Mildred Romundstad Madson 1897-1992

Pioneer Days in Norseville, Romundstad Valley, & Strum, Wisconsin

Mildred Romundstad Madson, 1897-1992

Growing Up in Romundstad Valley, Norseville, and Strum, Wisconsin;
to Out West to Montana & the Dakotas;
Then Back Again to Strum

Written 1992 by Mildred's granddaughter, Lisa Lindberg

Expanded from the original 5-page version read aloud at her October 7, 1992 memorial service
at the Strum Lutheran Church by another granddaughter, Gail Madson.

3 Generations of Imislund-Romundstad Women, 1900.
At the farmhouse porch on Anders & Karen Romundstad's Farm,
Norseville -- north of Strum -- Wisconsin.
Anne Imislund, Karen Imislund Romundstad, Mildred Romundstad

Anne Imislund, Karen Imislund Romundstad, Mildred Romundstad

A Note by Series Editor and author of this story, Lisa Lindberg

In October 1992, I wrote the initial version of this story about my grandmother Mildred Romundstad Madson. At the time, I was 40 years old and lived with my family on a farm in Sugarloaf Country outside of Washington, D.C. I wrote it in the days between when she died on October 2, 1992 and the day of her memorial service, October 7. Her children knew I had spent a lot of time with her, and also knew I liked to write, so they -- my mother Charisma Madson Lindberg and my uncle, Romund Madson -- asked me to put together something about her life to present as a part of her memorial service.

From my childhood, I remembered stories Mildred told about her parents coming the America from Norway and also about herself and her sister growing up in the Norseville and Strum area. In addition, in the decade of 1974-84, my family -- Duncan Work, myself, and our son Matthew -- lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Because of this proximity in those later years, I got to be with her a lot as an adult, also. We would visit often, and I spent hours with her on drives and walks in the Norseville and Strum countryside, poured with her over old photographs and her sister, and visited relatives with her. In addition to soaking up oral history from her and other relatives, I also did additional extensive research on our family history -- both in America and Norway - - and made voluminous notes and family tree charts.

With a mind and heart full of impressions from all these experiences and work, I went for a walk in the fields by our lake. As I watched a breeze ripple the surface of our pond, all of a sudden flashing through my mind was the central feeling around which to weave her story : my grandma and I both love the Earth.

With this intution, I went back to the house, sat down at my computer, and wrote. For three days.

I wanted to gather together into one narrative an essential feeling of my grandmother's life, an offering both to her and to the relatives and friends gathered together at her memorial service.

I was finished in three days, then faxed my story -- including the above striking illustration -- up to my Uncle Romund in St.Paul, Minnesota. On October 7, 1992, at Mildred's memorial service in the Strum Lutheran Church, another of Mildred's granddaughters, Romund's daughter Gail Madson, read aloud the original, 5-page version of what I later adapted into this version for this webpage. Friends and relatives at her service reported that hearing all these things about her helped them make a broad all-at-once image of the entire scope of her life -- which had spanned almost the entire 20th century -- and also of the life of their community of Strum.

For this website, I used this piece written in 1992 as the base for incorporating more stories and information about her life growing up and her young womanhood in Eau Claire.

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Mildred Romundstad Madson -- written October 2, 1992

Our Grandma Mildred died last Friday. She was 63. Actually she was 95, but once when I was little, I asked her how old she was, and she answered, "63." After that, I thought of her as always being 63, forever feisty and full of pep.

Grandma Mildred always came to our house along with a new baby -- something I always thought was just a nice coincidence. Not until many years later -- when I became a brand-new mother myself -- did I realize how much help she had been for our mother.

Grandma Mildred figures in my earliest memories at extended-family gatherings in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We kids always eagerly looked forward to visiting her childhood Romundstad Farm near Strum, Wisconsin where lived her sister, whom we called "Grandma Nora," and husband, John Wiedenbauer, whom we called "Grandpa John." Early in my life I fell in love with Wisconsin's "driftless bioregion," with its beautiful hills and cool, secret valleys. Whenever I was there, I felt like I was "home."

Later, when our Grandpa Wlhelm Madson died, Grandma Mildred lived with us on our Ohio farm, and was always around to do things with us kids, and used make us snacks of hot cocoa and crackers when we got home from school. I shared my room with her and she would sometimes snore, so I would rap my knuckles on the side of my bed to try to drown out the sound. She would awaken with a start and demand, "Lisa! Why are you making all that racket?"

She would instigate cleaning projects that were right up my alley: large-scale, exciting ones like washing the outsides of all of the windows, complete with ladders, buckets of water, and lots of rags. She was famous for collecting "interesting facts," and also for her wry, droll sense of humor. She hated having her picture taken, and once chased away our movie-taking mother with a broom -- all captured for posterity on movie film.

Grandma Mildred loved being outdoors enjoying our beautiful Earth; she and Grandpa were ecologists before the term was ever coined. They composted their kitchen scraps, used fish fertilizer on the garden, and re-used or recycled everything they could. They planted vegetables, flowers, fruit trees, and nut trees, caring for them lovingly, and never taking their bounty for granted. Grandma Mildred was a great believer in the benefits of sunshine and fresh air, spurning clothes dryers as inferior substitutes for solar-powered clotheslines.

She was also a great walker, having walked the several miles to every community function in Strum when she was young. She liked hiking with us kids back to the old apple orchard on our farm to find fallen branches to haul back for firewood. She was in her mid- and late-60's at the time, but gamely climbed over the big gate along with us youngsters, keeping right up with us. She would pick crabapples with us and make crabapple jelly.

Grandma Mildred talked about Norway a lot, the country of her parents' birth. She wrote regularly to cousins who lived there, and taught us Norwegian words, phrases, and songs. As our mother also loved all things Norwegian and was proud of her heritage, knowing about Norway and Norwegian traditions became an integral part of our family life. We enthusiastically learned how to make Yulekake, krumkake, and our all-time favorite, lefse. Our mother and her four daughters even developed a Norwegian program of folk customs, songs, stories, and dances, and performed for various groups around Christmastime, with me accompanying on the guitar.

Grandma Mildred would tell stories about how her mother had left Lillehammer with her family when she was eleven and had come to settle in Strum, Wisconsin, about 20 miles south of Eau Claire. She told how her father had also come to Strum with his brothers and cousins from the Romundstad Farm Village near Rindal in the Trondheim area. I went to Norway myself when I was 18, found the cities of Lillehammer, Trondheim, the town on Rindal, the Romundstad Farm Village, and also our Romundstad cousins. I found Norway to be a land where I could live the rest of my days, and I wondered how her parents and the others could have ever left.

A year after my trip to Norway, in my and my husband Duncan Work's first summer together, I brought him also to Strum - Grandma Mildred's little 300-population town -- to visit family and to show him the beautiful hills and valleys. He shared my enchantment with the countryside, and enjoyed the care lavished on him by Grandma Mildred and Grandma Nora. For the decade 1974-84, he and I lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an easy drive to Strum. We visited as often as we could, and in 1981 also brought our baby, Matthew, when he was brand-new and as also he grew up.

