1783 Transforming Swedish Immigrants Into Swedish Americans

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JULY 2000 VOLUME LI, NUMBER 3

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5125 North Spaulding Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60625-4816 (An Illinois nonprofit corporation) Established to record the achievements of the Swedish Pioneers OFFICERS Chair, ELOISE V. NELSON, Chicago, 111. Vice Chair, RONALD J. JOHNSON, Madison, Wis. Secretary, FRANCES B. JOHNSON, Park Ridge, 111. Treasurer, DONALD E. OLSON, Chicago, III. President, PHILIP J. ANDERSON, Chicago, 111. At Large, ERIC R. LUND, Evanston, 111. BOARD OF DIRECTORS (Year in parentheses indicates expiration of term) H. Arnold Barton (2002) Eloise V. Nelson (2001) Dag Blanck (2002) Ingrid Nyholm-Lange (2002) Earl D. Check (2000) Roy E. Olson (2002) E. Stanley Enlund (2000) Charles I. Peterson (2001) Scott E. Erickson (2001) Kevin M. Proescholdt (2002) Charles W. Estus Sr. (2000) G. Carl Rutberg (2000) Junita Borg Hemke (2000) Ellen T. Rye (2000) Frances B. Johnson (2001) Mariann E. Tiblin (2002) Ronald J. Johnson (2000) Kermit Westerberg (2002) KerstinB. Lane (2001) PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE Philip J. Anderson, Chair, Chicago, 111. Nils Hasselmo, Minneapolis, Minn. H. Arnold Barton, Carbondale, 111. Ronald J. Johnson, Madison, Wis. Ulf Jonas Bjork, Indianapolis, Ind. Eric R. Lund, Evanston, 111. Dag Blanck, Rock Island, 111. LeRoy W. Nelson, Chicago, 111. James E. Erickson, Minneapolis, Minn. Byron J. Nordstrom, LeSueur, Minn. Anita Olson Gustafson, Greenwood, S.C. Nils William Olsson, Winter Park, Fla ADDRESSES Swedish-American Historical Society 5125 North Spaulding Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60625-4816 Phone: 773-583-5722; fax: 773-583-5677 E-mail: [email protected] www.swedishamericanhist.org Editor of the QUARTERLY: Byron J. Nordstrom Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota 56082 Phone: 507-933-7435; e-mail: [email protected] Associate and Book Review Editor: Roger McKnight Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota 56082 Phone: 507-933-7422; e-mail: [email protected]

For sale by the Swedish-American Historical Society Swedish Exodus. By Lars Ljungmark (Carbondale, III., 1979, 1996). Paper

$14.95 (Members $13.50) Scandinavian Immigrants and Education in North America. Edited by Philip J. Anderson, Dag Blanck, and Peter Kivisto (Chicago, 1995). Cloth $19.95 (Members $15.95) A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840-1940. By H. Arnold Barton (Carbondale, III., 1995). 448 pages. Paper $24.95 (Members $22.45) Guide to Swedish-American Archival and Manuscript Sources in the United States (Chicago, 1983). 600 pages. Cloth $20.00 (Members $18.00) The Hedstroms and the Bethel Ship Saga. By Henry C. Whyman (Carbondale, III., 1992). Cloth. $19.95 (Members $17.00) Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840-1914. By H. Arnold Barton (Minneapolis, Minn., 1975). Paper $14.95 (Members $12.95) On the Left in America: Memoirs of the Scandinavian-American Labor Movement. Translated by K. Westerberg, edited by Michael Brook (Carbondale, III., in cooperation with SAHS, 1999). Paper $19.95 (Members $18.00) Peter Cassel and Iowa's New Sweden. Edited by H. Arnold Barton (Carbondale, III., 1995). Paper. $11.95 (Members $10.75) The Search for Ancestors: A Swedish-American Familiy Saga. By H. Arnold Barton (Carbondale, III., 1979). 178 pages. Cloth $19.95 (Members $17.95) Sweden: The Nation's History. By Franklin D. Scott (rev. ed., Carbondale, III., 1988). 688 pages. Paper $29.95 (Members $25.50) Swedes in America: Intercultural and Interethnic Perspectives on Contemporary Research. Edited by Ulf Beijbom (Vaxjo, 1993). Cloth $19.95 Swedish Place-Names in North America. Edited by Raymond Jarvi (Carbondale, III., 1985). 372 pages. Cloth. $34.95 (Members $31.45) Swedish Passenger Arrivals in the United States 1820-1850. By Nils William Olsson and Erik Wiken (Stockholm, 1995). 628 pages. Cloth $65.00 (Members $49.95) Swedish-American Imprints: A Catalog of the Tell G. Dahllof Collection. Compiled by Gunilla Larsson and Eva Tedenmyr (Stockholm, 1988). 387 pages. Paper $46.00 The Swedish Texans. By Larry E. Scott (San Antonio, Tex., 1990). 228 pages. Cloth

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champion the stone is Magnus Larson. Where does Millett stand on the controversy? In his concluding note there is uncertainty. Detractors Eric Wahlgren and Theodore Blegen and supporter Robert Hall are mentioned. Perhaps he believes, as one of his characters observes in the book, that it all depends on where you are and whom you are with. Whatever the case, Sherlock Holmes concluded the rune stone was a clever hoax, and this book is a fun read spiced with some very perceptive assessments.

The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly Formerly The Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly Vol. LI

July 2000 BYRON

No. 3

J. NORDSTROM, Editor

R O G E R M C K N I G H T , Associate and Book Review Editor SALLY A . J O H N S O N , Production Editor

EDITOR'S CORNER

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JOHN LARSON

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From Amerika to America: Alma Crosses the Border LARRY LUNDBLAD

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The Impact of Minnesota's Dakota Conflict of 1862 on the Swedish Settlers ERNST F. TONSING

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Transforming Swedish Immigrants into Swedish Americans: The Function of a Speech by Governor John A. Martin, Lindsborg, Kansas, 5 July 1886

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BOOK REVIEWS

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BOOK NOTE

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THE SWEDISH-AMERICAN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0730-028X) (formerly the Swedish Pioneer Historical Quarterly) is published four times a year (January, April, July, October) by the Swedish-American Historical Society, 5125 N. Spaulding Ave., Chicago, IL 60625. Subscription price is $10.00 per year, which is included in the membership dues of the Swedish-American Historical Society (formerly the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society); subscription is not available separately from membership. Address communications regarding membership to the office of the Society, 5125 N. Spaulding Ave., Chicago, IL 60625; in Sweden, to Swedish-American Historical Society, RiksfOreningen Sverigekontakt c/o Lennart Limberg, Box 53066, 400 14 GOteborg, telephone 031-18 00 62, fax 031-20 99 02. Postmaster send address changes to The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly, 5125 N. Spaulding Ave., Chicago, IL 60625. Periodical postage paid at Chicago, IL, and additional mailing offices. © 2000 by THE SWEDISH-AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Book Note Larry Millett, whose Lost Twin Cities is mentioned in John Larson's article in this issue, has written three highly successful mystery novels under the header The American Chronicles of John H. Watson, M.D. These include Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon (1996), Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders (1998), and Sherlock Holmes and the Rune Stone Mystery (New York: Penguin, 1999). The last of these is built, loosely, around the discovery and debate over the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone. Although the book makes no claim to be historically accurate or to masquerade as history in ways that, say, Simon Schama's Dead Certainties might, and Millett offers a disclaimer in a concluding "author's note," he clearly has done his research on the Kensington controversy and the broader historical context. As a result, as he spins a convincingly Doyle-esque narrative, he also offers up some highly perceptive insights into the attitudes of real actors in this seemingly endless controversy. For example, consider what he writes about the motives and character traits among the Alexandria-area Scandinavian Americans when the question why anyone would create such a hoax is posed: What you've got to understand is that if there is one thing [the Swedish Americans] hate, it's big shots putting on airs. 'Tis the worst sin of all in their book, to be boastful or to put yourself on a pedestal. That's why somethin' like the rune stone would appeal to them. Fact is, the good Swedes here would find nothin' funnier than springin' a sly joke on the professors and the nabobs and all the other highfalutin' types who think they're smarter than everbody else. (116) On another level, Millett obviously had fun naming the places and characters, and anyone familiar with the rune stone controversy and all of the primary players in the discovery and then the debate will chuckle over his choices. The discoverer is Olof Wahlgren. The nearest town to the stone is Holandberg. The likely co-conspirator and local rune expert is Einar Blegen. The outsider who comes to

is compelling. It is the story of an extraordinary frontier minister, a tireless missionary, a man who saw promise for the young in education and who gave his all for his people and their faith. It is also the story of failure and loss. This is a refreshingly honest biography of a man whose accomplishments reveal only part of his identity. EDI THORSTENSSON GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE

Editor's Corner

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istories are built from many elements. The wide variety of sources is evident in the three articles in the present issue. Family scrapbooks, newspapers, congregation histories, photographs, memoirs, speeches, books, and articles are just a few of the resources our authors used to prepare their contributions. Often we see sources as limited to written records—materials by and about individuals and groups—with a few photographs tossed in for good measure. However, physical evidence, including houses, churches, schools, furniture, housewares, tools, clothing, nicknacks, and machines, is also important for understanding the past. In recent months my involvement in an effort to ensure the survival of a group of nineteenth-century stone buildings in Ottawa, Minnesota, the completion of the restoration of Gustavus Adolphus College and especially the Borgeson cabin on the campus following the March 1998 tornado, and the fates of two Minnesota buildings important in Scandinavian-American history have reminded me of the significance of this body of historical sources. It is these last two buildings that I wish to emphasize here.

Dania Hall 427 Cedar Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota 1886-2000

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Dania Hall was, for over a hundred years, an important building in the history of Danish Americans, Scandinavian Americans, Minneapolis, the most Scandinavian neighborhood in that city for several decades around the turn of the last century, and a sequence of other immigrant groups, most recently Somalis, Vietnamese, and Russians. The building stood at the south end of the 400's block on Cedar Avenue, in the heart of the Cedar-Riverside/"Snus Boulevard" neighborhood. This architecturally eclectic brick structure was built

by the Dania Hall Building Association, an off-shoot of the Dania Society, as a retail location, meeting place, and entertainment center for its members and for the thousands of Scandinavian Americans in the area and the city. The original cost was $35,000, including the lot. Appropriately, the cornerstone was : laid on 5 June 1886 (Denmark's Constitution Day), and Dania Hall opened that November. For many, the real jewel in the building was the auditorium with its proscenium stage and horseshoe balcony, which filled the third and fourth floors. This DANIA HALL. was the site of Ibsen and Strindberg drama productions, concerts by the likes of Ole Bull, lectures by Scandinavians including Knut Hamsun, the immigrant vaudeville shows of entertainers such as Olle i Skratthult, and sentimental evenings of song and dance. Over the years it served as a gathering place for the sequence of immigrants who called the Cedar Riverside area home—Danes and Norwegians and Swedes, Czechs, African Americans, Native Americans, students at the University of Minnesota, and, most recently, Somalis and Vietnamese and Russians. Time, of course, took its toll on the building and its neighborhood. Over the last twenty years, or so, friends of the hall had sought to bring it back to life. But the fates seemed stacked against it, and the best of plans always seemed to run into obstacles. In 1991 Dania Hall was nearly destroyed by fire. Recently, however, things had turned. A $2.7 million renovation project was well underway, including restaurants, stores, and a rejuvenated auditorium, when fire struck again in February this year. The building was totally destroyed. This proud landmark, filled with over a century of the echoes of

independence carried him into and through a number of differences with his own synod, the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, most notably over the doctrines addressing lay activity, absolution, and slavery. His stubborn tenacity eventually lost him the presidency of the synod, but it also provided him with the leadership to found St. Olaf's School, later St. Olaf College. Institutional history and institutional biography can be interesting for the membership but tedious for everyone else. This biography of the pioneer Norwegian Synod pastor Bernt Julius Muus is an exception. Although its subtitle—Founding Father of St. Olaf—might unjustly limit its audience, it is well worth reading for anyone who has an interest in the history of Norwegian emigration and immigration and the immigrant Norwegian Lutheran church, its growth and controversies. It also explains much about the Norway that sent its sons and daughters into the New World. Muus was not the conventional founding father of Midwestern Lutheran colleges. Shaw explains well the complexities of the man, the doctrinal disputes into which he entered, and the grounds for his marital difficulties, which were made public and discussed in both the United States and Norway. Shaw respectfully lends insight when he addresses the problem of the scandalous dissolution—legally, separation—of the marriage between Oline Pind Muus and Bernt Julius Muus, who cannot have been an easy man to live with. He tells us about talented, educated Oline, interviewed in 1881 by Bjamstjerne Bjarnson, who described her as being "all worldliness, indifference, defiance, intelligence, craving for fun, and in her way just as strong as he (Muus) is" (271). He writes about her reconciliation with her estranged daughter and the affection shown her by the people whose congregations were served by her husband. Far from taking sides, Shaw reveals individuality and identifies issues. It becomes increasingly apparent that we are in the presence of two strong-willed people with entirely opposing points of view about a woman's rights within marriage, two personalities for whom self-sacrifice and suffering had separate purposes and limitations. Yet we know that they each sacrificed much and suffered deeply, most often in isolation from each other. It is this very human side to the Muus story—this tragedy—that

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Joseph M. Shaw. Bernt Julius Muus, Founder of St. Olaf College. Northfield, Minn.: The Norwegian American Historical Association, 1999. 392 pp. And he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong."

immigrants' voices, laughter, music, and dancing, lay in ruins.

St. Ansgar's Hall East Union, Minnesota 1856-2000?

