Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Remembering Our Unsung Pioneer Ancestors, Jim Lewis

The Bridge

My great-grandparents, Niels Jensen Norgaard (1848-1920) and Karen Sorensen Norgaard (1852-1949) immigrated to America in 1869 and 1871, respectively. They had both been raised in the Aalborg area of northern Jutland. Niels left his family and a comfortable home at the age of twenty to travel alone to a new, yet unknown, destination. His immediate objective was Harlan, Iowa, where relatives had a farm. It was twelve hundred miles across unfamiliar land between New York City and Harlan, Iowa. Niels was alone in a strange land, didn't know the language, and had little money to sustain himself. He traveled on …

Jacob A. Riis: The Ideal American Citizen, Flemming Just

The Bridge

At his death in 1914, Jacob A. Riis was one of the US's best-known and most admired citizens, who had been able to effect more social change than most of his peers. President Theodore Roosevelt had earlier declared Riis to be "the most useful citizen of New York," and now called him "the ideal American citizen." In one of many obituaries of Riis we read:

Denmark gave him to us, and if we gave Denmark millions in return, we could not pay her for what Riis did for us and for what Riis inspired us to do. He landed in …

The Transformation Of Chris Madsen In 1875-76: From Troubled Young Man In Denmark To Mature Wild West Hero In America, Frans 0rsted Andersen

The Bridge

In October 2018, I pub- lished a book about Chris Madsen with the title Et liv pa kanten. En biografisk fortcel- ling om Chris Madsen's utrolige liv (A life on the edge. A bi- ography about the incredible life of Chris Madsen). The second edition, which I cite in this article, was published in 2019. This book grew out of two separate projects: one aimed at publishing texts that can encourage boys and men to read more books (again), and another focused on Dan- ish emigration to the US in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.