Norwegian Family - Part IV

"Carl and Marie Gravseth"

Carl and Marie settled in the east section of Tacoma, moving first to 82nd and B as newlyweds in 1918. (Meanwhile, two of Marie's brothers, Chris and Al, went off to fight in WWI). Another move took the couple to their final home at 8041 East C when Marie was expecting Lillian (born at home 1925). Mervin and Evelyn had been born earlier. Later came Clarence (Lillian was closest to) and Arthur the baby.

It was a self-sufficient home. There the family planted a huge garden, tended fruit trees and berries, raised chickens, cows, and pigs, feeding the family well and often providing for their neighbors (during the Depression). Carl also fished in Puget Sound, deep-sea fished from California to Alaska every summer and took shipbuilding jobs, as well as positions in the ice plant and Sperry Flour Mill. Perhaps, Carl's more challenging job (if not fun) was the building of a fishing boat in his backyard. He once had owned a fishing boat called the "The Pearl" but sold it before Lillian was born. Unfortunately, the new boat was never completed.

Lillian says the Gravseth children often spent the evenings playing board games. Monopoly was their favorite, but so was a Norwegian game their father had made. As they played, sometimes their musical parents would entertain them. Carl had a deep baritone voice when he sang and could play the violin, guitar, clarinet, flute, and mouth harp. Marie played the guitar and also sang. Lillian loved to sing along, but it was their son, Clancy, who would carry on the musical tradition. He mastered the guitar and joined a western band in his youth, and from what I hear, he nearly made it to Nashville.

I do not remember Carl playing such instruments, although I do recall his loud baritone voice (usually in Norwegian), which sometimes startled me and added to my confusion. He'd laugh and often called me his "little Jap girl," an endearment I never really understood, until my mother explained that he admired Japanese beauty. (Perhaps it was my black/brown hair.)

It was much later that I heard Marie sing on the guitar, a beautiful Norwegian folk tune. I was awestruck. I became curious about her as a person and discovered a woman of deep Christian faith, an influence that has impacted me greatly over the years. Her passing in 1980 was a hard blow, but her presence is still strongly felt.

Tacoma was a good home for the Gravseth family. In 1920, about the time the Carlsens and Gravseths started settling there, it had a population of 96,965. The lumber business was still going strong, but it was the last decade that timber would be the main industry. The sawmills were located on the tide flats and from there the lumber was either towed out by boat, trucked out, or stacked on rail cars. Land management concerns would eventually change this, shifting the emphasis away from the generations-old industry.

Logging was what drew pioneers to the area in the beginning. In 1852 when a Swedish man built a water-powered sawmill at the head of Commencement Bay, settlers began pouring into the area. It's unofficial name was Commencement City, but it became Tacoma officially in 1868. When Northern Pacific Railroad chose Tacoma as its home in 1873 (much to Seattle's distress), luck seemed to be on Tacoma's side, but the railroad was ten years coming. Meanwhile, Seattle bypassed them as a major port, and supposedly Tacoma has been playing catch up ever since.

When the family began migrating to Tacoma in the 1910s and early 1920s, the city was beginning to see signs of modernization and change. In 1926 the Cushman Dam allowed Tacoma to have electricity on a regular basis for the first time. In 1927 Charles Lindberg flew over Tacoma skies introducing everyone to the novel idea of airmail postal service. It was the decade that Babe Ruth visited the children's wing at Cushman Hospital (1924), and President Harding made a visit (1923). And in 1928 the Puget Sound Electric Railway that had traveled from Tacoma to Seattle since 1902, made its final run. It was too slow at 45 miles an hour.

More change came in the 1930s. The beloved Tacoma Hotel burned in 1935 and in 1938 Tacoma celebrated its last streetcar ride. Crowds gathered on 9th and Broadway to watch it pass for the last time, making way for the new busses that would soon take over. Tacoma was growing fast and so was the need for additional transportation byways.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge went up in 1940, so residents in Gig Harbor and surrounding areas (e.g. Fox Island) could cross Puget sound into Tacoma. Unfortunately, "Galloping Gertie" as became her nickname, buckled and broke in the wind that same year. Engineering students (my husband included) would study the flaws in the design of this famous bridge for years to come.

Fourteen million dollars later, a second bridge went up in 1950, but the story of the original bridge, "Galloping Gertie," was legendary my entire childhood. I still recall the film clip of a man escaping his car just in time, and of his small, black dog who ran the wrong way and went down with the bridge. I doubt if anyone living in Tacoma at the time couldn't recount the story, and repeat it over the years to their children as mine did to me. For years I held my breath every time I crossed that bridge, wondering if it would go crashing down a second time.