This passage from 2 Corinthians was the text used for Bernt Julius Muus's ordination in Oslo on 8 July 1859, nearly two months before he left for the United States to serve as a missionary pastor in Goodhue County, Minnesota. The text is prophetic. Born in Snasa in North-Trendelag in 1833, Muus was raised in the home of his maternal grandparents at a time when Norway was undergoing a social, political, and cultural awakening in which he was not destined to take part. While his grandfather, Pastor Jens Rynning, vehemently opposed emigration, his uncle, Ole Rynning, was a respected emigrant leader, whose True Account of America for the Information and Help of Peasant and Commoner did much to accelerate the early exodus of Norwegian peasants. Muus had his own path to follow. University trained in theology, he was distanced from the secular intellectual patriots of his day, but Shaw writes, "In his university life and in America [he] would acquire knowledge and sympathetic understanding of the pietistic, low-church brand of Lutheranism that is traced back to Hauge" (41), and this would endear him to the Norwegian settlers whose roots and aspirations were very different from his own. . Muus founded numerous congregations in southeastern Minnesota and traveled widely as a missionary pastor. In 1860, it was reported that Muus was caring for a district approximately two hundred miles in length with at least twenty-five to twenty-eight preaching stations or congregations. The energy and will required for the sustained activity that characterized Muus's ministry to his people is noteworthy. As he grew in stature, the same will and energy as well as

Another building important in Swedish-American history is St. Ansgar's Hall, located in East Union, Minnesota, about forty miles southwest of Minneapolis. This building began its life as the church of the Union congregation in 1855. It was originally a log structure about 30 by 36 feet. In 1863 it became the site for Eric Norelius's school when it was moved from Red Wing and was variously called "the school at Carver," "the Jackson School," and, from 1865 to 1875, St. Ansgar's Academy. In 1866 the East Union congregation built a new church, and the school building was partially dismantled, moved, reassembled, and enlarged to include an abbreviated second story. Three years later, more thorough modifications raised the second floor walls and added a 14-foot extension. At the same time the exterior was sided and the interior plastered. In 1876 the school moved to St. Peter to become Gustavus Adolphus College, and the building returned to the church. It became St. Ansgar's Hall and served a number of purposes for the congregation. (See Emeroy Johnson's A Church Is Planted, Minneapolis, 1948.) For the last several years the fate of this struc* ture has been in question. The East Union congrega•r* tion built a new complex for offices and activities, and the land (with the building) was sold. When I drove up to East Union in early June, I fully expected to find "probably the only pioneer building in the [Minnesota] Conference dating back to pre-Civil War times" (Johnson, 96) gone

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or a pile of rubble. But it was still there, clearly unused and unwanted. Sparrows had nested under the entrance roof. Painted peeled from the siding. The half-moon window in the top story was missing a pane. The blue and white sign over the door was faded and almost unreadable. What is the future for this piece of Swedish-American history? It is owned by a developer and stands in the way of a project. He doesn't return my phone calls. It may seem most logical for Gustavus Adolphus College to acquire it; but moving it to the campus, siting it, and restoring it would cost several hundred thousand dollars—and then to what use would it be put?

ral dynamics and cultural forces: A solitary V of wild geese flew north overhead, honking for the stragglers to catch up. I kept my neck tilted until they disappeared behind the trees, thinking how seldom I see them, but how often they flew across the pages of the local poetry anthologies of the 1930s. Geese, salmon, old-growth timber, indicators of ecosystems, traveling together on the road to silence while the media talks about growth, jobs, and a healthy economy. (42-43) The author relates that he came to his Oregon farm to "discover and accept the reality of the land." While he modestly states that after ten years he is just getting acquainted, it is clear that he has met and internalized a profound and essential realization:

>.

What I thought were mundane things like food, shelter, and daily routines actually belong to a sacred river that flows below us. When you start eating and drinking out of your own hands, you gradually discover that you are flowing through something much larger than yourself, and that something is holding you, carrying you as you hold it. (20)

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Every historical source is fragile. Nothing appears to be permanent or safe. Every day, valuable collections are lost, destroyed, or casually discarded. Preserving at least a sampling of the materials of the written record may be relatively uncomplicated—although always skewed by chance or politics or social status or gender or . . . Libraries and archives have been doing so for centuries. Preserving the smaller elements of material culture also seems manageable and the task of museums. Buildings are another matter, and these days 180

Pleasing woodcuts by M. J. Pfanschmidt complement the tenor of the text. This book would appeal especially to readers with interests in nature/ecology, voluntary simplicity, or viticulture. Knowledge of Swedish and first-hand experience of Sweden enhances appreciation of Nordstrom's narrative but is not necessary to its enjoyment. RITA ERICKSON INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR AND CONSULTANT

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Yet, Nordstrom is a grounded romantic; the monotony and physical demands of farm work are presented forthrightly. The reader is made aware of the grower's stress, as well, over the great vulnerability of grapes to powdery mildew and the highly specific weather conditions necessary for a successful harvest. He is also not sentimental about nature, but accepting of the reality of humans' current position on the food chain and the physicality of living close to the land. He and his wife find a dead goose decapitated. They decide to salvage it for eating and get straight to work processing the corpse. When they learn that a great horned owl killed the bird, Nordstrom's wonder and humility are reflected in his response:

more and more appear to be falling victim to more than the ravages of time or accident. Changes in urban and rural America threaten the survival of many. One can, as in the case of Dania Hall, try to preserve the historical integrity of a structure while adapting it to contemporary uses; or one can collect important structures in outdoor museums, in Skansens. Both options are expensive. However, the preservation of historical structures is as important as saving the written records. Words are only one aspect of history. The places in which they were spoken or written are just as vital to our understanding of the past.

Thinking about this big silent bird from the night, powerful enough to kill a fifteen-pound goose whenever it wants to, just to eat the bony head and neck while leaving several pounds of good meat behind, I suddenly sense another order of the universe, a wild force following a different design and purpose. It occurs to me that what we, from our human point of view, only see as random, wasteful, or chaotic, might in fact be some important pattern beyond our small knowing. (102) The author writes frankly about frustrations and defeats, from the earlier failure of life on a communal farm in Sweden to giving up after several years' attempt at growing that "finicky aristocrat," the pinot noir grape. Nordstrom also shows us wry humor (in, for example, his relating the permutations of his name by Americans) and sensuousness (in his delectable recounting of meals and wines, and even types of potatoes). Skillfully incorporated into his personal narrative are references to the native Molallas and to the region's homesteading by Europeans, largely Germans, in the mid-1800s. Contemporary problems are integrated in a gentle way that does not preach but prompts the reader to pause and consider. These issues include deforestation, garbage and recycling, the information superhighway, consumerism, and sustainability. The author ponders the dichotomy between natu240

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From Amerika to America: Alma Crosses the Border1 JOHN LARSON

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emnants of a Swedish and immigrant past survived in my grandparents' home during the 1920s and 1930s. I did not always recognize them as such, except, of course, when the family gathered for lutefisk suppers on Christmas and New Year's Eves. As a child, I ate this traditional dish. Wiener sausages were served to guests who preferred them. O n one or two memorable holidays grandfather Joel, in good spirits, began to sing the popular Swedish-American ballad "Nicolina," a comic song about unfulfilled love. He remembered it, I expect, from his bachelor years in Chicago. Grandmother Alma would always intervene to shut him up. I was left with no more than a tantalizing glimpse into the family's past— all the more reason to be curious about it. As a small child I was drawn to family stories about the past. I always enjoyed nostalgia, even when I was too small to have anything to be nostalgic about. Yet, curiously, when Joel and Alma talked about bygone days they seldom mentioned Sweden. Alma was born here of immigrant Swedish parents. If she heard stories about her parents' lives in the old country, she never passed them on. Joel, who had come to this country when he was barely eighteen, almost never talked about his childhood and youth back home in Sweden. An America-induced forgetfulness, a host of factors, some deliberate, others pure chance, must have gradually eroded my grand-

J O H N LARSON, a graduate ofHaverford College and the University of Minnesota, was a historian with the Defense Department before becoming a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His work includes numerous articles asweRas histories of the Twelfth Air Force, the Corps of Engineers' Chicago and Detroit Districts, and Great Lakes navigation. He lives in the historic Oscar Roos House (from 1853) in Taylors Falls, Minnesota.

But it is yearnings beyond geopolitical spaces and cultural traditions that this book addresses. Central to it are identity, connectedness to others and to the earth, a place where one feels truly at home, and a personally authentic way of living. Nordstrom evidences a deep awareness of his environment: its winds, geology, soil conditions, weather patterns (from his daily record), and the arrival and departure of various birds. He is humble toward other species, giving thanks and an apology before slaughtering geese or shooting deer (with bow and arrow). The poet is in evidence in descriptions, for example, watching a heron: "My eyes follow his slow flight like a prayer to an old spirit" (11). He fancies his vineyard a ship: I return to the vineyard in the evening, and as I walk through a few rows in the darkness I hear nets rub against the leaves in the light breeze. It is a dry, rustling sound, reminding me of how worn and leathery the leaves now are. . . . As I walk between the long nets they seem like sails, and I get the sensation that the whole vineyard is a ship flying through the night. Behind me, I am leaving a sky illuminated by the lights of Portland, sailing south toward the black silhouette of mountains. The ridge line is smooth past Goat Mountain, then turns into a series of bumps and crinkles, then a final elegant rise ending in Seosap Peak with its blinking tower beacon. . . . Then I let my eyes climb higher as the vineyard sails out among the stars. (116-17) He describes the "currency" generated by a Japanese persimmon tree: After the first heavy frost, the Japanese persimmon tree drops all its leaves in a perfect circle right below it, leaving a lace of black branches against the sky. The stiff, fat leaves have turned red with streaks of green and yellow, and the pile looks like money, like bills of some cheerful foreign currency. Yes, I am ready to exchange the dull dollars in my wallet for these leaves. I am ready to follow. (124) 239

Making It Home is a book by a complex man who has chosen to live simply, engaged in organic farming and viticulture with his family on an eight-acre parcel of land in Oregon. Lars Nordstrom describes farming as "a kind of lifelong listening to what the land is saying" (6), and here he shares with us much of what he has heard and learned. Nordstrom, a translator and a poet himself, has a superb facility and love of language. He skillfully travels between the personal and the cultural, the immediate and the transcendent. As its author says, Making It Home is an answer to the question of why Nordstrom settled in the United States. Into his vignette-rich account of daily life, this native Swede intertwines the autobiography of searching migrations between Sweden and America. Nordstrom writes of internal changes, returning to experience Sweden as "smug and paternalistic" (100), and aching in America "for what is no longer home." Oregon life brings reminiscences of his grandfather's woodshed, his grandmother's nettle soup, and Swedish farming practices.

parents' recollection of Sweden, or at the very least discouraged any desire to perpetuate these memories by passing them on to their children and grandchildren. I took my family for granted while I was growing up in Saint Paul during the 1920s and 1930s, and only later did I wonder how Alma managed to become so American. She didn't leave a journal in which I might pry into her secrets, but she did leave old documents, letters, memory albums, and her scrapbooks—dozens of them. When I look at the scrapbooks today, certain images strike me as being typically her. Just inside the front cover of Alma's earliest scrapbooks are different versions of the same patriotic theme, always a blond girl or young woman holding an American flag. In one such image, dating from the Spanish-American War, a smiling, round-faced girl clutches an American flag to her breast. In another, from 1918, the flag is being unfurled by a carefully groomed woman. She is about to hang it from the comer post of a broad white porch overlooking a long and well-kept lawn. Alma clearly saw herself in these patriotic women. Over holidays she never forgot to mount the flag at the comer of the front porch of the big white house at 83 East Jessamine Street in Saint Paul's North End. Next door in the little house where I lived with my parents, we didn't fly the flag. Grandmother was patriotic enough for all of us. Grandmother's patriotism did not stop with the flag. She was fond of presidents, any president. She began clipping articles about presidents with the inauguration of Grover Cleveland in 1893. But the death of Cleveland's successor, William McKinley, from an assassin's bullet in September 1901 set him apart and reminded Alma of another presidential martyr, Abraham Lincoln. When the hundredth anniversary of the Civil War president's birth was celebrated in 1909, Alma faithfully clipped all the Lincoln articles she could find and pasted them in her scrapbooks. As Lincoln's birthday returned year after year, she clipped and pasted again, throughout her life. Alma's patriotic passion was fed by the popular press, and her enthusiasm was not unusual for her day. Still, her being so at home in America is remarkable considering her beginnings as a child of Swedish immigrants. She made no effort to hide her Swedish-

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Midwest, patterns of emigration had taken hold. But New York, as Mauk makes clear in this study, was unique. The Norwegian-American Historical Association and David Mauk have produced a valuable portrait of an aspect of Norwegian immigration often neglected. For that they are to be commended. In addition, the book presents a wide array of interesting photographs and drawings providing pictorial insights into the colony. A useful appendix with immigration protocols, a list of interviewed subjects, and a discussion of the methodology complements a useful index. This book is strongly recommended to anyone who seeks to become informed of the dynamics of maritime emigration and the origin of the urban Norwegian population of New York. TERJE I. LEIREN UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Lars Nordstrom. Making It Home. Portland, Ore.: Prescott Street Press, 1998.