Toward the end of every May, the fresh, sweet, earthy scents of a new Spring would stir in me the thought, "Well, it's time to go visit Grandma Mildred and Grandma Nora." And off we would exuberantly go up north.

Grandma Mildred always gave us her bedroom when we visited, and would sleep on the couch in the living room. Unfortunately, the living room also had crickets which would chirp in the night, keeping her awake. In the middle of the night we would awaken to sounds of furniture being moved, and go in and find Mildred crawling around on her hands and knees, armed with a fly-swatter, hard after her victims. "There was a chorus of them," she said, "and I'm trying to find where they're hiding."

Grandma Mildred would have her geranium sets, fish fertilizer, and trowels all ready for our arrival. After some visiting and partaking of her famously hard cookies, we would set off down the street to the cemetery, carrying all her equipment. As we walked, Mildred, ever the believer in fresh air, would instruct us, "Breathe deeply; back down where you live in the city, the air isn't clean and fresh like it is up here, you know."

We would walk over to the other side of Strum Lake to the cemetery on the former site of St. Paul's Lutheran Church -- "the Conference church." This is the church founded 100 years earlier, among whose founders were the younger members of Mildred's extended family -- her parents and uncles' families. We would plant flowers on her parents' grave, on Grandpa John's, and on the nearby grave of Inga Rone, a cousin and country neighbor from the old days. She took us on tours of the stones of her relatives, telling where they had lived, little stories. She showed us the place where she said she herself would one day be laid to rest.

We also went southeast of Strum to the cemetery of the former site of the West Beef River Lutheran Church -- "the Synod Church." There we visited the graves of her grandparents Anne Mostu and Per Imislund, of her Grandaunt Karen Mostu and Granduncle Peder Nelson and family, and other relatives. This church had also been founded 100 years earlier, among whose founders were these older members of Grandma's extended family. The members of this church felt that they upheld the "untarnished truth of literal interpretation of Scripture."

From such real-life church congregation "splittelse" -- splitting in two -a common occurrence among the early Norwegian Lutherans in the U.S., Garrison Keillor finds material for events in his mythical town Lake Woebegon. I was always puzzled about these two former churches, and wondered how our family having membership in both the "Conference" and "Synod" congregations affected relationships among people in our family. But not being one to dwell on anything negative, Mildred was reticent to talk about Strum's "splittelse."

I remember one beautiful summer day when Grandma Mildred and I sat on that peaceful West Beef River Church cemetery hillside overlooking lovely farm fields. She told me stories of when she was sixteen and first left home for the big city, Eau Claire, to attend secretarial school. For months she was terribly homesick, wanting instead to be home back on her farm. She missed so much her beloved Grandma Anne Imislund, her Grandma who had lived with them since Mildred was seven, and who used to sit and knit and tell her grand daughters Nora and Mildred stories about Norway. Or else Grandma Anne would sit in the corner with her big spinning wheel and spin and spin, even when her eyes could no longer see.

We would take Grandma Mildred on drives along the road northeast of Strum where she and her relatives had lived on farms, Grandma telling us stories of people and events of time gone by. First came Imislund Valley -- whose creek runs south into the Buffalo River -- and the farm of her Grandaunt Karen Mostu and Granduncle Peder Nelson. As children, Mildred and Nora had always loved walking over to the Nelsons' to visit, because their Grandaunt Karen was always so glad to see them and always had a lot of good things for them to eat. Their daughter Palma was one of the sponsors at Mildred's baptism.

Next we would come up to her Grandparents Per Imislund and Anne Mostu Imislund's farm. In the spring of 1867, Per and Anne Imislund left Lillehammer, Norway with their four children, including their oldest, Karen, age 11. They sailed from Oslo for America, and took about two months or more to cross the Atlantic, having to bring along all their own food. Anne's sister Karen and her family were with them also .They came first to southwest Wisconsin, to the area near Westby and Coon Valley -- between Viroqua and LaCrosse, Wisconsin. In 1869 they went further north to the Strum area, settling in Imislund Valley northeast of Strum. When Mildred's Imislund Grandparents saw smoke coming from Ole J. Romundstad's house nearby in the valley to the north, they were so glad to know they had neighbors.

The first Spring we brought Grandma Mildred to visit her Grandparents Imislunds' house, she hadn't been up close for years, and was eager to go look inside of the now-abandoned farmhouse. It is inside of a fenced pasture now, and we had to climb over a gate to get in. She was in her late 70's by then, but again gamely clambered up and over. At the house she encouraged us in our attempts at "breaking and entering," knowing it was all right to be doing so. I have pictures of that day, a day in early Spring, light green buds on the trees, fragrant, moist warmth coming up from the Earth, us striding across the field to the old farmhouse, looking around the farm, finding its still-running spring filling an old oaken bucket, duck weed sprinkled on the water, violets blooming all around.

From there, we would drive on up north over the wooded hill, Grandma Mildred showing us the spot where the hill crests and the road bends -- where her family's horsedrawn buggy had once tipped over with Nora and Mildred in it.

From that wooded hillcrest, the road goes down again, and after a sharp bend in the road to the left, the view opens out to the Romundstad Valley, whose creek runs north into Big Creek.. Romundstad Valley is part of Norseville, a little hamlet settled even before the town of Strum.

: they had a store, a post office, a milk skimming station, a school, and a small chapel-meetinghouse. The Norseville Norwegian Lutherans called themselves the Big Creek Congregation and had services at this chapel. This group and other smaller groups later consolidated into the West Beef River Congregation and built a church south in Strum.

Grandma Mildred told me that many of the Norseville settlers had come from farm villages in the Rindal area 60 miles southwest of Trondheim, Norway. One of these was her father Anders Romundstad who had come from the Romundstad Farm Village. This is one of the Rindal area's oldest Farm Village, whose founding dates back to Viking times. Heimskringla --The Sagas of the Norse Kings say the sons of Viking Erik Bloodaxe and his wife Gunhild lived in this rural Trondheim region. F. L. Tronsdal's article, "Bits from the Wayside" in the November 1923 issue of The Scandinaven says that some of the "Gunhilds-sons'" descendants lived at the Romundstad Farm Village.

Romundstad Farm Village: Inner Romundstad, 1903
Left: Oppistua Farmhouse -- 1829 birthplace of Fredrik Olson Romundstad and his 7 nieces & nephews: Gjertrud O. Romundstad, Big Ole O.Romundstad,
& their 5 younger brothers & sisters
Right: Austistua Farmhouse -- birthplace of Fredrik's 1st cousins: Peder, Even, Ole J., Anders, et al.

People emigrating from this more northerly area of Norway left from Trondheim, the nearest big city seaport. In 1869 the first relative from the Romundstad Farm Village arrived in the Norseville as its second settler family. This was Fredrik Olsen from the Romundstad Oppistua farmhouse, age 40, with his wife and 4 children.

