Olaf Pederson
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 8 to 14.
BRAVE SETTLER DEFENDS HOME
Olaf Pederson Keeps Vigil When Indians Threaten
How a courageous Scandinavian pioneer kept lonely vigil in a dugout on his claim near Pembina, armed with a “muzzle-loader” and a pitchfork, after reports had been received of an impending Indian raid, is related by his son, a pioneer of Hope township.
The father was Olaf Pederson and the son is Seward Pederson, for more than 30 years a justice of the peace in Hope township and now at 75 a member of the town board.
The elder Pederson came to America in 1869, the journey in a sailing vessel, requiring eleven weeks. After a short stay in Canada he came to North Dakota, settling four miles south of Pembina. The son recalls that the family faced many hardships. One winter they lived mostly on fish and salt.
When word was received that the Indians had gone on the warpath most of the settlers fled to the fort near Pembina, where cannons had been rolled outside the walls in preparation for defense. Olaf Pederson sent his family to the fort but remained behind, determined to defend his newly acquired home. He barricaded himself in the farm’s underground milkhouse on the banks of the Tongue river. One night he heard a noise in the woods across the river. It sounded like someone walking stealthily. Seizing his gun, he waded across the stream to investigate, only to find the noise was made by one of his own calves. The Indians did not appear, the families returned from the fort and the usual tempo of pioneer life was resumed.
Made Pearl Barley
The elder Pederson was a blacksmith and he added to his income by making hundreds of barrels of charcoal, which he sold to neighboring blacksmiths. The family later moved to Mountain post office and seven years later settled in the Vang neighborhood, where the pioneer continued to combine farming and blacksmithing. But he was ambitious and resourceful and found time to invent a machine for making pearl barley. For years he traveled about the country selling pearl barley and acquired the Norwegian sobriquet of “Grynpederson”.
Rated as one of the strongest men in the neighborhood and absolutely fearless, he was at the same time noted for his good humor. He accepted all hardships with a smile. He lived to the ripe old age of 91 and the memory of his fine character, his prowess and sturdy manhood will linger long in the communities in which he lived.
Tales of an Immigrant Blacksmith
OLAF PEDERSON/PETERSON, IMMIGRANT, 1833 - 1924
Stories and Memories of Him As Told by His Grandson, Lawrence A. Peterson
The following descriptions and stories have been transcribed from tapes recorded 25 Feb. 1975 by Boyd and Elna Haagenson, with Gerald Peterson; 24 and 26 Dec. 1978 with Lyle Peterson, Joe, Alfred and Cora Haagenstad; and 17 August, 1980 with Ella and Leonard Magnus, Gilbert and Lyle Peterson.
ELNA: You remember your grandfather quite well?
LAWRENCE: Yes. Grandfather’s name was Olaf Peterson; and he was kinda hard customer.
He was a powerful man. He could cut 1 ½ cords of wood in an afternoon; most people took all day to cut one cord.
He was awful, awful powerful. He used to tell about his experiences, and he said the closest he ever came to getting a lickin’ was on the boat when he came across from Norway. The sailors tried to pick fights with him, and he got in a fight with 16 sailors. He’d back up against the wall and then he’d fight. And the fellows that didn’t know enough to leave him alone, why they was layin’ all over the deck! After he beat up 16 sailors, they learned to leave him alone!
ELNA: He used to carry flour on his back, isn’t that right?
LAWRENCE: Yes. They lived 3 ½ miles from Pembina, and he could go to Pembina on a pair of skiis and take a hundred pounds of flour on his shoulder, and a bunch of groceries under the other arm, and he would go home without stoppin’.
He sure was a powerful man. …He was my height [about 5 feet, 7 inches] and he wasn’t fat; and he weighed 265 pounds. And he used [size] 54 overalls, he was so wide. …He was so big boned. …They was quite a few of them tried to give him a lickin’, figured they’d give a name to themselves, and all got beat up pretty bad! They could hit him as hard as they wanted to and never phase him at all.
Oh, a horse kicked him in the head here, cut his scalp open and [cleaned] it right back, you know; he just socked back a little, straightened up again, kept on ridin’. Drivin’ through the yard to the neighbors and by golly here he was bleeding all over, and the hair was, scalp turned back, you know. “You can’t go home that way”, they said; so they got him inside, and they had alcohol [wood alcohol], a lot of ‘em had alcohol back then; and they went to work and they poured the alcohol in there and washed it out and they tied the hair down again, you see, and it grew back. Didn’t bother him any. …No infection. They used the alcohol on, I suppose that was it.
