Memories of Nellie and Ole H. Olson
The following is an excerpt from "From Norway to North America: The Descendants in Canada and the United States of Olaf and Caroline Pederson" by Jean E. Peterson, 1981 – pages 52N to 52R.
Noting that we had no biographical data about Nellie and Ole H. Olson in the original book, we asked several to share their memories of them:
Mabel Selmon wrote:
We can’t tell you too much about Grandma Nellie Olson, as we only saw her two or three times in our growing up years, as in the twenties and thirties people just didn’t have the means or vehicles to travel with. So much different from today’s way of life. …Grandma Olson was a person of large stature and a great housekeeper. Dad tells how she would get up before anyone and scrub the kitchen floor before breakfast. She broke her hip early one morning when she was in her sixties.
Viola Redick wrote:
Mother was the best, and always so busy she didn’t talk much about her life.
She did file on some property before she and Dad married. That was a part of the farm. She had a team of oxen. Whether this was before she married or later I don’t know. She would hitch the team of oxen to a stone boat. This was a flat apparatus. Two logs for runners, and some flat planks laid across. This was in use summer and winter. She would have some large wooden barrels placed on this rig. Then with her trusty oxen hitched on to this rig, she would go down to the Little Pembina River and haul water home. This was used for cooking and drinking. Water from the surrounding sloughs she used for washing. Later they had a well dug.
I must tell you of the time Mother had taken my sisters and Mabel back to school in town. They had been home for weekend. She had the horses hitched to the caboose. There was a door in the back. On her way home she got out to walk as she was getting cold. Tied the lines and was walking behind. Suddenly the door slammed shut. The horses began to run. She ran behind for three miles before catching them. It was years before she told anyone.
I don’t believe Mother ever complained about extra plates at the table. Anyone who had ever lived in the neighborhood was welcome. There was always someone. I recall one winter when my oldest sister Ethel, who lived in Canada, spent the winter with us. She and her four children, and one more – Ruby – was born while she was there. There was weekends when there was 18 persons there.
Mother was a very good cook. We grew up without ever knowing what it meant to go hungry. Her coffee was the best, although she never drank it herself.
I can recall her and Uncle Ole Peterson arguing about how to make coffee. Our place was his second home. He had built a cabin in the Big Pembina Coulee. I remember him coming winter time with skiis on his feet and snow shoes strapped on his back. These he used when the snow was soft. He would make his own leather jacket with fringe on the sleeves, and leather trousers. Sometimes he used Mother’s Singer. When he was in his cabin he would sew on a machine that he operated by hand. He had a beautiful leather vest, which he wore in the winter. The front was covered with bead work. He had received this and a pair of moccasins from Indians in Canada. I still recall in the late fall he would say, “It’s about time to go to the Northwest.”
He would go to Canada to trap, Northern Saskatchewan, and near the Canadian Rockies. He spent some time with the Indians who were his friends. There is much more I could tell you about this uncle – who was someone special to us as children. I neglected to mention the fact that every winter he let his whiskers grow. They were a beautiful red and bushy, curly.
Tema Soby wrote:
…Some place it says Mom and Dad lived on Dad’s homestead, but it was Mother’s homestead they settled on and where we were raised.
Before she was married (I’m sure) old Mr. Amundson sat at our house while waiting for the mailman to pick him up, told how Mother had driven the early mail with a team of spirited horses—he said she could really handle them and make them go.
She also told, how, as a young wife (along with Dad), they had befriended some wandering Indians who used to camp occasionally on a slough south of us. The old chief loved green tea and bread, so one day after baking, Mother decided to take him some tea and a fresh loaf. Herman, very small (probably 2 ½ or so) begged to go along. When they approached the tent and the chief came out in all his finery, Herman turned and ran pel-mel for home!
She also raised chickens, ducks, & geese, and a large flock of turkeys. When I was young, they always had a turkey shoot, for which she made dozens of rolls for beef sandwiches and gallons of coffee—many cakes.
Mother lived for her family. She had a large garden, did the milking (7 or 8 cows) along with us girls, washed, ironed for a large family. Canned everything she got her hands on—wild berries, cranberries, plus other fruit, garden produce—canned chickens. We would take a day off to go berry picking and pack a good lunch, especially when we went into Big Pembina to pick blue berries. Aunt Bertha often accompanied us, and would leave Willy & Lilly (they were small) at our house with one of my older sisters.
When our Vang Church had their fall Lutefisk dinner, Mother took enough food to feed us for a week. Five pounds butter, dozens of sweet rolls, several apple pies, a large roasted, stuffed turkey, among other things.
She broke her hip at 64, in late March, and by July was getting around on crutches, and when I left in early September to go back to my teaching job, she took over all the housework, but could no longer do any milking. Their milk cows had now been reduced to about 4, since Mom & Dad were home alone. So that became Dad’s job.
I remember once, when I was small, Mom dressed up and went Yulebuk-ing (Christmas Ghost) with a bunch that stopped at our house. Rena and Belma went, too, I believe. They dress up in crazy costumes (with home-made masks), go from house to house. There people try to guess who they are. They said no one could guess Mom. She had a rag doll along that she had made of men’s old underwear. Of course they traveled in a sleigh—lots of snow. It was such fun to see them come around and try to guess. Sometimes they finished by unmasking, and having an old fashioned house party (square dances, schottische, polka (we called hop-vals), waltz, and other.) Cakes and sandwiches appeared like magic so there was plenty of food for lunch break. Usually someone stayed to help the hostess clean up and get furniture and everything back in place. Often if the party lasted (and the food) there was a second lunch before people departed over the snow trails in the pre-dawn. You see, then people had to make their own entertainment where young and old alike could work off extra energy.