The Narrows bridge not only symbolizes an event most remembered in Tacoma, but it also symbolizes the great waterway of Puget Sound it spanned--that huge water expanse that attracted so many to the area. Fishing brought early immigrants to the Puget Sound region in the 1880s, especially the Slavs, Greeks, and Norwegians. (Ten years earlier another influx of Norwegians had come to fish and lend their boat-building skills to the area).

There was so much salmon in the sound, it was rumored one could support themselves with a rowboat alone. By 1910 and as techniques became more sophisticated, fish canneries began popping up. In 1920 Tacoma had nine in operation, which eventually led to a shift in the industry. By the 1930s the area had become saturated with fishermen, which might explain why Carl Gravseth went to Alaska to fish in the summers. Fishing was a fact of life in Tacoma. I would not be surprised if everyone in my family has fished, clam dug, or picked up oysters on the beach at one time or another. It's what you do it seems when you live on Puget Sound.

Norwegian Family - Part III

"Odin and Pauline Carlsen"

The family isn't sure when Marie's parents came to America, but we do know that Odin and Pauline were in Willmar, MN in 1886 for the birth of their first child, Petrine, and a baptismal record indicates Christian was baptized in Willmar in 1888. Lillian also remembers Odin and Pauline had come to America on their honeymoon. Since couples tended to start their families early in the 1800s, it's a fair guess they came to America sometime in the early to mid-1880s. Arthur says their ship arrived in Boston harbor, so a tedious check of immigration lists might prove helpful. A preliminary check on my part was unsuccessful.

Baptism Record - Carlsen children

Odin and Pauline also came with Pauline's mother, Barrett Marie Carlsen (Larsen), whose husband, Peter Andreas Larsen had passed away in Norway. He had been a shipbuilder in his younger days and apparently had left Barrett with a fair amount of money. It was her money that allowed Odin to buy land which we assume was in Willmar, MN. (Odin had been a soldier in the Norwegian army).

Lillian recalls from family descriptions (she never met her) that Barrett's influence was considerable. She sewed for the girls, scrubbed, and shined everything in the home. She adapted well to life in the United States Through self-education she became a leader in the Lutheran church and the community. Having come from a well-to-do family, she was a tidy person and apparently had high standards. Arthur Gravseth says the family's large home in Willmar became a stopping-off point for other Norwegian immigrants. They would stay awhile, get their bearings, and go on their way.

Their home in Willmar was located about 90 miles northwest of Minneapolis. Arthur says "Odin was a drifter," but we know the family remained for at least twelve years (1886 to 1898 according to birth dates), where Pauline gave birth to Petrine, Olga, Christian, Nella, Alfred, and Marie. Marie once told Lillian she rode a horse in Willmar to school and had to cover her face because it was so cold.

[Minnesota Historical Society - source]

No one knows for sure what Odin's profession was during their residence in Willmar, but his death certificate years later indicated his profession was "fisherman," so it's a good guess he fished (at least some of the time). There he had access to a number of rivers and lakes, the closest being Foot Lake and Willmar Lake.

From Willmar, they moved 170 miles north to Bemidji, MN around 1903. There Alma, Emma, and Arnt (date uncertain) were born. It's with fondness that I recall the family's old-fashion sounding names--that are beginning to regain popularity today.

Lillian tells me that Marie was the conservative one of the girls. Later, in the 1920s her sisters would lead a wild life, partying and living it up all the time. They often came to Marie for extra money until Carl put his foot down. The story is she had been loaning them money from her egg business (she sold to the neighbors) when Carl became angry and demanded the money be given to him from that point on.

After Bemidji, Odin and Pauline moved the family to Troy, Idaho around 1908 or 1909. We think they stayed one or two years. They came at the urging of their relatives, Bertine Nilsdatter and Odin Bernhard Waller. Odin Waller may have owned the Waller Saw Mill Co. mentioned in the 1908 Troy Weekly News. It was thought that Odin Carlsen mined for ore while living in Troy, but although mines existed a distance away, the main draw to Troy would have been lumber.

Documenting the Carlsen family's time in Troy has been difficult despite the information the family has. Initially, I thought since the Carlsens were known to be strict Lutherans, a search of local church records would give me the documentation I needed. Unfortunately, the stored records were burned in a house fire in 1949. A search of school records also proved unfruitful.

So far the Troy Weekly News has been my most promising source, which mentions Christ Carlson two times to my knowledge, once as "making a cord of wood" and another time, as making "captain of the Upper Bear Ridge Baseball Team." Arnold Waller is also mentioned (Wallers had a son named Arnold). Odin and Pauline's son Christian Carlsen could be the aforementioned Christ Carlson. Christian would have been 20 or 21 years old at the time.

Interestingly, the stories that came out of the Carlsen's stay in Troy are some of the best the family has. One is the story of Marie falling in love with a local Troy minister. For some reason, Odin disliked this man--despite the fact he was a church minister. Here the story is puzzling since Odin was a devout Lutheran. We can only surmise that Marie's fiancé was not a Lutheran, or was he?

