Harvest Dinner - "Reviving the Swedish Smorgasbord"

Today we celebrated the Swedish heritage of our town--Port Wing--with the annual Harvest Dinner, a fundraiser for our Heritage Museum.  Tonight after the clean-up, Soney Rockenbach, our museum curator, told us how the idea for this dinner began.  Back in the '30's a group of local women started a club called the Civic Club.  They met regularly and contributed to the life of the community with events and projects to promote the town.  One of those events was a Harvest Dinner which was designed to preserve the Swedish food traditions of the area families.  The club members all served the dinner wearing aprons and scarves of blue and yellow, and the hall was decorated with autumn colors.

That was then and due to time and age of the membership, the Civic Club is no longer operating.  But when Soney and her people started up our new museum back in 2001, they decided to revive the Harvest Dinner with the same menu, the same decorating scheme, and even the same apron style, and that's the event we celebrated today. 

Fortunately or unfortunately we had such a record crowd that I didn't get many pictures, and the ones I did get are blurry.  But it was a big success--Swedish potato sausage (Potatiskorv), turkey and dressing, ham, pickled herring (Inlagd sill), Swedish meatballs (Svenska köttbullar), rice pudding, pickled beets, lots of salads and desserts.  All delicious!

The next big dinner is the First Lutheran Church Lutefisk Supper on the second Saturday in December.  Lutefisk, lefse and Swedish meatballs.  Get it on your calendar now!

An afternoon at the Port Wing Heritage Hall

Today I did my first shift for this summer, staffing our museum from 1-4pm when it's open to the public.  This museum came to be back in 2001 following the big Port Wing Centennial celebration.  They had collected so many items for the Centennial displays and then decided they should build a museum to permanently house those treasures.  So, lots of volunteer hours and $40,000 in donations later, they had a museum...and lending library!

Behind the museum you can also visit the old Port Wing jail and also what they call the "Booth Building" which housed a commercial fishing operation at one time.  Both of those buildings were moved to this location.  Also inside the Booth Building is a miniature replica of the town as it looked in the early 1900's.  Pretty fun!

We are very fortunate to have a talented and hard-working curator, Soney Rockenbach, who has spent the last 13 years organizing and recording all of the donated items, and setting up thoughtfully arranged displays by topic and category.

It's nice when people can feel confident in those running the museum to trust them with their family treasures.  There are LOTS of items from the Larson family farm taking up space here!

The sign on this chair says, "Parlor chair from the home of Fred & Regina Larson."  And,
"Fred Larson was the first homesteader to move his family to Port Wing."  

This is the carding bench and carding brushes from our farm.

Lots of old toys, some from our old house.

Nice displays with informative captions and signs.

Lots of family histories in these notebooks!  Each family has contributed their stories and memories of family members to the contents of these notebooks.  What a treasure for a little town!

And below is the Lending Library corner.  This is run on the honor system and has been cared for all these years by my friend, Sandy.  Today, since I was going to be there for a few hours, she mentioned that I could help her weed out the old stuff so it can go to the flea market fundraiser for the museum next weekend.  So I was back "reading shelves"--putting the shelves in alphabetical order, and weeding per her criteria--anything older than 10 years old or any duplicates.  When everything is donated, and there isn't an abundance of shelf space, it could get to be kind of a conglomeration over time.  So clearing up the old stuff in time for the flea market leaves room for new donations in the future.  And I felt like I was "back on the job" again!  Thanks, Sandy!

Toto, we MUST be in Kansas NOW!

Toto, we must be in Kansas, or anywhere it gets hot, because it certainly didn't feel like Memorial Day in northern Wisconsin today!

Memorial Day here is usually chilly, often rainy, and not the best weather as a summer holidays go.  And I know that sometime last February I may have said I would never complain about warm weather again.  It would just be nice to have one week, tops, between shutting down our heating system and thinking we needed to have the AC on.  And since it WAS just a couple days ago that I finally shut down our geothermal heat, I refused to turn on the air today...even though at last check this afternoon it showed 84˚ IN our house.  Complain, complain, I know.  Never satisfied.

