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Note: The biography is a work in progress. Please contribute or correct any mistakes. Thanks, Martha-Lisa Mode Flinsch
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Bio contributed by Herb Schwede who started this memorial:
The funeral for Mrs. Anna Christianson, 94, formerly of Kenmare, who died Wednesday in a Devils Lake nursing home where she had been a resident for several years, was held Monday at 10 in Nazareth Lutheran Church, Kenmare.
Douglas Brandt officiated and burial was in Lakeview Cemetery, Kenmare. Pallbearers were Jack, Warren and Ronald Hams, Meldrick Christianson. Donald Modin and Ted Johnson. Mrs. Marvin Gravesen was organist and Mrs. Douglas Brandt sang. Sorensen Funeral Home of...
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Note: The biography is a work in progress. Please contribute or correct any mistakes. Thanks, Martha-Lisa Mode Flinsch
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Bio contributed by Herb Schwede who started this memorial:
The funeral for Mrs. Anna Christianson, 94, formerly of Kenmare, who died Wednesday in a Devils Lake nursing home where she had been a resident for several years, was held Monday at 10 in Nazareth Lutheran Church, Kenmare.
Douglas Brandt officiated and burial was in Lakeview Cemetery, Kenmare. Pallbearers were Jack, Warren and Ronald Hams, Meldrick Christianson. Donald Modin and Ted Johnson. Mrs. Marvin Gravesen was organist and Mrs. Douglas Brandt sang. Sorensen Funeral Home of Kenmare was in charge of arrangements.
Mrs. Christianson was born Aug. 25, 1875, in Denmark to Mr. and Mrs. Jens P. Hansen. She moved to Becker, Minn., with her parents at the age of 16. In 1900 she filed on a homestead in Spencer Township, Ward County, near Kenmare.
On Oct. 2, 1901, she married Nels Christianson in Buffalo. They lived on her homestead until 1950, then moved into Kenmare. Mr. Christianson died in 1959.
Surviving are two sons, Alfred of Sacramento, Calif., and Francis of Independence, Mo, two daughters, Mrs. Harry (Verna) Harris and Mrs. Jerome (Doris) Harris, both of Kenmare, 14 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.
From the Kenmare News.
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From; Charles J. Mode, March 15, 1989.
Anna Hansen was born August 25, 1875 at Fírslev Parish (near Haslev), Denmark. She received her elementary school education in Denmark. She was a homemaker, married to Nels N. Christianson October 2, 1901 at Buffalo, Cass County, North Dakota. She and Nels lived on a farm near Kenmare, North Dakota. She died in Lakeview Nursing Home, Devils Lake, North Dakota, and was buried at Lakeview Cemetery, Kenmare, Ward County, North Dakota.
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ANE (ANNA) HANSEN
25 August 1875- 1 July 1970
by Verna Harris Verna Marian Christianson Harris
Mama's story will be different because it will include her whole family who came from Denmark with her. Ane Hansen was born in Haslev, Denmark on August 25, 1875. Her parents were Jens Hansen and Maren Sophia Jeppsen. I will start her story with a paragraph from my cousin Charles J. Mode's Family Story.
"Jens Hansen and his wife Maren lived near Haslev, a prosperous agricultural community situated south of Copenhagen, Denmark. Then as now, thatched roofs were part of the landscape. But such outward appearances of quaintness should not be interpreted as a lack of sophistication. For, being near Copenhagen, which was not only the capital of Denmark, but also among the leading economic, cultured, and scientific centers of Europe. The residents of Haslev were constantly being exposed to a social environment of new possibilities and ideas. No doubt, this environment led to an unusual event in the life of this family. Jens Hansen was 43 years old and his wife was 40. at these ages, most people with families in the 19th century Denmark would have viewed a move to America and the learning of a new language as nearly inconceivable. Yet, when a letter was received from a friend in Minnesota offering to sell his farm because he wanted to dig gold in Alaska. Jens Hansen sold his farm in Denmark and bought the farm in Minnesota."
