A Letter from Torgal Sletten to Eli Aas 26 June 1887

 Letter from Torgal Sletten to Eli Aas 26 June 1887


We were given a copy of this letter by Tulla Kahl Froyen of the Trysil Historielag.  It describes how difficult things were for our ancestors as they sought to settle the Dakotas.  Torgal Sletten's wife, Ingeborg Larsdatter, is my great-grandfather's sister.

Sletten letter re: Ole Strandvold & Chris Nordstrom trans. from Norwegian by Priscilla Sorknes
Mandan in Dakota the 26th of June 1887

Dear sister Eli Aas!

I think you have waited long for a letter from us. But I have written many to brother Per and I think you have heard and maybe read them. We came to Fargo last year on the 6th of July and our brother-in-law O. Strandvold met us there with two horses and a wagon and gave us a ride to Strandvold. We arrived there during the night between the 6th and 7th of July, at 1 oʼclock in the morning, and both the children and sister Guloug were up and expected us. You can imagine how glad the last mentioned person was when we arrived. We came just as they were in the middle of haying. We were at Strandvold until the 4th of May last year. Then we said goodbye to the Strandvolds and traveled 207 English miles further west to Christian Nordstrom, the husband of Marie Strandvold, who is the daughter of Ole and Guloug.

Maria was at a mental health asylum (word appears to be sindssygeasylet), because she was mentally ill (sindsvag) – and Kristian wrote to me about whether we had settled where we were and that we should come to him, because he could not get any help where he lived. There were very few women available for work there. Christ has up to 20 head of cattle, including cows and calves, and eight horses. He was alone and taking care of everything until we came. They have four children, two sons and two daughters, but now Marie has come home, and she is mentally okay, but she is unable to work very much. Ingeborg has to take care of the house and the cattle stalls. With taking care of both the animals and the housework, she is very busy, but we live well with food and clothing as well as everything else we need. Christian is exceptionally nice, but it has to have been hard for him a while when Marie was so poorly.

You can imagine that we have seen a lot of strange things since we left Norway – countless fine cities and places – much that seems impossible for people to have done, but we cannot thank God enough for our escaping from miserably poor Norway. I have not seen any poor people in America. Everyone has sufficient for their daily needs. That must be because the soil here is so fertile. Everything grows better without fertilizer than it did with the best fertilization in Norway. Everybody is respected here from the lowest worker who conducts his life respectably to a President. And everybody eats at the same table.    Here there is fine food at every meal, finer and better than we used for the richest wedding in Norway.

Guloug thinks that our leaving them was difficult, but we exchange letters with each other.    I can greet you from her. She says that everything is fine with them. But Guloug has not always had it so good, because Ole has been drunk and been improper toward her now and then, but when we stayed with them he was sober. I saw him drunk two times when we stayed there. The one time was when he went to Fargo. He had gotten drunk and the horses left with him (in the wagon), so he was in danger of killing himself.    His head hit the iron pole of the sled and made a large wound in his head.

We have done well since we came here even though we have also had a variety of negative experiences. The Lord chose to take our dear daughter Elide from us to a place even better than America. Although I know she is taken good care of, we regret that she could not remain with us. She died when we had been at Strandvolds for three weeks. I made her last bed myself, namely her casket, but it was a difficult job for me to do. The entire time she lived, I thought she was a hope- filled child, but her time was short. She was healthy the entire time on the trip across the ocean.
Since I came to Mandan my work together with Christ has been to make a fence around the pasture for the horses and cows. We put down posts and stretched steel wire (barbed wire?) between them. Now we have finished clearing away the mess on a meadow by the house – about 180 acres on which the Missouri river left a lot of debris during the flood. We will start right away with the haying, but this week we are going to go out and shoot antelope -- Christ and Ole Strandvold, Guloug and O. Strandvoldʼs son, and I.    There are a lot of deer (hjort, the larger variety), antelope, wild pigs, which are a kind of large hedgehog, a lot of rabbits, wild cats that are larger than the tamed ones, beaver, mink, some Vaskebjørnlingen. West of here there are Griselbjørn and a lot of moose. There are moose around here too. We are going out to shoot antelope and make spekemat (in this case cured antelope) to have in the summer. I have seen deer and five antelope since I came here. Two deer have been shot. We have eaten them up since we came here. If we go hunting for three days, Christ thinks we can shoot a load for two horses and wagon and drive them home. We do not need to be afraid of being without meat here.

Our tickets to America cost us 135 dollars.    O. Strandvold took interest from me for that until last fall, and I was sick with pneumonia last spring for 7 weeks and was not in any condition to work. I got a doctor from Fargo. That and the medicine cost 26 dollars and some cents. Ingeborg was sick for a week last winter and got medicine for 2 dollars. I am angry with O. Strandvold because he did not pay us nearly as much as they paid others, even though I paid for our Oleʼs food last winter when he went to English school – 20 dollars to him for board and we sent him 11 dollars for travel money, and the trip to Mandan cost 22 dollars. I thought he was way too petty toward us, and we have paid everything. You know that we have earned a lot in relation to what we would have gotten if we had been in Norway. We do not have any money now, however, but if we retain our health we will likely earn something this year. A woman can earn as much as she wants every month, because there are too few females here, especially in Dakota.

We have also bought a variety of clothes since we came. If your daughters had been here, they could have become rich in a short time. Our sister Guloug has been in America for over 20 years and has not had typhoid fever before she caught it last winter and was sick for 7 weeks. There was too much for Ingeborg to do during that time, so she got sick afterward for a week, as mentioned earlier.

I so often wish that everyone I knew who had a poor economy could come over here, because one does not need to work too hard in order to have it much better than if one works like a dog in the woods and brush in the Old Country. Olaf, my brotherʼs son, wrote to me about my arranging for his coming to America, but I have no money now so that I could send a ticket, and all the farmers have already hired help for the summer. If he had made his wishes known to me three weeks earlier, he could have been in America now, because then O. Strandvold, Paaul Mortensen and several others would have sent the ticket in order to get him to work for 8 months for 20 dollars a month and board. Some of them pay as much as 27 dollars a months, but no newcomer gets that much.

We will be here at Christ Nordstromʼs this summer and winter, but I undoubtedly will not buy land here, since most often there is not enough rain in the summer. If Christ Nordstrom sells (his property) here, I am thinking that we will travel to the Pacific coast. Washington territory is supposed to be almost like Eden – both the soil and adequate rain; now that is something for us. Nothing definite has been decided, but if it happens, you will hear about it afterward.

I am to greet you more than I can say from Ingeborg and little Ole. Ole speaks English when he wants, but Ingeborg and I have still not learned any more. Greet my siblings and your family and for that matter everyone who wishes to receive greetings, but you dear sister, above all, are greeted from me, your humble brother, T. Sletten.