But it was Memorial Day so we went to the cemetery to take care of the geraniums on my parents' and grandparents' graves.  I think I'm one of the last people who use real flowers rather than plastic in the hanging baskets.  But the deer don't seem to bother them, and all it takes is a jug of water once a week to keep them looking nice.

All of the graves of veterans have the medallion next to the marker showing in which war the person served.  And for Memorial Day they add a flag to the medallion.  Then at 11am the American Legion squad, along with the high school band, comes for a short ceremony.  We didn't make it there today, but the picture below is from last year...it never changes very much from year to year.   

This group--American Legion and band--does the same ceremony in three other cemeteries in the course of the morning--Cornucopia, Herbster and Orienta.  Part of the ceremony is to read the names of those buried in that cemetery who served in any of our country's wars since the town was formed.  I heard today that there is only one person still living here in town who served in World War II.

So, we officially feel like it's summer!  Happy Memorial Day!

A post-winter check on Quarry Beach - jackets, not sunscreen, needed!

 Quarry Beach is one of the hidden gems in our little town of Port Wing.  When the town was first founded in the late 1800's, this was the site of a sandstone quarry where stone workers quarried out large pieces of Port Wing brownstone that was destined to be building materials for many structures.  The passage below lists some of the buildings where the brownstone was used, and I copied it from this website detailing the history of the Port Wing Quarry:

Stone from Port Wing was used in the Wisconsin Building at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. It was also used in William Jennings Bryan's home in Lincoln, Nebraska; George Crosby's home in Duluth; and the Martin Patterson Mansion in Superior. The Department of Interior Building in Washington D.C. was constructed of Port Wing Brownstone. These are only a few examples of well-known structures in which our stone was used.

Locally, the basement floor of the Port Wing School, the foundation of the Lutheran Parsonage, and the O.T. Bagstad warehouse were constructed of Brownstone.

Now today, the old quarry is a favorite place to hang out at the beach and look at Lake Superior.  The pictures above and below show how it looks on a typical, beautiful summer day.  Those of us living on the "South Shore" like to promote our long, sandy beaches, compared with the rocky shores on the Minnesota and Canadian "North Shore."

View looking toward the town of Port Wing

Since today is NOT a summer day, the view is a little different.  The north wind was blowing like crazy, so the nice blue sky makes it looks more comfortable than we felt.

This was what we found today:

Again, we are looking east toward town, but the first 100+ feet of beach out to where the waves are crashing is lots of ice in layers and piles.  And the extent of the "sandy beach" is quite narrow right now.  We will need to make frequent trips to see how it changes as the ice melts.

This is the view looking northwest, same view as the first picture above.  Over toward the trees is usually a good place to hunt for "pretty rocks" (I have never found an agate in my life!) but it looked too treacherous to check for rocks today!

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And finally, I just have to share something I saw posted by Bayfield County Tourism on Facebook today, and I'm just kicking myself that I didn't think of it first!  I'm going to put the link here because the YouTube page didn't give me the option to embed it.  

Seven months in a minute and a half!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM1uVevri7c

Memories of a pioneer child - Fred Larson's story

And, finally, today I'm posting the last part of my Uncle Fred Larson's story.  He must have started rambling a little, or else the recorder started leaving out parts.  It gets a little sketchy in places.  And I think I am going to leave out a couple parts, especially the part about someone shooting someone else at the blacksmith.  Too many names mentioned!

One of my friends commented that it starts to sound like a Little House on the Prairie story with all the talk of "ma" and "pa," but this all took place very soon after that Laura Ingalls Wilder time period.  And, by the way, my mother was born in Stockholm, Wisconsin, on the Mississippi River right near where the first book, Little House in the Big Woods took place. I'm surrounded by pioneers ancestors!

Taken in 1938 at my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary - Fred is the tall man in the back.  When I'm going through pictures and trying to figure out who people are, I can always start with Fred who is the tallest.  He never married and ran the farm where we're now living until the late 1960's.  My father, who is the youngest, is on the far right.  Carl Larson, the first non-native child born here, is to his left.

So here's the last of the story - any comments I make will be in [brackets].