And now back to my own words and the memories that Mama shared with me. She was 16 years old when they came to the new land, so she remembered it well. It must have been a nearly impossible hardship for mother Maren [Maren Sophie Jeppesen Hansen Wife of Jens Hansen] to get ready a family of 11 for moving. And she was to leave her homeland and her own family behind. Mama said they lived in a long low house, and Maren's mother, Grandmother Jeppsen lived in a couple rooms at one end. She was blind and all the children loved her. They quarreled with each other about taking a bowl of soup that their mother had made for her. For the chance to go over to sweep her floor or do little chores for her. Mama often got to go because she was older. I have wondered who cared for her after the family left.
If it were a hardship for grandmother Maren . It must have been a most challenging task for grandpa Jens, who had to have a sale, keep and pack the most necessary clothing, tools, and household goods for 12 people, one a small baby. He bought 11 tickets so I assume the baby was carried on. Aunt Fanny [Fanny Emilie Hansen Mode Daughter of Jens Hansen] was the baby. I suppose that they boarded a liner in Copenhagen, and it was large, a 5-deck ship.
Mama talked about the trip over durinq our Cando winters, and I wish now that I had asked more questions. They had a space on the third deck with their trunks and belongings packed around them. Her mother had brought two large kettles along and each day made a large pot of soup or stew. Grandpa could buy supplies at the ship's store, and there was a huge coal range that the passengers could use. I'm sure that they had to carry their own water and dispose of their waste which went overboard in those days. People couldn't keep very clean, and Mama said the smells were almost overwhelming. They were even worse when they went by the 4th deck stairs and bilge area. They were not supposed to go up on deck. But Mama said they did sneak up for a breath of fresh air when they could. Their crossing was not too rough, but most of the passengers got motion sickness anyway. It lasted over two weeks and then they were quarantined at Ellis Inland for three days. That was as bad or worse than the voyage, Mama said.
I remember my Grandpa Hansen. He was a managing type person and orders like a general. I think the whole family jumped and obeyed long after they were grown-up and even gone from home. They respected his authority. But this trait perhaps carried him through the rest of the way; getting to the train in New York, with family and luggage, changing trains when they reached Minneapolis, where they made a final change for St. Cloud and Becker which was only a few miles from the new farm.
The farm and land around were covered with trees and brush and had to be cleared before it could be farmed or pastured. Grandpa was a stone mason in the old country and his trade stood him well in the new. His skill with dynamite allowed him to blow big stumps, both his own and for his neightors. I don't know what kind of house was on the place when they got there, but he must have started building a better and bigger one very soon. All I remember there was a large 2-story yellow brick house that was heated with wood-burning stoves. Everyone in Minnesota had plenty of wood from his own land. We were used to North Dakota lignite, and I always thought the smell of wood smoke was so fragrant and refreshing. It was lots of work, though, cutting the wood, carrying it in, and carrying out ashes daily. I said Grandpa was a manager. As soon as the kids got old enough, they went out to work and the younger ones took up their chores at home.
Grandpa worked out himself building foundations and helping neighbors clear land. It was a busy time for all. They were learning the new language and the younger ones had started school.
When Grandpa got his citizenship papers, the whole family became citizens with him. In 1936 when Social Security started, Aunt Nora was working and needed proof of age and residence. I don't think her citizen's paper was enough, but through them she got information to send back to Denmark for birth certificate. She got Mama's and several of the others as well.
These are the children and a little of their story. They may not be in order but fairly close; I'm not sure about the middle ones.
Mary was the oldest. She was 18 when they came to America. She went to Becker to work and soon married another Dane. He was Christian Petersen and they had one son, our cousin Harry Petersen. Mary died when she was quite young and Harry was raised by his father. I believe they spoke Danish and kept to the old ways. He lived close to his uncles and was about their age so was always friendly with them. He and Jens married sisters. Harry was a mechanic, worked for Henry Ford and Co. in St. Paul, and later had his own garage and repair shop near Litchfield. He had four children.
Mama (Anna) was second in line. Her story will be our family in North Dakota.