Back in Norway, the Romundstad Farm Village was becoming quite crowded. In the Romundstad Austisua Farmhouse where Mildred's father Anders came from, there were six brothers and three sisters. Ander's mother Marit Romundstad had died in 1859 when Anders was 10 and the youngest was 5. The oldest son in the family, Peder Romundstad - - over 20 years older than the youngest brother, Anders - - had inherited the Romundstad Austistua farmhouse and lands, had married Marit Loset in 1854. They were having many children - - eventually 10 - - and were the primary farmholders and caregivers for this large extended family.

The Family at the Romundstad Austistua Farmhouse
1872 photo of the family then living there & farming the land:
Peder Jonson Romundstad Austistua (1828, age 44) wife Marit Loset (b.18__, age __)
& 7 of (their eventually 8) children
-- at the time of baptism of the youngest, Ola, b. 1872 --

2015-02: Photo from Oddbjørg Ljøkjell via "Rindal i Bilder" ("Rindal in Pictures") Facebook Group. Oddbjørg lives in Rindal and is the Great-granddaughter of Guri, the little girl sitting in her sister's lap -- front row, far right.

Back row, from left: Jon (b.1863, age 9); Anne (b.1861, age 11); Gjertrud (b.1859, age 13); Eli (b. 1857, age 15)
Front row, from left: The father, Peder Jonson Romundstad (b.1828, age 44); on Peder's lap: Oline (b.1870, age 2); the mother, Marit Olsdotter Loset (b.18__, age __); on Mother Marit's lap: Ola (b.1872 -- the baptismal newborn); Marit (b. 1854, age 18); on Marit's lap: Guri (b.1866, age 6 -- Oddbjørg's Great-Grandmother.

Living at the Austistua Farmhouse also were Peder's seven, unmarried, young brothers and sisters, and Peder's widowed father, Jon Pederson Roen -- born in 1800, and who had been raised at Romundstad Austistua as a foster son. In addition, since 1862, their seven young orphaned cousins age newborn to 15 from next door at the Romundstad Oppisua Farmhouse, had come to live with them.

The pressure of crowding must have become quite strong for the young folk to go somewhere else. Seeing limited opportunities of finding good farmland in the Rindal area to, the obvious choice for the older of these young people was to go to America. Fredrik Olsen from Romundstad Oppistua had opened the door to possibilities in the new land across the sea, and so they followed.

Emigration from the Romundstad Farm Village to Norseville & Romundstad Valley, Wisconsin

1869 saw the emigration to Norseville, Wisconsin the following young people:

- Three of the still-unmarried and un-landed of the six Romundstad Austistua brothers: Even, Ole J., and Anders Romundstad, aged 34, 30, & 20, respectively -- Anders later became Mildred's father.
- The first of their cousins from the Romundstad Oppistua farmhouse: Ole Olsen Romundstad the Younger, age 17
- Five other Rindalings

In Norseville, the three brothers from Romundstad Austistua put claims on adjacent land in an area still known today as Romundstad Valley.

Led by Fredrik Olsen from Romundstad Oppistua, these and other young Rindalings left their ancient, ancestral farm villages in Norway in the mid-1800's. They came to Wisconsin and built farms next to each other, creating a new farm village, which they named Norseville. In doing this, these young people together created a rural farming culture, the fabric of community life in which Mildred grew up.

The hamlet of Norseville had a store, a post office, a milk skimming station, a school, and a small chapel-meetinghouse. The Norseville Norwegian Lutherans called themselves the Big Creek Congregation and had services at this chapel on a corner of land on Ole J. Romundstad's farm. This small congregation and other smaller groups later consolidated into the West Beef River Congregation and built a church south in Strum.

Where the Romundstad Valley road turns sharply to the West: The Farm of Sigrid Stomprud & Rone

Right at that corner where the road turns abruptly to the left -- at the good open view of the Romudstad Valley -- is the Rone farm, now quite dilapidated. Sigrid Stomprud Rone was Mildred's cousin, and sister to the husband of Jennie Hagestad Stomprud, author of Hagestad Family History -- a delightful account of pioneer days in the Norseville and Strum area. Sigrid Stomprud Rone and Mildred's mother Karen Imislulnd Romundstad were good friends, and Mildred and her sister Nora used to play with the Rone children, Otellia, Annie, Inga, Cornelius, Geneva, and Harold Rone. They would often all go blueberry picking together at the edge of their adjoining woods, of one of which times I have a picture. Two of the Rone children, Annie and Otellia, died as young girls in the scarlet fever epidemic.

Where the Romundstad Valley road then turns sharply to the North: Farm of Ole J. Romundstad & Gjertrud O. Romundstad

A little ways further, at the corner where the road bends sharply to the right is the old farm of Mildred's Uncle Ole J. and Aunt Gjertrud Romundstad -- where now lives the Schlomer family.

Mildred told stories about these cousins: Back in the Romundstad Village in Norway, Ole J. was born in the Romundstad Austistua Farmhouse next door to Gjertrud, the oldest of his seven cousins in the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse. When their mother died, (and later their father also) all of these orphaned cousins went next door to live at Austistua. Gjertrud was 15, Ole J. was 22, and they became even more acquainted.

Mildred told me Ole J. and Gjertrud had evidently been sweethearts back at Romundstad, for in 1870 when she came to Norseville the year after Ole J. had, they married that very fall, he 31, she 23. In the 18 years following, from 1871-1889, they had nine children, all of whom grew to adulthood. As Ole J. and Gjertrud were married 10 and 20 years earlier than Ole J.'s brothers Even and Anders, they became a hub for neighborhood activities. They were very sociable and community-minded, and Gjertrud was one of the midwives for babies born in their area. It was to their house that Gjertrud's younger brothers and sisters came to live when they left Norway. Another of their community-minded gestures is their donation of a plot of their land for the Big Creek Congregation's chapel-meetinghouse -- by the road across from the Rone farm.

Mildred told how her Uncle Ole J. had been gored in the leg by a bull and had to walk with crutches the rest of his life, but it didn't slow him down much. Whenever he came down the road on his crutches over to visit his brother Anders' family, Nora and Mildred would be happy because they knew they would get out of wiping dishes. Uncle Ole J. would sit down at the kitchen table, and after Grandma Imislund washed the dishes, he would wipe them dry. Sadly, in 1906, Ole J. eventually died at age 66 of complications from this injury -- two and three decades earlier than his two brothers.

Mildred told stories of she and her sister Nora having good fun times with Ole J. and Gjertrud's children down the road -- especially with the younger ones who were more their age. Before Ole J. died, the family's four oldest brothers and sisters had already married and moved to Fergus, Montana, outside of Lewistown. The youngest five stayed in the area, including Mike Romundstad, who was 32 when he took over the farm when Ole J. died. A few years later Mike married Marit Fossom, one of Mildred and Nora's teachers at the Norseville School. They became the parents of Olive, Muriel, Astrid, and Gjermand Romundstad, all good friends of Mildred and Nora their whole lives.