Pat Hines had a swell dock over in Orienta [the township to the west of Port Wing]. He was logging over there. There was a railroad track ran down to the dock. He had a stone quarry where the power plant is.  Everyone was supposed to clear up a little bit around their homestead and seed in rye or wheat. The cows would be brought into the Orienta dock on a stone scow. (The people were happy in those days although they didn't have a  dollar. The first winter  we were here, we had the cow under the bed—canned milk, that is. And navy beans. And we ran out of flour. All we had was venison and rabbit. Couldn't make pancakes.)

(WE SHOULD ALSO  ASK FRED  TO DRAW A MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION  OF THE  VARIOUS LUMBER CAMPS.)

Charlie Franson used to have oxen.

The first schoolhouse was up by the Twin Falls [now a park in town]. Then the school moved into next to the creamery. That later became the town hall. I started school there. The first passenger boat I remember was the Barker; then there was the America and the Ploughboy.

The fishing industry. There were the Booth fisheries. Tugs mostly. No engines. Some fellows from Two Harbors used to come over with sailboats. There was a little short Norwegian captain, called Pickanute. Real name was Peterson. Pickanute—he'd say that, meaning pick them—the  fish—out of the nets. Chaffee, DeVrie, and Peterson, in that order, used to be in charge of the dock. Orienta was quite a place once. Four saloons, sidewalks on both sides of the river, stores, hotel, church, school. Now, she's dead. Two hundred fifty men on the payroll.

     (WE SHOULD ASK SOMEONE TO DRAW A MAP OF ORIENTA AS IT USED TO BE.)

In the early logging days, they wouldn’t look at a spruce or a balsam—just white pine.

The lumber company had the first hardware store.

Eric Johnson had the first radio, and possibly the first car.

The farmers used to send out cedar fenceposts; they paved the streets in Duluth with posts in those days. They lasted a long time. [And that's why they used to refer to some roads as "cordoroy" roads - they would be ribbed and bumpy like cordoroy.  Port Wing had log/cordoroy roads down in the slough/swampy low areas before you get to Lake Superior.]

There used to be a lot of fire in the slashings [places that had been logged off] around here. The first few years, that's all we did was try to save our buildings. Summer after summer that's all we did—try to save our homes. There were no screens on the smokestacks of the logging trains; they were setting fires all the time in the slashings.

We used to wear buckskin clothes all the time. There were Indians used to come down here from Red Cliff [over by Bayfield] every summer. The menfolks would pick blueberries. They'd dry them on racks. Then the menfolks would go up the river where there was a natural salt-lick above Harry Andersons. They had scaffolds up there in the trees. They'd sit up there and shoot deer and then run them down in canoes down to the point where the women would take care of them. The menfolk would then tan the deerhides. We used to bring hides down there to the Indians and they would tan them. Mother would then make our clothes by hand.  Moccasins, pants, jaokets everything.  You couldn't wear them out.    And when they got a little wet they got so cracked. Tough. Mother used to wash for one of the logging camps.

So that's the end.  If you got this far, thanks for persevering!  

Memories of a pioneer child - Fred Larson's story - Part 2

As I work with my family history, I am constantly regretting that I didn't ask more questions of my parents and other family members when they were still alive.  And reading some of these stories about what my grandparents went through to come here to set up their home and the town really makes me appreciate them and all the work they did for their family.  Wait 'til you get to the part about the pot of beans left in the cabin and wood chunks for chairs!  What a welcome that would have been for my grandmother!

And I also want to thank my (second/third?) cousin, Del Lorentzson, who sent me this story yesterday.  He really has devoted much of his retirement years to gathering family information and putting all these stories together.  Lately he's been using https://familysearch.org/ as a free site for posting family stories.

Fred & Regina Larson - Port Wing Pioneers

And now, back to Fred Larson, the three-year-old pioneer arriving with his parents and two-year-old twins onto the shores of Lake Superior in Port Wing...which probably wasn't even called Port Wing at that point in time:

All of those Pennsylvania Dutch were nice people. Where they came from, I don't know. They were the first ones to have a sawmill here—it ran night and day; the Calkins.  They had their own electric plant.  Calkin's logging road ran through our land. They made the ice ruts in the fall. That mill burned. Dr. Merrill was the first doctor here.  Maybe Dr. Harder, but I don't know if he was practicing.

