SPANDE FAMILY HISTORY and MEMOIRES PREPARED BY REV. T.K. SPANDE

SPANDE FAMILY HISTORY and MEMOIRES PREPARED BY REV. T.K. SPANDE

(With data supplied by Inga Rask, Dennis Spande and Jacob C. (“Jake”) Spande)

INTRODUCTION:

I am now past my 83rd birthday. While I may have some time yet, I think it would be a good idea to try to put together a short history of our family’s earlier years. I have often wished my father had done this. He didn’t and there are many things about his life, I don’t know. Father’s side goes back many centuries. While we have some information on my mother’s family, it is much more limited.

MY GRANDFATHER AND HIS SIBLINGS: (Amelia, this is your Great, Great Grandfather)

My father’s father, Jakob Kristianson Spande, (b. 8-11-1823; d. 10-5-75) [mother Siri Bjørnsdatter Mjølsnes (b. 1788, d. 1882 (93 yrs. of age!); father Kristian Jakobson Spande, b. 1789, d. 1839 (50 yrs. of age)] was born on the North Sea island of Finnøy in Rogaland, a S.W. province of Norway on August 11, 1823. Finnøy is presently famous for its 1000 or so greenhouses. The nearest city, Stavanger, is on the mainland 30 miles to the south, roughly 2 hours by boat, and is plainly seen from the island. Hesby, perhaps one of the oldest stone churches in Norway (we have a Norwegian language pamphlet with a photograph; curiously, the church has been privately owned for generations (until 1869) and at one time was the cathedral for the Stavanger diocese. It is the principal church where most Spande ancestors rest.

Jakob (Your Great Grandfather) was the eldest son and entitled to the farm, which he took over at the age of 17. His mother lived on the farm with him in her own house with two servants, outliving him by seven years. He had two brothers Bjørn, (b. 12-13-1827; d. 3-2-1901) and Rasmus (b. 5-4-31; d. 11-19-1914) and two sisters, Gunla (Gunhild) (b. 9-30-1920; d. ?) and Elizabeth (b. 3-29-26; d. 3-28-1894). Gunla stayed in Norway but the other three came to Fillmore county, Minnesota via Illinois. These three married and each had a family of ten children and pioneered in the settling of Fillmore county and particularly Preble township (data of Dennis Spande, 6085 S. Main, Clarkston, Michigan). Elizabeth, who married Thore (Toré, Toere) Olson Faae (Faa) in 1851, came there only two years after the first white settlers entered Minnesota and was the mother of the first white child, Kristian, born (Oct. 1854) in Preble township. Brothers Bjorn and Rasmus followed her to Preble township in 1854 and 1855, respectively. Bjorn had been a ship’s carpenter as a young man, sailing up and down the European coast* and built many of the commercial structures in Newburg, MN. Gunla married Jens Flesjå and lived and died on Finnøy. They raised six children; each had a child before their marriage and four together.

*The father of Siri Bjørnsdatter Mjølsnes and his brothers had all been in the Dutch navy in their youth. Bjørn Mjølsnes sailed to China and back; an older brother died on a trip to South Africa and is buried there. Another brother settled in Amsterdam. Dennis comments that many young men from the Rogaland district went to sea.

The children of Bjørn, Rasmus, Elizabeth and Gunla are listed below (vital statistics are found in the detailed genealogical records researched by Jake; married names are in parentheses): many of the descendants of Bjørn and Rasmus live in the Mabel, MN area. Dennis Spande has researched these descendants.

BJØRN: Lina (died in infancy), Inger (died in infancy), Elisabeth (Watland)*, Kristian Bjørnson†, Nels‡, Inger (he died at the Ebenezer home in Minneapolis, MN shortly before TJS went there) , Severin, Albert, Jacob, Jacobina (called Josephine (Josie) (married Orlando Henderson, son of Nels and Sina/Sarah (Faa) Henderson). Bjørn’s wife was Anna M. Kingstad also born on Finnøy and from a family with many prominent churchmen, one of whom got his Th. D. degree at Univ. of Wittenburg only 20 years after Martin Luther left (information of Dennis Spande).