Later when Nora grew up, and became a nurse, she went out to the Fergus area to live for a while with her Romundstad cousins there -- something which had far-reaching unfoldments, as we shall see later in this story.

THE ROMUNDSTAD VALLEY FARM OF EVEN JONSON ROMUNDSTAD & GJERTRUD NERGAARD

Further north along the Romundstad Valley road is the farm of Mildred's Uncle Even Romundstad and Aunt Gjertrud Nergaard -- now owned by our cousin Joe Rindal and his wife Mary. Uncle Even Romundstad was a very quiet and religious man. He used to make beautiful inlaid-wood furniture in his woodshop over the granary, all with only hand tools.

In the mid-1970's -- 100 years after originally written and sent -- a letter was found written in July 1870 by 35-year-old Even Romundstad living in Norseville, Wisconsin. Even wrote in to his 23-year-old sweetheart Gjertrud Nergaard, back in the Rindal, Norway area. In the mid-1970's, Gjertrud's Nergaard's present-day descendant, Lars Nergaard, was helping to tear down an old building in a Rindal-area farm village, and found this letter in a window frame. This old building was in the Tronsdal Farm Village, where 100 years before, Gjertrud had been living with her aunt.

By the time Even Romundstad wrote this letter, he was 35 years old and had been in Norseville for a year, and wrote to Gjertrud Nergaard imploring her to come to America and marry him: "As I continue to remember you dearly, I must take pen in hand to tell you what lies on my heart, and I humbly and lovingly write this to you. I have already started farming and realize that the mother in the home is missing. You with your clear mind, good heart, and your beauty, have for a long time made it clear to me: my future happiness depends on you. Because I love you dearly, will you accept my heart and hand which I now offer you. If so, it will make me indescribably happy."

She waited six years before coming to America, and they were married several years after that -- in 1880 -- he by then 45 years old, she 33. In the next 7 years they had 4 children, three of whose lives ended tragically. Mildred told me that in the scarlet fever epidemic of 1890, 3 of her 4 little cousins from this family had died within a week of each other, at ages 3, 5, & 9. She showed me where they were buried together in the cemetery of the Conference Church in Strum, sharing the same sad gravestone. For Even and Gjertrud's 7-year-old daughter Kristine who survived the epidemic, having her little cousins Nora and Mildred be born several years later right across the road, helped make up for the loss of her own little brothers and sisters.

As Kristine Romundstad was over a decade older than Nora and Mildred, after going to Teachers College in Minneapolis, she became one of their teachers at the Norseville School. In 1900 Lars Romundstad Yttgaard, age 20 -- Kristine's first cousin from Rindal, Norway -- immigrated to Norseville. Lars and Kristine got engaged secretly, then Lars went to Montana to work for many years. When he returned in 1910, they got married, Lars 30 and Kristine 27. By then Kristine's parents, Even and Gjertrud Romundstad, were getting quite old, so Lars and Kristine worked their farm, and in 1920 their first child, Erling, was born there.

Toward the end of his life, Even Romundstad often wandered down the road, trying to get back to Norway. Even died in 1920 at age 85, and Gjertrud in 1923, age 76.

In 1925, 43-year-old Kristine and 45-year-old Lars Yttgaard sold their farm to Mikkal Rindal -- Joe Rindal's father. They packed whatever belongings they could take on the train, and moved with their 5-year-old son Erling to Washington State. On the way west, they got off the train Lewistown, Montana, for a visit with Mildred who at the time was living there with her husband Rev. Wilhelm Madson and their young son, Romund, born 1924.

One of the possessions Kristine and Lars had to leave behind in Strum when they moved west, was a beautiful chest of drawers made by Kristine's father, Even Romundstad. For safekeeping, they gave this chest to Even's brother Anders Romundstad.

Out in Washington, Kristine and Lars had two more children, Borgny in 19__and Reidar in 19__. She said her mother Kristine in Washington sorely missed her cousins Nora and Mildred so far away. But the three cousins kept up a good correspondence their whole lives. Borgny sometimes returnen to Strum to visit relatives, and also visited that old chest of drawers and other pieces of furniture made by her Grandfather Even who she had never known.

Mikkal Rindal & Hannah Torset: Next owners of the Old Farm of Even J. Romundstad & Gjertrud L. Nergaard

Lars Yttgaard & Kristine Romundstad sold the farm of Kristine's parents Even Romundstad & Gertrud Nergaard to Mikkal Rindal & Hannah Torset.

Mildred told me a good story about how Mikkal Rindal's family came to Norseville. She said she remembered so well when they arrived because shortly thereafter, there was a large "Young People's Meeting." These were the neighborhood gatherings attended by -- despite the name -- everyone of all ages, babies to grandparents.

It was 1911, Milded was 14, and Mikkal was 15. His widowed mother, Mali Rindal had just come to Norseville from Rindal with 6 of her 8 children who still lived with her, ages 8 - 23. Two years before, Mikkal's older brother Lars and sister Ellen had come to Norseville, and lived with Lars Haltli -- their mother Mali's girlhood beau from Rindal -- and the man Mail would soon marry.

Our Rindal cousins in Norseville told me that Lars Haltli was actually Ole J. Romundstad's son. Lars was born in 1862 in the Rindal area when Ole J. was 23 and his mother, Ingeborg Aune (or Tretten?) was __. Ingeborg died when Lars was two weeks old, and Lars was raised as a foster son at the Haltli Farm Village. He grew up there, never knowing his father was Ole J. Romundstad who lived next door at the Romundstad Farm Village. In 1869, Lars was 7 years old when Ole J. Romundstad and his brothers left Rindal for Norseville. Nearly 20 years later in 1887, Lars himself left Norway as a young man of 25, and came to Norseville, still not knowing the identity of his father. He came here using Haltli as his surname, the name of the farm village where he had grown up.

Mildred said her father Anders Romundstad took great interest in helping young Lars Haltli get a good start in this new country, helping him build up his farm in what she called Haltli Valley -- to the east of Romundstad Valley, just over the ridge at the eastern boundary of Anders' farm. Mildred told me Lars was a Romundstad cousin in some way, but she didn't know quite how. However, my Norseville cousins told me some of the neighborhood men folk knew about how Lars was related to the Romundstads. The story goes that Lars had at one time showed an interest in courting one of Ole J's daughters. The men of the neighborhood -- knowing Lars was her half-sister -- had to step in and tell Lars the reason why going with her would not a good idea.

Considering the circumstances of his life orphaned as an infant to a single mother, Lars Haltli could have had a difficult life, but he was such a good and nice person that his life was a happy one. Here is what happened in his life.

Mildred told me that back in Rindal in the early 1880's, Lars Haltli and Mali Rindal were in their early 20's. They had been sweethearts but had quarreled and broken up. Then Mali married Andres Rasmussen and lived in the Rindal Farm Village inside of the town of Rindal. In 1887 when Lars was 27, he left for America. Meanwhile, Mali had eight children with Andres Rasmussen, and then Andres died in 1910. In 1911 -- a quarter of a century after Lars Haltli's departure from Rindal -- Mali Rindal, age 48 left Rindal with all of her children and came to Norseville. She married her old sweetheart, Lars Haltli, then 49, and they lived in Haltli Valley the rest of their lives. My Rindal cousins, Joe Rindal and Norma Rindal Pire, told me Lars Haltli was the only grandfather they ever knew.