American origins, her birth next door to Saint Paul's Swede Hollow, or her confirmation in Saint Paul's Swedish First Evangelical Lutheran Church. She was faithful, too, to the memory of her immigrant parents, Martin and Hanna Johnson. O n 1 June 1880 Grandmother's parents, Hanna and Martin Johnson, were visited by Alice Williams, a federal census taker. Miss Williams noted that Martin was thirty-three years old and Hanna twenty-five, that they were both born in Sweden, and that they lived near Swede Hollow on Commercial Street along with their Minnesota-born, nine-month-old daughter, Alma, and a toddler, Walter John Lord, the son of Hanna's sister Else. Else had died six months earlier and the boy's father had disappeared, presumably by returning to Sweden. Walter was soon to be adopted by an American couple, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Stacy of Newport, and so disappeared from my grandmother's life until he reappeared, significantly, during Alma's teens. The census taker also noted that Martin worked as a day laborer. Except for a German grocer, William Gieseking, and his wife, Eliza, Martin and Hanna's neighbors were all born in Sweden. All their children were born in Minnesota. Like Hanna, the other wives stayed at home and kept house. Like Martin, most of the husbands and bachelor boarders worked as day laborers. Romanticized later into a cozy ethnic community, Swede Hollow and nearby Commercial Street were overcrowded and unsanitary, and living there reduced opportunities for contact with English-speaking Americans, contact essential for getting ahead. As Swedish families could afford it, they moved away from Swede Hollow and Commercial Street. Many resettled nearby, on Saint Paul's near East Side, and seldom very far from their Swedish Lutheran Church. In 1883, after Martin found permanent employment as a laborer with the St. Paul Harvester Works, he and Hanna moved away from other Swedish families into a neighborhood settled mostly by Yankees. The Harvester Works, located at Saint Paul's northeasterly city limits, was three miles from the city's center. There, not only harvestOpposite : St. Paid Harvester Works, from The Illustrated Historical Atlas of the

jump ship or emigrate than seamen from other Western countries" (9). Pay for Norwegian sailors was also the lowest offered by North Atlantic nations, further encouraging the tendency to abandon seamanship for a life on land. The Brooklyn colony began its growth in the wake of the American Civil War, toward the end of the first wave of Norwegian migration in the early 1870s. Some were traditional immigrants who remained in New York, but Mauk notes that the real early growth of Norwegian immigrants in Brooklyn and Manhattan was the result of "soaring desertion" from Norwegian merchant ships. By 1910, the Brooklyn colony was estimated to have reached a permanent population of 15,000, most of them coming from the south and southwest coast of Norway. As late as 1908 an observer noted that the West Agder dialect was so prominent that he believed the entire county must have emigrated (33-34). According to Mauk, sailors coming and going through this period produced numbers much higher than the permanent population of Norwegians in the New York area. In the decade and a half that ended in 1890, an estimated 40,000 Norwegian sailors spent shore leaves in New York. The harbor was a forest of Norwegian ship masts, and the Norwegian influence was not inconsequential. Overall, Mauk's study is an examination of the growth and development of the Brooklyn colony. Like the emigrants themselves, the urban landscape of New York was also changing dramatically in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Mauk presents this urban mosaic, and the cultural conflicts that occasionally resulted, with clarity and understanding. He presents compelling personal stories, such as those of Theodore Kartevold, a watchmaker; Gabriel Fedde, a grocer; and Carsten Hansteen, the Seaman's pastor, demonstrating the humanity and personalities behind otherwise dry statistics. Through the use of newspapers, memoirs, passenger manifests, census records, city directories, church records, and interviews, he succeeds in weaving a fascinating tapestry of immigrant life adjusting to the urban setting of America's largest city. From the 1880s on, most new members of the New York communities came directly from Norway and were not seamen. To a large extent, however, they had come from the same districts in Norway as the sailors themselves. Just as in the

State of Minnesota, A. T. Andreas, Chicago, III., 1874, p. 35. 184

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Book Reviews David C. Mauk. The Colony That Rose from the Sea: Norwegian Maritime Migration and Community in Brooklyn, 1850-1910. Northfield, Minn.: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1997. Pp. ix272. $44.95. Since 1925, the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA) has chronicled the history of Norwegians in America. To a great extent, this history has focused on rural stories in Midwest settings. Because the great majority of Norwegians came from rural circumstances and went to rural areas in the interior of the American continent, it is, perhaps, not a surprising bias. Although SwedishAmerican urban life has long been well documented, Norwegian urban immigrants have traditionally been largely ignored. Through the efforts of Odd Lovoll, however, the editor of NAHA since 1980, their urban stories have been told more frequently. Beginning with his own extensive history of Norwegians in Chicago and through several articles in Norwegian-American studies, Lovoll's editorial hand has been changing the overall picture of Norwegians in America. With The Colony That Rose from the Sea, a second major study in the history of Norwegians in American urban settings has been published. Beginning life as a doctoral dissertation, The Colony That Rose from the Sea tells the compelling story of Norwegian maritime migration that led to the establishment of the Red Hook colony in Brooklyn, New York, from 1850 to the eve of the First World War. David Mauk places the development of that colony into the context of international maritime trade, wherein sailors seeking better pay and working conditions often found themselves between sailings in a major port city, tempted by better pay ashore and a more diverse job market. According to Mauk, factors such as the rate of Norway's population growth, its relative poverty, and its lateness to industrialize "suggest that Norwegian sailors may have had better reason to

At

ers, but binders, mowers, reapers, hay rakes, and binding twine were manufactured, all products in heavy demand now that the railroads were opening vast western lands to homesteading farmers. When Martin started working at the Harvester plant, he joined others of the factory's two hundred or so workers who walked to the plant from their homes nearer the center of town. Although an Omaha Railroad commuter train took passengers from the Union Depot to the Harvester Works station for five cents, workers like Martin seldom took the train. It was used by the middle-class business and professional men, who by the 1880s were settling in Victorian homes to the east of the Harvester Works. While still a day laborer, Martin occasionally worked at a twothousand-acre farm not far from the Harvester Works station, owned by William Leonard Ames Jr. A Yankee, Ames was the descendant of a prominent Massachusetts family. Martin, as a hard-working, serious, and sober immigrant, had qualities the Yankee could admire. A n unlikely pair, the two men's paths crossed a number of times, with results significant to Martin's getting ahead. Ames may have helped Martin find employment with the Harvester Works. In any event, he played an important role in Martin's decision to move out closer to his work there. When Martin Johnson first met William Ames, the latter was about to turn the Ames farm into a real estate venture. He began with a relatively small development along Harvester Avenue (now Case), just west of its juncture with White Bear Avenue. He named the development Oak Park. When he began to promote Oak Park in the summer of 1882, improved transportation made it possible for more and more families to move to the suburbs. As the decade wore on, Ames competed with promoters of a number of "parks" being developed at the outer fringes of the city. Many of these suburban developments catered to families who were, at the very least, moderately well off. Ames had a different approach. While he made much of the business and professional men who had already settled in the area, he saw greater potential for selling Oak Park lots to the many thousands of working-class and largely immigrant families who were renting houses in cramped quarters close to the city center. To attract such 186

scribed by Martin in his speech "The Kansas Pioneer," at Garden City during the opening of the Southwestern Exposition, 12 October 1886, in Addresses, 202-5. 14. Lydia Johnson, however, the paternal grandmother of John A. Martin's wife, Ida Challiss Martin, was of Swedish stock. Rebecca Chaky and Ruth Martin, Ruth Martin Family Tree, 1995 (Friendswood, Texas, 1995), 25-26. 15. Martin, Addresses, 159. Colonel Heg fell at Chickamauga, Georgia, during the 19 to 23 September 1863 conflict. 16. Martin, Addresses. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 159-60. 20. Ibid., 160. 21. Martin, Addresses. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. William G. Doty, Letters in Primitive Christianity (Philadelphia, 1973), 57-9. 25. Martin, Addresses, 161. 26. Ibid., 161-62. 27. Ibid., 162. 28. Martin, Addresses. 29. Ibid., 40. 30. Ibid., 163. 31. Martin, Addresses. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid.; George Bancroft, History of the United States, ten volumes (18341874). 34. Martin, Addresses, 163. 35. Ibid., 164. 36. Martin, Addresses. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 165; James Russell Lowell, The Poetical Works of ]ames Russell Lowell (Boston and New York, 1890), 370-72. I am indebted to the reference librarians of California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California—Lynn Lampert, Deborah Moore, and especially Jeff Williams— for their help in identifying the source of this poem. 40. "Our Celebration." 41. The quotation is from the King James Version of Ruth 1:16-17; Addresses, 205. 42. Wilder, in Addresses, 5. 235

and, through it, to enable these immigrants to advance their metamorphosis into new beings: Swedish Americans. ENDNOTES 1. "Our Celebration," The Smoky Valley News, Lindsborg, Kansas, 9 July 1886. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. Dr. Carl Swensson was pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church, Lindsborg, Kansas, and founded Bethany College in 1881, serving later as its president from 1889 until his death in 1904. 4. Daniel W. Wilder, ed., Addresses: By John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas, for private circulation (Topeka, Kansas, 1888), 5. 5. Franklin D. Scott, Sweden: The Nation's History (Minneapolis, 1977), 335. 6. Ibid, 336. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 335. 9. See Robert L. Wright, Swedish Emigrant Ballads (Lincoln, 1965), for examples of the emigrants' complaints in song. 10. The reasons for emigration, of course, were many and included poverty, famine, landlessness, religious persecution, the wish to escape from family difficulties or criminal penalties, seeking one's fortunes, etc. Cf. Scott, Sweden, 366ff. 11. For the function of "sacred symbols" in American national society, see W. Lloyd Warner, The Family of God: A Symbolic Study of Christian Life in America (New Haven, 1961), chapters 1-2. 12. The experience of immigrants is rather similar to that of inductees into military life. Cf. William C. Menninger, "Things I Never Would Have Learned at Home," in A Psychiatrist for a Troubled World: Selected Papers of William C. Menninger, ed. Bernard H. Hall (New York, 1967), 557-60. 13. Governor Martin reflects upon this in his speech at a reunion of the Pennsylvania Society of Atchison County, Atchison, Kansas, 1 March 1878, "Pennsylvania and Kansas," in Addresses, 7-14; in his tabulation of the birthplaces during his speech at the reunion of the surviving members of the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention at Wyandotte, Kansas, 29 July 1882, "The Wyandotte Constitutional Convention," in Addresses, 21; and in his comparisons of the growth of Kansas with that of Pennsylvania and other states in his speech at the Quarter-Centennial Celebration of the Admission of Kansas to the Union, at Topeka, Kansas, 29 January 1886, in Addresses, 126ff. The loneliness and awe of the immensity of the Kansas plains exchanged for the familiar home is de-

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people, Ames told them that anyone who could afford to pay fifteen to twenty dollars a month for rent could afford to own a house in Oak Park. It was demoralizing, Ames told prospective buyers, for a man to live from year to year in a rented house. Such a man would always feel himself a mere sojourner, a pilgrim and a stranger. Martin's modest command of English probably prevented him from understanding all of the Yankee's loftier arguments for buying property in Oak Park. But Martin could understand basic economics. Ames maintained, and Martin confirmed, that lots were cheaper in Oak Park than in the other suburban areas. In Oak Park a man could buy a lot and build a modest home for the price of a naked lot in other areas. In fact, he could save enough money by purchasing property in Oak Park to be able to afford several lots, have a lawn in front of the house and a garden in back, keep a cow, and raise chickens—in short, have a real home. Then too, as the area grew, the value of his investment would increase. Buying a home in Oak Park was shrewder than putting money in the bank. Swedish neighbors would be few and far apart in Oak Park, but Martin and Hanna saw no problem in that. A t the eastern outskirts of the city they could finally realize Martin's dream of having a house and garden of his own, they would not live very far from families of older American stock, and little Alma would go to school and talk English with the neighborhood children. Martin was the first person to purchase Oak Park property. O n 30 September 1882 he met with Ames, paid $450 in cash, signed the necessary papers, and became the owner of lots one, two, and three in the Oak Park development. Martin now owned a sizable piece of land, and buying it had required considerable optimism. There were as yet no dwellings in Oak Park. It was all hills and woods, and Harvester Avenue, which formed the southern boundary of Martin's 150-by-450-foot plot, was no more than a dirt track. But to the north Martin's property bordered on the right-of-way of the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Omaha Railroad. This proved advantageous when, in 1903, the railroad widened its right-of-way and paid Martin $1,000 for the northern fifty feet of his property. By then Martin's lots were worth several times what he had paid for them some twenty years earlier. 187

Back in 1882, money was a problem for Martin. To build a house on his newly acquired property, he borrowed money from the East Seventh Street Building Society, money he managed to pay off by December 1894- Martin and Hanna were prompt in paying off their debts. Orderliness in such matters came as naturally to them as the careful management of the small amounts of money at their disposal. A little money on hand made all the difference in an age when the unemployed and destitute were left to survive as best they could or seek private charity. Martin built a simple but solid one-and-one-half-story frame house on a hill, from where he could look over the tops of nearby oak trees and across gradually sloping terrain to the city below. The house was a modest affair, nothing like the Victorian home Ames was building at the same time not far away at 1667 Stillwater Avenue. Martin and Hanna's house was heated with coal and wood-burning stoves and on winter evenings was lit with kerosene lamps. Water had to be fetched from the backyard well before dishes could be washed in the dry sink in Hanna's kitchen. But neither these inconveniences nor the rough comfort of the outdoor privy were viewed as hardships. Swedish families living closer in to town were no better off, and Oak Park was far from the smoke and steam of the busy city. The Johnsons had not yet moved into their new home when, in August 1883, Alma acquired a brother, Ernest, and two years later a little sister, Selma. Alma started going to the Harvester Works School (later the Deane School)—a one-room affair, but only a short walk from home at the corner of Brand Street and Tracy Avenue. Alma was fortunate in her teacher, Miss Mary E. Gray, a young woman whose parents and grandparents had been teachers before her. Miss Gray was a solid but mild-mannered and considerate teacher who made an unforgettable impression on several generations of children before she retired in 1917. From gentle Miss Gray, Alma learned about things unfamiliar to her Swedish parents. Alma learned, for example, how Americans viewed their past. For them America was not only Framtidshndet, the land of the future, as Swedish immigrants thought of it, but a country with a long history. America's past, Alma learned, was filled with noble people and ennobling events. At the very beginning of American history 188

flict and death but the civilizing arts of music, oratory, and, doubtless, the visual arts, all of which especially befit a vigorous folk in their adopted homeland. The editor of The Smoky VaRey News found Martin's speech "soul stirring" and printed it in its entirety, including the sixteen stanzas of the poem, in three columns of his paper.40 FROM IMMIGRANTS T O AMERICANS: THE NEW BEINGS

The means by which immigrants from all nations are fused into the American population, of course, vary. Governor John A. Martin's address is, doubtless, representative of speeches delivered at Independence Day celebrations throughout America every year since the founding of the nation. Elsewhere, for example, Martin remarks on a decision all immigrants must make. In a speech at the opening of the Southwestern Exposition at Garden City, Kansas, 12 October 1886, he cites the poignant words of the biblical Ruth to her mother-in-law, Naomi: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried."41 These words, finally, must be spoken by all immigrants who decide to leave their former homes and to remain in their land of choice. Martin's speech at Lindsborg was not only an "adornment" to the Fourth of July celebration in that town, but a part of a process, a "rite of initiation," with the task of bringing the immigrants not only into the rational understanding of citizenship, but into thorough, symbolic participation in the life of the nation. The words of the chief executive of the state, in which he identified himself with the immigrants, must have struck the members of the audience as extraordinary. They had been born in an oppressively rigid class society in which the rulers and nobility were unapproachable and lofty, and they had forsaken everything dear to come to a new country. The governor now addressed them as equals. His words, according to the newspaper accounts, so moved the audience that they were praised not only in Lindsborg but also in distant Sweden itself.42 The function of Governor John A. Martin's address was to rally these Swedish immigrants to patriotic and passionate allegiance to the United States 233

