Wisconsin My Home

Tone

TONE If HAVE MENTIONED several times that the families of my mother, JlThorild, and my husband's mother, Tone, were greatly attracted to each other. The two sides were not in the least related, but lived near each other in the Old Country. Now Winchester Township in Wisconsin was full of them and their descendents. Some of the couples you have already heard about-Anne and T orger Landsverk , Uncle Ole Boe and Tone's sister Aslaug, Tone's brother Halvor and Mother's niece Anne. There were many other intermarriages . I do not know any two families that have had more except the kings and queens of Europe, and yet there was never a mentally defective child born, and only one crippled baby that I know of. They were almost all economically independent and kept out of jail, and there have been only three or four divorces that I remember in our whole relationship. You can see how pretty nearly all who went to the Winchester church were related to each other, either by blood or by marriage. I could never understand how Mother could feel so homesick for Norway when she was surrounded by her own folks and acquaintances . That is, not until I got old myself and had to leave the home that I loved. Mother was thirty-eight when she came over, and that is quite old to transplant your whole life. I was seventy-four before I had to be uprooted, and I'll never forget myoId home. I want to explain here about Norwegian surnames. They are very confusing to people who have not been brought up with them. For Norwegians, a woman like my mother had had a terribly long list of names, but they trace her from the cradle to the grave. We all understood it, but the Yankees would throw up their hands in despair of ever unraveling it. Thorild was her Christian name. Her father's name was Andres, so she was Thorild Andresdatter. At successive times in her life, she bore the surnames of Boe, Leine, Juve, Kjeldalen, and Olson. Her father owned the Boe farm, therefore Boe placed her on the land. Then she married Mathis Olson (son of Ole), who lived on the Haevre farm. This made him Mathis Olson Haevre before his marriage. After he married, he bought the Leine farm, so he had to change his name and that of his family to Leine, and the Haevre was dropped. After a while he bought the Juve farm and lived on it until he came to America. Then Leine 117 was forgotten. On all his sea chests and boxes was written in fine large painted script, "Mathis Olson Juve." He bought the Kjeldalen farm in Winchester, at which time he dropped the Juve name and was known thereafter as Kjeldalen-Mathis Olson Kjeldalen (always pronounced Cheldarn). Of course, his children were known as that, too. I was always Thurina Mathisdatter Kjeldalen among the Norwegians, and Tilla Olson to the Yankees. These names were so confusing to the Yankees that most Norwegians changed them after a while. The distinctive names of Juve and Skare and Daalaan and Boe were dropped, and people went by their fathers' Christian names, such as Olson, Johnson, and Larsen. There are so many of these names now, that you can hardly keep the families straight. I have to stop and study it out every time I am introduced to a new young person. I believe it would have been better if they had kept their old names, with maybe changing the spelling. I think I have told you about the given names being changed. Yankees tittered at Signe, Aslaug, and Bergit. So the poor girls in self-defence would begin calling themselves Sena, Alice, and Betsey instead. Now the old names are coming back, and we hear of Karens and Kristins with the good Old Country ring. WHEN TONE came to America she was a plump young girl of nineteen, with flashing blue eyes, fine white skin, rosy cheeks, and a nose that was high and thin. She had an abundance of curling brown hair. Although she was never very tall, she was as strong as a heifer and snorted at weaklings who got tired, or had to take naps in the daytime. She always loved a good joke, and could laugh until she shook when amused. But she had...