Mildred said her father Anders Romundstad continued his good fellowship with Lars Haltli and his new family. Anders and Karen didn't have sons of their own, but had 2 foster sons who helped with harvest chores. In addition, at threshing and haying time, Anders would hire the Rindal boys from Lars Haltli's farm over the ridge to come and help him put up his crops, and also in winter to help him cut firewood.

In Norseville, some of Mali Rindal's children married into families of former Rindalings. One of Mali Rindal's daughters, Ragna, married Oscar Romundstad, one of "Big Ole" and Marit Romundstad's sons, and they lived on Big Ole and Marit's farm the rest of their lives.

In 1925, Mikkal Rindal, age 29, married Hannah Torset, also 29 - Mildred's cousin through her Roen Grandfather. Hannah Torset and Mikkal Rindal had known each other in Rindal, married the year she came to Norseville, and that year also bought Even and Gjertrud Romundstad's farm. The next year their first child, Norma, was born, followed by Joe, Vic, and Ed. Grandma Mildred and her sister Nora were good friends with Hannah Torset and Mikkal Rindal their whole lives. My mother, Charisma Madson Lindberg, has fond memories of summer visits in her childhood and youth visiting Grandma Nora & family, and playing with these Rindal kids across the road.

THE THE ROMUNDSTAD VALLEY FARM OF ANDERS JONSON ROMUNDSTAD & KAREN IMISLUND

A little further up and across the road, nestled against a hill with a stand of giant white pine trees and a windmill on it, is Grandma Mildred's beloved old farm home, The Romundstad Farn. This is the farm of her parents, Anders and Karen Imislund Romundstad - lived in after them by Mildred's sister Nora and husband John Wiedenbauer, and now lived in by Wes and Katy Borreson.

Mildred and her sister Nora had so many memories of growing up on this farm with their foster brothers, Leif and Elmer Iverson. My mother also has many memories of visiting this beautiful farm in summers when she was a child. She said she and her brothers could hardly wait to get out of the car and play around the farm with Grandma Nora's children, their cousins Margaret, Irene and John Armin. My mother and uncles said their Grandma Karen always had some lump sugar in her apron to give them for a treat.

Fond memories in our family continue as more generations of children are born and go back to visit this farm and our extended family of neighborhood cousins. When I was one year old, I lived here for a few months with my mother and older brother. In the 1950's-1960's, our family freqently visited this farm.

Summer 1958
The Charisma Madson & Harold Lindberg Family,
visiting "Grandma" Nora Romundstad & "Grandpa" John Wiedenbauer
-- our mother Charisma's aunt and uncle --
at the old Anders Romundstad & Karen Imislund's Farm,
Romundstad Valley, Norseville, Wisconsin
1958 Lindberg Family at Grandpa Anders Romundstad's Farm

1958 Lindberg Family at Grandpa Anders Romundstad's Farm

Back row, from left: Harold Lindberg (b.1927, age 31), Sara (b.1956, age 2), Charisma (b.1926,age 32)
Front row, from left: Chris (b.1950,age 7-1/2); Kari (b.1955,age 3); Nora (b.1954,age 4), Lisa (b.1962,age 6-1/2)

My husband Duncan and son Matthew and I have gone camping way back on the far eastern ridge of this farm, and watched the sun come up in the morning over Haltli Valley and Romundstad Valley.

When Mildred's father, Anders Romundstad, first came here in 1869 at age 20, he put a homestead claim on this 120 acres, then bought it later. He earned the money to buy it by working on the railroad, in sawmills, and in Montana as a sheepherder. Their barn has the date "1884" painted on it

Around this same time, the Imislunds from Lillehammer, Norway arrived in the Norseville area, and settled in Imislund Valley to the south of Romundstad Valley. The oldest Imislund girl, Karen, around 12 years old then, grew up there, and over twenty years later, in December 1892, married Anders Romundstad. By then he was 43, and she was 34. Before marrying, Karen did housework in Eau Claire for the Laycox family, and also in Titusville, Pennsylvania. They had two daughters on that farm: Nora born in February 1894, and Mildred, born Sept. 1897, plus their foster children Leif and Elmer Iverson.

The Iverson boys came to live with them when their mother Mali Iverson died. She had left her husband in the North Woods of Wisconsin, and came to the Strum and Norseville area with her three children. For a short time, she kept house for Lars Haltli, but died soon afterwards of cancer. Other families in the neighborhood informally adopted these three boys, and raised them to adulthood as members of their own families.

Mildred said her father always insisted his family walk to the 5 miles to their church in Strum on Sunday rather than take their horse and buggy; he thought their horses needed a rest from their work during the week. They had to set out walking very early as their father always wanted to be on time for church. As they approached the church, if there were already even one horse and buggy team there, he would say, "Oh! We're late." Toward the end of his life he was hard of hearing, and always sat at his reserved pew right up front by the pulpit so he could hear the pastor as well as possible.

The family had 6 cows to milk by hand twice a day, everyday, and they also raised pigs and lots of sheep. Every day after school, after a snack of bread with butter and syrup on it, the girls and their foster brothers would go herd the sheep so the wolves wouldn't get them. There were both wolves and bears in the hills then, Grandma Nora told us, but not many trees as the Indians had burned them off. They also had barn chores: they had to let the cows out, clean out the barn, and put the feed in. On Saturdays the youngsters walked the five miles each way to confirmation class in Strum, where Mildred also took piano lessons.

Of these three Romundstad brothers, Anders was the one who was the most farmer at heart. Anders, like his brother Even, was very religious and quiet -- so quiet, said Grandma Nora, that you had to poke him to get him to talk, So when he said something, they knew he really meant it. Their mother Karen was just the opposite; she loved to talk and have a good time.

Their mother Karen loved gardening more than any other work. Mildred also loved working in the garden, and always had a green thumb. Mildred once told my mother that her mother Karen had told her she had only wanted one girl, and was only interested in teaching only her sister Nora how to do housework. So Mildred preferred doing farm chores outside with her father and foster brothers, while sister Nora liked doing cooking and housework inside with their mother. Mildred said hearing that her mother had wanted only one girl made her feel unloved, so when she had children herself, she made sure they knew she loved them.

ADDITIONAL RELATIVES FROM THE ROMUNDSTAD AUSTISTUA FARMHOUSE:

In addition to young people of Mildred's father Anders coming here from the Romundstad Austistua farmhouse, some of the children of Peder Jonson Romundstad -- the oldest brother and inheritor of Romundstad Austistua -- also came to America.