For Governor Martin, these modern-day Vikings of Lindsborg were harbingers of a new age in America, who cultivated not armed con-

were the Pilgrim fathers, who first settled in America in 1620. Of most recent and still powerful memory was the Civil War. Miss Gray's memories of American history and the Civil War were accompanied by a bittersweet note of nostalgia. Since Alma was born in America, these were her memories too, and she clung to them. Later in life, Alma's idea of bygone days never included the Sweden her parents had left. By some mysterious New World magic, Sweden had all but vanished, and the Pilgrim fathers became her ancestors. Alma embraced what, for lack of a better name, might be called "civic piety," a secular fidelity involving the nation's past, one open to all who were, or wished to become, Americans. Learning was exciting under Miss Gray's tutelage, and the atmosphere was such that the girls in particular developed sentimental friendships. Among Alma's girlhood friends at the Harvester Works School were Elsie Dunn and Stella Carling. Elsie was the daughter of Winslow Whitman Dunn, a prominent Saint Paul citizen and member of the state legislature. The Dunns lived in a fine big house at 1007 Handrau Street, not very far from Alma's home. Stella Carling also lived nearby. Her father, Henry Carling, was an artist remembered in Saint Paul for his portrait of James J. Hill, which used to hang in the First National Bank building and is still in the U.S. Bank's art collection. Carling also painted a portrait of William Ames. Today it hangs in the entrance hall of the Ames School. These and others of Alma's friends at the Harvester Works School came from well-established American families thoroughly engaged in the life of the city. It didn't appear to matter that Alma was only the daughter of a Swedish immigrant employed as a laborer in the nearby Harvester Works. The girls idealized their friendships, called one another "chums," and wrote sentimental verse in each other's memory albums. "Dear Alma," Stella Carling wrote in March of 1892. "When distant lands divide us, and you no more I see, Remember it is Stella, that often thinks of thee. Your Schoolmate . . ." In later years it was not distant lands but differences in background and opportunity that kept Stella and Alma apart. Both women spent most of their lives in Saint Paul. Stella became an active businesswoman and was secretary of the Saint Paul Committee on Industrial Relations and a charter member of the Saint Paul Business

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readily would reward their labors with ample space and spirit. The impact of the Scandinavians upon their new land will be enormous, predicts the prophetess. Their powers will bring not war, as in the Old World, but peaceful enterprises. Peering over the ruins of the former homeland, the "Sibyl" sees that not only will empires be built, but a mighty, unspoiled people will emerge. The stanzas describe the qualities of the earliest explorers and foretell of later ones who will be just as valiant, just as able, and just as gifted. But, the lines assert, in contrast to the former adventurers who returned shortly to their old homes, the later Vikings will remain to settle the land, and in so doing will become a new, pacific, almost divine kind of human being. Might makes no master Here any longer; Sword is not swayer; Here e'en the gods are Selfish no more. Walking the New Earth Lo, a divine One Greets all men godlike, Calls them the kindred, He, the Divine. Here, in America, "Justice and Mercy" will be secure without arms. The tired, war-torn Old World will be replaced by the New, which is as hope-filled as a dawn over the Kansas prairie: Weak was the Old World, Wearily war-fenced; Out of its ashes, Strong as the morning, Springeth the New.

and Professional Women's club. Alma followed her schoolmate's career from a distance and, of course, cut and pasted references to Stella as they appeared in the Saint Paul Daily News. Grandmother approved of women with active careers in public life. Women prominent in any field, wives of presidents, heads of the Daughters of the American Revolution, leaders of the various women's auxiliaries, even women who may have accomplished no more than being mothers and grandmothers but who lived to be a hundred years old, all were honored with space in Alma's scrapbooks. But when Stella Carling died, her obituary was not pasted into a scrap book. Alma placed it in the memory album from her school days alongside the fading lavender lines of Stella's 1892 entry. Alma's adult patriotism had its beginnings during the five or six years she spent with Miss Gray in the one-room Harvester Works School. Every morning Alma placed her right hand over her heart and, together with the other pupils, pledged allegiance to a flag presented to the school by the Daughters of the American Revolution. This daily ritual gave Alma a sense of belonging in America, something her parents never quite achieved. In its place, Alma's parents looked for stability in the familiar Swedish language of their church, in the unshakable tenets of the Bible, and in the teachings of Martin Luther. Saint Paul's original Swedish Lutheran Church, at the corner of John Street and Stillwater Avenue, had been built to accommodate a few dozen members. It was a frame building of only 28 by 50 feet. As membership grew, the church was enlarged. But in the late 1870s and early 1880s, as many thousands of Swedes came west either directly from Sweden or from eastern states, many of them passed through Saint Paul, and some stayed on. The congregation expanded so rapidly that often there was not enough room for everybody. "It's a joyful sign," Pastor A. P. Monten reported, "but we must have a larger church." Martin and Hanna were present when, on 1 January 1882, the congregation voted unanimously in favor of a new building. A lot had already been purchased next to the old church, which was eventually sold and removed. Work on the new church was completed in stages as funds became available. A loan of $8,000 from James J. Hill 190

sula" for America, and declares that a person's true homeland is that where all of its citizens possess the same rights and opportunities and are equal "before the throne of its Constitution and its laws."38 Since, therefore, his listeners share his belief that the United States is where these virtues are best enjoyed, and since they have taken this national festival to their hearts, Governor Martin reaches the emotional summit of his speech with the words "I greet you, therefore, not as Swedes, but as fellow-citizens." Second, Poetic Summation Sustaining this high sentiment at the conclusion of Governor Martin's speech is a poem quoted from one of the poets he had just mentioned, James Russell Lowell, entitled "The Voyage to Vinland."39 Selecting verses from the third part, "Gudrida's Prophecy," Martin employs it to make a poetic summary of his arguments, introducing it by the words "I gladly join with you in celebrating this Festival of Liberty. You and your kindred have witnessed the full fruition of the predictions which one of our great poets attributes to a prophetess of your race, who lived centuries ago." Martin begins in the long section, changing the original singular to the inclusive Men, following nineteenth-century conventions, to draw in all of his listeners: Men from the Northland, Men from the Southland, Haste empty-handed; No more than manhood Bring they, and hands. The poem functions something like a liturgical recitation of the journey of the immigrants coming to the new land and their assimilation into the new society: Dark hair and fair hair, Red blood and blue blood, There shall be mingled; The new, vast land itself was anticipating these Scandinavians and 231

evident" rights that the Declaration affirms, that there would be a two-way influence upon the world. Not only has it shaped other governments, but it has attracted to America "the most energetic, daring and aspiring spirits of all civilized nations."34 Martin names the social order and protections of liberties that have appealed to immigrants and validates the choice made by the members of his audience, remarking that "if it was great to be a Roman citizen centuries ago, it is glorious, to-day, to be a citizen of the United States."35 American Heroes In addition to the flag, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, Governor Martin seeks to draw the new immigrants into the history of the United States by identifying other sources of inspiration. He says that he does not regret that this nation has no "venerable antiquity," for its short record has yielded a distinguished list of "immortal names."36 Earlier in the speech, Martin cited an example of a Scandinavian-American hero with whom he identified. In turn, Martin provides models for his audience to emulate. What other nation old or new, asks Martin, has provided "jurists such as Jay and Marshall; or statesmen equaling Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Seward, and Blane; or orators rivaling Patrick Henry, Webster, Clay, Douglas, Morton, and Summer; or soldiers equaling Washington, Jackson, Grant, Sherman, and Thomas; or philosophers such as Benjamin Franklin; or poets of nobler fame than Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, and Whittier; or financiers greater than Morris, Gallatin, Chase, and Sherman; or historians such as Bancroft, Prescott, and Motley"? Finally, Martin cites as the most worthy exemplar for these immigrants one "who was at once statesman, orator, philosopher, hero, patriot and wise ruler—Abraham Lincoln."37 First Summation At the end of this crescendo of names, Governor Martin begins his final statements by announcing that all who are citizens of the United States are rightful partakers of the benefits of the Declaration, the Constitution, the "protection of the flag," and the "fame and glory" of those heroes just recalled. Once more he commends his audience on their "wise exchange" of the "bleak Scandinavian Penin230

• .•

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Alma's confirmation certificate, 1894; author's collection.

abusing and outraging the liberty they are permitted for the first time in their lives to enjoy, at once array themselves as enemies of all law and all government." He states that "the red flag they unfurl is the flag of the robber and the murderer. Their cry for liberty is the cry of the wolf in the forest seeking for his prey."28 Governor Martin notes the public outcry against this group of people and his lack of comprehension of those who ignore the recent war in which "more than two million men rallied around their country's flag, and cheerfully offered their lives that the Republic might be preserved." He then returns to an acclamation of the flag: "It is a glorious banner—the brave old flag of the stars and stripes," and names the battlefields of Yorktown and Gettysburg and others, in one of which the speaker himself fought, Chicamauga [sic].29 Calling upon the recent memories of his audience, he jubilantly asserts that, in opposition to the ruling houses of Europe, in America "every man who lives where it floats is a freeman and a sovereign." This flag "is the banner of the Nation that opened this rich and beautiful land as a free gift to all—native and foreign-born alike," and, says Martin, anyone who wanted to replace it with an anarchist emblem "ought to enjoy, for an indefinite period, the liberty of the penitentiary." Martin remarks that he is happy to say that the Swedish immigrants have never shown sympathy for those who wish to reinstate tyranny.30

made it possible in May of 1882 to let a general construction contract amounting to $17,000, a large sum in those days. The new church was also large, an 85-by-90-foot building, with an enormous auditorium-like sanctuary and a spacious U-shaped balcony. Alma was four years old when her parents brought her along to the first services in the new building, held in the church basement on 4 November 1883. When the upstairs sanctuary was completed, the basement was used for the children's Sunday school. Alma began attending Sunday school in 1886, when some two hundred children gathered in the church basement each Sunday afternoon at 2:30. Among themselves many of the children spoke English, but Swedish was the language of instruction. The children sang Swedish hymns together and then separated into classes according to their ages for Bible lessons, stories, and instruction in the Lutheran catechism, all in Swedish. Each year the Sunday school sponsored special programs at Christmas and Easter as well as an annual outing. For the outings, trains of up to ten or eleven cars were chartered and the entire congregation turned out to visit places like Bald Eagle Lake, Chisago Lake, or Lake Minnetonka. Later, annual steam boat excursions on the Mississippi River were popular, as were picnics at Phalen or Como Parks. Already in her childhood, Grandmother acquired an easy familiarity with Saint Paul and its surroundings. At Sunday school Alma had plenty of opportunity to socialize with children of the Swedish community. But Sunday school met only once a week and .lacked the intimate atmosphere of Alma's little one-room Harvester Works School. There she came together each weekday with neighborhood friends. If she had special friendships at the Swedish Sunday school, there is no record of them. None appear in her memory album. Hanna and Martin agreed that Alma should grow up in the faith and be fluent in Swedish. Still, Hanna was pleased that her daughter was becoming an American. Hanna had been no more than sixteen when she arrived in Saint Paul from Sweden in 1871. From then on until her marriage in 1878, she had worked as a domestic servant in American homes. Bright and quick to learn English, she felt comfortable with Americans and their ways. After Alma was born, Hanna

The Declaration of Independence There is a third object worthy of the devotion of the Swedish immigrants: the Declaration of Independence. Rising out of "long centuries of barbarism, ignorance and oppression," says Martin, the countries of England, France, Germany, and Sweden at last compelled "Kingcraft" to give way to constitutional government. The experience of this struggle was then carried across the oceans to the new world and resulted in a government which is the "perfection of human wisdom."31 For the love of liberty, the earlier pioneers had "braved the isolation and dangers of an unknown land in order to enjoy it."32 Citing the American historian George Bancroft,33 Martin states that the heart of the author Thomas Jefferson, when writing the document, "beat for all humanity." It is not surprising, the governor notes, based upon the "self-

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To these credentials the governor contrasts the record of other immigrants. For them Martin expresses contempt.27 "There are some foreigners whose coming to America is a public disaster. These are the men who, degraded and embittered by the oppression of despotic governments, confound liberty with license and lawlessness, and can see no difference between the President of the United States and the Czar of Russia." The governor is sharp in his criticism of these people: "The tolerance of our laws, the liberality of our system of government, allows such freedom of speech and of action that these men,

spoke English with her daughter. But it would have seemed unnatural for her to speak English with her Swedish husband. Alma also spoke Swedish with her father and grew up bilingual. As a child, Alma successfully coped with two languages, in two worlds and with dual loyalties. At home and in school her mother's hopes and Miss Gray's teaching urged her towards English, gentility, and Americanization. On the other hand, her parents' church in Lowertown put her in touch with the robust life and language of Saint Paul's Swedish immigrant population. To outsiders this was the Swedish "community"; seen from within it was, in many ways, a divided one. When recently immigrated Swedish men and women settled in Saint Paul, each gender was exposed to radically different aspects of its urban life. Like Martin, most Swedish men labored at the very bottom of the city's social hierarchy and had relatively little contact with Americans. In contrast, as domestic servants, young immigrant Swedish women, like Hanna, were readily introduced into the very heart of the American home and had a better chance than Swedish men to experience the pulse and rhythm of its intimate life. Among the thousands of Swedes who came to Saint Paul in the 1870s and 1880s were a good many young and unmarried newcomers. Free finally of fathers and Old Country restraints, many young Swedish bachelors spent their first American years in one long celebration. When they were not working, they were drinking, gambling, and idling in gangs on the downtown streets. To the more settled members of the Swedish community, those who had already joined the Swedish church, these young men led vulgar and immoral lives. Meanwhile, Swedish girls and women who readily found work and a place to live in American homes tended to become more refined. They celebrated their America-found freedom by mimicking their mistresses, rivaling them in their choice of hats and gowns, and becoming late-Victorian ladies. Nevertheless, Swedish servant girls readily joined the Swedish Lutheran Church, as did many of the young married couples. Many Swedes who did not join the church nevertheless turned to its pastor when they wanted to marry, baptize a child, or bury a loved one.

