Summer of 1930, Liden Girls

Summer of 1930

In the summer of 1930, my grandmother would have been 15 years old.  Life on a farm was a struggle for many, as this was part of the depression era.

In her memoirs, she wrote:  "Our farm had one hundred sixty acres, which was the average size of the farms people claimed as homesteads.  The farm was a mile and a half south of Thief River Falls.  The home that my father built here had a large kitchen, a large bedroom and a large living room with two porches - one in the front and one in the back.  There were two large bedrooms upstairs, one for the boys and one for the girls. 

Living on the farm we always had plenty of food to eat and clothes to wear.  We had a very large garden where we grew all our own vegetables.  The staples were potatoes, corn, carrots, onions, beans, peas, rutabagas and turnips.  There were a few things we couldn't grow very well because of the cold winters and short growing year like tomatoes.  Yet we did grow enough to get us by.
Under the house was a large cellar where we stored our fruits and vegetables.  We had a lot of potatoes.  A large box of sand is where we stored the carrots and they stayed fresh all winter.  We would dry the ears of corn, beans and peas.  The onions and rutabagas were stored down there too.  In the winter when it was very cold my folks would hang a lighted lantern down there to keep it from freezing.  My mother would place a dish of water on the step going down there to see how cold it would get. If it looked like it would get cold enough to freeze she hung the lantern.

When we got home from school it was our job to slop the hogs, pick the eggs, feed the chickens, then it was up to us to milk all of the cows.  We did it all by hand as there were no milking machines then.  We had a water pump and we would have to pump all of the water for the animals to drink.  It took so much water it seemed we just pumped and pumped and pumped.  We had to take turns.  It took a lot of water to water all of our animals.

When the depression of 1929 hit the country, we hardly knew it on the farm.  The only things we had to purchase were coffee and sugar.  One day my father sent a cow to the herd stockyards in St. Paul but the price of meat was so low it didn't even pay for the freight so my father had to send them money instead of him getting anything for it.  He never sold any more."

Great, Great Grandparents

Maria Johansdotter Lundell married Henry Kringsberg, a preacher in Sweden, in 1876.  They emigrated to the US in 1886.  With the help of internet friends, I have located this information from a Sweden registry:  

        Johansdotter Henriksson, Maria --- Hustru (married woman)

b. 9/26/1854 in Södra Finnskoga, Värmlands län (Värmland)

Emigrated 8/1/1886 from Kringsberget, Södra Finnskoga, Värmlands län (Värmland)

to Nordamerika

0221886032 - Bilaga/ytterligare information finns. Kontakta Emigrantregistret i Karlstad

Source: Household Examination Roll, p. 171

Emibas migration file ID: Södra Finnskoga S 1886 032

Their first child was Mary D Elizabeth Kringsberg.  I'm wondering if this is her with her parents, perhaps taken before the next child was born (in 1881) so she would be 4-5 years old here? Maria died shortly after arriving in America (1888).  "Doug Windle who is also researching the Linden and Kringsberg family wrote that Mary Johnson Lundell Married Kringsberg ( a preacher in Sweden) was on a train and got off to get some milk for the baby - fell under the train and had her leg cut off (died) the children were separated and Anna was raised by Pete and Lizzie Liden."  

To follow up the family chain, my father (Oliver), his mother, Myrtle. Her mother Anna, and her mother is Maria Lundell.  (My second great grandmother).  Anna married Charley Liden, and Peter (Per) Liden is Charley's older brother.   

Spring!

Perhaps Easter or Mother's Day ... 

Dad, Mom, Grandma Myrtle and husband Bill Greer. 

ca 1976/1977

Buffy lolling in the grass (we STILL have flamingos in 1976/77??)

 Lori dressed up, that was such a cute dress style! 

And Lori with Diana and Rene Nault in the front yard. 

(and a flamingo in the background here too!!!)

Anna Liden

Very little is known about relatives so many generations back.  But I'm trying to imagine, to piece together a timeline on some of them, just because. 

Anna Liden was born in 1877.  She came to America with her mother, and 3 brothers at around age 10. 
I like to think that they came to Pennington County, Minnesota, because they knew someone who could assist them.  Anna is my great grandfather Charles' sister. 

I believe she was baptized as
Anna Cecelia on July 9, 1877,
in Nikolai församling, Sweden
with no Father's name, and her Mother's name as Kajsa Andersdotter.

In 1893 she married Ole Lundberg.  She had her first child, Albin, in 1895.  Clara was born in 1896.  Signe was born in 1898.  Mable Olive in 1900.  Rudolph was born in 1902.  Silwer was born in 1903, and then died.  (Oddly enough, the listing in the Minnesota Deaths shows her name as Anna Danielson).

In 1904, Ole dies, and Rudolph and Albin are sent to live with Charles' family.  I don't know if Clara or Mable went with them; Clara died in 1908.  Mable is found on the 1920 Census as a "boarder" with Anna and her second husband.