And when he cut his thumb off, he never quit. He was milkin’ the cows; he’d milk with one hand then. And done the chores and everything. Went right out and sawed wood til the steam went down. It was a steam engine, you see, and kept on sawing too. Oh, that was nothin’ to cut a finger off then.
ELLA: Grandpa was very good at arithmetic.
LYLE: Did he learn his blacksmithing trade in Norway?
LAWRENCE: Oh, yes! He was good at that in Norway.
He made the pearl barley machines; he figured that out for himself. Just made them. That thing was, oh, it was about as big around as from here over to there – 6 feet 1 – and he had this disk made, you see, and then he took the team and he turned that upside down and just kept punchin’ with the nail so it was rough. And then there was another one that come down on top; and that had a hopper on it; and the bottom one turned. The pressure of the grain down here went on that thing, and that thing was goin’ around and the stuff would come off of the edge, you see. When he got through with that, why he just run through the fanning mill, and here he had pearl barley. And so he used to travel around, oh, 30 miles around, selling pearl barley. They called him “Pearl Barley Peterson’ around there! He would sell it by the half or quarter bushel; anything they wanted.
He ground the regular flour in the other mill, too. Boy, he did a little bit of everything, because in those days, it was survive. Do things to live.
LYLE: I imagine after what they had run into in Norway, if they just made a decent living over here they were well satisfied.
LAWRENCE: Well, [another] old [fellow], you know; we used to go up there and visit quite a lot and he used to tell tales. He said the last year he lived in Norway, he hired out for a year; and he got $8.00 for a whole year. The first – clothes and somethin’ to eat. Next year they come over here; then one of the neighbor boys had gotten over here and he made some money and he’s gonna bring his brother over here; and the brother didn’t want to go; so this fellow went along, so he sent over money for both of them to come over. They got to Minneapolis, and they got work on the railroad to get a dollar a day, and oh gee! They was really makin’ the dough! They didn’t know what they was going to do with it for a while! When you work for eight dollars a year and then you work for a dollar an hour, “Oh, ho,” he said, “That was somethin’”; now he was really makin’ money.
LYLE: Dad’s grandfather came over in ’69. [They must have arrived in Canada by or before 1868, the year Nellie was born there. They were in the U.S. by June 1, 1870; probably came to U.S. in 1869.] But they came in through Canada. He lived a couple of years up there north east of Winnipeg, at Selkirk. Then he came on down into North Dakota and homesteaded. …Did your grandad ever tell you how he got from the coast into Winnipeg? How did they get across there?
LAWRENCE: Never heard. …They got into Winnipeg, Canada, you know; and they lived on Lake Winnipeg, the first. …Well, I suppose they evidently took a train. That’s about the only way.
LYLE: They didn’t have any money, though.
LAWRENCE: No. Well, the first winter they was here, you know, they didn’t have enough money; they couldn’t even afford to buy salt. They lived on fish only. And they was a whole colony of them; they was a bunch of ‘em. And Grandpa, he was a great fisherman; he stayed out there on Lake Winnipeg and fished there all winter, out on the ice. That first winter they come from Norway to Manitoba, he kept the whole colony alive just fishin’. They didn’t even have money to buy salt, and they just cooked them the way they was and et ‘em. …I never did see a man could eat fish like that guy! He could eat fish with so blame many bones in it, and he’d sit there, head on the side, and he’d be shoving the fish in this side and the bones was droppin’ out the other side. I never seen the beat!
CORA: I suppose he chewed a few and swallowed ‘em?
LAWRENCE: Well, his digestion, his stomach would take anything, you know, by cracky!
LYLE: I supposed he’d lived on fish all his life; why he’d get pretty handy at it.
LAWRENCE: You know, the best sandwich Grandpa could get was just salt pork – it wasn’t fried or nothing, it was just slice off the slices and put it between the bread and eat it that way. The grease would just fly!
Well, the women was makin’ this old time soap, and he always used to help himself to coffee. He come in and he was pearlin’ barley; they had a sample of soap on the cupboard, and he goes over and slices own some of that and put it in the sandwich and took a cup of coffee and sat down. “By gons,” he said, “They making soap here so it tastes soap in the sandwiches.”
