen Christensen

I have been documenting the early life of my great-grandmother Gabrielle “Ella” Christensen, a Norwegian immigrant.  Her father, a fisherman, was caught up in a storm off the coast of Norway and never returned home, leaving his wife a young widow with three small children.  One by one, she sent her children to relatives in the United States in hopes of a better life for them.  Ella was the oldest of the children and first to make that trip at the age of 20.  Her mother worked as a “washer woman” to pay her fare.

Ella’s destination was Howard, South Dakota to the home of her paternal aunt, Ingeborg Rye. While I was happy to find so many details about Ella’s life, which was my primary goal, what I found as a backstory was even more interesting.

Aunt Ingeborg immigrated March 1, 1889 as a 35-year-old single woman.  She married a homesteader, Ole Rye, and they settled down on his farm in Miner County, South Dakota.  Eleven months later, she gave birth to their only child, a boy named Ole, and five days after that her husband died.  She was suddenly left as a single immigrant woman with a newborn, and no means of support but a homesteaded farm. So what did she do?  She farmed.  With a baby.  In fact, in 1892, she “proved up” the homestead and her farm was granted to her free and clear.  In 1904 her niece Ella came to the United States to her Aunt Ingeborg and there she not only learned English, but probably a whole lot about digging deep and doing what you need to do to make it in this world.  Eventually Ella moved to nearby Huron, and Aunt Ingeborg and her son continued to farm for at least another 20 years. 

This is what I love about family history.  I want my granddaughters to know that they come from strong roots and that there are some remarkable women in their ancestry.