In 1906, Anna marries Carl Bergan.  He was married previously, and had seven children with his first wife, Karoline.  His two youngest children, Mabel and Marie, would have been only a few years old when he marries Anna, and yet, the next Census in 1910 doesn't list any of his first wife's children living with him.  Which leaves me to assume divorce, rather than being widowed.

Carl and Anna go on to have more children:  Arthur in 1907, Gladys in 1910, Ruth in 1911, Arnold in 1913, Ettle (or Ettie?) in 1915, Myrtle in 1917, and Frances in 1920.  By this time, Anna is 43 and has given birth to more than twelve children.  Anna dies in 1924, Carl dies in 1927.

In 1940, Rudolph is a resident at Fergus Falls Hospital.  He is buried in the Liden family plot at Greenwood Cemetery in Thief River Falls, MN.  He was 77 years old.  I don't have a clue why he was at Fergus Falls, or where he lived after 1940. 

Piecing together this little bit of history hasn't been easy!

I can't imagine what life was like for Anna when her husband dies.  She can't provide for her children, so they are sent to live with other family members.  She remarries and continues having more children. 

At this point, I haven't located where she is buried, or where her children all ended up. On one of the message boards that I frequent, Dianna Hanson was looking for information, her grandmother is Mable Olive Lindberg.   Maybe some day, we'll be in touch!

Get Togethers

Bob and Shirley Liden, with Kathleen and Danny.

We spent many, many evenings together.

The parents would play cards, us kids would hang out,

there was always something going on.

During the later 70s, we started having sing-a-longs.

Uncle Bob had some reel-to-reel equipment, 

and he'd play his guitar while Aunt Shirley played bass,

mostly playing old Johnny Cash songs.  We'd all chime in and sing along.

Here, Uncle Bob is playing the guitar I got for my birthday,

That's Lori on the left, then Bob, Kathleen and Linda.

Gotta dig those orange curtains!  (It matched the carpet though!!)

The Rose Garden

Easter perhaps?  We're posed in front of the Snowball Bush. 

Pretty, but such a pain to clean up after when the petals dropped.

This looks like we made a trip to the Rose Garden in San Jose.

You still have a lotta hair, Mom!

So many beautiful roses 

Grandma Myrtle and her husband, Bill.

Family Reunion, pt 2

Handsome bunch o' fellas! 

Barbara and family

Diddle (Donald) and family

Good times all around!

The entire family made it for this family reunion

that brought Ed and Mabel out from Minnesota.

“Family is like branches on a tree; 

we all grow in different directions, 

yet our roots remain as one.” 

-Unknown

Family Reunion

With Ed and Mabel visiting, it looks like we're having

a good old fashioned family reunion!

Mom will have to correct me if I'm wrong

but I believe this is George and Vanessa.

Vanessa would be Grandma Myrtle's niece,

her brother John's daughter.

 

This might be the Donald Liden family then

This is the Bob Liden family:  

Kathleen, Shirley, Bob, Colleen, Shirleen and Dan.

Doing some guesswork here:

Donald, Vivian, Vanessa, Blanche (mom) Barbara and Bob.

Those other two men in the back I don't recognize

and my family tree might be incomplete ... 

one could be John.  

Please chime in and help me out!  Thanks!

Welcome to Fall

When it came to chores around the house,

Dad was OK with just about any kind of help!!

It's Spirit Week at Cabrillo Jr High

and it must be "Western Day"!!

The family in front of the house.  Looks like Dad has done

some work here.... punched out the dining room wall a bit.

Did we have a built in window seat here now??

Ohhh, I like the 70s dress and vest I'm wearing... in purple of course!

Look how little the hedges are ..... they get big enough to hide behind

in a few years!!

And we've got company... Ed and Mabel Liden.

Ed one of Grandma Myrtle's brothers.

Expose'd!!

Uncle Carl Kringsberg.  

This is Grandpa Charley's Uncle, his mother's brother,

a definite family resemblance, in my opinion! 

And one with a fascinating background. 

American mentalist and performer on the Redpath Chautauqua circuit 

in the 1920s with his wife, billed as 

"Miss Esmeralda Martin, the Girl With the Radio Mind". 

Their show was mainly an exposure of spirit mediums and their methods.

"So much has been written and said about Spiritualism, both for and against it, 

that Mr Kringsberg has undertaken to expose its fallacies.  

This he does by performing many of the thrilling spooky tricks 

employed by the leading mediums of America and Europe, 

and then taking the lid off  and explaining how it's done, 

proving that in spite of appearances there is nothing supernatural in it."

"Assisted by Miss Esmeralda Martin, 

he gives a programme of music, magic, mystification and myrth, 

that is not only highly amusing and entertaining, 

but it also educational and greatly worth while." 

