Great-Great-Grandmother Buys One Ticket, One Way

Because of the language barrier, we knew neither what to order nor how. The woman looked at our flushed, sweating faces, disappeared into the kitchen, and returned promptly with a large, chilled bowl of rabarbar grød and a pitcher of fresh cream.

I was surprised and delighted. I knew three words of Danish. Two were rabarbar grød.

My grandmother had grown up in a Danish speaking home in Cambria, Wyoming. Rabarbar grød —a refreshing dish made from rhubarb juice—was a long time family favorite.

The year was 1960. Since morning we had been wandering the byways of Mariager, a scenic village in northern Denmark dating back to the 15th century.

Mariager today 

(visitor's info)

Finding Mariager

The previous week we had looked for the traveler information sign when we got off the train in Copenhagen. We told the woman behind the counter we wanted to spend a few days in a small town off the beaten track. She told us how to get to Mariager.

The morning we left Mariager, found our way back onto the beaten track, and headed for Aarhus, I mailed my grandmother in Riverton a postcard. It was postmarked Hobro.

Her letter, just two sentences, was waiting a few weeks later in Zurich. "When you were in Hobro you should have gone to Mariager. That's where our family came from."

Five generations. 

Tipoldefader and Tipoldemoder Simpson, our great-great-grand parents, seated. 

My cousin Jim and I as toddlers in arms. 

(family album)

Back home to Wyoming

When we returned to Riverton in late August, my grandmother was waiting with an extraordinary tale about the family's migration. I had grown to manhood and lived a year abroad without hearing it, not even a hint.

Our grandmother spoke immoderately when her insecurities were stirred. As my generation was growing up our knowledge of the family's Danish origins boiled down to a distainful: "They always used to go on and on about how wonderful life was in the Old Country. But they came to America because they were so poor they didn't have . . . "

An expression, familiar at the time, would complete her sentence. It portrayed abject poverty using images of an open window, a container, and urine.

Down on the farm in Denmark, 1885

 (Museum of Danish America)

Not a good time for the Danes

The family left Mariager around 1890 during a period of active Danish emigration to the U.S. Good times had led to bad times. Driven by prosperity and improved health care during preceding decades, the Danish population had outgrown the small country. Jobs were scarce; wages were low; prospects were dismal.

From across the Atlantic the Homestead Act and an expanding economy beckoned. A growing nation was filling its blank spaces.

Workers were needed. Farmers were needed. Agents of steamship companies and the American railways—which had land for sale—actively recruited immigrants. Some corporate employers paid people's passage and subsidized their resettlement.

Between 1880 and 1910, one in every ten Danes emigrated, 90% of them to the U.S.

Down on the farm in the American Midwest 

(Chrsjensen)   

Not a good time for those Scandahoovians either

While not a first generation immigrant, our grandmother barely qualified as second generation. Her parents were born in Mariager and their romance budded at age 12 on the ship coming over with their families.

At the time Grandma was growing up, strong nativist, anti-immigrant feelings swept the U.S., especially during World War I. Many Scandinavians tried to hide their heredity and become as "American" as possible. The 1919-1920 Red Scare intensified pressures to assimilate.

The prospect of social criticism terrified our grandmother. Reluctant to acknowledge her own ancestry, she kept ours hidden from us kids. However . . .

The dam broke that summer when she found out I had visited Mariager. The family story unfolded, like a good drama, in three acts.

Act One: Expulsion

Our great-great-grandfather—Tipoldefader in Danish—was a town drunk.

To keep the children fed and shod his wife—our Tipoldemoder—laundered other people's soiled clothing and bedding. As such women have always done, she hid money from her husband.

One day an ocean liner tied up at the Mariager dock. The price of passage to America was posted.

Tipoldefader was on a binge. Tipoldemoder packed a bag, dug into her hidden savings, and strode down to the dock. She bought one ticket.

The next day Tipoldefader woke up broke, hung over, and seasick. He was emigrating to America. All he had was a bag containing the few clothes he owned.

Act Two: Hospitalization

Tipoldefader landed in New York and turned up later in Texas. Nothing is known of the intervening period.

According to family lore, in Texas he worked as a cowboy, was gored by a longhorn, and spent three months in bed with nothing to do but contemplate his life. He left the hospital sober and reformed.

He hadn't intended to emigrate. Perhaps he hadn't intended to dry out either. But he stayed on the wagon.

The mines at Cambria 

(Wyomingtourism.org)

Act Three: Redemption

In the meantime important economic events had been occurring in northeastern Wyoming.

A few years earlier construction of the nascent Burlington Northern Railroad had stalled at Alliance, Nebraska, on the way to connecting with the Northern Pacific in Billings. The trains had outdistanced their coal sources in the East and Midwest.

Intensive prospecting turned up major deposits of high grade anthracite eight miles north of Newcastle.

Within two years the Cambria Fuel Company established a technologically innovative mining and coking operation there. It was building a stable work force by importing whole families from Europe.

 Tipoldefader made his way north and went to work for the mines. After a time he arranged for Tipoldemoder and the kids to come over with one of the immigrant parties sponsored by the Company.

New Danish Americans, just off the boat 

(http://danishmuseum.tumblr.com)

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