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LAWRENCE: When he was in Norway, he said there was people that believed in ghosts. “But I never was able to see one”, he said. “But,” he says, “they was people that told me they seen ghosts and they wasn’t that way that they lied, either. But one time," he said, “I thought I was seeing a ghost, walkin’ home from town and past the graveyard. I went past; I seen somethin’ over there that.., and I thought it was a ghost, but I thought I’d better come back and take a good look at him, So,” he says “I got back to the gate and got down on my hands and knees and crawled over on there and got right up to it; and here it was an old white horse that was out there!”
LAWRENCE: When they lived over by Fort Pembina, the Indians come in there and traded horses with a family there and they got beat awful bad. And there was a rumor that they was gonna come down and kill, and clean out the whole settlement. Well, everyone went to the Fort but Grandpa. “Well,” he said, “you can’t grow hogs over there.” So he stayed to do the chores for himself and the neighbors. ... He had the milkhouse right in the edge of the Tongue River; and he had his musket and forks and axes and everything in there. So he stayed there for three days, and nothing heard; didn’t see nobody. ....
Then, a while after that, there was a big man that came into Fort Pembina, and he was lickin’ everyone in town. They told him he was all right as long as Olaf Peterson didn’t come in; but when he come in, why he had to give him room. But he wanted to see this Olaf Peterson; so when Olaf come to town with a load of cord wood, they pointed him out to the man; and the man went out and said, “Is your name Olaf Peterson?” And he said, “That’s what they call me.” “Well,” the man said, “you’re going to have a lickin’ before you leave town!” “Oh?”, he says, “is that so?” “Well,” the man says, “let me know when you’re going to leave town.” “I’ll oblige you with that,” he said. So he got all his groceries and stuff ready to go home, and he went into the saloon, took one drink, and he come out and he takes a look at the big man and he says, “I’m going home now.” And the man hauled off and he hit him and he took two or three steps back and he come back and he hit him in the face with both fists and kicked him in the stomach; and the big man was in bed for two weeks afterward!
Grandpa used to make charcoal, burnt charcoal, for the Hudson Bay Company; they used to (do it) on bids. They’d take ten cords of cordwood, and they’d pile it in a pit and then they’d cover it up with dirt and stuff on top and then they’d start a fire and they’d get burnt flues, and the coal would be there, you know. And so then they took that out and bid; and another guy underbid ‘em; and he was gonna, thought he could burn charcoal and he set a fire and he burnt up the wood and the coal and the whole blame works. He didn’t have anything. So then he had to hire Grandpa to kiln the charcoal for him; he had to do that all over again. And he had to get his price, so the guy lost money on it!
And, there was a guy that had a horse that he couldn’t get to shoe; and somebody told him to take him over to Ole, Olaf Peterson, and have him. He couldn’t shoe, nobody could. So, he goes to look at the horse. “Well,” he said. “I can shoe him all right, but I won’t guarantee the horse in gonna be good anymore.” “Well,” he said, “go ahead and shoe him.” Well, he went to shoe him and he got hold of the behind foot, and the horse fought and fought. He couldn’t get away, and he put the shoes on him all right; but the horse ...wasn’t much good after that.
LAWRENCE: Another time he was up to something rough, he was sawin’ wood with a steam engine. Dad (Adolph) and Seward, they weren’t very old; but anyway, he was sawing it, and he sawed his thumb so it hung on there at the joint, and he said. “That’s gonna be good no more”, and so he said, “I think we’ll cut it right off here,” so he winded up with his index finger and told Dad to take a block of wood and hit that ax hard and the thumb flew on the ground and he started for the house and took a big chew of tobacco and plastered on that and went in and put flour on top of that and then tied it all up. “Well, boys, let’s go out and finish sawing that wood!”
ELLA: Grandpa Peterson, Olaf, ..he had one finger off, you know.
LAWRENCE: Thumb. And then two fingers was crooked. …And he was gonna, they was sawing lumber and so he was looking at them. “By gons,” he said, “I think I’ll get you to help me,” he said; “They’re no good anymore; they’re just a-hookin’ into everything.” And he had the ax and he wanted Dad (Adolph) to hit it. “By golly,” Dad says, “I cut them fingers off; I cut off the last fingers I’m gonna do.”
ELLA: Well, there was no doctors to speak of, hospitals---
LAWRENCE: Well, he didn’t want to go to the doctor for that little thing! …Dad said that wasn’t so bad, but when that thing was healing, that—just broke that bone off, you see; and he sat there with a tweezers and pulled out big chunks of bone. Golly, he said the chill went right down his back! …Oh, he was a hard customer.