 

I am so tickled when I find out something about our family!

Found one last poster!

Hello Again, Summer!

Grandma Myrtle and her husband, Bill Greer

Grandma has a corsage, was it Mother's Day?

Definitely a Sunday, we're all dressed up!

and here's the rest of the family, blue must have been the

"color of the year" ... we all sorta match!

Those are some long pearls, Mom!

Standing in front of the oleander bush in full bloom,

And another mystery photo:  I'm guessing this is

one of Myrtle's sisters?

Let us know, Dorothy!

Lori with one of Mom's roses.

And what says 70s better than this flashy skirt and vest??

Something About Mary

This photo has always puzzled me. 

The photo is marked that the man is Charley Liden, my great grandfather. 

The woman, Mary, is the sister to Anna, the woman Charley married. 

At the estimated time this photo was taken, Anna was 2-3 yrs old. 

The young man in the photo is Oscar, the son of Henry C Liden. 

I estimate he's around 17 here. Henry Liden is Charley's brother.

So what brings three members of different households 

together for a formal portrait? 

I could make up stories... lol 

but sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction! 

I guess we'll never know.

Then again, maybe my Grandmother had all the names wrong ...... 

Miss Mary 1898

This is Mary Kringsberg, sister to Anna, 

who was the wife of Charley Liden (Myrtle's Dad). 

Isn't this a gorgeous photo? And what a fancy dress ... 

I imagine it a soft brown, with black ribbons and accents. 

It was taken by J. Borry, in TRF, and he was there in 1898. 

She would have been 21 years old. I wonder what the occasion was? 

There's a photo on the table, I wonder if it was of her mother, Maria, who died in 1888?

1901: Liden Anniversary

Charles and Anna were married Feb 28, 1901.

This is their 50 year Anniversary celebration!

When they married, Charles was 30, and Anna was 16.

When you see the two of them together, they look happy!

Relaxing with three of their girls. 

Gives new meaning to "Men in Hats" !?!

In 1952, there was an AdSlogan for hats that read:

"If you want to get ahead, get a hat!"

Looks like our men were ahead of the times!

Christmas 1969, part 1

Christmas Dinner around the table

Mom's china, the Bob Liden family is here

and so are the Gowan's!

With everyone visiting, we did a bunch of tourist-y things:

a walk on the beach

Visiting the Golden Gate Bridge

(and check out the old cars!)

and the San Francisco Zoo!

My one very vivid memory was Auntie LaLa (Gowan)

saw a couple of hippie bikers, and asked if she could take their picture.

In those days, the Hell's Angels were all over the news

and I was SO impressed at her gumption to ask them!

They refused, of course.  hehehe

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

In a letter from Myrtle (my grandmother) to my parents dated 6/27/1996, she writes:

          I often wondered about her [Harold's mother].  She came from the same place in Sweden where Mom [Anna Kringsberg Liden] came from.  Harold and I went to church with Mom on Sunday, and Rev. Lundell, the minister, came right over and said "You must be Mom's youngest brother, I'd know you any place."  Mom said, "Oh no, that's Myrtle's boyfriend."   In our wedding picture so many people commented about Harold and I looked so much alike.   I've never said this to anyone before but I have thought of it often, just a thought, I don't think his mom really knew who his father was as the names on his birth certificate and baptism certificate were different. I just haven't wanted to check into his family.  His mom was a Hendrickson, tho.

          Several of the kids have wanted to check on our family history and I've kind of discouraged it.  "Why not let sleeping dogs lie?"

Pretty much sums up how both sides of my family felt about family history and events.

I'm sure other families have these kinds of "skeletons in the closet"!!

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

In a letter from Myrtle (my grandmother) to my parents dated 6/27/1996, she writes:
          I often wondered about her [Harold's mother].  She came from the same place in Sweden where Mom [Anna Kringsberg Liden] came from.  Harold and I went to church with Mom on Sunday, and Rev. Lundell, the minister, came right over and said "You must be Mom's youngest brother, I'd know you any place."  Mom said, "Oh no, that's Myrtle's boyfriend."   In our wedding picture so many people commented about Harold and I looked so much alike.   I've never said this to anyone before but I have thought of it often, just a thought, I don't think his mom really knew who his father was as the names on his birth certificate and baptism certificate were different. I just haven't wanted to check into his family.  His mom was a Hendrickson, tho.

          Several of the kids have wanted to check on our family history and I've kind of discouraged it.  "Why not let sleeping dogs lie?"

Pretty much sums up how both sides of my family felt about family history and events.

Family Mysteries

Kajsa Anderson.  My great great grandmother.  She must have been quite a woman.
She had her first child at 19, Henry, in 1857.  Peter was born 6 years later, then Charlie, and last, Anna.  From what little I've been able to piece together, she emigrated from Sweden to America around 1883.   She was 45 years old at the time, and traveled here with her four children.  Henry was 26, Peter was 19, Charles was 13 and Anna, just 6.

