The soldier

On this Veteran’s Day, I am remembering my cousin Henry C. Dahl of McKenzie County, North Dakota, who died November 11, 1944, in the service of our country. His death, 71 years ago today, occurred exactly one week prior to what would have been his twenty-ninth birthday.

Henry C. Dahl was born November 18, 1915, in McKenzie County, North Dakota, to Christ and Nellie (Forthun) Dahl. Henry's mother Nellie died when he was only two years old, and his widowed father was left alone to care for two young children.

Like countless other young American men, Henry enlisted to serve his country in World War II. He was a Staff Sargent in the 135th Infantry Regiment, 34th infantry division. He saw battle in North Africa and Europe.

 In a letter dated 1 December 1944, Lt. Col. Charles Greyer, 135th Infantry Commanding, wrote to Christ Dahl: "On November 11, 1944, your son was killed by an enemy mortar shell fragments while he was traveling by truck in Northern Italy near the front lines." Henry was awarded the Purple Heart, and is buried in Florence American Cemetery in Italy.   

Thank you to all the veterans, to their families who sacrifice so much, and to those, like Henry, that paid the ultimate price.

She's a lady

 

This is my maternal grandmother, Golda Victoria Slagle Forthun, in her Homestead shack in McKenzie County, North Dakota, circa 1911-1913. Born in Missouri in 1889, Goldie moved to western North Dakota in 1910 to help her older sister Nettie with newborn twins.  Goldie decided to stay, and filed a Homestead Claim as a single 21 year old woman.  She lived in a 12x14 shack, and grew flax and wheat on her 320 acres.  She proved up her claims and received the title to her land at age 25 on June 20, 1914, three months after her marriage to another homesteader.

I love that she has her china nicely displayed, and that she has hung window treatments to decorate and civilize her little home on that isolated prairie. Some of those pieces of china have survived and have been passed down to family members. 

Only about forty percent of those that filed Homestead Claims succeeded, and I am enormously proud that my grandmother was one of them!

The lost boy

Lavern Enget was the son of Obert Lavern “Bud” Enget and Sophie O. Enget. The Enget family lived on a farm near Powers Lake, Burke County, North Dakota, in the northwestern part of the state. Our family farm was in a neighboring community, about fifteen miles away.

On the evening of October 17, 1954, four year old Lavern went into the fields near his home to meet his father, and disappeared. It was dusk.  His father never saw him, and Lavern did not return home. Neighbors gathered to help look for him.  The effort to locate the young boy expanded.  He was clad in only a T-shirt and overalls when he left his house, which would offer little protection from the cold North Dakota nights. More than three thousand North Dakotans, my father among them, came together to aid in the biggest hunt in North Dakota's history. They joined hands and walked in mile-long human chains across the prairie. Airplanes, helicopters and bloodhounds (including one sent by the Canadian Mounties) were called in to help.  

My father took this photograph of one of the helicopters used in the search on October 18, 1954.  The story made national news, including coverage in Life Magazine. The search covered one hundred square miles, but no trace of Lavern was found. The hunt for the boy was eventually called off due to bad weather. 

One year later, in October 1955, a second search was organized by local newsman Daniel Halligan of Williston, North Dakota, to help ease doubts by the parents that their son may have been abducted. The search was conducted in an area close to the farm. The sloughs in the area were drained, something that had not been done the previous year, as the authorities felt the little boy would not have been able to get through the waist high weeds and grass surrounding the waters’ edges. 

LaVern's body was found in ten inches of water in the middle of one of the sloughs, about a mile from his home, on October 30, 1955. He is buried in Bethel Cemetery, near his parents and other family members.

The land-owner

My grandfather, Nicolai August Andreasen Tangsrød, who chose to be known as Nicolai Tangsrud in the United States. He is holding his eldest son, Carl Norbert, in this picture. Nick was born in Borre, Norway, on March 21st, 1885, and arrived at Ellis Island at age twenty, with $20 in his pocket. He came west to Williams County, North Dakota, and filed for a Homestead claim and American citizenship on the first day that he was eligible, his twenty-first birthday. He earned both. His life in western North Dakota was brutally hard, and I often wonder if he regretted his choices. He died at age fifty-five, with two minor children still at home, and never was fully able to enjoy the fruits of his labor. I think he would be pleased to know his land (now in Divide County, North Dakota) remains in the family, and that he lives on through his twelve grandchildren.

The man with the (probably not yellow) hat

I inherited my grandmother Golda Slagle Forthun's photographs. Goldie, as she was known, was born in Ravenwood, Nodaway County, Missouri, to Elizabeth Lockhart and William Slagle on March 20, 1889. Goldie's parents were natives of Lee County, Virginia, and migrated to northwestern Missouri in the aftermath of the Civil War. Both Elizabeth and William had siblings and extended family members who also moved to northwestern Missouri, to Nodaway and Gentry counties. Fellow neighbors and friends from Lee County, Virginia, joined them there as well.  I have yet to determine who went first, but there was a large network of family and friends surrounding my grandmother's family.