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contributors to the whole human race, Martin cites Gustavus Adolphus as a ruler, Charles XII as a soldier, Axel Oxenstierna as a statesman, Thorwaldsen (Bertil Thorvaldsen) for art, and (Esaias) Tegner, Fredrika Bremer, (Emilie Flygare-)Carlen, and Bjornson (Bjomstjerne Bjornson) as authors. Jenny Lind and Christine Neillson (Nilsson) are added as singers. He recalls his admiration at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 for the woodcarving and paintings he saw. He makes this tribute: "The fair-haired people of the Scandinavian Peninsula have indeed stamped their impress upon the history, the literature, the arts, the industries, and the laws and government of the whole civilized world, and always the influence exerted by their teaching and example has been wholesome and beneficent."25 Once again, the governor takes up the subject of the presence of Swedes in America in another list. He cites the census of 1880, saying that there are 440,262 Scandinavians in the United States, of which 194,337 are Swedes. There are 11,207 Swedes in Kansas, and McPherson County has the largest number, 2,117. Saline county has 1,636 living within its borders, and Riley, Osage, Republic, and Clay each has over 500. Again, he proclaims them thoroughly American. "They do not want to go back to the bleak, snow-clad hills and vast forests of their native land, nor do they bring with them to this country that distrust of rulers and of law which arrays them against our government as if it was a natural enemy." They are not yet prominent in that government, being preoccupied with building homes, farms, industries, schools, and churches. But, while not actively participating in politics, they still take up the responsibilities of their fresh citizenship: "They study to discharge these, not as aliens, but in the true spirit of American individuality and patriotism."26

is your flag as it is my flag—mine by birth, yours by adoption." The first person plural can now be used. We all have the right "to celebrate the anniversary of our National Independence."21

Nothing was seen to be wrong in this. However, among the outsiders who showed up at the First Swedish Lutheran Church were young men who came to make mischief or, one suspects, only to meet the young women. In either case, such visitors were frequently drunk enough to cause rowdy disturbances. Toward the end of the 1880s the problem grew worse, and the pastor, P. J. Sward, complained in his annual report for 1889 of "unchristian" visitors who molested the worshipers and were "lewd, rough and perverted." "Utterly pitiful," the pastor wrote, "that Swedes can behave so badly." Pastor Sward was sometimes obliged to call in the police to subdue fellow countrymen before he could complete Sunday evening vespers. Of course, calling in the police under such circumstances was a blow to Swedish pride. The Board of Church Deacons preferred to handle these matters on their own and established an inhouse police force. Great-grandfather Martin served as one of several church members who were deputized as Special Police. Their job was to assure that church services were carried out in an appropriately dignified atmosphere. Trouble-makers were evicted. For his services as special policeman Martin was paid $25 a year! In 1889, a year in which these disturbances were particularly bothersome, Alma was ten, old enough to draw conclusions concerning the rough nature of young Swedes when compared with the quieter Yankee youth in her Oak Park neighborhood. As a child I was fascinated with a six-pointed metal star, much like a motion picture sheriff's badge but inscribed "Special Police," that Grandmother kept in her curio cabinet. Grandmother was evasive when asked about the badge's significance. She kept it, I suppose, because she was sentimental. It meant something to her, but she saw no need, apparently, to make the rougher aspects of Swedish America part of the family tradition. My father never learned the significance of the badge. I discovered its meaning for myself in old church records. Overall, what happened in Alma's Swedish church in Lowertown was of less importance to her than what was happening in her East Side neighborhood. Developments there in the late 1880s radically altered the life of the Johnson family. In 1887 William Ames initiated

The United States Constitution Governor Martin reminds the audience that these rights, guaranteed by the United States Constitution, are precisely those for which they departed their ancestral home. "The impulse which led you to leave the land of your birth and establish homes in the new world, was that love of Freedom and faith in Humanity which is the soul of the great Declaration." The sacrifice of blood in the war between the states, and their choice in adopting this country, has made them, too, "heirs to the common heritage of American citizenship—individual liberty and security, a fair chance to work and win, the sovereignty of electors, and the protection of just laws."22 At this point, the governor returns from his patriotic recitation to a theme briefly cited earlier. In this he acknowledges the dilemma of all immigrants. Devotion to the new country does not quell the heart's attachment to old family, friends, and lands. The immigrant must find a balance, making peace with the abandonment of the past and the cementing of new allegiances in the adopted country. Martin confirms the ancestral pride of his audience. "I do not depreciate your native land. I know something of its history and its resources," he says, and then describes the area, population, and poor farms of Sweden. "But amid its rocks and snows a singularly hardy and energetic people have lived and worked since the dawn of civilization," he says. This land, indeed, has made globe-wide contributions: "From the bleak and barren hills of this Peninsula came the earliest forms of constitutional government. There, too, is found not only the oldest aristocracy of Europe, but the sturdiest, most prosperous and well-educated people." Despite living in a kingdom of the Old World, with all its oppressive propensities, "not one in a thousand is unable to read and write, and the common people are the owners of nearly the whole of the landed property in the Kingdom."23 Governor Martin endorses the origins of his audience by employing a rhetorical tool developed by ancient Hellenistic orators: organizing catalogues of witnesses or facts to support his assertions.24 As

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The American Flag Turning from specific Scandinavian contributions, Governor Martin begins to draw the audience into symbolic participation in the mainstream of American history. The American flag is to be an object upon which the Scandinavians may focus their devotion. Says Martin: "One hundred and seven years ago, after the Americans had carried the British works at Stony Point, the commanding General, Anthony Wayne, sent to Washington a letter which read: 'Dear General: The American flag waves here.' That was all. But it told all."19 The American banner is the emblem of "peace, order, education, progress, and freedom."20 It is dear to sixty million people because "it is the flag of a Republic where each man is the equal of every other man, in rights and privileges as well as in duties and responsibilities." Grounded upon this assertion, Martin calls for his audience to join a collective affirmation, along with their other countrymen, because "it

an ambitious real estate promotion effort that dwarfed his earlier Oak Park project. After 1887 Oak Park was absorbed into this new community, one he called Hazel Park. To sell lots in Hazel Park, Ames continued to appeal to what he thought to be the more responsible members of the working class. At the same time, he was obsessed with the notion that Hazel Park should have a special tone, something to set it apart, and, in the best Yankee tradition, he concluded it should be a school. Traditionally, Yankees believed that illiteracy and lack of learning played into the hands of the devil. Wherever they founded communities in the West, they established New England versions of the public school. But Ames was not thinking of the usual white clapboard school building with a bell tower. What he wanted for Hazel Park was a majestic building that would stand out as a landmark and serve as an emblem for his new community. Ames got the project rolling by donating a suitable parcel of land to the city, an elevated site at 1750 Stillwater Avenue (now Ames Place), a site high enough so that the completed school would tower over the modern cottages, the tree-lined boulevards, and the grassy slopes that he envisioned for Hazel Park. Ames probably had a hand in selecting the school's architect, J. Walter Stevens. Stevens had provided the design for the Peoples Church being built just then, in 1889, on Pleasant Avenue, below James J. Hill's Summit Avenue home. Ames was well acquainted with the founder of the Peoples Church, Rev. Samuel G. Smith, a dynamic personality who had split off from the Methodist church a few years earlier to establish a church of his own on the Congregational model. Smith and Ames were both promoters, and in the 1890s they would work together to establish a Peoples Church in Hazel Park. The building is gone, but, as completed in 1889, it looked more like a large club house than an ecclesiastical structure. The Hazel Park school was also a break with tradition. Stevens gave it many features of the Peoples Church, including a red brick facade punctuated with rough-hewn brownstone, a steep roof with dormers, and deep-set arched windows. The school looked rather like a compact version of some European castle.

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holds up Col. Heg as an example of one who was born in Scandinavia and served in the Eighth Kansas Volunteers for nearly three years in the Civil War, but fell during the Battle of Chicamauga [sic]. Martin had "the honor to have commanded, tented, marched and fought by the side of a regiment of Scandinavians," and he succeeded Heg as commander of the brigade upon Heg's death.15 Drawing from this association, he pays a compliment: "I speak from personal knowledge, therefore, when I say that the Scandinavian people who have immigrated to this country, and sworn allegiance to its Constitution and its laws, are thorough Americans." Martin draws further conclusions from the military service of the Scandinavians: "I have seen their loyalty and devotion tested in the fiery furnace of battle, and by the most arduous and trying campaigns."16 He recalls the Scandinavians serving in the Fifteenth Wisconsin with "reverent gratitude."17 Having described the contributions of Scandinavian immigrants some twenty-five years before, Governor Martin cites more recent contributions. He names the prosperity of those regions they have cultivated, cites their industry and thrift, and says that they have "done their full share in making this a great, prosperous, law-respecting commonwealth."18 The census as well as the agricultural reports attest to this, according to Martin.

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rr Ames School, 1892; author's collection.

The castle impression arose not only out of the school's overall design, but especially from the two heavy octagonal towers that formed the right and left wings of the building. In later years former pupils had trouble describing how the school looked from the outside. Perhaps its overall design was difficult for a child to comprehend. One alumnus thought the school had been round. Actually, it was the classrooms that were round. There were only four of them, one up and one down in each of the octagonal towers. Because there were only four classrooms, later generations assumed that the first Hazel Park school had been small. Actually, the school's steep roof rose sixty-seven feet to its highest point—sufficient, as Ames hoped, to dominate the residential area growing up around it. Alma and many of her chums were among the first pupils of the Hazel Park school. Martin became the school's first janitor. Very likely, William Ames, the Yankee who had already played such an important role in Martin's life, recommended Martin. William Ames had influence in such matters. The new Hazel Park school was named after his ancestor, the Massachusetts-born Fisher Ames—statesman, orator, political writer, and contemporary of George Washington. Martin Johnson had every reason to be satisfied. As school jani196

varies throughout, from lengthy catalogues to emotional appeals. Statistics and poetry coexist. The structure of the speech is uncomplicated, with brief departures to embellish its contours. Martin first draws his audience to himself in the opening, then offers arguments for the realignment of their allegiance to the nation by citing objects worthy of their respect and devotion. These items have meaning beyond their physical reality. They call forth ideas, historical persons, or events, but in a condensed form, to which Martin affixes specific but evocative meanings. In so doing, the speaker redefines the experience of the immigrants, moving them from their individual, culture-bound memories of the past into a new, American collective consciousness. While acknowledging the autonomy of his hearers and the necessity for each person to make, individually, a symbolic transformation, Martin, in effect, invites and encourages them to reorient their values and affections to become part of a new belief system, a new moral order.11 At the end of the speech, Martin gathers these items into a rousing conclusion fortified by a poem. The experiences of Governor John A. Martin, himself an immigrant in 1859 from the state of Pennsylvania to the strife-torn wilderness of the Kansas Territory, lay just behind his words. In other speeches he had reflected upon the feelings of leaving behind the family, friends, and customs that had sustained him from infancy, and being physically and mentally challenged by the abrupt alterations demanded in the new life.12 He had also spoken of being torn between reverence for his birthplace and his embrace of the new land.13 This address is not autobiographical, however. Instead, the governor concentrates wholly upon the audience. The governor's speech, as printed, was about twenty-five minutes in length. "THE SWEDES IN KANSAS: A N ADDRESS BY GOVERNOR JOHN A. MARTIN"

A Scandinavian-American Hero The speaker was not Scandinavian, but of Scotch-Irish and German extraction.14 But in the opening Martin immediately identifies himself with a Swedish-American hero of the Civil War, one with whom the governor had served, Col. Hans C. Heg. Governor Martin 225

Governor Martin's address is an artifact of this period during which some of the Scandinavian immigrants made their transformation into Americans. As such, it reveals much about the role of these patriotic ceremonies within this process. The governor's address was designed, perhaps not all that consciously, for this end. The style

tor, an employee of the city, Martin had at last achieved a measure of security, even a kind of status, in the New World. He held the position for twenty-seven years, until his death in 1916. As janitor, he was called Mr. Johnson by the educated young American women who taught at the school, and by the pupils too. They, however, talked about him, not without affection, as "Yonny Yonson," the Swedish janitor. Among my grandmother Alma's papers I found a sepia-tinted photograph of the Ames School from the spring of 1892. The school stands solid and emblematic, towering over a collection of tiny, specter-like figures in the foreground. I used a magnifying glass and discovered a teacher, in a long skirt and shirtwaist with puffed sleeves, standing in the sunlight in front of the school's pillared portico. I examined the small figures wandering about in the schoolyard, girls and boys clutching books and wearing what appear to be variouslyshaped straw hats. A tall schoolgirl stands in the foreground at the far right, my grandmother. Graduating that day from the eighth grade, she dressed in a fine white frock. It seems too large for her and may have been her mother's. Far behind, alone and close to the building, a man wears a dark hat and a rough jacket. His unpressed trousers and something uncertain in his posture set him apart as a worker. It's the janitor, I realize, my Swedish great-grandfather, who has at last found his niche in America. The opening of the Fisher Ames School, Martin's janitor work there, and Alma's and later Ernest's and Selma's attendance there as pupils gave the family a new sense of security, even well-being. The school's midday break was a full hour and one half, time enough for Martin and the children to walk home for lunch. Together, each day, around the kitchen table with father always at the head, Hanna opposite him, and the children all at their customary places at either side, the family felt right and whole as never before. It was an experience the children would remember in later life, partly because it ended so quickly. Hanna was not well for her elder daughter's twelfth birthday. Alma celebrated it at home with a few friends from school. Hanna gave her daughter a memory album with a blue plush binding. In it