Peder Jonson Romundstad's daughter Anne from the Romundstad Austistua Farmhouse came in 1881 at age 20. Anne had been especially close to her cousin Johanna Romundstad, born a year later than her next door at the Romundstad Oppistua Farmhouse. Johanna's mother had died in childbirth with her, so she was raised next door by Anne's parents at Romundstad Austistua as a sister to Anne. Johanna came to Norseville at age 12 in 1874 to live with her sister Gjertrud and husband Ole J. Romundstad. It was Johanna who convinced her cousin Anne to come here also. Anne came right to Ole J. and Gjertrud Romundstad's farm to live for a while. She later went to Minneapolis, married a teacher Johannes Skurdalsvold, and had six children there, all born around the same time as Nora and Mildred: two Johannas who died young, Peder, Jennie, Sigrid, and Magne. They were a very educated, cultured family.

Anne Romundstad's niece, Marit Torset and husband Lars Tronsdal, and settled in Washington State. Anne's brother Ola Romundstad from Rindal came through Minneapolis around 1902 at about age 30 on his way to the Alaska Gold Rush. He returned 50 years later, at age 80, and died there. Two of Mildred's Uncle Jon Romundstad's children also came to America: Jon Tiset, and Marit Tiset who married Even Wold and also lived in Minneapolis. Mildred said these Wold cousins would often visit them at their farm in Norseville, and they had great fun taking pictures of each other doing play acting.

THE ROMUNDSTAD VALLEY FARM OF "BIG OLE" OLSON ROMUNDSTAD & MARIT JONSDATTER STORHOLT

Across the road from Anders Romundstad & Karen Imislund's farm, and across Romundstad Valley Creek is the farm of Cousin "Big Ole" Romundstad -- the oldest son of the seven orphaned nieces and nephews of Fredrik Olsen Romundstad -- now lived in by Matt and Beka Fendry and family.

In the fall of 1873, when Big Ole Romundstad's next youngest brother, Ole Romundstad the Younger, revisited Norway,and the next brought back their family's three youngest children with him, along with them also came 19-year-old Marit Storholt. Later that year she and Big Ole Romundstad, by then age 25, were married. Big Ole and Marit had ten children, five of whom died young. Their son, Oscar Romundstad and wife Ragna Rindal took over the farm, and had Ruth, Hardin, Arlene, Jeannette, and Virginia Romundstad who also grew up there. Grandma gave me an old picture taken on this farm of the cousins helping Big Ole in his hay field with a horse-pulled hay-cutter.

Marit Storholt Romundstad was another of the area midwives, and over twenty years later, helped at the birth of Grandma Nora, who was born early, weighing only three pounds. Big Ole and Marit's son Goodwin told me the story of how he was four years old when Nora was born and went over to see his new baby cousin. He thought she looked so small and flat that he couldn't stand it and burst out crying. Three children from their family also had died in the epidemics of 1890 -- one of them Goodwin's twin -- and two others had died as infants. So little Goodwin didn't want any other of the little Romundstad cousins to die.

As we all know, little baby Nora didn't die, and when Mildred was born in 1897, Big Ole Romundstad's wife Marit Storholt Romundstad became her godmother. In the summertime, from Nora and Mildred's farm across the road and little creek, they could hear Goodwin and his brother Millard singing and whistling as they went about their farm chores. Goodwin was an exceptionally handsome young man, and was Best Man at both Nora's and Mildred's weddings, plus six others, but remained a bachelor his entire life. "I stood up for eight weddings," he told me, "but no one got the Best Man."

THE NORSEVILLE FARM OF ERICK HANSON AND MARET SHERMO

Taking Romundstad Valley Road to where it goes into Road "D," and going north a little ways brings us to the old Hanson farmhouse, built by the original settlers Erick Hanson and his wife Maret Shermo. Erick was from the Elshaug Farm Village in the Rindal area, and had come to Norseville at age 36 in the same 1869 emigration group as Mildred's father Anders Romundstad.

This Hanson Farm is where Mildred's cousin - and Fredrik and Serianna Olsen's granddaughter -- Laura Olsen (Brill) grew up with her Hanson cousins. Her mother Mary Olsen had died when Laura was a baby, and she was raised here by her Hanson Grandparents and Uncle Hans Hanson and Aunt Mary Moe. Mildred told me that the kids from the Hanson farm had a shortcut with Mildred and Nora through the woods between the two farms, so they could easily go back and forth to play.

THE NORSEVILLE FARM OF FREDRIK OLSEN FROM ROMUNDSTAD OPPISTUA & HIS WIFE SERIANNA HALVORSDATTER

Then we would go back south a little ways on Road "D" and turn east into the gravel side road leading to the farm of the first of the Romundstad pioneer settlers, Fredrik Olsen Romundstad and Serianna Halvorsdatter -- now lived in by their grandson Chester Olsen's widow, Esther. Chester and Esther were 2nd cousins as Esther is Fredrik's grandniece. Serianna was another of the midwives in the area, and had 12 children of her own, three of whom died as babies or small children. We looked at the well over the still-running spring which Fredrik had found on this land, and which had helped him decide to chose this place for his family's homestead. We also rang the big bell that had called the folks in to dinner so many times.

Another time, we went back to the little stream that flows through the Olsen pasture, and sat beside it with Esther, enjoying the lovely, peaceful serenity. Fredrik and Serianna's granddaughter, Laura Olsen Brill, became a scholar and a teacher, and taught for a time at the Norseville School which she herself had attended . As she was a little older than Nora and Mildred, she was one of Nora and Mildred's teachers there. Laura also became the family historian for this Olsen branch of the family, and has written beautifully of this family's story and of early days in Norseville in Olsen Family History.

NORSEVILLE SCHOOL -- WALKING DISTANCE FOR THE AREA CHILDREN

Near where Fredrik & Serianna Olsen's road goes into Road "D," we visited the old one-room Norseville Schoolhouse, built in 1878 . Nora, Mildred, and the other Norseville children attended school here together up to the 8th grade. Their cousin Laura Olsen (Brill) was a little older than they, and had been one of their teachers here. After finishing 8th grade, Mildred and other older children met with her at her house to continue their studies. Mildred said there were only girls in their graduating classes because the boys usually quit before the end of 8th grade. Mildred said in her day, the girls liked to go to school better than did the boys, and since there were no attendance rules, the boys only went a little while in the winter time. During the spring, summer, and fall, the boys would have to work on their familys' farms.

As no one had cars in those days, all of the Norseville children walked to their school. Since most everyone lived nearby, the walking distance wasn't a hardship. On winter days when it had snowed in the night, Mildred's father Anders would drive them to school in his sleigh. He had a plow attached to the back, and as they went along, the road would be cleared. She said Anders was always good about keeping the road "opened up." On Saturdays the youngsters walked the five miles each way to confirmation class in Strum, where Mildred also took piano lessons. Their whole family would walk the route again on Sundays to go to church.

Mildred remembered the first time a car ever drove up their road. They were eating supper, heard the noise, and went out to see what it was. Coming up Romundstad Valley Road to court Big Ole and Marit Romundstad's daughter, Mary Romundstad, was the man who later became her husband, T.M. Olson in his Buick and it was quite a sight.

