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Chapter 3: Marriage and family

We were married at home in the parlor of the new house the folks had built on the forty acres called the Staaland place. (There was a log house standing yet, since the owners had moved away many years ago. Margit and Palmer fixed it up and lived there the summer after they were married and we exchanged places in the fall when the folks rented the farm to them. My dad started building the new house that year.) My family had lived in the new house a year, about, before we got married.

Nils and I were married on September 7, 1924 at four o’clock in the after noon. Dinner was served afterwards to the wedding party. At the first table were Rev. and Mrs. Nils Magelssen, the attendants, my cousin, Alice Oian and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ole Oian, and Edward Hesby, Nils’ second cousin, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Hesby. It was a cold rainy day. In the evening friends and relatives gave us a wedding shower. We received many pretty and useful presents.

The next morning we left for Nielsville, Minnesota, Nils’ home town. He had a job waiting as a janitor and bus driver for the school year in the Nielsville Consolidated Schools. Nils’ sister, Ellen, and her three year old daughter, Doris, came down for the wedding. They lived in Moorhead, Minn. and they drove back to Moorhead with us.

As I didn’t know anyone and not too good at getting acquainted with people, it was sort of a lonesome winter. Ellen and Doris came down and visited once, and his brother Martin and family lived in Shelly, the next town. And his older sister and husband, Sam and Larua Ness lived by the river, a few miles away, and we visited back and forth.

Nils’ family and upbringing

Nils’ mother had died when he was three, his dad when he was sixteen. His dad had come from Norway, an island named Finnoy, near Stavanger. He had the money to buy one of the nicest farms in the Red River Valley. But his dad was not a good manager of money and he eventually lost the farm.

His dad had married a girl from Mable, Minnesota, first. She died when their son, Jacob was a year or two old. After that, Lisa Fugledahl, a sister of our neighbor, Laura Fugledahl, went to work for Nils’ dad and they eventually married. They had six children. I was told that when Selmer, the youngest, was a year old and Nils was three, his mom, Lisa, was taken to the state hospital in Fergus Falls and died there.

Growing up, Nils and his siblings had guardians. They let the boys buy cars and do pretty well what they wanted to do. The Jacobson children didn’t learn the good ways of family life and worked only when they felt like it. Laura the oldest was eleven and had to learn to keep house best she could. So Nils didn’t learn the give-and-take of life. When things didn’t turn out the way he thought it should, he would blame me.

I said to Mother once, when he blamed me for something that didn’t turn out right, that I should talk back and not let him get away with it. “Oh no,” she said, “De ble bare galle av de.” (Oh no, that will only make it worse.) Mother didn’t know human nature as much as Dad. I remember so many times Dad would compliment mother, tell her what a wonderful wife she was. And Palmer did the same with Margit. He would hug her and dance her around the floor, sometimes to her embarrassment. I also remember how Palmer’s grandfather, Peter Olson [who had raised Palmer], would caress his wife and show her his love.

Our first baby

We were expecting our first child the last days in June—and no job for the summer. So my parents asked us to come home for the occasion. Ethelyn June was born June 28th, 1925, at home.

Uncle Rasmus Jenson at Highland was a life insurance agent. He tried to get Nils interested in selling insurance. But that didn’t work out so good.

Our years in North La Crosse

In August Nils went to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to look for work. He got a job at “The Gauge” in North La Crosse as a screw machine operator. Years later, after we had come to Rushford to live from Minneapolis, I was told Nils was the best screw machine operator they’d ever had. We lived in La Crosse about three years. My parents encouraged us to make our permanent home there and lent us $400 to buy a lot and start building a house in North La Crosse.

I was pregnant again and not feeling well. I couldn’t keep food down for weeks and got no better so my parents asked Ethelyn and I to come home and stay for the winter. That fall I was getting so weak that Dr. Williams sent me to the Lutheran Hospital in La Crosse. Ethelyn was then two and a half years old and stayed with Grandpa and Grandma Landsverk and Halvor. Palmer and Margit had two boys, Paul and Alf. Alf and Ethelyn were close to the same age and they played together that winter.

