History Commons^™

My Father, The Christmas Doctor, And The Danish Nurse Who Saved His Life, Tom Weber

The Bridge

My father, Dr. John Peter Weber, was born to German immigrants in Creston, Iowa in 1888. At the age of eleven he realized he wanted to become a doctor. After finishing the eighth grade in 1904, sixteen-year-old John rode the rails to Montana to help lay railroad tracks, intending to save his wages in order to continue his education. Treated brutally by his foreman, he left the railroad construction job and traveled to Portland, Oregon, searching for work in the lumber industry. The young man from Iowa fell victim to a pickpocket on the streets of Portland. All his savings …

My Grandfather: Soren Lorentz Lassen, Karen Lassen

The Bridge

Fifty-five years aft er my grandfather’s death in 1934, my two brothers and I gathered at his gravesite in Sault Ste. Marie near the Great Lakes. For the fi rst time, Soren Lassen was being honored by a family that he never knew. Although he had died long ago, his gravestone had only recently been put in place. I pulled the scissors I had brought out of my purse and carefully cut back the crabgrass that was already creeping across the new stone. Stepping back, I read it aloud:

Svend Lawrence

(Soren Lassen)

1864-1934

Danish Midsummer: My Bodtker Grant From Dahs, Kelsi Vanada

The Bridge

Though many Americans can trace their family history back to their European ancestors, I have met very few people outside of my own family who have maintained relationships with the branches of their families still living in Europe. I have always been proud of the fact that I know many of my family members living in Denmark today. These ties between the Danish and American sides of my family are strengthened every time one of us travels to visit relatives in the other country, so I am extremely grateful that the Danish American Heritage Society (DAHS) awarded me an Edith …

Memories From Rudbøl, 1923-1927: My Teaching At Rudbøl Danish School, M.R. Mikkelsen

The Bridge

All four of my grandparents emigrated from Denmark in the 1890s. The first time any member of my immediate family visited Denmark was almost a century later, when my wife Marge and I, together with our two sons David and Philip, went over to spend an eight-month sabbatical leave from Iowa State University in Denmark in 1981.

My Danish Heritage And The Privilege Of Serving As U.S. Ambassador To Denmark, Laurie S. Fulton

The Bridge

One of the things I miss most since leaving my post as U.S. ambassador to Denmark is not hearing anyone around me speak Danish or speak English with a Danish accent. It was an adjustment to realize that few people in America know much about Denmark. And so, I truly am delighted to be with you this evening for the Danish American Heritage Society Conference. Tak for invitationen.

Remembrances: Early Years By The River: Growing Up In The Junction City Danish Community, 1904-2, Arnold N. Bodtker

The Bridge

I was born December 5, 1904, in Junction City, Oregon, on the farm, which later will be referred to as the "lower place." Quite often my father called it "Sibirien." (This is the Danish word for Siberia.) My memories from that place, where I lived my first five years, are spotty now, but nevertheless vivid

Excerpts From The Course Of My Life, Jens Hansen, Edward A. Hansen

The Bridge

Jens and Maren Stine Rasmusdatter came from the small island of Mom, Denmark. On a larger map of Denmark, Mon is a scarcely discernible plot of separated land, with chalk cliffs on its eastern seaboard and sandy beaches on the other. Stege is its chief town, set by an inlet called Noret and surrounded by verdant fields and forests. It is an idyllic spot, with its own culture and legends. Residents love it. Present day tourists are charmed by it.

From this fabled island, Jens Hansen made his first journey to America. He remembers it as happening in the winter …

Christine: The Life And Death Of A Danish American Medical Missionary In The Middle East, Jim Iversen

The Bridge

Recent world events have spawned renewed interest in the people and history of the Middle Eastern country known as Iraq. For many centuries the people and territories of what was known as Mesopotamia were part of the Ottoman Empire, which was ruled by the Sultan of Constantinople from the city now called Istanbul. Iraq did not become a separate country until the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist shortly after the "Great War," eventually called the First World War. The history of the area is complicated, but Iraq became a country essentially because the Western Allies, that is, Great Britain, France, …

Doc Christy, Borge M. Christensen

The Bridge

On February 17, 1892, a young man of twenty-five boarded the transatlantic steamer Hekla in the port of Copenhagen to emigrate to the United States of America as had many Danes before him. When he took the decision to emigrate we do not know; but that he was determined to leave is certain. His father died shortly before the departure date and the burial coincided with the sailing date. Why did he leave his home? What happened to him?

Defining An Immigrant, Helle Mathiasen

The Bridge

Before emigrating in August 1965, I had already experienced America while a child living in Denmark. My first American memory is the smell of Wrigley's Doublement gum. I also remember the green gum package containing the thin, shiny silver paper with the jagged edge you had to remove in order to touch the delectable candy. For me, as a child, chewing gum was America. I was born in Vangede in 1940, the year the Germans invaded Denmark. During much of the five-year Nazi Occupation, our family lived in Sydhavnen, in Copenhagen, on Sjcel0r Boulevard number 3, in a onebedroom apartment. …

My Re-Americanization, Willard R. Garred

The Bridge

They met in Tivoli, Copenhagen, Denmark. Ray Garred was a United States Navy sailor with a squadron of battleships sent by President William Howard Taft on a goodwill tour of England, the Scandinavian capitals, and Kronstadt, St. Petersburg's port city and Russian naval base. She was a Danish girl, Olavia Frederiksen, who had spent four years in the United States as a domestic servant and had learned English in an evening school for immigrants. The year was 1911, summer time. Tivoli, as many tourists know, is a natural place for visitors to Copenhagen to congregate, and it was where a …