Grandma Nora told us how her sister Mildred had been an unusually pretty young girl, with long golden braids, light blue eyes, and fresh, sweet face. Nora said all the boys wanted to "go with" Mildred, but she was too shy to accept their attentions.

When Mildred was 16, she enrolled in Business College in Eau Claire to take stenography. Her Uncle Anton Imislund lived there and worked as a lumberyard foreman, so for several months in early 1914 Mildred lived with her him and her Aunt Thea Johanson, and her cousins still at home: Palmer, Louise, Clarence, and LeRoy Imislund. Mildred told me her 18-year-old cousin Louise always wanted to go out on dates with boys, and Aunt Thea said she could if Mildred went too. So Louise was always trying to fix up Mildred with a boy so they could double-date. Mildred hated the pressure and was homesick and miserable. When she was home in Norseville for vacation that summer, Mildred told her parents she wanted to work for her board and room instead of staying with her Imislund cousins- never mentioning to anyone the real reason.

(Several years later Mildred's cousin Louise Imislund married Lester Shermo -- Laura Olsen Brill's cousin from Norseville. Mildred's cousin Clarence Imislund became an outstanding educator and a superb storyteller, and gave what was called "chalk talks." He was also a writer, and published a very good history of his mother Thea Johanson's family, the Tanlokkens. He told me he had such nice memories of spending summers with Nora and Mildred on their farm in Norseville. I knew him a little, and wish it had been a lot more.)

To avoid being pressured into going out on double dates, in the fall of 1914 when she was 17, Mildred lived for a couple of months in the home of a dentist's family, and did housework for them. But the wife, Mildred said, was not a kind lady; she was very sharp and cross, and "never did anything." For Mildred to earn her keep, this woman expected her to get up early, make breakfast for everyone, wait while they, as Mildred said, "dawdled over breakfast," then wash and dry the dishes. She had to run to school to make it there in time. Then she had to come home from school at noon to wash and dry the lunch dishes, and hurry back to school, then at night also wash and dry the supper dishes. Understandably, Mildred continued being homesick and miserable. She said she became very nervous, and started sleepwalking - getting up in the night and doing housework in her sleep, then waking up with a start. When Mildred's mother Karen found out Mildred had been sleepwalking, she knew it meant something was wrong at that place.

Mildred's mother Karen arranged for Mildred to stay instead with the family of one of Fredrik and Serianna Olsen's daughters who had moved from Norseville to Eau Claire when she married: Nora Olsen, her husband Ole Sortomme, and their children. She lived with them for a while starting in 1914 when she was 17 while going to school and then working. She said staying with them was very nice, that this family and the other families of Fredrik and Serianna's children living in Eau Claire made her feel at home as one of the family. Three of the Eau Claire Olsen families had children at home, included among them her old Norseville companion Laura Olsen (Brill) who was living there with her father Ole Olsen and family. Mildred said she had a good time there as there were lots of youngsters her age for her to join with in family activities. When the Ole and Mary Olsen's twin girls were born that spring, Mildred and another of the Olsen cousins, Roy Bye - both age 17 -- were the baptism sponsors for one of these twins, little Beatrice ("Beco") Olsen. Mildred continued her friendship with her Eau Claire Olsen cousins, and corresponded with some of them her whole life.

Mildred worked for a while as a stenographer at the Eau Claire Civic and Commerce Association and also in the Menomonie Court House for the School Superintendent -- a woman. Then in 1920 she went to Chicago at age 22 to take the three-year nurse's training at Lutheran Deaconess Hospital, intending to go overseas and be a medical missionary. Her sister Nora had watched Mildred be boy-shy her whole life, and was afraid Mildred might live out her life as a spinster missionary somewhere far away. But Nora had other ideas for her sister's life. With only one year to go before Mildred finished her nurses training and decided on a place to go overseas, Nora took matters into her own hands and became a matchmaker.

In the early 1920's, Nora was working as a nurse in Lewistown, Montana where some of their cousins from Ole J. Romundstad's family and one of Mali Rindal's daughters had moved. Nora was engaged to be married to John Wiedenbauer, the wedding was to take place in Strum in the summer of 1922. Laura Olsen (Brill) was to play the organ, and Mildred was to be the Maid of Honor. John had told Nora that he thought Mildred would make a good pastor's wife. Nora thought Wilhelm Madson, the young Norwegian bachelor Lutheran pastor of her church in Lewistown & Fergus, was a likely prospect for a husband for her sister. He was kind, quiet, intelligent, thoughtful, and religious -- a man Nora thought Mildred could be happy with. (July 1921-1925: (age 29-34) served as Pastor in Lewistown & Fergus, Montana)

Nora thought Mildred could just as well do church work in Montana with Wilhelm instead of going overseas by herself. So Nora hatched a match-making scheme to put her sister Mildred and Wilhelm together: Nora convinced Wilhelm that since he was going east to LaCrosse, Wisconsin that June for a Luther League Convention, he could also come up to Strum to officiate at Nora and John's wedding. Mildred was going to be the bridesmaid, so Nora figured that the two young folk Mildred and Wilhelm would have ample opportunity to get acquainted.

The stage was set and Nora's plan worked: Mildred and Wilhelm met each other, liked what they saw. Between June 1922 and June 1923, they and corresponded throughout the upcoming year. "We worked out our differences by mail," Mildred told me. Wilhelm sent her a watch for Christmas, and later asked her to marry him. (Could he have actually proposed by mail?!) Since Wilhelm would be coming to the annual church convention in Minneapolis that next June, they set their wedding for a time right after that in Strum.

Mildred graduated from nurses training in Chicago in May 1923, took the train back up to Wisconsin, and the next month Wilhelm Madson drove east from Montana to Strum. He brought along with him his sister Dorthea Madson to sing the solo, and his pastor father Rev. Jorgen Madson to read the service. On June 20, 1923, Mildred Romundstad and Wilhelm Madson were married in the Strum Lutheran Church. Grandma Nora must have been triumphant. Five days later, their cousin and long-time friend, Laura Olsen, married Clare Edward Brill under the elm trees on the Hanson farm out in the country in Norseville.

After visiting Wilhelm's clan of Madson cousins in northern Wisconsin, the newlyweds and Wilhelm's father and sister travelled for a week from Strum to Montana in an old-fashioned Model T. For 1000 miles they slogged through the rain and mud, had flat tires, often got stuck in the mud up to their wheel hubs, and camped in a tent along the way. What a good sport Mildred must have been; what a honeymoon.

Out West went Mildred with her new husband Wilhelm, to be Pastor's Wife in the wild desolate plains out there, living in four different towns in central and eastern Montana and the Dakotas, serving numerous parishes. In the course of their work they often had to brave harsh weather -- dust storms and unexpected blizzards. See Wilhelm Madson & Mildred Romundstads' married life together.