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LYLE: What about his encounter with the skunk?
LAWRENCE: Oh, yeah. Dad and him was to town; and Grandpa had a few drinks and they was going home and it was in the moonlight, and they seen a skunk running, and he said, “Whoa, stop! I want to find out if that skunk is fat,” because he said he was getting short on skunk oil. He said, “If he’s fat, why I want to kill him and take him home.” But Dad said, “Oh, you’re not in shape to monkey with that skunk now.” “Oh, yes” And he jumps out of the wagon, had an old empty sugar barrel; and he run over after the skunk under the barrel; then he was watching and he flipped it up and he had the skunk in the barrel. So he picked him up and held him up to find out how fat he was. You know, a skunk won’t do anything unless the tail is up in the air; and he happened to feel of him under and see if he was fat; and here he had, he got it right in the face!!!
[He had to sleep in the barn for about a week afterward!]
Then, in later years, after they moved to Vang, why there was an old guy; he was an awful homely guy. He would buy his cord wood from my uncle, and old Grandpa was there, and he was talkin’ to him, and they started talking about doctors. He said, “Well, sir, by gons,” [in brogue], “We had a doctor in the old country, he was an awful good doctor. Awful good doctor, but so fear-ful homely, fe-ar-ful homely, long in the face, long in the face, just like you, just like you, Mrs. S---.”
And so Grandpa goes up to the house, and the man says to my uncle, “Guess the old man don’t think I’m very pretty, huh?” So that was all right. But a few days afterward, why the same man comes drivin’. He always had some awful nice horses; and Grandma was out in the road, and so he stopped to talk with her; and she says, “That’s a nice team you’ve got there, Mr. S---.” “Ye-e-e-s,” he says, “and there’s a nice man drivin’ ‘em, too!”
LAWRENCE: Well, he had one of his neighbors from up in Canada come down and I was there; and he was that way when somebody couldn’t understand Norwegian, then he’d talk English, and of course, that was a mess. Anyway, he got talking to this fellow and they were talking away about something, and he asked me something in Norwegian, and I answered it in English. There and then he started talking English all the time. So he said, “Well, sir, by gons, we had an old caht, he was a darn good caht; he catches two rats everyday, sometimes only one. One day he come a run—rat he come yumping along and he yumped right in the chickens but it wasn’t long time til the old good caht had him’ he said. (Foregoing in brogue.)
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LAWRENCE: By golly, we kids used to laugh at old Grandpa. You know, he lived with Charlie and Clara, and they had 12 children. It wasn’t a very big house, either.
He had a little bedroom that he slept in. One time we was staying there, and the kids was gonna go upstairs to bed, and they was going to take the lantern up. “By gons, you just as soon monkey around and drop that lantern,” he says, “You better give it to me.” He takes the lantern away from them and takes it along and horses around and drops the lantern and broke the globe. “By gons! Can you beat that? Correct the kids and then did it myself! By gons!”
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Then he was over to our place once, and he had these big whiskers, you know, and everything; and one of our neighbors was there, and by golly, he talked him into shaving him. He shaved them—he shaved them, and dyed his hair and everything; and, by golly, come home and they didn’t know him!
ELLA: Grandpa Peterson, Olaf, he stayed at our place a lot.
LAWRENCE: Yes, always. That was his home.
ELLA: And Gilbert, he had to tear down the old house; the remembrance of the old home; that’s all gone.
LAWRENCE: Well, it wouldn’t help; wouldn’t have been anything left of it now, anyway.
GILBERT: No, it wouldn’t be anything.
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The uncertainty regarding the home of Olaf and Caroline Peterson in Norway continues:
Stella Remington wrote with certainty that they came from the Valdres district. Her mother, Minnie Rogstad, supplied her information.
In conversation with Lawrence A. Peterson on 29 June 1981, he stated with conviction that Olaf and Caroline and his dad (Adolph) came from Hallingdal.
Viola Redick wrote, “Incidentally Grandpa Olaf Peterson and Grandma Karlina came from Gulbransdalen, Norway.”
Jackie (Fix) Stordal advised us that Dr. Arne Brekke at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks has access to the Norway history of Norwegian-American immigrants. Brian Pederson, now a student at the UND has been working with him on this question, and his report at Thanksgiving, 1981, was that they came from the “Hallan farm at Nord-Trondelag, northeast of Trondheim.” More information was to be available next summer from Dr. Brekke at UND. (1982).