Hans was the oldest boy. When he reached draft age, he enrolled in the Army. We have pictures of him in uniform, and he did service in the Spanish American War. When he got out, he went to Oregon where he married Veda. She was a Mormon, and they had two children, Bessie and Alfred. He was a butcher by trade, and had his own butcher shop in Burns, Oregon.
Aunt Nora was next and the oldest girl at home, when their mother died. She had to become responsible at an early age, and that maybe accounted for her independence and ability to care for herself. She stayed at home until Jens got married and brought Aunt Vangie home. There was not room for two housekeepers in the same kitchen. So Aunt Nora went out to work at an early age. She never married. Most of her jobs were in the kitchen; she loved to
cook and eat and got very heavy. She was single and available so she helped any of her sisters and sister-in-laws through their pregnancies and child-bearing. It may have been when Alfred was born that she came to North Dakota to help her sister Anna. We knew her well. She lived to be 80 years old and died in a nursing home near Becker, of kidney disease.
Jenny was the next daughter. She married a Dane, too, Nels N. Chrestersen. He was never well. They went to a little farm near Sandstone, for the first few years. It was poor sandy soil, and after a devastating forest fire, they moved to Little Falls, to a few acres on the river. They had a big flock of leghorn chickens and sold eggs in town. Nels's health failed and he spent his last years in bed. Jenny nursed him and he was not an easy patient. Aunt Nora told Mama about it. He had asked to be dressed in a shirt and tie one morning after his bath. When Aunt Jenny left the room, he tied one end of the tie to the bedpost and pushed himself off the bed. He strangled before she got back in. They had four daughters; Alice, Hazel, Sidsel and Ethel. Alice had two children. Hazel was retarded but worked in a greenhouse near their home and stayed with her mother until the end.
Christian was next. He was not really retarded, but childlike. Grandpa told Mama that if he had been born in this country, doctors could have treated his condition at birth. He was born with a skull that was too tight. It would have been a simple thing to saw the bone open so that the brain could grow. As it was, he had only room for a six-year old brain. They discovered the handicap when he started school and by then it was to late. He spoke Danish and was short in stature. He was quick and did a mans work, choring around from morning to night. I don't know what Aunt Vangie would have done without him. Grandpa had it in his will that Jens was to get his share of the estate and always take care of him. He more than pulled his weight and was no care to the end. Aunt Nora always visited
him and told Mama that Jens and Vangie took good care of him as long as they could. He got cancer and they had to put him in a nursing home where he died. He lived in to his 60s.
Jens was the son who stayed on the farm and kept it going. He started a herd of Holsteins and made it into a dairy farm. He married Evangenline (Aunt Vangie to us), and they had two boys, Eugene and Leslie.
Aunt Christine was next. She never moved from Becker. She married quite young to Aage Petersen. They had three children, Clarence. and twins Diner and Dagmar. They were hard-working Danes and lived in a yellow brick house by a lake. Dagmar took Lois out in a boat, and Lois caught her first little sunfish there. When Uncle Aage died, Aunt Christine lived alone in a nice little house of the farm. When we took Mama along to Minnesota at Thanksgiving time in 1959, we visited her, and that night she and Uncle Harry came over to Uncle Waldies to see us. Aunt Nora was staying with him so that night Mama visited with two brothers and two sisters right across the road from the old place. We stopped to greet Aunt Jenny in Little Falls the next morning on the way home. Within the year all except Mama and Waldie were dead. (Harry lived to 1965).
Aunt Fanny was the baby in arms when they came over. We knew her the best of all because she was the only one who came to North Dakota. When she finished the 8th grade, she came to help Mama, perhaps when I was born in 1909. She enrolled and graduated from the Normal School in Velva. When she was 18 and had her teacher's certificate, she stayed with the folks and taught at least three years in Spencer School District. The last year was in our school and she and Clifford went off to school together. I think Mama kept him home until he was 7. Teaching a rural school was really a tough job in those days. She shared many of her experiences with us which maybe told in own story. She was with us for most of ten years and married Uncle Charles in our little house in 1916. They lived and farmed near Steele, North Dakota. They had three children; Roy, who was killed in Germany in World War 2, Helen, and Charles Jens, who was born when his grandfather died, and was name for him. He became a Professor, P H D, and wrote the story of his folks lives when Steele had their Centennial. I used his paragraph at my beginning. Aunt Fanny died of heart congestion at age 80, and Uncle Charlie stayed on at Steele, dying at 93. We stopped to see him the spring before he died. He drove uptown for mail and a few groceries, and his mind was as clear as a bell.