*One of her sons, Bjørn Watland had a son Alfred whom I knew. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the ELC Synod and also on the Board of Regents of St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN. He had a son, Bjørn (probably retired by now), who lives in Jackson, MN.

† I met him once in Minneapolis when he was nearly blind. He married Annie Jacobson.. A daughter was Carmen; a son Leslie died in camp during WWI.

‡ Sons were Victor, Albert (Abbie) and Bjorn (Buren).

RASMUS: He married Serina Tostensdatter from Høyland, later Stavanger, where Rasmus met her as he clerked in a store there. They were married on Finnøy but her roots were in Hjelmeland parish as Serina’s parents moved to Høyland shortly before she was born. The family moved again to Stavanger while she was still young. Their children were: Kristian†, Theodore*, Caroline Elizabeth (Shirven; americanized from a farm name, Skjørvestad, on island of Rennesøy), Joseph, Sina Amalia (Aahre), Rienert, Siri/Sarah (Haga)‡ (has a grandson Keith Haga in CT), Curine, Gustav and Julius. A daughter of Julius was Myrtle who was a frequent visitor to the home of my parents. Dennis Spande relates how a granddaughter of Rasmus, Ester Spande married a grandson, Bernt Amdahl, of Jens Flesjå and Gunhild (Gunla, see below) Spande’s family. The had three daughters before they found out they were related by common greatgrandparents, i.e they were second cousins. This must have been the downside of the crazy naming system of the Norwegians, wherein you adopted the name of the farm you lived on.

*Children (He was married three times): Judith, Francis, Gerhard, Oren, Sophia, Nora, Lulu, Randolv, Olga. Randolv, probably named after Jakob Randolv (my uncle; see below) was killed at school .

†One of his children was Oscar, who lived in southern MN and SD. One of Oscar’s 9 children is Christ who also has nine children who live in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN. They are Betty (Wickland), Mervin, Richard, James, Mary (Borchardt), Sheridan, Lois Ann, Loren and Robert. Oscar’s other children were Gladys (Mrs. Elmer Lynne), Orestes, Ernest, Raymond, Norma (Mrs. George Moran), LeRoy, Quintin and Curtis. We usually see Christ when we visit Minneapolis and have spent a day at his cottage on Smith Lake. He is interested in family history. Other of Kristian’s children were Cyrus, Alpha (Mrs. Tom Hanson) and Ella (Mrs. Westre).

‡Dennis Spande has researched the descendants of Sara and Knud Haga. Knud was his great-grandfather, Torger’s brother. Dennis states that four of the five separate Haga families on Finnøy have some connection with the Spande family. Dennis has also researched this area. Dennis also comments how four different family names were carried by a great, great grandfather and his four brothers.

ELIZABETH: Anna (Mrs. Lars B. Larson, lived and died in Halstad, MN area; their farm was two miles north of Halstad)*, Ole Olson (died young), Kristian Olson, Sina/Sarah (married Nils O. Henderson), Lena Olson Faa ( Mrs. Olias Danielson), Gustava Faa (Mrs. Peder Henderson), Ole Olson, Theodore Olson Faa, Elias T. Faa, Joseph Faa. Toere Faa was also from Finnøy.

*Two of their several children were Theodore and Clara (Olson). Clara lived in Halstad, MN Theodore was married twice; both wives died and he was left with four small children to raise which he was unable to care for so he gave them up for adoption. Maurice was adopted by Carsten Jacobson; Delmare by Canadians where the family had been living. Beatrice married Walter Jacobson. A son Lyle was also adopted (information from Inga).

GUNLA (GUNHILD)*: Children: Kristian, Sena, Børre and Gunhild. All emigrated to the US but Kristian and Børre returned to Norway. Gunla’s husband, Jens B. Flesjå came from Finnøy. Sena Flesjå married Lars Amdahl in ca. 1885. Many of the descendents of Bjorn, Rasmus and Elizabeth are buried in the Scheie Cemetary, Preble township, Fillmore county, MN. A daughter of Kristian was Mrs. Landa. Gunhild Kristiansdatter had a son , Kristian Helgeson (b. 8-2-1842; d. 1846) by Helge Jacobson Rodobøren before her marriage to Jens Borgeson Flesjå ( who also had a son before marriage).

