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Restless Fanatic:Mogens Abraham Sommer, 1829-1901, Thorvald Hansen

The Bridge

This account of the life and activities of a Danish religious fanatic who played a significant role in emigration has been prepared on the basis of materials available in this country. Further items are available in Denmark, but on the basis of what is known to be available, it is doubtful that this would make any appreciable difference. To my knowledge, this is the only English language story of his life.

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 46, No. 3, Don Yoder, Alfred L. Shoemaker, Paul R. Wieand, Earl F. Robacker, Ada Robacker, Herbert H. Beck, Edna Eby Heller, Vincent R. Tortora, Frances Lichten

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Two Worlds in the Dutch Country
• Belsnickel Lore
• Carpet-Rag Parties
• Quilting Traditions in the Dutch Country
• Lititz
• Lititz Specialties
• Amish Funerals
• Pennsylvania Redware
• Scratch-Carved Easter Eggs
• Fractur From the Hostetter Collection

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 46, No. 1, Jean-Paul Benowitz, John Lowry Ruth, Paula T. Hradkowsky, Monica Mutzbauer

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• The Mennonites of Pennsylvania: A House Divided
• "Not Only Tradition, but Truth": Legend and Myth Fragments Among Pennsylvania Mennonites
• Mennonite Women and Centuries of Change in America
• "It is Painful to Say Goodbye": A Mennonite Family in Europe and America

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 45, No. 1, Joan Saverino, Joseph Bentivegna, Nicholas V. De Leo, Catherine Cerrone, Janet Theophano

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• "Domani Ci Zappa": Italian Immigration and Ethnicity in Pennsylvania
• A Study of the San Cataldesi Who Emigrated to Dunmore, Pennsylvania
• A Look at the Early Years of Philadelphia's "Little Italy"
• "An Aura of Toughness, Too": Italian Immigration to Pittsburgh and Vicinity
• Expressions of Love, Acts of Labor: Women's Work in an Italian American Community

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 44, No. 3, Diane Sidener Young, Anne W. Goda, Susan Kalcik, Woodward S. Bousquet, Monica Mutzbauer

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Conservation and Mediation in the Folk and Traditional Arts of Pennsylvania
• Isaac and Thomas Stahl, the Revival Potters of Powder Valley
• The Folk Art of Decorated Eggs
• Jim Popso and His Coal Country Folk Art
• Leaving the Old World for the New: Rules Governing Emigration from Landau in the Palatinate

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 44, No. 1, Charles L. Blockson, Roland C. Barksdale-Hall, Jerrilyn Mcgregory, Terry G. Jordan

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• "A Missing Link": The History of African Americans in Pennsylvania
• The Twin City Elks Lodge: A Unifying Force in Farrell's African American Community
• The Greening of Philadelphia
• The "Saddlebag" House Type and Pennsylvania Extended

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 43, No. 1, Thomas E. Gallagher Jr., James D. Mcmahon Jr., Gary M. Johnston, Monica Mutzbauer, Robert P. Stevenson

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Causes of Diversity Between Old Order Amish Settlements
• Daniel Danner, Woodturner: An Early 19th-Century Rural Craftsman in Central Pennsylvania
• "Truth Somewhere in the Telling": The Legend of the Wigton Massacre
• The Connections Between Pennsylvania and the Palatinate in Popular 20th-Century German Literature
• The Story of One Old-Time Country Store

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 42, No. 3, Margaret Clark Reynolds, Mary Lou Robson Fleming, Lee C. Hopple

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Assimilation and Acculturation in a Pennsylvania-German Landscape: The Nisley Family and its Architecture in the Lower Swatara Creek Basin
• Charles-Alexandre Lesueur of Paris, Philadelphia, and New Harmony, Indiana
• Religious-Geographical History of the Hutterian Brethren in Europe and Russia, 1523-1879

Emigration From Denmark To America: Diary Of Marius Larsen, Marius Larsen

The Bridge

The hour of departure falls on this day, a busy one for me. I have made good use of Christen Knudsen, my travel companion, in tieing up and transporting my baggage. "Cimbria" got under way at precisely eight o'clock, a large crowd on the dock waving farewell. Many of them were our friends and relatives. My parents came on board with us and there said their sad goodbyes. It hurts me to leave them; I hope for their sake, and for ours, that our future will develop in such a way as to make them happy that we left. We …

Weeping Water, A Typical Small Town Danish-American Community, 1880-1930, Edith Matteson, Jean Matteson

The Bridge

It is common knowledge that Danes established numerous small agricultural settlements across the United States during the period of mass emigration from Denmark that began in the 1860s and lasted through the 1920s. Yet scholars studying Danes in America have frequently devoted more attention to the institutions established in small towns in America than to the communities themselves. For example, if it had not been for Sophus K. Winther's trilogy that begins with the novel Take All to Nebraska (1936), the community established by Danes in and around Weeping Water in Cass County, Nebraska, would probably have passed unnoticed by …

