Andersen

Anders and Marta, shown at right in a photo taken in Trondheim, perhaps about 1885, married in 1855. At that time Norway was ruled by the king of Sweden. Although Anders was the eldest son and so would one day inherit the family farm, the young couple decided not to wait, and purchased it from Ander's parents the year following their marriage. The economy was reasonably good at the time, and they must have felt they could successfully run the farm, but the decision eventually turned out to be an unfortunate one.

Anders and Marta had several children while at Torstad, beginning with a daughter, Berit Martha , born in 1855. Another daughter, Berit Anna , followed in 1857 and Ole , their first son, was born two years later. Mette Marie came next, in 1861, and she was followed by five boys. Olaus was born in 1864, Anders Martinus in 1866, and Nicolai Askim in 1869.

Try as they might, the economy finally caught up with the growing family. After struggling for 20 years to make a living on the farm, they went bankrupt in 1875. The family then became tenant farmers at Askjem, another farm just a few miles away. The new farm was on flat, fertile land, and was much more suitable for crops. (The current owner grows strawberries.) The new farm meant a new surname as well, and the family now adopted Askjem as their last name.

Another son, Johannes , was born a year following the move, and Kristine in 1878. Finally, Kristian was born in 1885, making a total of twelve children. Elias Helmer died in 1888 of unknown cause, but the other eleven children thrived.

Life at Askjem was easier, but still primitive by today's standards. We know from a letter handed down from Christine that there was no electricity or water in the house, and that the children dug peat from a swamp to be burned for heating the house and cooking. Washday came twice a year, when the clothes and bedding would be taken to a nearby river, washed, and spread on the grass to dry. The family's beds were wooden bunks and the mattresses were stuffed with hay which was refilled once a year. Marta made the soap and candles, spun the yarn, and knit the children's clothes and stockings. Anders made the shoes. He also carved a spoon out of a cow's horn for each of the twelve children.

As the children grew older, some left the farm. First to leave was Beret Martha, who married and moved away with her husband. Then, in 1880, Mette Maria became the first of the family to leave for the United States. She sailed on the Allan Line steamship 'Pacific', using a ticket someone, perhaps a relative, had paid for in America. Her destination was Scandia, in the state of Kansas.

The economy was poor, jobs were hard to find, and it must have been difficult for the small farm to support such a large family. Two years after Mette Maria left, Olaus followed, with his destination also listed as Scandia. Ole followed in 1883, headed for Duluth, Minnesota. A year later Beret Anna left for Duluth, and Anders Martinus emigrated in 1885 or 1886. Nicolai was next to leave, in 1887. Finally, in 1889, plans were made for the remainder of the family to leave, accompanied by Ole, who had earlier returned to Norway. As before, the family left on a Wilson line ship, this time the Domino.

The first part of their voyage was to Hull, England, where they would have taken a train to Liverpool. There they would have taken one of the Allan Line steamers to Quebec. We know from contemporary accounts that that voyage took about 17 days and was not particularly uncomfortable. Ocean travel by the year 1889 no longer meant many weeks of confinement in unsanitary and dangerously overcrowded vessels. Years later, Christine even recalled that she was given the first orange she had ever seen by a member of the crew.

In a letter written in 1890 by Ole Andersen's wife-to-be, who also traveled on the Allan line, she says that her ship would land in Quebec, and this is believed to have been the route that the family had earlier taken. From the city of Quebec, they would have traveled across the river to the United States and then taken a train to Jamestown, Kansas, their final destination. No longer on their Norwegian farm, they were now simply "Andersens". While it is clear that Anders died in 1899, there is considerable confusion about where and when he died. Some believe it was before they left for the United States, others that he died en route, and others (perhaps the majority) believe he died soon after arriving in Kansas.

After about three years, many of the remaining Andersens moved to the Puget Sound area of Washington state. In the photo at the right, probably taken around the turn of the century, Martha appears with nine of her children.