The only certainty to come out of this is that the compiler was totally in error in theorizing that “Hallan” might be HØlen, south of Oslo!
It is evident that Gudbrandsdalen, Valdres, and Hallingdal are all adjacent districts. There is a community named “Vang” in the Valdres area. If these people brought this name to the Cavalier County community, this might suggest that they did come from somewhere near Vang in Valdres, Norway. However, we have not learned how Vang, N.D. acquired its name or who named it or why, as of this writing.
[Note: Click here for wikipedia information regarding Vang in the traditional region of Valdres within the county of Oppland, Norway.]
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MORE STORIES AND COMMENTS ABOUT IMMIGRANT OLAF PEDERSON
Oscar Olson of Naicam, Sask., wrote:
Will add a few more words to Grandpa’s (Olaf I.) experience coming here. On the train he got mixed up with some travelers and they gave him lots of whiskey and they thought it was fun to listen to his broken English, and he didn’t much like it, so he kept sliding down in his seat and brought one foot up and kicked the guy in the stomach. They realized they’d done wrong, and apologized.
One Sunday Mom and Dad (Herman Olson) went visiting Andrew Anderson. The roads were trails through the tall timber and they stayed too late; it got dark, so thought they’d better stay overnight. They had a fresh cow that hadn’t been milked, so got home early in the morning. When they arrived home, Grandpa was busy making breakfast and Dad noticed he was frying something that looked like pork, so Dad asked him where he got the meat, and he said, “A neighbor had butchered.” Dad should have known better because no one had pigs around there. Grandpa wanted Dad to have breakfast before milking the cows. Mother was tending Ella, as she was baby, and didn’t get to the table for breakfast with them. Dad was enjoying his breakfast till Grandpa asked, “You know what you’re eating?” and Dad said, “Pork”, and Grandpa said, “No, by gonas, dis is bager” (badger); and that finished Dad’s breakfast; but Grandpa kept it on hand and [would] always fry a little for himself.
Is it in your history book that Grandpa Peterson came here [Saskatchewan] with my dad, Herman, and homesteaded when he was 70 years of age. He proved up the homestead and then went back to Vang. It was later sold to John Bye in about 1923. I think he gave this homestead to Charlie, his son; and I think Charlie sold it to Mr. Bye.
This information was repeated in November, 1981 conversation with Lawrence A. Peterson. To this he added:
Yeah, he went. Well, there was a bunch of ‘em that went up there, young people, you know. And he (Grandpa Olaf) said, “Sendin’ them young people up there doesn’t know nothin’ about; I better go up there and homestead, too, and take care of ‘em!” He was one of the first ones to get his place proved up!
LYLE: But he didn’t figure on stayin’ up there, huh?
LAWRENCE: No, no; when he got it proved up, why then he come back. You see, Grandpa and Grandma, they lived with Charlie all their life, you know; and so he give this land to Charley. To Charlie, and he sold it to John Bye, was a guy that moved up there from Vang.
More Comments by Lawrence A. Peterson:
Yeah, Charley (his brother?) and I was sawin’ wood out there, and there was about two feet of snow – towards spring, you know. By golly, the crank shaft broke in the engine; one fly wheel come clean out and went up in the air a ways, and it was goin’ around fast, you know, and hit the ground and it took off, went past the window of the house, and Grandpa was standin’ lookin’ out, and “Ah haw, those kids is startin’ to wheel wheels around already.”
You take even when he was 75 years old, he was stronger than a bear. Butchered a pig, Charley did. The pig weighed about 250 lbs. or so, better; and Ole (my brother) and him was lookin’ at the pig wonderin’ how they was gonna get it in the house, you know. And, “By gons, you kids,” he says, “no good at all. Nothin’ to that!” He just walked, and he slid the pig over his back, grabbed ahold of the ears and told ‘em to cut the tissues; he just walked in the house with it and laid it down on the table. Nothin’ to it at all!” …(He’d) Get ahold of a horse’s leg; by golly, the horse couldn’t get it again! He took ‘em by force.”
Most of them up in that Vang country come from Norway. …I don’t know how Vang got the name there. I don’t think there was any man around there by the name of Vang.
Lyle: Were most of those people pretty satisfied to move over here from Norway? “Oh, yes. There was an odd one that would go back, but not very many.”
Jean: Did your grandfather leave because it was hard to make a living there? “Oh yes. They were poor people when they come here.”