1938 and Electric Power

The year 1938 held an important technological advance for rural America, especially rural Wisconsin. In her Homestead family history, aunt Clara Cook describes it this way: “In 1938, the Wisconsin Power Cooperative had an easement on land to the area to install pole lines which gave all the farmers the benefit of electric power” (page 38). And that included Emil Borreson’s Fitch Coulee farm.

Only when I was glancing through a book about Wisconsin’s historical markers along roadways throughout the state did I realize that the Badger State was at the forefront of this rural electrification change, and that Trempealeau County was at the cutting edge within the state.

Three miles north of Chippewa Falls, there’s a historical marker along Highway 124 noting the “Nation’s First Cooperative Generating Station.”

On Sunday, May 2, 1937, the Wisconsin Power Cooperative was formed by an assembly of farmers for the purpose of developing a generating and transmission facility for low-cost electrical service to the rural areas of eight counties. REA loans financed the new organization, and on March 14, 1938, the first transmission began to two of the eight counties, Trempealeau and Buffalo, with the other six counties online by the end of the year.

As the ensuing years brought changes, this Wisconsin Power Cooperative eventually was merged into the current Dairyland Power, and the historic original 1938 plant was retired and dismantled in 1975.

I find it fascinating that Emil’s farm was part of this bit of history. Not only was it within one of the two counties first served by this rural electrification effort, but a key to success was the cooperative model, that is, the farmers themselves – real grassroots action – got the ball rolling. Such local or area initiative was not new in Pigeon Falls which had a history of cooperative ventures (like the Pigeon Falls Cooperative Creamery) – but that may be a blog posting for another day.

Why They Came to Wisconsin

Did you ever wonder why our ancestors came to Wisconsin – or specifically Trempealeau County or Fitch Coulee? The answer is usually found in who came before they did. But first, let me back up a step.

In the 1850s and 1860s, the states encouraged – and even competed for - immigrants, Wisconsin included (statehood came in 1848). In 1852 in New York the office the Commissioner for Emigration printed pamphlets about opportunities and resources in Wisconsin, five of those pamphlets being in Norwegian. These were often handed to besieged immigrants when they arrived on U.S. soil. Immigration numbers dropped sharply in 1855, but in 1867, Wisconsin resumed a Board of Immigration that arranged to get pamphlets sent directly to people in Europe.

A prominent Wisconsin scientist by the name of Increase Lapham prepared an official pamphlet in 1867, “Statistics, Exhibiting the History, Climate and Production of the State of Wisconsin.” Despite its bland title, the pamphlet teemed with information immigrants desired: topography, water power, animals, fish, forests, farm products, occupations, newspapers, churches, the Homestead Law, wages, and more.

Increase Lapham

We can wonder if our Borreson and Estenson ancestors might have seen the pamphlet by Lapham or others in their home areas back in Norway. Clearly a powerful inducement to come to America was the land policy of the state, and this included low prices. By 1871 the commissioner of immigration even arranged for reduced railroad fares for immigrants. After all, the object was to attract immigrants.

Another key motivation to come to America was found in the letters that earlier immigrants mailed back home. I have read that often when a letter from America arrived back in Norway, reading it became a social occasion in the home or community. Such letters meant, of course, that the earlier immigration of friends or relatives often influenced other family members to follow, and the places where they might settle.

According to Merle Curti’s book, The Making of American Community (page 98), many people from Biri settled in Trempealeau County’s Hardie’s Creek Valley (south of Ettrick) after 1860. Biri was home to the Thorson family. First Johannes and his wife Ingebor homesteaded in Steig Coulee near Pigeon Falls in 1868. (Was it further north because the southern part of the county was too populated?) Then Torger came in 1875, and the following year, with money earned from working at the Ekern Company in Pigeon Falls, he brought his wife Regine and their six children, plus our great-grandmother Maria Thorson. In any case, many folks from Biri ended up in Trempealeau County.

Curti told of an Arcadia Leader article, June 28, 1877, that a large group of Biri men and women were traveling together for Blair, Wisconsin: “they are just the class of which the Northwest needs thousands more.” By this date, of course, our ancestors were already farming in the county.

Among the Estensons, our great-grandfather Bertinus, his brother Peder, and their parents immigrated in 1875. Their reasons for choosing Pigeon surely must have included the fact that their sister Anne and her husband Ole Iverson Hofstad had immigrated to America nine years earlier, becoming the first settlers in Fitch Coulee (Clara Cook, Homestead, page 4). Clara makes a point that Anne was to first in her family to come to America.

Among the Borresons, our grandparents Elias and Kari emigrated in May 1869, residing with friends and relatives in Onalaska, Wisconsin, before making their way to Pigeon and Fitch Coulee four years later. It seems reasonable to believe that there may have been folks from their home area of Loten, Norway, drawing them to each of these communities in turn.

As a postscript, I find it interesting that most of our ancestors began their lives in America at an economic low point – and at a time when immigration numbers were low. Curti wrote that between “1873 and 1880 immigration … was comparatively slight,” partly due to a depression in 1873. Nevetheless our ancestors came. They must have been very motivated, convinced that life in America would still be better than what they had in Norway.