About the only trips to town were business trips, necessary shopping for things not available in small stores at Vang, or sometimes Mona.
When I was small, before Dad remodeled our house, the first story was one big room—an ideal place for such a gathering. I remember once being very disgusted when such a gathering (neighbourhood dance) had taken place unexpectedly at our house after a Christmas tree program at our school (I was in first grade. ..I had flopped on Mom’s bed in exhaustion after the evening’s excitement. I really konked out—didn’t hear a thing.) I was really irate next morning to think no one had awakened me so I could enjoy the fun!
When I was tiny (2 years +) when Viola was born, Aunt Ida Currie came to help Mom; and she taught me the polka. Uncle Freddie Peterson used to polka with me (just the 2 of us) when he came over. He would hum. I loved it, but being so little, I danced up on my toes. Mom had a pair of tiny shoes that seemed quite good—but the toes were worn out.
Oscar Olson wrote:
My grandmother Nellie came to visit my dad and her sister at Brooksby, Sask., and she always had a bag of Green Tea with her, as she couldn’t get it here at that time.
Whenever Grandpa Ole H. came he would buy a pair of rubbers for his shoes, across the line, as he thought we had a muddy country. He filed on a homestead about 1910, but Grandma would not move to Canada, so he abandoned it and went back to Vang.
Of her dad, Viola commented:
Dad (Ole H. Olson) was born in Nesbien, Norway and came to the U.S. at the early age of seven. His mother died in Minnesota. She is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Minnesota. She was a secretary or accountant, I am not quite sure of the last part—except that he spent a lot of time with her parents and an Uncle and Aunt. After his mother’s death he lost track of his father.
Tema:
Must say Dad had a homestead, a tree claim on the prairie between our home and near where the Tollefson’s lived. The claim was signed by President McKinley; signed 1898, I believe. “Grandpa” Tollef Tollefson raised Dad [Ole H. Olson] after Dad’s mother [ Birgit Tollefsdatter] died. (He was really Dad’s uncle on his mother’s side.) [Birgit Tollefsdatter and Tollef Tollefson were siblings.]
Asked if he remembered much about Nellie, Lawrence Peterson said:
Oh, yes. She was nice. You know, many years she had one crutch; she broke her hip, you see..she was on that crutch. And she’d never drink coffee, always tea. He agreed with Viola, “Yeah, yeah, she could make good coffee!”
In an unrecorded conversation in March of 1981, Lawrence Peterson said of Ole H. Olson:
He was compassionate. A Baptist minister, somewhat sickly, served a “slim congregation” and needed some extra cash; so he applied for a job working in the coulee, where men were carrying rocks. He found this heavy work too much for him and couldn’t do it; so Ole H. assigned him to fill the water bucket to bring water to the other men who were carrying the rocks, as this was a necessary task, too. That way he was able to do something that needed to be done and could earn the pay he needed, as well.
He [Ole H. Olson] was everyone’s friend; he was funny’ he could put over funny stories (tall tales). Lawrence was asked to repeat the story he’d given as an example of this, in the conversations of November, 1981:
They went to the dance, you know, and Ole H. and Aunt Nellie went there. This bachelor, he wasn’t invited to that stuff, because he was so miserable. And, of course, I suppose there had been some drinking there, but not too much; and so, just as Ole H. got back in the morning, it was after daylight, …here he (the bachelor) comes over to the barn and wanted to know how things was over there. And he kept asking and asking. “Well,” Ole H. says, “I suppose you’ll hear about it sooner or later, anyway. …Old Peter D. got laid out and they had to take him out in the oat bin and laid him out in the middle of the winter. And Knute and Ole was there, and, he said, “Knute, he got so drunk that Ole wheeled him home on the wheel-barrow,” and it was three feet of snow! …Then the bachelor hitched up and he drives over and he got tellin’ all this and that, and when he got to where Ole was wheeling Knute home on the wheelbarrow, why, “Well, I don’t think you need to tell me very much more,” Ole E. Said, “I think Ole H. has lied you full for once! …You should ought to know he is awful to lie!” he said.
Oh, we had one guy by the name of “Gus”, and he was a great guy to tell stories, and then he would wait til everybody else got through laughin’, and then he’d laugh, and make them laugh worse, you know. And Ole H. got on to that, and they was sittin’ there tellin’ stories, and then he started to laugh, and Ole H. sat there (making silent gestures with his mouth as though he were laughing) ..not a sound, you know. Then they all did laugh!
Lyle: I kinda gathered he was a real good personality.
Lawrence: Oh, yes!
One time I was sittin’ there and Ole H. was sittin’ there and Aunt Nellie and Pete was talkin’ you know, and Ole K. and the girls and them went up to a dance in the winter, you know, and drove up there with the team, and Nellie and Peter were talking and said, I don’t understand them getting’ out in this weather and drag way up in there with a team and have them out and, ..” They kept on, complaining on the young people; and Ole H. nudged me, you know, to listen to what they was saying, and finally they got so far. “Ah,” Ole H. would say, “I don’t think you have got much to say about that. If I remember, when you’s was young, why you’s would go to them things and you’s would leave the horses out, and not take care of them; but now the young folks, if there’s no place for the horses or blanket ‘em up, why they come home again!” And, he said, “The trouble is, 99% of the people forget they was young once!”
Lawrence: Herman married a newcomer girl, Turina…she was workin’ for a fella’ there; and she was a regular slave, you know. They had a daughter of their own and she didn’t do anything; but Turina had to do everything; she had to do the milkin’ and herd the cows in and everything. Well, Herman went there to work, and here he fell in love with her; and when Herman left, he took her along with him. And, oh! The old man (she worked for) was mad!