There was a passenger boat between Duluth and Ashland. The folks, my folks, took that. Pete[Braff] was with, he had his  family in Duluth. The first house we lived in was on Pete Braff 's—Larvick's—place. They had built a little homestead shanty, you know, right east of Eric Johnson's house. Pete Braff built that. It was his land. That summer, they started a passenger boat—a freight boat—between Duluth and Ashland. They dumped us off in the lake. There was no harbor and no dock. They took us in with rowboats and landed us along the beach. Pete knew that McCardle had a boat up there along Kinney Creek. So he waded across the slough, waist deep in water,  you know.

When he came back it was getting dark on the lake.  Pa stayed with ma and the kids.  A little wind had come up and pa had put up some blankets for shelter.  Then Pete came back.  That was a long trip from up there in Kinney Creek down to the lake.  Then we started to paddle up toward Kinney Creek.  And when we got up there it was nine o'clock. Dark. There was no road. So we hiked through the woods. Dad took me and Pete took Herb;  my mother took my sister. There was a trail through the woods from Kinney Creek up to that shack.  Pa and Pete went ahead and Mother came behind.    

Under windfalls and over windfalls. When Mother came into the shack, she cried. They had made a table of a sort, and there were wood chunks to sit on. Pa had baked a big pan of beans. To save for us. To treat the folks. He had put an old felt hat over the beans.  Ma said that when they lifted that felt hat, the beans were ready to blow up.  They had started to raise—stunk, they had to throw  them out.

Dugie McClain maybe had the mail route after Tummy.  Then Gidloff and Andrew Peterson. Then Eskil Swanson had it later. Jardine and Eric Sehlin had it too.

Ma was afraid to let the kids out alone. There were owls sitting in the trees looking at  them. And there were bobcats too.  One time, Uncle Charlie had bought a horse from Cameron. And he  came down into a cedar swamp—it was wet all over then. Water all over. The horse started to act up something terrible. Finally, he spied two lynx sitting up in a tree.  So he let the horse go. And one of the lynx jumped and landed on the hind end of the horse. Then the horse really went.

We had a black cow that was dumped off in the lake. It didn't want to follow the rowboat in but wanted to go back to the big boat. T. N. said, "The devil is in those black cows.”

And more to come tomorrow!

Memories of a pioneer child - Fred Larson's story

A few years ago I received an email from someone I didn't know who was asking questions about my paternal grandmother's family.  Her name was Regina Charlotta Peterson and then she married my grandfather, Fred Larson.  As it turned out, the person sending me the email was a cousin on my grandmother's side of the family, and I think he got my name from something I had posted on Ancestry.com.  He was from north of Duluth and we had a meet-up here in Port Wing 3-4 years ago with him and his wife, some friends of theirs who also do a lot with genealogy, and some of my Larson cousins from here.  He showed us all of the work he had done up until then and we all were really amazed, finding out things we never knew.  And we've been in touch from time to time ever since.

Yesterday I received an email from him asking me questions about the Fred Larson side of the family, and he mentioned about something that was written by Fred Larson.  I was confused and part of the confusion comes because my grandfather was Fred Larson, one of the original settlers here, and his oldest son was Fred Larson.  Well, this story was something the son, my Uncle Fred, had related to someone back in 1955.  After I saw it I realized I had seen it before, but I thought it was interesting enough to include here.

One more note of clarification - Fred, along with his sibling twins, was one of the first three children who came with his mother and father (my grandparents) to live here in Port Wing.  This was originally one long paragraph, but I'm going to break it up so it's more readable.  Now here's his story:

FRED LARSON

     My dad was one of the original settlers here. Of course McCardle was here but he hadn't brought his family yet. He built over by the Twin Falls.  My dad homesteaded here about 1890. He brought us kids and mother over here in 1891. He came from Duluth and he was a carpenter by trade. (Uncle) Charlie came in 1892. I was born in 1889.     