I was there for five weeks before I could go home. After I had been there three or four days I was so low they didn’t expect me to live. Nils called the folks and they came down. I lived through the night and the next day they started giving me small amounts of sauerkraut and that seemed to stabilize things. The doctors said there had been a few cases like mine before; they didn’t know what caused it.

Baby number two

I wasn’t able to keep house so the folks asked me and Ethelyn to stay with them. When the baby was due Mother and I walked over to Palmer and Margit to stay until the baby was born. There wasn’t any doctor, but a neighbor lady, Hilda Dragvold, went around and took care of baby cases. Our second baby, a boy we name Donald Erling, was born Feb 24 1927.

Donald cried so much and was so weak and lived only three days. My dad and Nils made a box of new boards 1 1/2 foot by 1 foot. Mother and Margit had lined it with white cloth and made a pillow to fit and there laid our little baby. It was so sad to see the little casket carried out, but we know we have a little angel in heaven. Rev N. Magelssen came and prayed and spoke a few reassuring words.

The new house was ready enough so we could move in spring 1928. There was just the sub floor but the windows and door were in and I think all the rooms were plastered. It was OK to live in until more could be done. It was that summer that Nils looked through the want-ads in a St. Paul paper and saw where Brown and Bigelow advertised for an automatic screw machine operator.

New beginnings and another baby

So Nils took off for St. Paul, applied for the job and got it. It paid $1.00 an hour and he had just been getting $.65 in La Crosse. We moved up there as soon as he could find an apartment and move our furniture up. It was at 792 Edmund Street, three blocks north of University Avenue. It was a few long blocks from Montgomery Ward. And Brown and Bigelow was a few blocks further west on the avenue. Ethelyn and I used to walk to Montgomery Ward when we needed something there.

Exactly four years after Ethelyn was born, Lila Helen was born at home. Aunt Laura came to help out for a while.

The next year we moved up to Minnehaha Avenue and 12th Street. We lived there until Nils was laid off.

The Great Depression and another baby

This was the early 1930’s, and it wasn’t easy during the Depression. I would take Lila in the buggy and Ethelyn and I would walk to Minnehaha Park. It was several blocks but fun to go and see the animals and flowers. That summer they laid off more people.

Nils went up to Nielsville and worked in the harvest again, and we were asked to come home. That fall he got a job at the company where Toastmaster and Wafflemaster irons were made. He rented an apartment on 26th St. and 4th Ave. in Minneapolis. He had a friend who was married to a girl from Nielsville, who lived in Minneapolis—and he was laid off too. Nils asked him, Earl Schaefer, to drive down to get us. Ethelyn had started school in St. Paul near Minnehaha St. that fall and when we moved to 2636 4th Avenue South in Minneapolis, she went to the Clinton School two blocks away. Our apartment was at the bottom of a short hill and next to the street car track. The street car would screech to a stop in front of our house. We were living here when James Gordon was born.

This time Nils had made arrangements for me to go to Maternity Hospital in Minneapolis. James arrived on January 5, 1931. He was a blond with very little hair but when it started to come out it turned into little curls. This year I’d take James in the buggy and the girls walking and go to Lake and Elliot Avenue to the Sears Roebuck store, six long blocks each way. In 1932 we moved to Pillsbury and 46th (4636) Street.

Nils was a proud and good father. He loved to take the girls to the lake for swims. James and I would sit by the edge and watch. Nils would always take extra children along that wanted to swim, too. He grew up by the Red River near Nielsville and his brothers would swim and play in the river. There wasn’t any swimming place close to our home, so I never learned to swim. And mother always warned us to be careful and not go close to the water.

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Next: Chapter 4: Losing Nils