The Kjems Family From Odder To Ashland, Magne Kjems

The Bridge

My father, Simon Nielsen Kjems, was born on the farm of Kjemsgaard on 23 July 1849.2 At the age of twenty, he entered Askov Folk School and was educated to be a teacher in private and folk schools (friskolen og hajskolen). In 1874, father became a teacher in the private school on Odder Mark, a short distance from the village of Odder. The pupils were both farm children and the children of master artisans in Odder. I do not know . whether father built the school himself, but I know that he came to own it, and when he married …

The Long Joumey To Oregon: An Emigrant Family From Odder, Kristian Tybjerg

The Bridge

Late Thursday afternoon on 7 February 1889, the steamship SS Bravo of the C. K. Hansen Line sailed from the port of Copenhagen for Hull in England. It carried freight, cattle, and a few passengers -all emigrants to America. Among them was a family from Odder in Jutland, a shopkeeper named Corfix S0rensen, his wife, Kathrine, and their five youngest children, Godert, Vagn, Svend, Kamma, and Alrune. Had Corfix and Kathrine known what lay ahead for the rest of their lives in terms of hard work, deprivation, disappointments, and a nagging longing for home in the old country, they may …

Breaking Ground In The Promised Land: Mary Lund's Letters Home To Denmark From Canada, March-September, 1926

The Bridge

I knew my Grandma Lund as a strong person. She was my Dad's mother, mary, the "tough" grandmaother my parents called on to babysit my older sister, Laurette, and me when they would travel for more than a few days. Mary Lund was a large person, a feature which worked against her in the years I knew her. Her legs were thick and chronic arthiritis did not allow her to walk without discomfort; she remained ever stoic, never complaining even as she winced in obvious pain. She insisted on respect for elder and a strict code of manners at the …

Ane Kirstine Jorgensen/ Bollesen, Dagmar Hoiberg

The Bridge

This is the tale of a courageous pioneer woman who with her husband Rasmus Jorgensen and daughters Caroline and Mette emigrated from Denmark in 1882, ultimately settling in Tyler, Minnesota. In her later years, she told the story in Danish to her granddaughter, Dagmar B. Hoiberg (Mette's daughter), who subsequently translated it for relatives and possible publication.

My First Ninety Years, Agneta Jensen Slott

The Bridge

My father and mother, John Christian and Anne Jensen and three children, Signius, Katherine and Kamille, came to America from Denmark in 1890. They settled in Tacoma for three years where my father worked as a bricklayer. Fremming, their fourth child, was born while they lived in Tacoma. After three years they came to Enumclaw, bought some wooded acreage which is now part of the King County Fair Grounds. My father cleared a space big enough to build a house. He worked in a logging camp and walked four miles to and from work. In 1893 they moved to Franklin …

Denmark: Through A Glass Darkly, John W. Larson

The Bridge

My Danish grandmother brought with her and retained an old country ambiance. It hung about her person in the formal way she dressed when visiting, in the erect way she sat and stood, and in her thick accent. When I think of her today, I do not visualize her in a specific residence, for she moved frequently, but I remember her distinctive atmosphere. An English visitor to the Danish island of Sj~lland wrote about 1860 that, "There is a refinement about the middle class of Danes in their household arrangements, seldom to be met with in other countries." During my …

Laurs Christian Laursen, Betty Laursen Miller

The Bridge

When my younger brother and I were little, our mother often sang to us, and soon our voices would be joining in with "Venter Paa Far"--Waiting for Father. This song is about two little blueeyed children who press their ' noses against the window pane as they eagerly await their father's homecoming. It ends with a happy rush to the door when they hear him approaching, and the words change to a joyous shout of "Her Kommer Far"--Here Comes our Father.

The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side Of The Fence .... About The Early Life Of Peter Lassen, Rene Weybye Lassen

The Bridge

Years ago, when I was a young boy, I remember my grandmother was telling about her grand-uncle. His name was Peter and he went to America many years before she was born. Just being a schoolboy at that time, I didn't pay much attention to what she was talking about. For me it was just the talk of old people, about their old folks, who were not alive any more. That couldn't really fascinate a twelve year old boy. Today I know I should have been listening with much more interest. One thing is for sure, however; I remember she …

A Short History Of The Life Of N. J. Blagen

The Bridge

In 1920 the Danish immigrant Niels Jensen Blagen looked back on his long, vigorous life, fifty years of which had been spent in the United States, and composed the autobiographical sketch which follows . Perhaps it was characteristic of N. J. Blagen that, as a man of action, he did not spend more time than he did recounting his remarkable career as a builder and lumberman in the Pacific Northwest. In an English that sometimes betrays through unusual phrasing the writer's foreign origin, Blagen takes the reader from 1850 and Rabylille on the island of M0n to 1920 and Portland, …

A Sampler, Carl Hansen

The Bridge

Note: Seventy years after his death the Danish-born writer Carl Hansen (1860-1916) remains, among those who read Danish, a highly valued interpreter of the immigrant experience in the United States. Hansen was the subject of two articles in earlier issue (Vol. 2:1, 1979) of The Bridge. His short stories and one novel are together a landmark in the American literature written in Danish , but the books have become inaccessible to many and, as to language, closed to a large audience who would appreciate his ability to sketch Danish-American personalities and lives. In Tyler, Minnesota, where he lived until 1910, …