The Story of the Stone

 

     Sometimes in person, more often in spirit, I return to a slender gravestone in a lonely cemetery in the sandhills. This modest monument marks the burial place of three of my ancestors: a great-great grand

mother, a great-grandmother, and a newborn baby of unknown sex who would have been either my grand aunt or grand uncle. 

     The sandstone was easy to inscribe with names and dates at the time the monument was placed, but the harsh effects of weathering through the decades have caused the lettering to deteriorate and become hard to read. When you study them and the light is just right, the following information for one of my great-great-grandmothers reveals itself: Dorthe H. Anderson  FODT  28 Feb 1829  DOD 26 Mar 1889. On another side we find her daughter-in-law: Helena Maria Anderson  FODT 1 Aug 1866  DOD 15 July 1892. On a third side, Helena’s baby, born and died on the same day, is recorded: DOD  FODT 11 Juni 1892.

     Names and dates do not reveal anything of their lives except to deduce from the etchings that Helena’s baby did not live, probably stillborn. Dates also tell us that Helena probably did not recover from any complications of child birth and died just a month later. A few dedicated people bent on uncovering something of their lives and struggles have found facts of their existence. From their research we can peer dimly into the past and capture something of their essence.

    

Dorthe was known by other names such as Durdim and Dordei which may have been the result of translation errors or misunderstandings. Her husband Anders worked on a freight boat that plied up and down the coast of Norway but died when the children were small. In order to supplement their income, the family had put their large house to good use by taking in roomers and boarders. 

     She came by sailboat as a widow from Norway with three sons and two daughters, a journey that took six weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. After reaching the east coast in 1864 they traveled by train, we think in a boxcar, to Wisconsin. After consulting the Norwegian genealogy and history book known as the Bygdebok, we found they brought with them as cargo 1/2 barrel of barley and three barrels of potatoes. For what purpose these items were brought we are not told. Were they for use as seed stock or simply their daily food?

     In need of money, one son, Henning, went to Lansing, Iowa to work in the harvest fields. As a consequence of slow traveling news, when he became sick and died, he was buried before his mother knew it. The family continued on to Dakota Territory by wagon in 1866, an interesting fact since few white settlers had arrived in the territory by this time.

     One of Dorthe’s sons was Thomas Anderson, my great-grandfather. It was Thomas who married the above named Helena, my great-grandmother. Their marriage bore two children besides the baby who died, my grandmother Clara and a son David who died of polio at the age of 57. 

     After Helena’s death Thomas married Miss Louise Olson who bore him five more children: Anna, Mrs. Sam Grant; Hilda, Mrs. C. T. Hartho; Molly, Mrs. Ted Strand; Ethel, Mrs. Ole Hoel; Lewis; Ernest; and Irene, Mrs. Alan Anderson.