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 …

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 40, No. 3, Steve Friesen, Monica Mutzbauer, Christopher S. Witmer, Mary Lamey Hoffer, Harry W. Barner, Robert L. Leight, Catherine L. Emerson

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Home is Where the Hearth is
• The Hearth is Where the Cook is
• "Philipps gehn in Amerka": The Palatinate Emigration in German Schoolbooks
• The Barner Farm: A Connection to Clinton County's Pennsylvania-German Heritage
• A Teacher With a Heart: Carrie Frankenfield Horne
• Aldes un Neies (Old and New)

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 39, No. 2, Wendy Everham, Lee C. Hopple, Ervin Beck, Juliana Bova, Grover M. Detwiler, Robert P. Stevenson

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• The Recovery of the Feminine in an Early American Pietist Community: The Interpretive Challenge of the Theology of Conrad Beissel
• A Religious and Geographical History of the Shakers, 1747-1988
• Indiana Amish Family Records
• Eel for Christmas: An Italian Tradition
• Recollections of Ninety-Two Years
• Those Old-Time Children's Days
• Aldes un Neies (Old and New)

A Mormon Melting Pot: Ethnicity Acculturation In Cedar City, Utah, 1880-1915, Vida Leigh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the ethnicity of the five ethnic groups found in Cedar City, Utah, during the 1880-to-1915 period. Those five groups were originally sent by Brigham Young to found the Iron Mission, as a two-fold project: (1) developing the iron mining industry, and (2) building a united community of Latter-day Saints.

The demographics, kinship, ties, marriage patterns, occupations, wealth, and elites in church government and society have been examined in detail through US censuses, Iron county assessment records, marriage records, Cedar City municipal records, LDS church records, diaries, histories, and personal histories. By comparing all the ethnic groups within …

A Journey With Obstacles, Jens Jensen

The Bridge

Jens Jensenwas born May 2, 1892 on a farm outside of Olgod, Denmark in central Jutland. When he was nine years old his mother died (of pregnancy toxemia), leaving five children. Jens Jensen then lived with his neighbors and relatives Kirstin and Hans Christiansen. He worked on the farm which required much labor since the Christianden family took on, in addition, the operation and management of a nearby creamery (Lindbjerg).

Recollections Of Two Immigrant Sisters, James D. Iversen

The Bridge

My father's family were among those thousands of Danes who made their decision to emigrate to America in the last decade of the nineteenth century. On March 28, 1893, Peter Iversen and wife Kirstine and children Christine, 12 years, Karen, 10, Katherine, 8, Marie, 6, Mikkel, 5 and Laura, not quite 3 years old, sailed from Copenhagen on the "Thingvalla." The came first to Sioux CIty, Iowa, where Kirstine's brother Graves Mikkelsen had settled earlier. Times were not prosperous in 1893 in Sioux City, however so the family soon moved to a homestead site in Buffalo County, South Dakota, about …

Karl Jensen's Diary

The Bridge

Karl Jensen wrote the following diary in Danish during his journey to America in 1903. He was born in Lynga in Jutland in 1873, and from 1903 until his death in 1948 he was a chicken-farmer in Enumclaw, Washington. In the diary he take considerable pride in the fact that during the entire voyage he did not suffer from seasickness. The reason for this is that as a young man he served as a seamannon merchant ships in the Mediterranean and Pacific. On one voyage his ship entered Puget Sound. This fact and the presence of a substantial Danish colony …

From Scandinavia To America: Proceedings From A Conference Held At Gi. Holtegaard, Peter L. Petersen, Reviewer

The Bridge

In early September 1983, scholars from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the United States gathered at Gammel Holtegaard, north of Copenhagen, for a three-day conference on Scandinavian emigration to the United States. Because a majority of the papers presented at the conference deal with elements of the Danish experience, readers of The Bridge should welcome this belated publication of the proceedings made possible by a grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities.

A Demographic Examination Of Household Heads In Salt Lake City, Utah, 1850-1870, Larry W. Draper

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the demographic characteristics of household heads in Salt Lake City, Utah at three points in its history: 1850, 1860, and 1870. Data was compiled on population growth, nativity, sex, age, occupation, wealth, and persistence from the United States Census for those years.

The data shows that between 1850 and 1870 the makeup of Salt Lake City household heads changed dramatically from predominately American-born to predominately foreign-born. This change in the nativity of household heads over time significantly influenced several demographic characteristics including the location of immigrant settlement, occupational tendencies, and a high level of stratification of real …

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 37, No. 1, Edward W. Chester, Nancy K. Gaugler, Ralph Connor, William T. Parsons, Roger W. Fromm, Hans F. Sennholz, Guy Graybill

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Franklin in Fact and Fiction: The Double Perspective of Leland Baldwin
• Jost Hite: From the Neckar to the Shenandoah
• The Migration and Settlement of Pennsylvania Germans in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina and Their Effects on the Landscape
• Bethesda Evangelical Church in Farmers Mills: Fact and Folklore
• The Tourist Bureau Shuns Me!

