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By Jon Tatting
jon.tatting@ecm-inc.com
With music in the air, the Dalbo community welcomed a group of 38 Swedish visitors—many following in their ancestors’ footsteps, so to speak—during the 3rd Annual Venjan Reunion held Saturday, Sept. 26 at Salem Lutheran Church.
“This wasn’t just a bunch of tourists from Sweden coming to Minnesota,” said Gary Sohlstrom, of St. Cloud, sharing insight on the reunion before getting into the early Swedish immigrants who settled in Isanti County.
Sohlstrom added:
“The 38 people who came here were from Venjan, or were connected to Venjan, a village in the province of Dalarna, Sweden. A lot of their relatives had left Venjan, starting in 1869, to seek what they had hoped was a better life in America.
“In recent years, interest seemed to build on what happened to their relatives who had left and never came back. With modern transportation abilities, and with Internet, people now have the ability to more easily connect with lost relatives.
“People from here were discovering they had living relatives in Venjan, and the people from Venjan, were interested in finding out more about the many people who had left for the Day and Dalbo region of Isanti County generations ago.
“The reunion was the third annual reunion of the descendents of Venjan. This year was special because we had received notification early in the year that some people from Venjan were coming. As the plans were made, the numbers kept growing.
“Thirty-eight people, all relatives of those who had come to Minnesota generations earlier, came to Dalbo! There were a total of approximately 250 from the USA who joined them at Salem Lutheran for this special reunion. There was good food, Swedish music and a chance to get acquainted and re-acquainted with our relatives,” concluded Sohlstrom.
Pictured from left: Keith Engstrom, Gudrun Wigg, Inga-Britt Jonsson, Sofia Wigg, Kim Nelson and Shelley Nelson.
In addition, reunion-goers brought printed family stories, family trees, pictures and any translated pages from “I Kum Fra Wenjan” for others to read and make copies. Tables were set up for displays.
Volunteers assisted with researching ancestors and how to find immigration records, cemetery maps and records, and old farm and township maps.
Christine Bergman deserves credit for her role at the reunion. Occupied with the food part of the program, she helped serve around the 300 or so people who attended.
From Venjan to Isanti County
Local resident Jack Puterbaugh, whose grandfather came to Isanti County from Sweden in 1882 and settled in Dalbo, also shared a bit of history in light of family descendants as well as their Venjan ancestors who helped shape a part of the county we enjoy today.
Wayne and Rebecca Olson still own 80 acres of the original homestead south of Day, said Puterbaugh. Ogilvie resident Marion Anderson’s great grandfather, Lars Anderson, arrived here at the same time as the original 63 Venjan immigrants in 1869.
He noted the Venjan immigrants pursued American soil due to bad crops in their homeland and wanting to leave Sweden’s primogeniture rule, the common law right of the first-born son to inherit an entire estate (excluding younger siblings).
They heard about available land in America, said Puterbaugh, noting word of mouth led to action.
In June 1869, men walked miles of paths in search of land they heard about in Alexandria. Empty-handed, they headed westward to Fergus Falls where they received more bad news—land wouldn’t be available until the following spring. They then walked back, Puterbaugh explained.
Later, Gammis’ father and brother walked to the nearest land office in Taylors Falls and discovered open land in Section 19 of the Stanchfield area, known today as Maple Ridge just south of Day. Not wasting time, he added, they gathered their relatives and were off.
Gammis Olof Olson, who grew up in Venjan, Sweden, shares his story as a child of pioneer settlers in his essay, “From Venjan to the Golden Land in the West.” He was 77 years old and retired when he wrote the piece in 1940.
A significant number of the original 63 Venjan immigrants ended up in Maple Ridge; some settled in the Dalbo and Day areas, Puterbaugh said.
Most land was gone by the 1890s, decades after Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, continued Puterbaugh, noting the last land under the Act was in Alaska in the 1930s. (Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959.)
“It was tough times, with courageous people, filled with many sad stories,” he added.
Day and lutefisk
Marion Anderson, mentioned earlier, does not want Day and its history forgotten in light of local Swedish history. She explained:
“When the Swedes traveled around the area looking for the farms where the Swedes settled in 1869, they also came to Day. Day is the town where lutefisk is processed.
“I should not call Day a town as this is the only business in Day. But at one time it was a small growing town with a hardware store, department store, garage, locker plant, creamery, “beer joint,” feed mill and maybe more. After the cars came, people chose to go to larger towns such as Cambridge.
“Day receives its dried codfish from Norway, I believe, and processes it here in Day to sell to the public. You have begun to see churches and the Masonic Lodge in Mora advertising lutefisk dinners in the fall. Day Fish Company sells 40 tons of lutefisk a year! At one time they sold as much as 60 tons...”
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