* A daughter Gunhild married Ola Osmundson Bakkevig and came to Illinois, then returned to Finnøy, Norway. There a daughter Gurina (Gunda) was born in 1878. Ellen Rask was sponsor at her baptism. She later changed her name to Julia. She became the first wife of Kristian Spande, the older brother of my father, on Oct. 2, 1900; then she would have been 22 and Kristian, 40 years of age. She lived with him for some time but left him and they were divorced, sometime before 1909 (information supplied by Jake). She was evidently homesick for the US and didn’t like Norway [maybe also not Kristian? TFS]. She lived in California using the Spande name

Incidentally, a Knut (Knud) Spande worked on one of the Spande farms in Norway. Although he was no relative, he used the name. He came originally to Fillmore county, MN, then eventually moved to western ND. Dennis Spande has researched him through Scheie church records, census records in Fillmore county, MN, where he had a daughter baptized on Oct 31, 1886 (godparents were Rasmus and his son Theodore). He took out citizenship papers in Preston, MN on 11-1-1884. My great grandfather, Kristian Jacobson Spande (b. 12-20-1789; d. 9-24-1839), had a younger brother Jakob, a cabinet maker living in Hetland, whom Dennis considers as a likely candidate for the father of this Knud J. Spande.

MY GRANDFATHER’S FIRST WIFE:

My grandfather married twice. His first wife was Eli (Ellen) Eriksdatter Hauskje, (b. 9-14-1823; d. 7-5-1852; daughter of Erik Nilson Hauskje and Margrethe Halvorsdatter Landa). They had two daughters—one (Anna Serina, b. 5-29-1852, d, 1853) died in infancy; approximately 5 weeks before her mother Eli died. Jacob had married Eli on July 16, 1851, i.e. 1 ½ years after his first daughter Karen was born. Karen Margrethe (Margareta) Jacobsdatter Spande (b. 2-4-1850), emigrated to the U.S.in 1870, came to Fillmore county , MN and, in 1873, married Johannes Sjurson Stennes (Steinnes), who had also been born on Finnøy on 2-5-1855 and came to the U.S., also in 1870, at the age of 17. His parents were Serina and Sjur Hadleson Stennes. In 1881 they moved by covered wagon to Norman county, MN (vicinity of Halstad, later Hendrum). Johannes was a rural mail carrier and operated a school bus in the Hendrum area. Karen died on July 14, 1903 at the age of 51 of a heart attack, leaving 8 children. They were Elias (b.’73, d. 1973), Severin (b. ’75, d.’49), Serina (Mrs. Ole Tengesdahl, Tingesdal or Tynglestad (?) of Grigla, MN) (b. ’78, d. ’60), Josephine *(b. ’81, d. ’64), Anna (Mrs Alfred Austinson) (b. ’84, d. ’65)), John (b. ’87, d. ’68), Julia (Mrs. Sigfrid Enochson) (b. ’89, d. ’54) and Joseph (b. ’92, d. ’64). The descendants of Karen Spande live in western MN and eastern ND. Children of Elias: Arthur (lives in Minneapolis), Elias Norman, Marie Bernice, Ester Margaret (Austinson), Ada Elaine (Lives in Lake Benton, MN); Children of Severin: Ernest Korman (teaches at St. Cloud Teacher’s College, St. Cloud, MN), Eunice Signora (R.D. Johnson) (lives in Moorhead, MN, has 4 children), Hazel (Ole Lund, a photographer in Roseau, MN), James Homer (unmarried, lives on home farm; an earlier James died at 10days of age). Serena had 8 children: Karen Margaret, Chester, Myrtle Mathilda, Joseph Kermit, Reuben Clifford, Viola Ruby, Orpha Signora and. Anna’s children: Albin Milton, Kenneth Julian, Harold Gerhard (lives on a farm), Henry Allen (died), Evelyn Alfreda (Romig) (lives in Rugby, ND). John Kristian ran the bank in Harwood, ND; children were Earl (married a Kjesbo and lives in Fargo, ND), John Lowell (an MD in Minneapolis), Gordon (lives in Harwood), Herbert (lives in Grand Forks, ND), JoAnn Marjorie Hildegarde (adopted, married a Nellermoe). Josephine, unmarried, was for many years, Supt. of Nurses at Good Samaritan hospital, Rugby, ND. A son of Joseph, Leslie Stennes, was an African missionary and translator. He also had a daughter Ruth who is a nurse at St. Luke’s Hospital in Fargo, ND, a son Jerome who is an accountant in Phoenix, AZ and another daughter Josephine (Britzel) whose husband teaches at Bemidji State Teacher’s College. We have seven pages of complete genealogical data on the Johannes Stennis-Karen Spande Stennis family from 1873 to the 1980s. It includes a photograph of Karen as a young woman. I (TKS) have annotated it with some additional information such as occupations, residences, etc. of those I knew or knew of. It includes children and grandchildren of the above. As of 1980, a total of 8 children, 60 grandchildren, 56 great-grandchildren and 54 great-great-grandchildren were the legacy of Karen and Johannes!