The Danish Immigrant Experience In The Fiction Of Enok Mortensen, Rudolf J. Jensen

The Bridge

Here are several short quotations from Enok Mortensen 's fiction for the purpose of showing its primary themes: " . .. for you emigrants, nothing is ever as good as it was in Denmark . .. you always have to compare . .. Over here one always possesses a peculiar unrest-only another hundred dollars, a thousand, or a million dollars more. In the old country everything was ordered and secure . .. Sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers, but as a rule they didn't get any farther either . .. Here in America it was the Golden Chance …

Enok Mortensen And The History Of Danish Immigration To America, Eric Helmer Pedersen

The Bridge

Enok Mortensen is probably best known in Denmark through his activity as a guest lecturer at Askov Folk High School in the 1960s and 1970s. Within the confines of a small group of Danes with friends and family in America he also had a name as a writer of fiction. It is true that his first work Mit Folk (1932), a collection of short stories, was published in Askov, Minnesota, but his next, the novel Saledes blev jeg hjeml0s (1934) was published in Holb

Reflections On Denmark As It Was, And Emigration To America, Arlow W. Andersen

The Bridge

In the late medieval and modern periods the histories of Denmark and Norway paralleled each other. During much of that interval the Union of Kalmar (1397-1523), which included also a dynastic tie with Sweden, practically insured common political, economic, and religious development. On the threshold of the modern age Sweden broke away from the Union (1523), but Norway was obliged to remain under Danish rule until 1814.

Chapter I: Emigration And Immigration

The Bridge

The description of an immigrant group begins in the place of origin, where thousands of individuals chose to abandon their old homes and build new lives in America. In the mid-nineteenth century, this decision required agonizing deliberation by people who knew little about America. Few had traveled abroad. Few had American relatives to provide first-hand accounts of life in the New World.

Kierkegaard Who Actually Emigrated To America, Carl Woltzer

The Bridge

Niels Andreas Kierkegaard, born April 13, 1809, was apparently destined by his father, a merchant in Copenhagen, to take over the family business. His two brothers were top students in the University-bound curriculum, but Niels was steered into business. Dissatisfaction with the course his life was taking and frustration with parental pressure led him in 1832 to seek advance payment on his inheritance and to emigrate to America, where he by no means lived the life of a prodigal son . In letters to his family, the first one from Providence, Rhode Island, and dated January 8, 1833, he told …

The Emigration Of Soren Kierkegaard, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong

The Bridge

John and Jane Doe, USA, are pretty well aware that Denmark exports the best butter, bacon, and cheese in the world to the world. But perhaps not even Jens and Tina Jensen, second and third generation Danish-Americans, realize the extent to which the second-to-none thoughts of a nineteenth century Dane have emigrated and are emigrating to the whole wide world . Indeed, they are valued more by the world than by Danes in Denmark, who can hardly conceal their surprise that the world now pays more attention to Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1865) than to Hans Christian Andersen . The Danes …

Overgaard, Arizona - How Come?, Ole Overgaard

The Bridge

Have you ever heard about a little town in Arizona by the name of Overgaard? Probably not. I hadn't, until I suddenly saw the name on a map. I, a Danish journalist from the city of Aalborg, and family were planning a trip to the USA, and we decided to find out how our family name got to Arizona. After seeing the beautiful Grand Canyon, we went along Highway 40 to the city of Holbrook. From there it is only 50 miles to Overgaard. It is a very small town, but with a lot of vacation homes in the big …

Attitudes And Attained Esl Proficiency Among First Generation Swedish Mormon Immigrants, Cecilia Nihlen

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis project, the relationship between attitudes toward target and native culture groups and attained ESL proficiency among immigrants was evaluated. The subjects were thirty adult native Swedes, all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had spent an average of 29 years in the United States. Fourteen were members of a Swedish-speaking branch, while sixteen were members of English-speaking wards. Significant differences were found in immigrants' attitudes toward the culture groups. High English proficiency related positively with a more positive attitude toward the target culture group. Those demonstrating high proficiency viewed the general native …

Thirty Years Of Emigrating, Lis Jorgensen

The Bridge

Contemporary emigration is both like and unlike the earlier emigration of Scandinavia.

The emigrants came to North America in the nineteenth century largely because of overpopulation in their own countries creating famine or purely for economic reasons. In North America they could obtain free or cheap land and thus make a better living for their families. According to early accounts, however, they often suffered even greater hardships here than at home. One question that seemed to bother the Danish settlers was whether they had done the right thing in leaving the old country. They wondered if in their struggle for …

The Remigrants, Edward F. Sundberg, Gerda Sundberg

The Bridge

"Why did you emigrate to the United States?" Gerda asked.

Mr. R. let a smile play with his lips. " It was an accident," he said.

"Tell us about it," she encouraged.

He told the story of his emigration. Gerda and I listened. Our recording machine captured his words on a cassette tape.

"Now tell us about moving back to Denmark."

Gerda and I were interviewing in Denmark as a part of the research project, RIBBONS OF MEMORIES, an American-Scandinavian Ethnic Heritage Oral History Program.