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voiceless, subjected to the restrictions of high property requirements in order to vote, a "posting" law which required peasants to furnish horses for travelers' carriages a number of days a year, heavy taxes, and oppressive laws.9 In addition, an odious compulsory military service was imposed upon the male subjects.10 These immigrants were now marking their transformation from subjects to citizens during the festivities of the Fourth of July. They had already acquired civic freedoms with certain privileges and immunities guaranteed under the Constitution that were unattainable in the old country. However, this was only the first step in becoming an "American." The second step was to become an American emotionally. This was the function of the holiday. It was such political celebrations, during which displays of patriotism were encouraged, that became the means whereby new citizens were "brought into the fold" of the national culture. Isolated as many of the immigrant communities were on the mid-continent's prairie, the affairs of the nation, or even those of the state's capital some one hundred fifty miles away in Topeka, were remote. Of course, newspapers, the telegraph, and railroads brought a modicum of news, and the mails ensured that ties with other parts of the country and the family in distant Sweden were not entirely broken. But the observance of patriotic holidays, such as Independence Day, was as much the cement that bound the immigrants to the nation as it was a family and community gathering. What it was to be an American was not so much explained as experienced at these festivals. It was part of the process by which the tension with the past was mitigated, a national consensus was achieved, and these Swedes in America now identified themselves completely with the commonwealth.' THE PURPOSE OF THE GOVERNOR'S ADDRESS

Hanna wrote in English, "Aug. 25. 1891. Dear Alma. Happy may thy birthday Be, And a Blessing from me to thee." She closed on a curiously formal note, "Your True Mother, Mrs. Hanna Johnson." Five weeks later, on 2 October, Hanna died of tuberculosis. Hanna was buried at Union Cemetery on a bright October day with the nearby woods in full autumn color. Already, as the little family gathered around the graveside, Alma must have sensed the weight of new responsibilities. Who but she could fill her mother's place at home? Now she would fix the family's midday meal, cook all their other meals, clean the house, wash the clothes, purchase the food, see that Ernest and Selma were looked after, and assist her father in matters requiring a better command of English than he could manage.

followed by Rev. Carl A. Swensson, who addressed the assemblage first in English, then in Swedish. Music, more speeches, and then evening fireworks concluded the day.3 The celebration of this small farming and college community in America's heartland was, no doubt, representative of contemporary rites in towns across the United States. What was not typical was that this community consisted almost entirely of immigrants, many of whom had taken up residence in the New World only recently. Governor Martin's address apparently satisfied the requirements of the day well. It was not only applauded at the event itself, but, according to the historian Daniel W. Wilder, was widely published in Swedish papers in this country and in Scandinavia. Wilder remarks that possibly no other Kansas speech enjoyed that distinction.4 TRANSFORMING ROYAL "SUBJECTS" INTO AMERICANS

When Alma graduated from the Fisher Ames School, her formal education in English was over. However, her father wanted her to be confirmed, a traditional rite of passage in the Swedish church, and she continued taking religious instruction in Swedish until, at nearly fifteen, she was confirmed in May of 1894. A studio photo of Alma in half-profile, wearing the high, broad, silk-beribboned lace collar of a Swedish Lutheran girl at confirmation, conveys a look of remarkable self-confidence in one so young. Proud, certainly, and indepen-

The address during the Lindsborg festival by Governor Martin, by today's standards, was neither dramatic nor thoroughly engaging. The inclusion of statistics from the census, county by county, and the catalogues of institutions and names of statesmen, financiers, and soldiers would not be found appealing now. Yet, in an age before radios or television, even these words were captivating. The fact that the chief executive of the state was honoring this community by his presence, and was acknowledging and commending the accomplishments of this newly arrived people, ensured an enthusiastic response. This receptivity was also guaranteed by the conditions most of the audience had left behind in Sweden. The speech celebrated an American national holiday, but for them it signified their transformation from "subjects" to "citizens." As subjects, they had been in service to monarchs and nobility in ways that had become increasingly burdensome during the nineteenth century. By mid-century there were some twelve thousand nobles, many living in large manors surrounded by their fields.5 Just below them were the clergy, which amounted to about half a percent of the population,6 and then the burgher estate, some two percent.7 It was a clearly stratified society of "prestige and authority looking down and of deference looking up."8 Most of the people of the lower classes were politically

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c

The Johnson family, 1898; from left: Martin, Alma, a photograph of Hanna, Selma, and Ernest; author's collection.

Transforming Swedish Immigrants into Swedish Americans: The Function of a Speech by Governor John A. Martin, Lindsborg, Kansas, 5 July 1886 ERNST F.TONSING

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n 5 July 1886 the citizens of Lindsborg, Kansas, were awakened with the ringing sound of iron anvils struck with repeated blows. As the sun rose, flags were raised on rooftops and in windows and draped across the street. By 8:00 A.M. the streets were crowded with townspeople and others who had come from distant farms and towns. The Lindsborg Cavalry paraded in line out to meet the Sharps Creek Cavalry, which had traveled fourteen miles to the celebration. With these new forces met, the whole proceeded to the railroad depot to meet the governor, John A. Martin.1 The governor was to have been with the townspeople to celebrate on the Fourth of July, but the train was delayed and the festivities were postponed a day. But twenty-four hours did little to dampen the jubilation. The governor was led in procession to the park to begin the event, which started with the reading of the Declaration of Independence by Bethany College Professor Nelander. This was followed by a speech by Mr. Garver of Salina, Kansas, after which a picnic was served.2 Reassembling at 2:00 in the afternoon at the speakers' stand, the "honored and much loved Governor" delivered his oration. He was ERNEST F. TONS1NG is professor of New Testament and Greek at California Lutheran University. His research and publications range from Alexander the Great to rune stones, Viking ships, Swedish folk art, and Swedish America. He has been active in the American Scandinavian Foundation in Thousand Oaks (California), the SwedishAmerican Historical Association of California, and CLU's Scandinavia Festival.

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Alma; author's collection.

dent too, to me her features bear promise of a maturing will not easily dissuaded from whatever she might set out to do. Alma's confirmation photo dispels any temptation to think of her as a lost, bewildered working-class child from a C h a r l e s Dickens n o v e l . Alma was none of those things. Alma did not think of herself as a victim. She identified rather with her middle-class Yankee schoolmates. Still, the four years between Alma's confirmation in 1894 and 1898 when she unaccountably left to live in Chicago do resemble a Dickensian novel in one important aspect. They contain,

I'm convinced, hidden secrets. There are, for example, three pages in Alma's memory album that have been removed with a sharp instrument. What was it, I've asked myself, that a girl would have wanted to hide? Was there some great disappointment that she wished to forget, an unhappy love affair perhaps, one that she preferred to keep secret? What is clear is that Alma did not work in other people's homes as her mother had done when she first arrived in Saint Paul from Sweden. Instead, in the years following her mother's death she kept house for her father and looked after her younger brother and sister. Alma became an efficient housekeeper. She rose early, made Martin's and the children's breakfast, and always completed the household chores before noon. Real ladies, she knew from her Yankee friends, never did chores in the afternoon. Afternoons were for receiving guests, perhaps for working outside in the flower garden, going into the city on errands, or joining with friends for an outing. Alma learned how to get around the city while still very young. 199

At twelve she already went into town to do errands for her father, to pay real estate taxes or insurance premiums, to shop, to carry out all the numerous errands connected with running a household. To get downtown, Alma took the electric trolley on Seventh Street, the Saint Paul-White Bear line, which ran every half hour. Once in the loop, she could transfer to other lines running to all parts of the city. Family life ran smoothly under Alma's direction, but there were unforeseen problems. In the summer of 1894, not long after her confirmation, Alma came down with typhoid fever. Each summer of the 1890s saw a number of cases of this dreaded illness in Saint Paul. I never heard grandmother speak of the disease, but an envelope I found among her things contained a lock of fine golden hair and bore the inscription "My hair before I had typhoid fever." Presumably the fever changed the color or texture of her hair. I can't say. As I remember her, Grandmother's hair was always gray. Alma would have recovered slowly from typhoid fever, and during a long convalescence at home, as late summer turned to fall, would have had time to reminisce and to think about her future. It was then, I believe, that she first puzzled over her position between two worlds, the ethnic world of her Swedish church in Lowertown and the Yankee world of Hazel Park. As a child, she felt no conflict between them, but now, as a teenager in the mid-1890s, she may have found them incompatible. What one knows for sure is that when she was well enough to begin to move about, Alma neglected her Swedish church and concentrated on her Hazel Park friends and interests. Among Alma's neighborhood interests was the mission of the Peoples Church established in Hazel Park in 1894 by Dr. Samuel Smith. Among those supporting the new church were William Ames and W W Dunn, and both became members of its board of trustees. Ames, of course, was no stranger to the Johnson family, and Dunn was the father of Alma's school friend Elsie. Miss Mary Coffin, the same pretty Miss Coffin who was Alma's teacher and friend from the Ames School, was appointed assistant Sunday school superintendent. Martin Johnson, Alma's father, became church janitor at a salary of $2.50 a month. Alma followed the ups and downs of the Peoples Church in

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9. Lebanon Lutheran Church History, 49; C. S. Bryant and A. B. Murch, A History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians in Minnesota (Cincinnati, 1864), 401-3. 10. Ibid., 50-52. 11. Ibid., 54-55; M. P. Satterlee, A Detailed Account of the Massacre by the Dakota Indians of Minnesota in 1862 (Minneapolis, 1923), 5. 12. Lebanon Lutheran Church History, 46. 13. Ibid., 66. 14. Johnson, 34. 15. C. C. Nelson, excerpts from an eyewitness account of the Dakota Conflict as it appeared in the Lafayette Ledger, Lafayette, Minnesota. Date unknown. Copy number on file at the Nicollet County Historical Society Archive. 16. C. C. Nelson, Minnesota in the Civil War and Indian Wars, vol. 1 (St. Paul, 1891), 807-8. 17. Johnson, 44-45. 18. Ibid., 47-49. 19. Louis A. Fritshe, History of Brown County, Minnesota (Indianapolis, 1916), 232. 20. W. E. Webb and J. I. Swedberg, Redwood. The Story of a County (Redwood Falls, 1916), 83-86. 21. Bryant and Murch, 335-42. 22. Fritshe, 232; Lass, 133-35.

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villains in the story appear to be the traders and the agents of the U.S. government, who, through their mistreatment of the Indians, precipitated a strong reaction by many of them. This reaction cost the lives of numerous innocent and decent people who were trying to establish a better life for their families and themselves. The fact that so many of the survivors stayed in the area is a testimony to their resolve and their faith.

Table 2 Chronology of Events in the Dakota Conflict of 1862 August 17 August 18

Murder at Acton (Meeker County) Attacks on Upper and Lower Sioux Agencies (Mary Anderson is wounded) August 19 First attack on New Ulm (Scandian Grove settlement sends volunteers) August 20 Massacre at West Lake August 22 (Mary Anderson dies) August 23 Second Attack on New Ulm; murder at Scandian Grove September 2-22 Several major battles occur September 23 Last major nattle at Wood Lake September 26 Surrender of captives at Camp Release

ENDNOTES

1. W. E. Lass, Minnesota: A History, 2d ed. (New York, 1998), 127. 2. Ibid., 127-28. 3. E. Johnson, Scandian Grove (St. Peter, 1958), 35. 4. Lass, 111. 5. Kenneth Carley, The Sioux Uprising of 1862, 2d ed. (St. Paul, 1976), 5-6. 6. Ibid., 7. 7. Anniversary Album, 1859-1944- Lebanon Lutheran Church History (New London, Minn., 1944), 47- 49. 8. V. E. Lawson and J. E. Nelson, Illustrated History and Descriptive and Biographical Review of Kandiyohi County, Minnesota (St. Paul, 1905), 21-22. 220

Hazel Park. In November 1895, when it was reorganized as the Hazel Park Congregational Church, she assisted the Ladies Aid Society in serving a special supper for the occasion. There is no record, however, that Alma actually joined the Hazel Park church. It was totally American and Alma found the atmosphere congenial, but she was not conventionally religious and eventually shied away from churches. On the other hand, she was drawn to the secular piety of patriotism and reverence for the nation's past. * * * In early September 1896, John H. Stacy of Newport spent several days in Saint Paul in the company of his seventeen-year-old adopted son, Walter John Stacy, the orphaned cousin with whom Alma had once shared a cradle. The elder Stacy came to the city to take part in the thirtieth National Encampment of the GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic, made up of men who, like himself, were Union Army veterans of the Civil War. (In 1896 many Civil War veterans were still alive and the GAR was a formidable organization.) Some thirty-seven years later, in September 1933, I, a bewildered ten-year-old, was puzzled by my grandmother's solemn intensity as we watched a contingent of straggling ninety-year-old men in blue marching slowly past us to the hesitant cadence of an equally ancient fife and drum corps. In one of my grandmother's scrapbooks I've found a newspaper clipping describing this nearly forgotten event, the sixty-seventh National Encampment of the GAR. The parade, according to the Saint Paul Daily News of 20 September 1933, was one of the most impressive Saint Paul had ever seen, and "many a spectator, standing bareheaded before the procession of flags and marching men, wiped an occasional tear from his eye and swallowed a lump in his throat as he watched the blue-coated symbols of the nation's highest idealism pass in review." Alma, with her reverence for the nation's past, was bound to be moved by this brave display of living remnants of a once grand army, but, as I now realize, her 1933 reaction was run through with a note of personal nostalgia for a significant moment in her youth. In 1896, 201