MY GRANDFATHER’S FAMILY BY HIS SECOND WIFE:

Jacob K. Spande’s second wife was Dorthe Jensdatter Haga (b. 11-3-1830; d. 9-16-05; daughter of Jens Torgerson Haga and Kari Aslaksdatter Haga). She had one brother and three sisters, all of whom lived and died in Norway. She lived to the age of 75. On 10-18-1897, she turned the Spande farm over to her son Jakob Randolv and lived there on a pension with her sister Anna Haga. The large oval picture in my basement is of her. She and Jacob had eight children, of whom all but Jensine and Serena emigrated to the US. Two emigrants (Kristian and Jakob) returned to Norway.

Between his two marriages, 1 ½ years after Eli’s death, Jacob had a son, Jacob Jacobson (b. 11-28-1853) by Anna Klemmetsdatter Ø. Landa, a first cousin of Eli, who was evidently helping Jacob raise Karen. He was confirmed in 1868 while living on the neighboring Haga farm with his mother and stepfather (Bård Kittleson from Nedstrand) present. Previously they had lived on Vestbø (1862-) and Steinnes (1864-). His stepfather was a ferryman and it is likely Jacob Jacobson worked for him. Since his stepbrother Klemmet Bårdson Haga emigrated to the US (he was postmaster in Meadows, ND), it is possible that Jacob Jacobson did also, perhaps returning with him after Klemmet came to Finnøy in 1891 for the funeral of his father. When Jacob Jacobson’s father died in 1875, he was a seaman (‘matros’ =able-bodied seaman), perhaps sailing out of Stavanger. Nothing more is known of his life. [He would have been a 22-year older stepbrother to my grandfather Thomas growing up on neighboring farm, yet I never heard his name mentioned in family genealogical discussions, TFS]. He would have been only seven years older than Kristian and they might occasionally met at church? Dennis comments on the commonness in the Spande family, at this time, of children born out of wedlock: Jakob’s brother Bjørn and sister Gunhild each had a child before their marriages. Dennis also remarks on the fact that illegitimate children were completely the responsibility of the mother and that a father, in this case, Jakob Kristianson Spande, not married at the time his first son was born, might still have no involvement at all in his life. Jacob Jacobson might have taken the name of one of the farms he lived on but it is unlikely he ever took the name Spande*.

When my grandfather Jakob Kristianson died in 1875, all the children except Ellen were still on the farm. The oldest, Kristian, then 15 years old, helped run the farm. In 1891, only three were at home: Kristian (who was home from America), Jensine and Thomas.

*Dennis comments briefly on illegitimacy in Norway in the 1800s when even roughly one-half of all women who were married were pregnant at the time of their marriages. Before Christianity was introduced into Norway, illegitimate children were left outdoors to die; after Christianity, things weren’t much better as a practice was adopted of placing illegitimate babies alive in a shallow grave and rescuing the last one alive. Part of the problem later was the church itself which had so many fast days (for a practicing Christian, at least one-half the year were fast days or days of penance); finally the church relented and pregnant or nursing women were exempted from fasts. The first orphanage in Norway did not come into being until 1830.