Ski Jumping: One More Time

Will this be the last post on ski jumping? I’d like to say yes, but I can’t promise!

A week ago, I was given a website enabling me to search old Winona, Minnesota, newspapers. What a treasure that was! Those papers did a good job covering news in western Wisconsin and, combined with La Crosse and Eau Claire papers I’d searched earlier, my wealth of ski jumping news articles grew once again. (Whitehall and Blair newspapers, which I’ve not been able to search, would expand my list again.)

If you’re a “Borreson cousin,” one of Emil and Gina’s grandchildren, I’m e-mailing each of you a summary of what I learned about the ski tournaments the Borreson brothers participated in. In this public posting, I’ll add a few more thoughts.

I have discovered about thirty pieces of ski jumping documentation from 1919 to 1948 for the family, most of them ski jumping tournaments. I am quite certain the brothers jumped at many more events; my findings may be “the tip of the iceberg,” so to write.

Five brothers were ski tournmanet jumpers: Gilbert, Bennie, Ednar (Red), Odell, and Sidney. I know that Edgar and my dad Garven also skied, but I doubt they did tournament jumping, at least based on news clippings. This was truly a ski jumping family. There were other such families, too, like the six Nelsons brothers from nearby Strum, or the famous Bietila brothers from Ishpeming, Michigan.

The first ski jumping evidence is 1919 photo for Pigeon Falls skiers including Gilbert and Bennie; the last is a ski jumping competition at Eid Hill, Pigeon Falls, that included Bennie  in the Senior Class. That’s Borreson ski jumping over the course of four decades! I’ll include the one article I found from January 1935 with three Borreson skiers. (Tamarack is near Arcadia in Trempealeau County.)

In addition to hometown Pigeon Falls, of course, the list of places where the brothers jumped is quite long and worth including. In Wisconsin, there were Blair, Tamarack, Whitehall, Eau Claire, Hudson, Wausau, Strum, Sparta, Westby, and Galesville. In Minnesota, I know of Winona, Red Wing, and Rushford. That’s a total of 14 places, and the list is likely incomplete. Red Wing was one of the earliest places for midwestern ski jumping, and today ski jumps are still going at Eau Claire and Westby.

There’s a line I found in the Skiing Heritage Journal (2008) underlining the importance of ski jumping in Norwegian-American communities: “There was a time that if a Norwegian moved to your town, a ski jump was likely to appear within a year.” Pigeon Falls was a ski jumping town, and the Borreson brothers were in the center of the action.

Whitehall Ski Jump in 1938

Recently the librarian in Whitehall pointed me in the direction of a website to access old Winona, Minnesota, newspapers. Did they ever carry great ski jumping news from western Wisconsin! Among the gems I uncovered, I located this picture of the Whitehall ski hill in 1938.

Obviously the quality is minimal, but if you look carefully, you can locate the very top of the slide and the take-off platform (the dark block below). Sid, I suppose, would have jumped from this slide, and probably several of his brothers.

The news article from January 29, 1938, indicated the slide was located ”on the Herberg farm one and one-half miles north of Whitehall on county road “D.” It was reconditioned recently for the tournament and a 37 degree slant provided. Improvements on the take-off platform also were made and the slide is believed to be in condition to assist the competitors in producing some record leaps” (Winona Republican-Herald).

Another fun discovery in the same newspaper was a ski jump competition Sid had told me about. He and Odell participated in a junior tournament sponsored by the Whitehall Record Breakers Ski club in February 1935. Sid not only won first place in Class A (10-13 year olds) but also won the prize for “most graceful form.” In the Senior Class of 13-15 year olds, Odell won third place and the prize for “the longest standing jump with 28 feet.” At the end of the article, Bennie Borreson and Maynard Sinrud were said to have represented Whitehall at a U.S. Central ski tournament at Red Wing the same Sunday. Three Borreson skiers in one news item – and Red Wing was the big time!

The same newspaper featured three Borreson brothers earlier too – January 21, 1935. This item reported a ski tournament at Tamarack. another Trempealeau County hot spot for ski jumping. That January Sunday Red Borreson (Ednar) took second place in Class B with jumps of 101 and 106 feet for 224 points. Odell took third in Class C with jumps of “56 and 54 feet, but he fell on one jump and scored 121 points. “Ben Borreson of the Pigeon Falls club had the long standing jump with 109 feet.”

The articles are numerous that the Borreson brothers were at the heart of this Norwegian-American sport in its hey-day. What fun it is to find the articles and read the stories!

Traveling in 1878 Trempealeau County

What were the roads like at the time the Borresens and Estensens arrived in Trempealeau County? For Elias and Kari Borresen, that would be 1873 in Fitch Coulee near Pigeon Falls; for Bertinus Estensen, 1875, and for his future wife Maria Thorsen, 1876.

In Merle Curti’s 1959 book on democracy in Trempealeau County, The Making of An American Community, page 36 holds a telling map of the roads in the county’s early life. Often these first roads followed established Indian trails and, of course, remained basically trails – muddy in rain and springtime, and hard and rough in dry weather. Townships called together groups of farmers for road repair, and the county itself often got involved in bridge-building. In low, marshy areas, logs were placed for corduroy roads. Spring floods and high water often undid the work. Perhaps the Borresens and Estensens participated in repair teams in Pigeon township after they arrived in the mid-1870s.