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Chankahda (Near One Woods). Mary and two other young women were taken captive and transported to Chief Waucouta's camp, located about a mile from the Lower Indian Agency.19 (Waucouta was the chief of the Wapekuta tribe.) Here the captor was moved by Mary's plight and showed her some mercy, bringing her a different dress so that she could change out of her blood-soaked clothes. He tried to remove the bullet that was lodged in her abdomen but stopped because he did not want to cause her any more pain. Mary removed the bullet herself, and the chief dressed the wound and tried to make her feel comfortable.20 Another source chronicles Mary Anderson's final hours.21 She apparently suffered for four days, and the captives had little to eat except for some potatoes and corn meal. On the last day of her life she was moved to the camp of Little Crow, who was the leader of the Sioux during the Conflict. Mary apparently died at about 4:00 A.M. on 22 August. Before she died, she prayed in Swedish and asked that her ring be given to her mother, but the other young women were unable to remove the ring because her fingers were so badly swollen. A picture of her fiance that she carried with her was returned to him. Mary was buried near Little Crow's headquarters and later interred at the Lower Agency. The hostilities ended in the latter part of September 1862. The white settlers were able to go about getting their lives back in order, while for the Indians it was the beginning of times of judgment and further upheaval. Many of the Indians fled to the Dakotas or Canada after the cessation of hostilities, and those who remained were forcibly removed to Nebraska.22 On 26 December 1862 thirty-eight Dakota were hanged for their crimes in Mankato, Minnesota. Among those hanged was Chankahda, who rescued Mary Anderson. One can assume that these Swedish pioneer victims left the Old Country for the New World with the hope of a better life. They became caught up in a whirlwind of events known as the Dakota Conflict during five weeks in the summer of 1862, and this conflict brought death and destruction to their settlements. The survivors were no doubt scarred for life, though their only guilt was that they were a part of the vast numbers of settlers who were moving into areas recently taken from the Native American Indians. The real

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when the GAR had last encamped in Saint Paul, she had watched the parade in the company of her cousin, Walter John Stacy. Within the family, an air of mystery always accompanied mention of Walter John Lord Stacy, or simply Walter Stacy, and the precise nature of his relationship to my grandmother remains a mystery still. Walter, who had little or no contact with the SwedishAmerican community after his adoption by the Stacy family, grew up as a Yankee. Alma may well have felt that if Walter could become so American, so could she. * * *

In Lowertown, the Board of Deacons of Alma's Swedish church dropped members who did not attend services regularly and who, for two years, failed to pay their annual membership fee of $10. This may have been why, in 1897, the deacons dropped Alma from church membership rolls. If Alma had been guilty of something more serious, some unpardonable sin in the eyes of the board, she would have been excommunicated. But records of the board reveal no special reason for Alma's dismissal, no spectacularly sinful behavior on her part. In becoming more American, Alma was out in front of her Swedish church, but only just barely. Alma's confirmation class of 1894 was the last to receive religious training solely in Swedish. The Swedish-born and -ordained pastor who had confirmed her, Rev. A. J. Sward, departed shortly thereafter. He was replaced on 17 June 1894 by the church's first American-born pastor, Rev. L. A. Johnston. Under Pastor Johnston's direction, the First Swedish Lutheran Church in St. Paul became less ethnic and more consciously American. English as well as Swedish was used to prepare young people for confirmation, and more and more English was heard from the pulpit. In this and other ways the Swedish Lutheran Church gradually closed a chapter in its history. In the early years its mission had been to serve the spiritual needs of Swedish immigrants. Now, as a mature church, it would serve an increasingly American congregation.

the congregation he was serving as "a thing of the past," since he assumes that most of the parishioners are thinking of moving elsewhere. On 28 August he is wavering on this decision to leave the area and considering sending his wife and family to Illinois. On 2 September he again is contemplating leaving. By 5 September, he and his family have left the area and are safely in St. Paul. He notes that the congregation was sad to see him go and that he might come back for a visit, but by this time his sights are set on Illinois.17 Rev. Cederstam was censured for his action by the Minnesota Conference of the Augustana Synod in October 1862. Eric Norelius, long-time leader of the synod, later said that the pastor left primarily because his family was frightened. As might be expected, the congregation's members were divided in their response to the actions of their spiritual leader. Several parishioners were quite angry with the pastor, while others accepted his reasons for leaving. Coincidentally, the Minnesota Conference assigned the care of the Scandian Grove parish to Rev. Jackson. Because of the killings that had taken the lives of twenty of his parishioners at West Lake, along with the decision of others to leave, he was left without a parish and was assigned to serve as a traveling missionary. He visited the Scandian Grove parish on a monthly basis until a new pastor was secured. The Scandian Grove church had maintained most of its membership of approximately seventy communicants and continued to grow despite the hostilities and lingering uncertainties.18 Further to the west, near the center of the hostilities, another young Swedish immigrant lost her life in the fury of the Conflict. Mary Anderson was a young woman who was working as a domestic servant at the home of Joseph Reynolds on the Redwood River in Redwood County, Minnesota. According to the account, Mary Anderson and Mary Schwandt, another domestic, were making preparations for the Monday wash on 18 August when word was received that the family, hired servants, and guests at the home were in danger. It was decided to break into a couple of groups and head for safety in New Ulm, to the east. The group that included Mary Anderson was overtaken by the Indians. The three men in the group were killed immediately, and one of the bullets intended for the men struck Mary. She was saved from immediate death by the Indian 218

The year 1897, in which Alma was dropped from membership in her Swedish church, was decisive for her in yet another way. In June Walter Stacy graduated from Saint Paul College, a Methodist school in Saint Paul Park, close to the Stacys' Newport home. The school sponsored an elaborate six-day-long graduation program, and the Johnsons were invited. Martin accompanied Alma when she went down to Saint Paul Park on June 6 to attend baccalaureate services. After the services, Martin and Alma sat and chatted with the family on the broad porch of the Stacys' fine Newport home, Swedes and Yankees together, almost related. Alma went down alone to Saint Paul Park on Thursday evening for a "lawn sociable" on the college campus. It was a mild June evening. There she finally met all the graduates, sober but fun-loving young men in Walter's circle. After the sociable, Alma joined the young bachelors and a few of the college misses in the parlor of the Stacy home in Newport. There, among the young people, the talk was light, polite, and flirtatious. Alma was delighted with the evening and made frequent trips to Newport during the summer of 1897. That winter, on 15 February 1898, a violent explosion sank the American battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. In March,

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. The Stacy house in St. Paul Park; author's collection.

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a court of inquiry concluded that the explosion was due to an underwater mine. The press and public opinion assumed that Spain was responsible, and the nation was soon at war. Many young men of better families flocked to take part in the Spanish-American War. One of those who went off may well have been a special friend of Alma's from Saint Paul Park and the light-hearted summer of 1897. One knows only that before the war was over in August, Alma left for Chicago and there, very soon, she met my grandfather-to-be, Joel Wilhelm Larson. There was reason enough to marry Joel. He was a tall and attractive young man and Swedish like .i ^_ HBB Alma's father. Still, it was a h Jx.-, *(• surprising move, Alma marrying a Swede, after her commitment to everything Yankee. Pasted into Alma's first scrapbook, the one begun soon after her arrival in Chicago, • r_ are a dozen or more small, postage-stamp-sized photos of Walter Stacy and his friends. They appear to be clowning. ^*^3JE2ft ™ .-«*' There are several photos of Walter alone, one in profile, his teeth clenched over the end Walter John lord Stacy, c. 1900; author's of an unusually large cigar. In collection. another, a friend wears a derby and one young man boldly flaunts a cigarette. In Chicago, Alma thought back to the carefree summer of 1897, and she continued to cherish its memory for years to come. When Joel and Alma's first son, my father, was born in 1901, he was not named Joel Wilhelm after his father. Perhaps Joel and Wilhelm were too Swedish. He was named John Walter, a reversal, simply, of Walter John Stacy's given names. As though to perpetuate this act of remembrance, Grandmother never called my father John. He was always called Walter.

the whites, who were traveling by wagon, many of the settlers tried to hide in the tall prairie grass. When the Indians arrived, they began to kill randomly. The wife of Goran Johanneson and her six children were spared, but when the Indians overtook the Eric Jonsson family they were vicious. While Mr. Jonsson, one of the scouts who had run across the Indians earlier, was able to escape with two of his children, the Indians found his wife and the three children who were with her. They killed Mrs. Jonsson and dragged her fourteen-year-old daughter until they thought she was dead, then shot and killed her twelveyear-old son. The baby, who was being carried by the mother, was spared but died a couple of weeks later. The other settlers en route to St. Peter were able to hide in the grass and the sloughs. In one skirmish, a young boy was shot in the wrist. The Indians burned the homesteads and property of the settlers, including the shocked grain, thus destroying the few meager possessions the settlers had. The Scandian Grove settlers were fortunate that so few Indians were pursuing them, or their fates could have been similar to those of the West Lake settlers. In an effort to protect themselves from future attacks, the Swedish settlers around the Scandian Grove settlement organized themselves into a militia unit that they called the Scandinavian Guards. The guard was formed on 27 August and served the settlement for twenty-one days. Gustaf A. Stark acted as the captain, and there were sixteen other officers and eighty-five privates in the company.16 The way in which people, clergy included, respond in times of crisis varies from individual to individual. In the massacre at West Lake, Rev. Jackson reacted in a heroic way that included leading a party to search for survivors. At Scandian Grove, Rev. Cederstam was an interesting contrast. The pastor and his family took refuge in St. Peter on 23 August. It appears that his wife was pregnant and had earlier been quite distraught over the possibility that her husband might be drafted into the Union army. One can assume that the current Conflict added greatly to her distress. In regular written correspondence with Rev. T N. Hasselquist in Illinois during the days of the Conflict, Cederstam recounts living in the Presbyterian church in St. Peter, voices concerns about starvation, and shares his anxiety about the plight of the refugees. By 25 August, he seems to think of

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When I, in turn, was to be baptized in 1923, my grandmother insisted that Walter Stacy's Yankee stepfather, over ninety now, be my godfather. I too was named John Walter. Sly Alma! She never let the family in on her secret. In subtle ways and without ever explaining what was afoot, she ensured that the summer of 1897 lived on in the family, as it has for over a hundred years.

The Minnesota legislature authorized the moving of the bodies of the victims of West Lake to the Lebanon Lutheran churchyard located near New London, Minnesota, and the erecting of a monument in their memory. Bishop Ljunggren of Skara, Sweden, visited the site in 1938 and placed a wreath in remembrance of the victims who had emigrated to their prairie home from his diocese.13 As the Sioux warriors fanned across the frontier attacking white settlers, Swedish settlers living in Nicollet County, Minnesota, eighty miles to the southeast of West Lake, experienced the same terror. Because of the close proximity of the area to Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, however, Nicollet County avoided the large-scale attacks experienced to the north and west. Rather, small Indian raiding parties attacked the county's settlements. A large number of Swedish settlers lived in the western part of Scandian Grove Township. Several Swedish families had come to this part of Nicollet County from Illinois in 1856 and 1857, first living in sod houses and then building cabins. The settlers had organized themselves into a Swedish Lutheran parish and were in the process of completing the church building, and Rev. P. A. Cederstam had recently arrived and assumed his duties as pastor. When he accepted the call he wrote, "I believe that the Lord has sent me here, therefore no advantages will lure me away from here nor will any dangers or difficulties drive me away."14 As previously noted, the hostilities began on 17 August. By 19 August word of the Conflict had been received by the Scandian Grove settlement. The settlers began gathering guns, a number of men went to New Ulm to join in the defense of that city, and the remaining settlers loaded their wagons and prepared to leave for St. Peter. In the evening of 22 August, they could see the glare of burning cabins toward New Ulm.15 On the morning of 23 August, some of the men set out toward New Ulm. On the way, they encountered a small war party of Indians dressed as whites, who shot at them. The men immediately turned around and returned home to begin moving their families to the safety of St. Peter. Alerted by the men to their perilous state, the settlers immediately left for the safety of St. Peter, with the Indians in full pursuit. When it became apparent that the Indians were going to overtake

Alma clung to her Yankee connections, and her father, Martin, became more American too. In October 1897 he became a United States citizen. Then, as though to celebrate the new age about to be ushered in by the turn of the century, he trimmed his beard, reduced the size of his Old World mustache, and wore his hair shorter than heretofore. In a photo from 1905, Martin sits with other family members outside his Hazel Park home, with my father, aged four, standing between his knees. Martin no longer looks like a Swedish immigrant, or even like a janitor, but could almost be one of the Yankee businessmen who lived about him in Hazel Park. In a small way, Martin had become a businessman. He had managed to have a second small house built on his Hazel Park property, one that he hoped to rent out. But Selma, his youngest daughter, had an unhappy marriage to a man who, although a Yankee, neglected his wife and children. After 1912 Selma and the children lived rentfree in Martin's second house. This was only one of Martin's many acts of generosity toward his children. To afford such generosity, Martin supplemented his janitor pay with extra money earned in any way he could. My father remembered him walking about in Hazel Park with a sawhorse over his shoulder, a saw in hand, ready to saw kindling wood for his neighbors in return for small amounts of cash. Perhaps it was hard work, or possibly illness, but the years were not kind to Martin. Photos taken of him after 1910 show him greatly aged. He was hospitalized briefly in the spring of 1916. After his release from the hospital, Martin's health did not improve in the course of the summer. Meanwhile, Hazel Park had expanded greatly since the Fisher Ames School was built in 1889. For some years now local residents

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clamored for a larger school. The city eventually relented and built a new school in the fall of 1916. The new school did not soar over its surroundings as the old one did, and it did not look like an early medieval castle. If anything, it resembled a Renaissance palace. The new Hazel Park school was also no longer named after Fisher Ames, but after his Saint Paul descendent, William L. Ames. William's name was carved in stone above the new school's front entrance. Before he died in 1910, William had been a member of the Saint Paul Board of Public Works. The city fathers recognized this and his other contributions to the life of the community in naming the new school. The Fisher Ames School was eventually torn down. The 1916 school named for William L. Ames is still in use. # * *

In December of 1916 both the new and old Ames schools were standing side by side. It was an unusually cold winter, and Martin had to keep furnaces going in both buildings. The effort proved too much for him. Feeling ill, he did what he had often done before: he climbed onto the Seventh Street electric car, transferred downtown, and arrived at his daughter's place on Jessamine Street, only to be put to bed. He died two weeks later. The Saint Paid Daily News told the story: "Veteran Janitor Dies" . . . Martin Johnson, 68, janitor, Ames School, for 28 years died Thursday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. J. W. Larson, 83 E. Jessamine Street. He contracted pneumonia in the course of his duties. Since the construction of the new Ames building near the old one, Mr. Johnson had care of both buildings and had to attend furnaces in both. Two weeks ago he became ill from a bad cold and grew slowly worse until his death. Mr. Johnson lived at 1545 Harvester Avenue. . . . Funeral services will be at the English Lutheran Church, Hazel Park, at 1:30 p. m. Saturday.