Identification of those in the picture is difficult, especially since one of the men is missing and it is not certain which one. In the front row are (left to right) Johan, Kristian, and Olaus. In the second row are Mette Marie(?), Berit Anna(?), Marta, and Kristine. In the top row are Johannes, Ole (?) and either Anders Martinus or Nicolai Askim (?). Marta first lived in Tacoma, but later found a home in Poulsbo , a small town in Kitsap county that had attracted a large number of Norwegian families. She lived there, never learning English, until she died in 1924.

Like his mother and many of his siblings, my grandfather came to the Pacific Northwest from Kansas, attracted by the news that work could be had at Seattle's Denny Hill regrade project. He later moved to Tacoma, where he was employed for the rest of his life as a machinist at the Northern Pacific Railroad shops in South Tacoma.

My grandfather attended the Norwegian Lutheran Church in Tacoma, where he met and ultimately married Gertie Mathison, a sister of Hannah Mathison, who married his brother Nicolai. John and Gertie were married in 1904, and had one child, my father Alton Jessmar Andersen, in 1907.

Below, on the right, in a photo taken in 1910, is my grandfather, John Andersen, milking the family cow while Grandmother Gertie and my father look on. My grandparents lived in this house until about 1934. It was in a section of Tacoma that, needless to say, holds few cows today!

John was a quiet man, very handy with tools. My father recalled that his father once fashioned a new type of part for the railroad's locomotives, only to have a foreman pick it up off his workbench, recognize what it was and what it was for, and say "that's just what we need!" He then turned and waked off with it. They never heard another word about the part, which was eventually used in every locomotive the railroad owned!

Unfortunately, I do not remember ever having seen my grandfather, who died of cancer on July 16, 1935, when I was three and a half. Dad also worked at the NP shops as a machinist, often alongside his father, and always felt that as his father aged, the railroad tried to force him to retire early, in order to save money. When the weather turned bad, the company insisted that John work outdoors, even though Dad was working indoors and offered to trade jobs with his father. Dad believed that this severely harmed his father's health and contributed to his death.

John was remembered by both my parents as having had a good sense of humor and loving a practical joke - unlike my rather dour grandmother!

In 1930, a fund-raising carnival was held at the Tacoma Armory to raise money for Franklin Park, off 12th Avenue. Dad volunteered to help build a booth at the event and was busily at work when he spied Gladys Imhoff, a young Tacoma artist who had volunteered to cut paper silhouettes of people. She had come with her mother, Cora Miller Imhoff, who was to tell fortunes at a booth they would share. The local newspaper reported that Gladys's work was "in high favor and the fortune teller's booth is a favorite renezvous for carnival patrons." From her booth on the balcony, she saw Alton working below, at the other end of the Armory and it was, I have been told, love at first sight. Dad told a friend later that he had met the woman he wanted to marry. They are shown at left in a photo taken in October 1930, and were married on June 5, 1931, at Tacoma's Central Lutheran Church on G street.

I was born in January, 1932, right in the middle of a severe depression, and my brother 'Bert' followed in 1933. That's Bert on the left, below, and me alongside. Although I certainly did not realize it at the time, times were very hard. Dad did odd jobs or worked as a door-to-door salesman whenever he was let go from his regular job as a machinist. He sold Wear-Ever pots and pans, roofing material and building insulation, none of them very successfully. One of Mom's favorite stories of those difficult days concerned a case of canned food that they bought at a bargain price because it had gotten rained on and all the labels had soaked off. The cans turned out to contain canned pears, which Mom died with food coloring. We ate different colored pears for breakfast, lunch and dinner for three days!

A fine bass singer, Dad was a long-time member of our church male quartet and also sang in the choir. The quartet would often practice at our house and I loved listening to them sing.

We moved from Tacoma to the little town of Burton on Vashon Island in 1947. The island, located in Puget Sound between Tacoma and Seattle, was an idyllic place to grow up. We lived in a small house on the beach and Dad worked as a clerk at the town's grocery.

After Bert and I had graduated from the Vashon Island High School, however, the folks moved back to Tacoma. There, they started what would eventually become a long series of small businesses, selling gifts, art work, crafts, and semi-precious stones and gems. With Bert and I married and gone, they moved first to Shelton, Washington, then to New Mexico and, finally, Arizona. They are shown at right as they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 1991.