Beginning in the 1850s, people like George Gale of Galesville had already envisioned market roads from south to north across the county’s three river valleys of the Mississippi, the Trempealeau River, and the Buffalo (Beef) River. These roads were constructed very piecemeal; nevertheless, before the Borresens and Estensens arrived, the two arterials were basically in place (see map below). I have identified the “Trempealeau and Eau Claire” in pink/purple, and the “Galesville and Eau Claire” in blue. I find it quite incredible how close these routes are to Highways 93 and 53 today.

If farmers needed to move crops to market, these are the routes they would follow. Curti wrote that groups of farmers would gather after the ground was frozen and take their ox-team-powered wagons through the snow. They’d alternate lead teams, since cutting a path demanded more of the oxen. (Did Bertinus’s team of Buck and Bright get in on those trips? Probably not.)

By 1873 when Elias and Kari arrived, the Green Bay and Western Railroad built tracks generally following the Trempealeau River (orange/brown on map). That completely changed the market situation. Now farmers had only to move their produce to one of the depot towns, and for Pigeon township folks, that place would have been Whitehall. What a reduction in distance that would have been!

Where They Lived in 1901

Recently I stopped by the library in Blair, Wisconsin, and I made the happy discovery of a plat book from 1901 that included the Borreson and Estensen farms in Fitch Coulee. The very large book had a very long title too: Standard Atlas of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, including a Plat Book of Villages, Cities, and Townships of the County (compiled and published by Geo. A. Ogle and Co., 134 Van Buren Street, Chicago, 1901). The book was published the year Emil and Gina’s second child, Mabel, was born.

If you look at a point about center, you’ll find the name of Emil Borreson, and to the right of that, B(ertinus) Estensen. According to Clara’s Homestead (p. 36), Emil purchased this land from his father Elias in 1898. If I read Clara’s history correctly, Bertinus and Maria sold their farm to Ole Foss and his wife in 1904, and “bought a smaller farm in Pigeon Falls where they lived a comfortable life for 17 years” (15). [Did you notice that preposition: a farm in Pigeon Falls?! This was a different era.] Here’s a look at the plat book page.

Isn’t it interesting to walk your eye around the Borreson and Estensen farms, and then realize you are getting acquainted with their neighbors from about 110 years ago? Hallingstad, Viverstad, Simonson, Stendahl, Kjos, Nelson, Bensrud – all those names remind us what a Norwegian-American community this was. Enjoy the tour!

Surviving Childhood

Amazing, I have often thought, that Emil and Gina Borreson had ten children all of whom survived childhood and lived well into their adult years. Edwin was the youngest to die at age 58. There were no family deaths in a 1918 influenza epidemic, nor did a late 1800s diphtheria epidemic claim any immediate family lives (that I am aware of).

In an earlier generation the family was not so fortunate. I found it especially heartrending to read of the plight of Maria Estensen’s parents and siblings in Biri, Norway. Here’s Clara’s Homestead (p. 8) description of Thor Taasensen and his wife Oline’s ”family of 13 children, 10 of whom died in infancy or early childhood…. While Oline was dyeing clothes in a large hot vat, one of their little girls Tonetta fell in and died from burns she received. The other children died of various child diseases such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, etc. Medical care and proper treatment during epidemics and sickness were not to be had.”

When Maria immigrated to America in 1876, she stayed with her brother Johannes Thorson and his wife Ingebor who’d arrived earlier. In March of 1877, Johannes and Ingebor suffered the deaths of three children – two to diphtheria and one to drowning (Homestead, 9). What an incredibly wrenching month that must have been.

Among Emil and Gina children as they were growing up, I remember reading and hearing only of the serious bronchitis that the twins Ednar and Edgar dealt with early in the year 1914 when they were but two or three months old. Again, Clara’s vivid description: “A neighbor, Carrie Anderson, came over and told Gina she could help the babies. Her son Clifford brought her over every morning for months. She made medicine from Bermuda onion juice by baking the onion with sugar and then giving it to the babies; that was the only medicine they had. She bathed them, made special jackets for them for warmth, and they soon became well. Emil gave her a young pig for payment for her help” (Homestead, 16).

The only other illness I have heard about was more recently from Sid and Irene. After the war, Sid – then in his early twenties – returned from working out west three years to farm with Odell beginning in 1945. In about 1947, give or take a year, Irene writes that “Sid contracted undulant fever caused by drinking milk from diseased cows having a bacterium. This caused Sid to have a very high fever and there was no cure for it. Mother Gina was also living there and she sponged him all night to reduce the fever. Sid then got yellow jaundice, raising the fever to 104.9. The doctor thought this fever killed the first fever. He has never had an attack of this since then” (e-mail April 18, 2011).

Well, those are the stories I know. Maybe you can add to them. As I said, surviving childhood more than a hundred years ago, or even less, was hardly guaranteed. Ten for ten in Emil and Gina’s family was truly a rare and wonderful blessing.