Mildred and Wilhelm had three children out there, all homebirths, and all easy, she said. However, when carrying each of their three children, she was incapacitated with nausea. (I inherited this from her, along with motion sickness and ears hypersensitive to wind and cold - I think these are all connected) She said she would lie on the couch, too sick to do anything, and was glad they lived in a small town -- so that the older child, and later the two older children, could roam around safely on their own.

Mildred remembered well the terrific dust storm the day their second child, my mother Charisma was born, April 12, 1926. To protect themselves from the onslaught, they closed up the house, stuffed old rags under the doors and into all the cracks, and with damp cloths wiped up all the dust they could. But within an hour, everything was again covered with an inch of dust, which had pressed its way in through slivvers of cracks.

That was how it was the day Mildred gave birth to my mother -- in the dry, dusty little town of Savage, Montana near the Yellowstone River near Sidney, close to the border of North Dakota where they lived throughout the 1930's until my mother was 12 years old. Such dust storms were the result of work of my grandparents' sod-busting farmer parishioners. For the first time in human habitation, the topsoil -- previously held down with thickly matted, many-feet-deep prairie grass roots -- was losing its grip on the Earth and blowing away in the wind. These were the days of The Great Dust Bowl and The Great Depression.

Mildred also told stories about blizzards. One warm, wet, dangerous winter day, Grandpa Wilhelm had been called to a funeral in Mobridge, Montana (ND?). No sooner was it over, than the blizzard hit, and everyone left fast go get home. Wilhelm and Mildred stayed behind with the church caretaker -- who had a wife and little baby - and helped them close up everything. In their car, Grandma and Grandpa followed the caretaker's family's horse and buggy til they turned off the main road to their place, then tried to go on to their own house. Grandma got out in front to try to lead the way, but couldn't see well, and directed them into a ditch. They left the car there, made their way back to stay with the young couple with the baby, and stayed with them for two days until the roads were cleared.

Even at home the winter blizzards could be treacherous. They had to tie a rope from the house to the barn to milk their cow, and in transit hung onto it for dear life. In Aneta, North Dakota, their young son, Romund, was once almost lost in one of these unexpected blizzards walking home the five blocks from school - even though he was in the main street of town. They knew of one man who had frozen to death trying to get from outside his barn where he had parked his sleigh and horses, to his house not very far away. In that short distance, he had lost his way in the shrieking wind and swirling snow.

How different this wild, dry, harsh, huge land must have seemed to this young woman who had previously known only the cozy, lush greenery of the dairy farming upper Great Lakes region, where she had grown up among family and friends who had known her since the day she was born.

Life was also often very hard economically, and once Grandma had to scour the house to find a dime to buy bread yeast for the year. Grandma chose wicker living room furniture because it was inexpensive, would look nice, and would also hold up well over the years despite children climbing on it.

Grandpa Wilhelm was often paid in-kind with food and services, as their parishioners were no better off than they were. During the Depression of the 1930's, all of the people out there were already so poor they didn't notice there was something unusual happening. But at every parsonage, Mildred and Wilhelm grew lush vegetable crops to fill their bellies for the year, and beautiful beds of flowers to fill their hearts' need for beauty. Mildred composted everything she could get her hands on, and with compost she could literally make gravel beds bloom.

Wilhelm would often draft Mildred to play the organ in church; he liked how she played -- felt she understood just how to do the timing of the liturgy and hymns. She would also sometimes direct the choir and run the Sunday School. She also found she could use her nurse's training out there; there were very few doctors for a very large territory. Sometimes Indians would come to their door, asking for food, which Grandma would give them. One Indian man became their friend, and once when one of his children was sick, he brought her to them to see if Grandma could help her.

In 1957, after 34 years of service together in the West, Mildred and Wilhelm retired to the house they had bought in Minneapolis in which my parents and us four kids had lived for the previous several years. After that, we would visit them there in our "old house," and as we were going to sleep, Grandpa would sit and rock our youngest sister, Sara, and sing us the song "Chickadee." In1961 after four years of retirement, our Grandpa Wilhelm died of a brain tumor. After that, our Grandma Mildred alternated between living in Eau Claire and being a welcome guest with her three children and their families. When there was an opening in the "old people's apartments" in Strum, she jumped at the chance to go back to her beloved Strum.

Ninety-five years is a long time to have lived; a little longer and she would have seen the inside of three centuries. She lived to see her three children grow to adulthood, as well as 14 grandchildren, and then to see the latest generation of 9 great-grandchildren be born. She told me that she had always wanted to come back to Strum at the end of her life. And she did -- being so happy to live for eight years in her apartment. "Strum is just right for me," she told me. "I feel at home here." When walking back to her apartment past the old people's home across from the church, she would tell us, "That's where I'll go live when I get even older." And she did, for the last nine years of her life, and was happy being there too. She also knew where she would be buried, in her little spot in the Strum cemetery by the lake. And now she is doing that, too.

I have an unusual old photograph that I got from Grandma, one that was taken around the year 1900. It is unusual for its time in that the people in it are unposed and natural-looking. With this photograph, we have a view into the every-day lives of three women, arranged around their front porch. In the foreground is a little blond girl, scratching her arm through her dress sleeve: Mildred at three years old. Behind Mildred, sitting on a stool on the porch is her mother, Karen Imislund Romundstad. Standing erect, highest of all, is Mildred's grandmother, Anne Mostu Imislund. This photograph gives us a little, split-second glimpse into what it was like to be them back then.

This photograph also gives us a split-second glimpse into then -- a completely different era, one that bears so little outer resemblance to today's life of a century later. What must times have been like for little girl Mildred in that picture, just starting her life in a brand new century? Our Grandma Mildred was one of the last people of the pioneer era to still be with us. Now, they have almost all passed on to their next realm, taking with them all living memories of their time.

In the late-1860's, it took Mildred's parents two months or more to cross the Atlantic by boat from Norway to America. One hundred years later, it took me a fraction of one day to fly by airplane the same distance. In Mildred's youth, she walked 5 miles to town for church and other activities. Today, I am writing this on a computer and will use a fax machine to instantly send these pages to arrive in time for her service.

How do we integrate the lives of these two eras into a wholeness we can make sense of for our lives today and for the future? How did our pioneer ancestors from Norway choose which of the values and traditions from the Old World they would carry with them into their lives in the New World? How do we decide today which of the values and traditions from earlier eras we will carry with us into the upcoming century? Which are deep enough to help make a good foundation for the future? Which have turned out not to be so helpful? What lasts? What fades away? What will bring peace and plenty to all the world?

I think some of the values that last are appreciating and enjoying being alive; love, kindness, and compassion for all living beings; love of and care for the Earth; awe and wonder for the great mystery that is Life. All these values Grandma Mildred held dear.

I hope when I am a grandma myself, I will be as feisty and full of pep as our Grandma Mildred was, enjoying the outdoors and always "breathing deeply" of the fresh air. And someday, to some grandchild, always be 63.

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Webpage by Lindberg-Work Family
2005-10-27
2009-11-01,21
2010: 3/1
2011: 7/1
2015: 2/28