Fred Larson (back), twins Herbert & Hedvig (or vice versa?) photo from spring/summer 1891

Andrew Peterson and Samuelson came in 1891 because Braff and Dad helped them unload at the stone quarry and then they dragged it along the beach. Peterson brought a team of horses because he was draying in Duluth. Pete Braff and Dad came at the same time. The purpose was to file a homestead claim. The intention was to prove up and go back again, but they stayed here. 

My Dad had a ten room house in Duluth. He sold that then but he didn't get much for it. I was two going on three when I came. I was 66 the 6th of May.  T. N. Okerstrom was not here then. The land office for this territory was in Ashland.  T.N. Okerstrom came from Duluth where he stayed with my folks.  Then he boarded at Pete Braff's boarding house. 

T.N. was single then. Then he met Mary Okerstrom. She worked for Nilsenius in Ashland.  He met her there. Okerstrom had the first logging camp. That was up on Ed Danielson's place.  Julia McCardle had a homestead here, down in the draw between Rudolph's and Morrison's and Signe's place.  Julia was single.  Grandpa McCardle had a homestead over by the stone quarry.  But which stone quarry it was, I don't know. There was a stone quarry over by the Fred Sehlin place. That was the first stone quarry. Old man McCardle died over there and they buried him over there. But I suppose they moved him afterwards; I don't know where he is now.  I never saw the old man, but I seen the McCardle that was at Twin Falls and Mrs. McCardle. 

Grandma McCardle took care of Mother when Carl was born.  He was born in January, 1893. He was the first white child born here in Port Wing.  Alaena Okerstrom would have been the first one, but she was born in the hospital in Ashland. Esther Peterson—Mrs. Helsing—she was the first girl born. The first one to die here was Charlie Larson's boy, Rueben.  He was buried on Aaronson's homestead, where Christiansen (?) lives. I was at the funeral. Dan Daly's house used to be a blacksmith shop. The Iron River road went in back of the Catholic church, directly south. John Tummy drove, I remember that. He  was  a little  fellow—wore  a big black hat. (WE SHOULD ASK FRED LARSON TO DRAW A MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE OF THE  FIRST ROAD TO  IRON RIVER.) 

[That last line was a comment from someone back then who had heard his story.]

Stay tuned because there is more to come!

My Lutheran Conversion

Yes, it's true.  I became a Lutheran last week.

Throughout my life, I really thought I was going to be "a Methodist till I die."  (You should know that there's a song by that title.)  Truthfully, the thing I always enjoyed most about being a Methodist was singing hymns, and singing harmony with the alto and tenor parts--the bass was usually too low. Someone near and dear to me, I won't mention any names, has always said that she learned to read music and do part-singing from all those childhood years standing next to me singing hymns in church.  And I always appreciated John Wesley and the positions he took on social issues of his day, and his conversion story of feeling "his heart strangely warmed."  And have you read his "Directions for Singing?" It's always one of the first pages in the Methodist Hymnals.

But now living here, the nearest (United) Methodist Church is 50 miles away in either direction.  And we have this beautiful First Lutheran Church right here in town with the nicest, most hard-working people around, and a great pastor, Pastor Nancy Hansen.  And they all won my heart.

First Lutheran Church - Port Wing, Wisconsin

And there is another reason I am drawn to this church and that also comes from the family history I've been translating.  Here are some passages that relate directly to this church:

"Since it was mostly Swedes who lived in Port Wing, it was not long before they began to discuss forming a Swedish church. That happened in 1895.

Even before this, however, there were occasional visits by traveling preachers, the first in 1893. A vivid portrayal of his first visit in 1893 is given by Pastor J. D. Nelsenius much later, in 1920, in conjunction with the congregation's 25th anniversary.

"I had taken the train to Iron River, from where I got on a horse. There was no road between Iron River and Port Wing. When it came to the big 'impenetrable' forest, it was not a game to penetrate.  We overturned twice. To our happiness were horse’s engines so used to it that they took things calmly. My sleeve cuffs were torn and I lost a few precious cufflinks that I had received from my wife.

As the sun was going down we saw Lake Superior and 'the big city' of Port Wing, which consisted of three or four small houses. Just when we arrived it began to thunder and rain frightfully. Thunder struck by a tree, but luckily no one got hurt.