Table 1 Victims of the West Lake Massacre Sven Helgeson Backlund, born in Finnekumla parish, Vastergotland, in 1787 Anders Peter Broberg, born in Algutstorp, VastergStland, 16 September 1819 His wife, Christina Nelsdotter, bom in Skofde parish, Vastergotland, 31 August 1826 Their son Johannes, born 23 January 1849 Their son Andreas, born 27 January 1852 Their daughter Christina, bom 31 May 1855 Daniel Peter Broberg, bom in Harenes parish, Vastergotland His wife, Anna Stina Johansdotter, born in Skofde parish, Vastergotland, 31 March 1822 Their son Alfred, bom 31 March 1858 Their son John Albert, bom at West Lake, 22 October 1861 Carl Johan Carlson, bom in Hogsrum parish, Kalmar Ian, 14 August 1825 Lars Endreson, born at Rosseland, Vikors parish, Hardanger, Norway, in 1803 Endre Endreson, bom 21 August 1842 Johannes Iverson, bom in Hurdal parish, Norway, 18 September 1821 Carl Peter Jonason, bom in Visserren parish, Smaland, Sweden, 21 March 1792 Andreas Lorentson, bom in Hillareds parish, Alfsborgs Ian, 21 December 1806 Anders P. Lundborg, bom at Algutstorp, Vastergotland, 23 March 1837 Gustaf Lundborg, born in Algutstorp parish, Vastergotland, 30 April 1839 Lars Lundborg, born in Algutstorp parish, Vastergotland, 22 December 1840 Johannes Nelson, a young man, bom in Skofde parish, Vastergotland

Martin had been a member of the Swedish Lutheran Church in 206

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to head for safety at Forest City, Minnesota. En route, the party was approached by a band of the warring Indians. Luckily, they were able to circle the wagons and keep the Indians at a distance. Two of the party, however, Sven Helgeson and Andreas Sandland, lagged behind the others because they were driving some cattle. The Indians turned upon them, killed the men, and mutilated the bodies in full view of the party. The Indians were unable to overtake the surviving members and eventually left the area. The party then made its way to the relative safety of Forest City.10 Other Swedish settlers in the vicinity lost their lives as well. Carl Carlson, known as Swede Charlie, was killed in a potato patch as he dug potatoes for the Indians. He died with a potato clutched in his hand. His father was killed by the Indians as he came back to the cabin after spending the previous night hiding from marauding warriors.11 Norwegian members of the parish also were killed as they went about their daily activities. Johannes Iverson was killed as he mowed hay, as was Lars Endreson at another location. Lars's twenty-one-yearold son was killed digging potatoes for dinner, and another son was wounded and left for dead. Lars's wife, Guri, hid with their daughter Anna in a root cellar, thus avoiding serious harm or death, but two other daughters in the family were carried away into captivity by the Indians. They were later released. As the Conflict grew, many of the surviving settlers found refuge at Paynsville and later at St. Cloud, located forty miles to the northeast. Many of the young men of the affected areas had been away from home during this time, working on threshing crews in the more established areas to the north and east of the hostilities. Many of these young men now were reunited with their families in St. Cloud. It was here that Rev. Jackson organized a party of twenty-one men to return to the site of the hostilities to retrieve possessions and search for possible survivors. The impromptu militia was successful and returned unharmed with close to one hundred cattle, a few horses, and numerous household goods. Some of these young men participated in later campaigns against the Indians. (A list of the twenty West Lake victims of the Conflict and their places of origin in Sweden is found in table l.12) 214

Lowertown for nearly forty years, but when he died Alma had him buried from the English Lutheran Church. She was not a member of the English Lutheran Church, but she preferred it to the Swedish church for reasons the family has never clearly understood. Many wreaths accompanied Martin to his grave next to Hanna's in Union Cemetery. The Janitors and Engineers' Society sent flowers, as did the Swedish Bethesda Society, relatives, and teachers from the Ames School. Ames school pupils sent their own bouquet to their Yonny Yonson. With all his efforts to fit in, great-grandfather Martin Johnson remained a Swede until the end. With Martin's death, the Swedish language was no longer heard in my grandparents' home on Jessamine Street. Grandmother Alma and the Larson family were now free to go their American way. Perhaps it was just as well. Within four months of Martin's death, the United States was at war with Germany. In Minnesota there were zealous patriots in high places who suspected Swedes of pro-German sentiments. Under the circumstances, it was best not to be a hyphenated American. By the time the war ended, only remnants of Swedishness were to be heard or seen in the Larson household— except, of course, for my grandfather Joel, who had been born in Sweden, and he generally kept his thoughts to himself.2 ENDNOTES 1. This article first appeared in Ramsey County History 32, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 17-25. The editor wishes to thank Ramsey County History and the Ramsey County Historical Society for permission to publish this version here. 2. This article was written without citations, but not without careful research. Alma's progressive Americanization is traceable in the wealth of scrapbooks and other memorabilia she left behind. Beyond these, because she was executrix of her father's estate and because it was her habit, she preserved all his papers as well. In the early 1980s, First Lutheran Church of Saint Paul lent some twenty cubic feet, 180 volumes in all, of its copious records to the Minnesota Historical Society, where they were categorized and microfilmed for the society's collections. The church retained the originals. In addition, the church published histories in 1904 (in Swedish), 1929, and 1979. The Hazel Park Congregational Church, originally The People's Church of

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Hazel Park, published a history in 1985. This and an undated, unsigned, typed document titled "A Church Is Born," located in church files, were among my sources. The Ames School had an active history program under the direction of teacher Shirley Pickett when I did the research there. The school also published an "Ames School Booklet," which included contributions from alumni and cunent pupils. The booklet contains background information on William L. Ames Jr. and his role in getting the school established. For information on the Ames family and other prominent early Saint Paul residents, see Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. 14, 1912. In addition, the Saint Paul Public Library has preserved a special publication of The St. Paul Dispatch entitled "Illustrated St. Paul" (1892). This contains a section on Hazel Park, which includes Ames's promotional pitch for his newly established development. Finally, I am indebted to Larry Millett's Lost Twin Cities (St. Paul, 1992) for clues that helped me to interpret the unusual architecture of the first Ames School building and to understand the origins of the Hazel Park Congregational Church.

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of the Lundborg family, who had been in the area for about two years. The members of the parish had gathered there to welcome some immigrants who had recently arrived from Sweden. As the service was concluding, Peter Broberg, son of parish members Daniel and A n n a Stina Broberg, arrived at the cabin and reported that Indians were abusing the Broberg children at the two Broberg cabins two miles away.8 Members of the assembled group, including the two Broberg families, immediately set out for the cabins. Daniel Broberg placed his wife and children and his sister-in-law and her ten-month-old baby in an ox cart, while Anders Broberg and four Lundborg brothers took a short-cut by foot to the Broberg cabin. When Anders and the brothers arrived at the cabin, the Indians, who were familiar to them, appeared to be friendly. A short time later, however, the Indians opened fire, killing Anders Broberg and three of the Lundborg brothers: Anders, Gustav, and Lars. They also killed Johannes Nilson, half-brother of Anna Broberg, and four of the Broberg children. The remaining Lundborg brother, Samuel, was badly wounded but survived. Unfortunately, the remaining Brobergs and the father of the Lundborg brothers arrived on the scene shortly after the first round of killings, and the Indians started after the elder Lundborg. They were distracted, however, by the arrival of the oxcart carrying Daniel Broberg and the Broberg women and children. Daniel, who was leading the oxen, was shot and killed. The Indians then attacked the women and children, who attempted to escape on foot. The Indians killed everyone except two of the children, one from each family, who were able to escape into the tall grass. Little Peter, who had sounded the initial alarm, and his cousin Anna Stina, daughter of Anders and Christina, survived. Meanwhile, Pastor Andrew Jackson had left the forenoon service unaware of the killings and had begun the second service of the day at the home of Thomas Osmundson near Norway Lake. Johannes Lundborg, the eldest brother of the slain Lundborgs, arrived with the news of the massacre. The pastor immediately left to warn other parishioners of the impending doom. 9 The settlers gathered together and began at dawn the next day 213

sented that ensured that debts owed by individual Indians to the white traders would be paid from the proceeds first. The Indian leaders thought that they were signing a third copy of the treaty. It was only later that they realized that they had committed a large share of the proceeds of the sale to pay off debts that they allegedly owed the traders. A similar separate agreement had been part of the Mendota treaty signing as well and was signed by some of the Indians.4 This already tense situation further deteriorated in the spring and early summer of 1862. The winter of 1861-62 had been extremely hard on the Indians. A crop failure that occurred during the previous growing season had resulted in extreme hardships for the Indians and their families, and they were looking forward to the goods and money they would receive in June. But the payments were delayed because the U.S. Congress had postponed action on the annual appropriation earlier in the year. Then the U.S. Treasury Department caused further delay as it debated whether to pay the Indians in currency or gold. The starving Indians attempted to buy provisions on credit from the traders, who refused. This refusal pushed the Indians to the breaking point.5 The spark that ignited the conflict occurred on Sunday, 17 August, at Acton in Meeker County, when a hunting party found some hen's eggs in the fence-row of a white settler's homestead. A disagreement among the members of the hunting party over taking the eggs resulted in a dare to one of the braves to show that he did not fear the whites. The whites were approached and the five settlers at the farmstead were killed. Over the next several days, violence erupted up and down the areas adjacent to the Indian reservations.6 In the ensuing fury, several Swedish settlers lost their lives as roving bands of warring Indians descended upon the often unsuspecting settlers. The largest number of Swedes to die in the Conflict were members of the Swedish Lutheran congregation living around West Lake near New London, Minnesota. Altogether, twenty members of the parish died at the hands of the Indians. According to the church history published in August 1944, the atrocities began on 20 August.7 On that Wednesday, the pastor of the parish began the first of two services in the forenoon at the cabin 212

The Impact of Minnesota's Dakota Conflict of 1862 on the Swedish Settlers LARRY LUNDBLAD

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uring the summer of 1862 the nation was preoccupied with the raging Civil War. However, battles associated with that conflict were not the only ones being waged that summer. Far to the west in the new state of Minnesota, white settlers and Native Americans were locked in a struggle that was one of many exchanges on a frontier continually moving west and encroaching upon the lands of the native peoples. The Dakota Conflict, which was one of the nation's bloodiest Indian wars, began on 17 August and ended on 26 September.1 It resulted in the deaths of 413 white civilians, 77 white soldiers, and 71 Native Americans. Because of the settlement patterns of the area, a large number of civilian casualties were of German and Scandinavian extraction. Affected rural Swedish settlements included the West Lake community in Meeker County, not far from New London, and the Scandian Grove community about twelve miles west of St. Peter in Nicollet County. A chronology of events appears in table 2. A map showing the location of selected sites of events occurring during the Conflict that are referred to in this article is found in figure 1. The origins of the Conflict were rooted in the mistreatment of the American Indians in the immediate years leading up to the eruption of hostilities in the summer of 1862. Prior to statehood in 1858, Minnesota was a vast, resource-rich wilderness populated primarily by Native American tribes and a few white traders. The

LARRY A. LUNDBLAD is vice president of academic affairs at South Central Technical College and an adjunct professor of education at Minnesota State University, both in Mankato. He also serves as a lecturer in the College of Education, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Beyond the demands of his career, he pursues interests in Minnesota history, family history, and genealogy.

traders and native peoples had a fairly harmonious relationship for many years. However, in the 1840s and 1850s the situation began to change as more settlers moved west. Land speculators and others sought to open up the area to settlement. To accomplish this, treaties were negotiated for the sale of Native American lands. In a treaty signed by the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of the Upper Sioux in July 1851 at Traverse des Sioux, near the present city of St. Peter, the Indians ceded the lands in the southern and western parts of Minnesota to the U.S. government for a few cents an acre. A similar treaty with the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands of the Lower Sioux, signed on 5 August 1851, resulted in the sale of lands in southeastern Minnesota to the U.S. government, again for a few cents an acre (see figure 1). In addition to the sale of the land, the treaties established reservations for the Indians. These reservations, which bordered the Minnesota River, were twenty miles wide and seventy miles long, extending from just northwest of New Ulm to the border with the Dakota Territory. The Upper Agency had been the home of the Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes. The Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands relocated from southeastern Minnesota to the Lower Agency, a prairie area that differed greatly from the hardwood forests to which they were accustomed. Each reservation had its own administrative center. The Upper Agency center was located near present-day Granite Falls, Minnesota, and the Lower Agency was located some thirty miles downstream near the present-day city of Redwood Falls. A reserve clause contained in both treaties provided for future sales of reservation lands.2 The flood of white settlers that poured into the region after the treaties were signed led to further pressures on the Native American Indians to sell part of their reservation holdings using the reserve clause. This was accomplished by treaty in 1858, when the Indians sold their lands on the north side of the Minnesota River for thirty cents an acre. The government gave the Indians annual annuities in money and goods and tried to train the Sioux to be farmers.3 The contents of the treaties, the manner in which the Sioux were coerced into signing the treaties, and the realization that they were duped into signing an additional document at Traverse des Sioux contributed to the resentment felt by the Indians toward the whites. 210

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State of Minnesota A. Camp Release B. Upper Agency C. Lower Agency D. West Lake E. Acton F. New Ulm G. Scandlan Grove H. St. Peter (Traverse de Soulx) I. Mankato J. Mendota

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Figure 1 - Location of sites of selected events occurring during the Dakota Conflict, 1862

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At both of the major treaty signings, the Indian agents representing the U.S. government made sure that plenty of alcohol was available. Because the Native Americans could not read or write, they were at the mercy of agents to tell them what was included in the agreements. Nor did the Indians comprehend the amount of money that they were to receive for their lands until they began to receive their payments. At the Traverse des Sioux signing, a second document was pre211