Uncle Harry was born in America. He did speak Danish, though. When World War 1 started, he joined the Navy. He sent Mama a picture of himself, and he looked very handsome in his white middy and black tie. He married a girl from Philadelphia (we never met her) and when he got out of the service, settled there. He joined the city police force and worked there until he retired. When Mabel, his wife, died, he came back to Becker, bought a little cabin by a lake where he could fish and raise a garden.
Uncle Waldemar was born in this country. He helped Jens on the farm and never left Becker (Santiago Township). He married Aunt Fern and they lived in a little house of their own just across the road so he could walk back and forth. They had four boys; Charles, Donald, Wendell and Glenn. We visited Uncle Waldie and Aunt Fern at different times, and they came to Kenmare for the folks Golden Anniversary. Uncle Waldie had not been well, and we stopped to see him when we came home from Florida in March, 1970. But we were too late. He had just died, and we stayed for the funeral. Uncle Charlie had come down and was there, too. Aunt Fern moved into an apartment in Monticello. She died there in a nursing home two years ago (1988). When they had the cousins reunion in Becker last year (1988), they met in the Becker hall. Helen and Dagmar had arranged it. They spent a long time in the old Danish Cemetery the next day reading names and dates on the stones. I was so sorry that I couldn't join them, but Harry was not able to go. They decided to get together a Hansen History, and we filled out our data sheets last summer.
To finish Jens Hansen's story-- he loved books and read everything but fiction. When he could afford it, he sent for sets of histories, biographies, and science. He was a socialist and a firm believer of Darwin's Theory, "Origin of the Species". He did not believe in the Creation and would argue with anyone about it. He alienated most of the local clergy with his views, and Aunt Fanny once wondered if there would be anyone to serve at his funeral. He always said that Mama was to have his books because he knew we were all great readers, and she brought them home after his death. They filled the bookcase at home and they were well-read there on long winter nights. Mama always said that I was to have Grandpa's books, so after Papa died, and she could not live alone, we took them to Cando in the folks bookcase. They were a great comfort to her when she lived with us there. Since then we have moved them with us wherever we have gone. When we had our flood in the park, the two bottom shelves got wet. After I had dried them out, I packed up all the sets and took them into the school library here in Kenmare. I had enough books of my own to fill up all the shelves again.
Grandpa Hansen was not only a reader, he was a doer. For a while he kept bees. I'll never forget how exited we were when Papa brought home from the Kenaston depot, two shiny square 5-gallon cans of honey. Imagine ten gallons of honey! We had honey on the table as long as Grandpa had bees. He took care of them himself. During the Winter he stored them in the cellar and fed them sugar. When I was drying out one of his books after the flood, I found one of his orders, maybe as a bookmark. It was dated March 30, 1914 and was from the
Minneapolis Bee Supply, Nicollet Inland. It was for 10 sacks of sugar for $30 and marked paid. When I showed it to Harry now, we figured it was 75 years old and older than Doris. How is that for history? I don't believe he kept the bees very long. Aunt Nora told us that some of them would wake up on warm winter days and fly around the cellar. No one else dared to go down into the cellar for anything. When Aunt Vangie came to keep house and the boys came, she perhaps ordered them out.
In his later years he traveled-back to Denmark, one Winter in San Diego where he liked the climate, and to see his scattered family. He died at home of cancer just before Christmas 1927 at the age of 79. The funeral was at home with family and neighbors there, with burial after in the old Danish Cemetery. One of the local ministers officiated, and Mama and I went down by train.
Note: Retyped by Wendell Hansen, with minor corrections and additions. May 1991.
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