How do you imagine that you can start a new life at 45?
What motivates you to make such a move?

I can only relate in my own experiences.  I was 49 years old when I rented a truck, loaded all my belongings, towed my car, moving me and my son across country.  Brian was 22 at the time.  But I was moving to be closer to family, needed to be closer to them.

So that brings me back to the same question:  What was the driving reason behind Kajsa moving from Sweden to America?  I know younger men and women moved for the dream of a better life.  Was she doing that for her children, a new place where they could make a better life on their own?  

I don't ever recall my father talking about visits with his grandfather, Charles.  They lived in Pennington county, my father was born in Marshall county, the distance between Thief River Falls and Alvarado, MN, is  ... according to Google 39 miles.  Was there ever a family picnic or Christmas gathering?  Grandfather Charles died in 1952.  My father was born in 1937.  Surely there must have been some kind of .... relationship.

Or perhaps there was a family rift, they didn't seem to approve of Grandmother Myrtle marrying Harold Danielson.  And I've always been curious about that.  Grandma was always secretive, never wanting to talk about Harold's background.  Now with the advent of the internet and census data being readily available and searchable, I have found several things that lead me to believe that the stories told were fiction.  Or embellished 'truths' based on very little facts.  I've contacted people over the years, and there have been differing opinions as to the real truth.

In the Alvarado cemetery, there are some other Danielsons buried there.  Relatives?  If so, they were never spoken of, either.  And Alvarado has never been a town of thousands.  Harold's mother, Christina, had family around as well.  Her brother, Peter Hendrickson, was raising Harold at one point, as he's listed on the census as his nephew.  So what's the real story?    She was buried without a headstone, I haven't been able to locate any kind of information whatsoever about her, other than her being listed on different census' over the years.

About every six months, the urge to dig a little bit more grabs hold of me and I can't seem to let go without finding out something about a relative!   Even a tidbit puts the whole story more into focus.

Genealogy sure is addicting!

Here's my great grandfather Charles with a cow on a lead ... one of my fav pictures because it tells more of a story than just a posed photograph:

Danielson or Pederson?

I've been trying to locate information about my grandfather, Harold, and his mother, Christine, over several decades.  Of course, the one solid source of information, my paternal grandmother Myrtle has since passed on.  But even when she was living, she didn't speak much about her husband Harold's history, or of his mother.   So I started my own investigation over the years, and have even more questions now.

Harold was born in 1900.  The most expedient way to track him as been through the Census records.   Working backwards, in
1940 he's married, living in Rural Marshall Co, MN.
1930 he's single, lodger with Theo Bergman, MN
1920 he's single, laborer to Ole Bergman (Theo's father)
1910 he's listed as nephew to Pete Hendrickson (so my assumption is he's Christine's brother)

Nothing else was found under Harold Danielson, however in checking the 1905 Minnesota State Census, I find Christine listed, age 33, and under her name I find Harold Pederson, age 4.  The age timeline follows in line with Christine through the other years I found her in the census.  And if Harold was born in 1900, in 1905 he could easily be 4 when the census was taken, before his birthday had arrived.  The above photo, line 51 shows Christine, and line 52 shows Harold.  It also shows that they both have been a resident of the state for 1year 8months, and in their current residence for 6 months.

Which leaves me with a number of questions, of course.  Most of all, why is his name listed differently?  A census taker error?   Where did they live the other 1year 2 months in MN?  and based on the way she is listed as servant, is she working for the Henry Nystrom family?

I searched Harold Pederson, there is one born the same year as my Harold in the same location to a Simon Pederson.

It's been told down through the family that Harold arrived in New York with Christine in 1903.  Again, time wise, this would fit with census information that in 1905 they'd been in MN for 1 year, 8 months.  However, I have not been able to find either of their names on any incoming ship manifest.  Were they using different names before arriving?  Did she come to this part of MN because her brother was already there?

So many questions, no solid answers.
Sometimes I think my grandmother was right:  "let sleeping dogs lie"
She never wanted to share or reveal whatever it was she knew.

Young Myrtle

My grandmother, Myrtle, as a young girl.  Not sure who she's with-- her mother?

This was taken aprox 1919-1922.  My grandmother was born in 1915, and

this girl looks to be 4-6 years old.  If the woman is my great grandmother,

she would be approx 36yo in this photo, and she looks so young!

She's wearing a ring on her left hand.  Grandmother's sisters

were at most 12  years apart.

Ahh the mysteries of unmarked photos! and one of my passions!

Updated:  August 2014  this is Myrtle with her sister, Ruth

it was taken in 1919; Myrtle had been ill, and they

weren't sure she would survive, so they had a formal portrait made.

This is the only photo of my grandmother when she was young.