The people gathered at T.N. Okerström’s and listened intently to the text from Philippians 2:12 urging us to arm ourselves with our personal salvation.

The next day at 10 am a worship service was held in the house of the Fredrik Larsson family located a little way into the woods. Text was John 10: 11-16: the good shepherd and his sheep. All of the Lutheran faith were present.   At this time were baptized two of the first children in this community. They were Carl Edwin, son of Mr and Mrs Fredrik Larsson and Edward Reuben, son of Mr and Mrs Carl Johan Larsson."

There were thus two cousins ​​whose fathers had come from Lungsund in Sweden who were the first to be baptized.

Nelsenius says that he then visited Port Wing as often as possible. He did itinerant preaching in the area lumber camps.

The congregation was founded in August 9, 1895, and among the 15 adults and 11 children who then enrolled were Frederick and Carl Johan Larsson with their families. Frederick was one of those who was appointed a trustee. He was a long-time participant in the leadership of the parish, especially during times when they had no pastor. As early as 1896 he was elected as chairman and was also a Sunday School teacher. He was a deacon for many years.

As early as 1896 it was decided to build a church. Fredrik Larsson was included in the building committee. "

And since my grandfather was Fredrik Larsson, joining this church was just logical.  And now I'm learning about Martin Luther!

A pioneer's story comes to life

For the last couple of weeks I've been working on translating a family history for my father's family who all came to America, most came here to Port Wing, all from Sweden.  It was written by Ingabritt's (cousin from yesterday's post) father, John, and consists of many pages of typed text interspersed with pictures, followed by a family tree that begins in the early 1800's and goes to about 1980 when he finished writing it.  But it's in Swedish.  So this is where my discovery of Google Translate, Bing Translate, multiple online Swedish dictionaries, use of cognates from my knowledge of German, and sheer curiosity about what it says, all came together to me producing a translation of this document.  And, boy, have I learned a lot! All of a sudden those tenant farmers mentioned from time to time in Downton Abbey all make sense!  I can see why possible opportunities in America looked a whole lot better than their reality in Sweden, at least for their own family.  But more about that in future posts.

Lämås, where my grandfather lived with his parents and 7 siblings before coming to America.
That's my dad in the picture.

This afternoon I translated the part about my grandfather coming to America in 1881.  He came through the port of Gothenburg (Göteborg) and his destination on the shipping logs was listed as Ortonville (MN).  There must have been some other relatives or friends living there because I've heard of other mentions of Ortonville through the years.

He eventually got to Minneapolis and somehow ended up in Canada working on constructing the Canadian Pacific Railroad system.  There he learned English from his Irish co-workers!  And then I got to where he moved to Duluth and here I'm going to include the full text as I translated it...so it might not flow very smoothly, but you'll get the idea.

After a few years Fredrik lived in Duluth, Minnesota, and supported himself with carpentry. In 1889 he married  Regina Charlotta Petersson from Dädesjö in Småland (a state in Sweden). She had come to America in 1884, one of seven siblings who all emigrated, and eventually their mother also came. 

In the early 1890s, there were bad times in Duluth and Fredrik considered acquiring a farm. When there was an opportunity to buy land in Wisconsin along the great Lake Superior, Frederick, along with Smålander Peter Braf, made a reconnaissance trip to the area. Both families decided to take on the adventure of becoming settlers, and in 1891 Frederick sold the house in Duluth (which had 11 rooms), and his family, consisting now of mother and father, son Frederick and the twins Herbert and Hedwig, stepped on a steamer which brought them level with the countryside they had decided to conquer.  There, they got into a rowboat and came ashore with the small amount of household goods they could bring.

A simple log house became their first home. In the forests Indians still roamed but there was never any hostility between them and the Swedish settlers. On the contrary, says the descendants of Frederick and Regina, that it was the Indians' good advice, especially when it came to using deer skins to make moccasins and clothing, which helped the settlers over hard times in the new, difficult conditions.

And that's just another Passage that I feel blessed to be able to tell, and then think about as I sit up here in Port Wing, with snow blowing in the cold winds outside, and I'm in my warm, cozy house.

Wow!