In talking with a Troy Lutheran minister I learned that the Norwegian Lutherans and Swedish Lutherans (both in Troy at the time) had a long history of tension that began long ago in Norway. He also said the Norwegian Lutherans were the rebels of the two. Many had come to America "under their own authority," unlike the Swedes who had come under the authority of the Swedish Lutheran Church. Apparently, the Norwegians wanted to escape the pietism of the church in Norway. Was Marie's beau Swedish?  

[Photo source: Latah Historical Society]
It's also possible Marie's fiancé was one of the other ministers in town (there were other denominations). We may never know, but it's fun to reflect on the romance that was cut off when Odin whisked the family away to Washington state. Added to this is the story that Odin had worried about his girls in Troy from the start, which in his opinion was a roughneck town with far too many men. Was the minister a tad bit on the wild side? It certainly paints a picture of early life in Troy, Idaho.

A short time later Odin moved the family to Wollochet Bay, WA. From there they moved across the bay to Fox Island, a short distance away (date unknown). Barrett died in 1911 and Pauline died young at age fifty-four in 1918, the year of the big influenza epidemic. Arthur believes this is why some of the Carlsen children ended up having such a tough time. They began migrating over to the mainland in Tacoma, WA in the teens and 20s, and "went wild--married anybody who came around. They were really nobodies--didn't amount to anything." Odin himself would eventually live out his retirement (behind the alley of his daughter and son-in-law Carl and Marie Gravseth).

There Lillian developed some of her fondest memories of Odin. She remembers the willow whistles he would make for his grandkids, of days playing baseball on the side of his house, while he sat smoking his corncob pipe, watching. He wasn't a teaser. He was a straightforward man, always tidy in his black suit, reciting verses from the Bible. "He was charming." When a woodpile fell on him in 1952, it was his first experience with a doctor or a hospital. He succumbed to pneumonia and died a short time later at the age of ninety-six.

Norwegian Family - Part II

"Carl J. Gravseth - Evensen family"

The lineage of Carl J. Gravseth (my grandfather) also goes back to the 1700s to Anne Olsdatter and Andreas Paulsen. They were born in 1750 and 1751, respectively. Andreas's parents were Paul Andersen and Beret Olsdatter, which places them in the early 1700s.

As a side note to this, in studying the family's Norwegian names, I began to notice a connection between surnames and given names that is fairly consistent (up until immigration to America). Datter appears to mean daughter and sen appears to mean son in Norwegian. For instance, Paul Andersen's son's last name became Paulsen (after his given name). Therefore a daughter would have been Paulsdatter. Of course, all this changed when families immigrated to America, but it's an interesting system of placing more importance on one's given name--a system I assume worked well.

 

Jrgeborg Oline Karlsdatter and Jonan Evensen

This also explains why Carl Graveth's name changed when he came to America at the age of 22. In Norway, he was the son of Jrgeborg Oline Karlsdatter and Jonan Evensen. Family records indicate Carl's last name was really Johnson (a variation of Jonansen?), but when he arrived at Ellis Island on the vessel, Ivernia, in 1906, he said his last name was Gravseth (see Naturalization Paper), which was really the name of the farm region he was from. It was also at this point Johnson (or John as he told some became his middle name and Karl became Carl with a "C." As for the spelling of Johnson with a "son" ending, on his marriage certificate it is spelled Johnsen with a "sen" ending (which is more accurate).

U.S. Immigration 1906 Declaration of Intent - Carl J. Gravseth

Eventually, Carl made his way to Egeland, North Dakota (Towner County) where he worked on the farm of Norwegian friends. Lillian said he had sent money to his girlfriend in Norway, whom he planned to marry, but he never heard from her again. He was still living there in 1916 at age 32 and working as a farm laborer. At 180 pounds, this six-foot, fair, blue-eyed man must have been one of the strongest men around, but besides having girlfriend problems, we know he had a tough time adjusting to his new environment.

Oddmund Gravseth of Norway recently described an early letter Carl had written to the family in Norway about his life in North Dakota. Carl wrote of a dangerous encounter he once had had with a bull in which he found himself eyeball to eyeball with the angry beast, pinned tight. "He gazed into what seemed to be a cannon." It took him eight months to recover from the injuries that resulted. Carl also wrote of one miserable morning in the winter of 1910 when he attempted to make pancakes. "There was an old, broken oven in the cottage, and finally he managed to get it warm. For a while, everything went well. But suddenly the fire went out, and by the time he did get it to burn again, both the pancakes and the batter were frozen as if they were stones."

Sometime around 1908, Carl decided to visit Odin and Pauline Carlsen in Troy, Idaho, who were family friends from Norway. There he met and took a liking to their seventeen-year-old daughter, Marie, but she was engaged to a minister in Troy at the time, a marriage that would never take place. (Marie and Carl would later marry).