My grandmother chose to leave this community at age twenty-one, when she left Missouri for western North Dakota in 1910. Her sister, Nettie Slagle Sowards, had given birth to twins, and needed help. Eventually, Goldie moved out on her own, when she filed a Homestead Act claim in McKenzie County, North Dakota. She ultimately proved up her claim, and married a fellow homesteader, Julius Forthun.

When Goldie left Missouri, she took with her a beautiful photo album filled with studio portraits. Sadly, none of the photographs were labeled. I imagine that all of the subjects were close friends and family, so she felt no need to mark them. Although I have been able to determine the names of some of the individuals, there are many that are still mysteries. 

This is one of them. I imagine that this young man was one of Goldie's friends from Nodaway County, or perhaps one of her many, many cousins. Some of the surnames of the extended family in Missouri are Lockhart, Slagle, Lawson, O'Bannon, McNeely, and Babb. The young man was likely born in the 1880's, and given the heavy coat and hat, he probably lived somewhere that had cold winters.  The photo album came with Goldie to North Dakota, to the best of my knowledge, so the photograph was probably taken prior to 1910. And that is the extent of my educated guesses.

The chicken ranch

My maternal great-grandmother, Ingrid Oline Burkum Forthun, in 1925. Lena was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants (her father fought in the Civil War). Born in Wisconsin, Lena married a Norwegian immigrant in the Dakota Territory, bore six children, and homesteaded as a widow in western North Dakota. She was visiting her daughter's chicken ranch in Arkansas at the time of this photograph.

The tailor

Hans Kristian Christoffersen

Hans Kristian Christoffersen was born September 3, 1844, in Andebu, Vestfold, Norway. Vestfold is a county in southern Norway, south of Oslo, and is one of the best agricultural areas of Norway.  Hans Kristian was the eldest of four sons born to Christoffer Hansen and Karen Sophie Christoffersdotter.  Norway had a patronymic naming system until 1923, whereby children took their father’s first name as their last, adding “sen” for son or “dotter” for daughter.

Hans Kristian became a “skrædder” (tailor) by the time he was twenty-one years of age. A tailor made custom clothing for men and women.  In Norway, as well as much of Europe, one’s occupation was a measurement of one’s social status.  Many trades, including tailors, were controlled by guilds.  The guilds regulated the training and practice of tailors, which included an apprenticeship.

The textile industry in Norway started in the 1840’s, around the time of Hans Kristian’s birth, when textile mills were established in the larger cities. An economic crisis along with a population increase shaped Norway in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Norwegians began to emigrate to the United States, and the rural population began to migrate to larger towns and cities. After 1860, the wave of emigration grew larger. The rapid increase in population in Norway meant that times were hard for many, and the appeal of cheap land and opportunity drove people to leave their country for the United States. These events shaped Hans Kristian’s world.

Hans Kristian was thirty-nine years old when he married Mina Martine Jensdatter on September 21, 1883, in Ramnes, Vestfold, Norway, a small village near Andebu, Hans Kristian’s birthplace. This was at a time when the average life expectancy in Norway was about fifty years.  Mina Martine was eighteen years younger than the groom.   The couple moved to the nearby city of Tønsberg, where Hans Kristian and his youngest brother, Anton, established a tailor shop. 

Tønsberg, generally regarded as the oldest town in Norway, was founded during the Viking Age. It is located on the western coast of the Oslofjørd.  Tønsberg is the capital of Vestfold County. In addition to being a commercial and shipping town since the Middle Ages, Tønsberg was a Hansa town. Hansa towns, part of the Hanseatic League, were a confederation of merchant guilds.  Tønsberg’s prosperity increased in the late 1800’s due to international shipping and the whaling industry, making it a good place to establish a tailor shop.

By 1885, Hans Kristian and his family lived on the first floor of a rented house in Tønsberg, and Anton and his family lived on the second floor.  Hans Kristian and Mina Martine had five children: Clara, Charlotte, Hanna, Jens Konrad, and Einar Charles.  Mina Martine was a seamstress, and likely worked along her husband and brother-in-law when she was not tending to the children.

The tailor shop thrived, and the brothers began to hire apprentices. Those apprentices were usually from nearby villages and farms, and lived with the brothers.  One of those apprentices, Nicolai August Andreasen Tangsrød, began to date Hans Kristian’s daughter, Charlotte.

Nicolai left Norway for America in 1905. After establishing himself in western North Dakota, the tailor’s apprentice sent for Charlotte, the tailor’s daughter, who arrived in America in 1907. She married Nicolai in March 1908. They became my grandparents. 

Hans Kristian Christoffersen, my great-grandfather, died on January 19, 1923, in Tønsberg at the age of seventy-eight.