Ellen (b. 3-29-56; d. 5-2-38) came to the US when she was 14, staying with Kristian, then moving to Hendrum to be near her half-sister Karen Stennis. She married Halvor Rask from Hallingdal, Norway in 1890. They farmed in the Red River Valley, MN., then moved to Montana in 1906. They had four children: Olaf (b. 1891 )(Ph. D.in chemistry, Stanford Univ.; on the faculty of Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD; worked on vitamins and credited with the discovery of one or more new vitamins), Inga (b. 5-15-93; d. 6-15-75), Joseph (b. 1895; d. 1900) and Harold (b. 8-9-98; d. 11-16-29) (a WWI vet). Joseph drowned in the Wild Rice River at the age of 5. Children of Harold by Oline Eidem were Harold James and Allan Burrnet. Both boys married; Harold had a son James and a daughter Mary by Mildred Bjerkan while Allan married Darlene Timm and had two sons, Richard (a Marine in the Viet Nam war) and David. David married Leslie Saucier in August of 1980. Harold died at the age of 46 and Allan at 35. Incidentally, Halvor’s son Harold, their father, also died early, at the age of 31 (see below). Olaf had a single son, Olaf Norris, who was a professor in Engineering at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD. Olav Norris Rask has two sons, Rayleigh Haller and Olav Haller Rask.

Jensine (b. 2-3-57; d. 9-7-22) did not marry. At the age of seven, she had scarlet fever that left her totally deaf. As far as I know, she lived her whole life on the family farm at Finnøy.

Kristian (b. 3-20-60; d. 2-16-23) came to Fillmore county, MN in 1880 and later to Hendrum, MN, Butte, MT and Logan, UT. My father comments that Kristian was converted to Christianity by Kjelland (a well known evangelical preacher on Finnøy). Kristian made three trips back to Finnøy, finally going back to stay in 1899. He was a naturalized U.S, citizen (Virginia City, MT, 10-26-1896). He owned and operated a hotel in Stavanger that eventually failed. His first wife was Gunda (Julia) Olsdatter Bakkevig (divorced, no children) He then married Jensine Ellefsen. He is Jacob. C. “Jake” Spande’s (b. 11-18-10) father. He is buried in his family’s plot, lots 268-269 in Lagaard Cemetery, Stavanger, Norway. Church records indicate he was confirmed October 4, 1874 in Finnøy church. Other children were Ragna (Karlsen), Selmer and Nora (Verfurth, lives in Portugal). Children of Selmer, who was a millwright and in the U.S. from 1958-64, were Ingeborg, Alf 1and Tor Hugo2. Ragna has a son Helge3. Nora (married Verfurth, a ship’s broker and has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 1942) and Ingeborg (Thoresen) married but had no children.

1children: Trond K Spande 2children: Tone Lise and Torbjørn Spande 3children: Torild and Vibeke Karlsen

Johan (b. 3-22-65; d. 2-19-09) came to Fillmore county, MN in 1886, went to Montana and then Logan, UT to work with Kristian. In Logan, he married Bertina Berg (originally from Trondheim, Norway) and lived there most of his life. He joined the Mormon church and had seven daughters, all of whom remained Mormons. They were: Mabel Verginia (b. 9-28-94) (Harmer), an author, Sybil ( b. 9-15-96; d. 8-23-45)(Bowen)*, Afton ( b. 9-25-98; d. 7-6-32 (Coleman), Dorothy (8-6-20) (Romney), Ruth (8-8-02; d. 5-14-56)(Grant), Margaret or Margot (b. 4-13-06) (Beal) and Helen ( 2-24-08)(Seymour). Mabel had 5 children: Marian (Nelson), Earl, Patty (Spencer), Larry (John Loren) and Alan Spande Harmer. All except Alan married and have children. Earl teaches, Marian’s husband is a builder, Larry is an attorney. Afton Spande Coleman, was killed in an auto accident leaving three children, two of whom were John† (died at age 32 in a plane accident, buried in Tucson, AZ) and Virginia who married a Thoreson.. Dorothy has one boy, is a widow. Ruth Spande Grant, died of cancer leaving three children. Margot Spande, married a teacher and lived in San Francisco. Helen married, is a journalist and lives in Modesto, CA.

*She must have been the one who wrote, “It’s Funny about Christmas” She married Grant Bowen. She died of lung cancer. Mother and I visited Mabel’s home in Salt Lake City and Mabel, Helen and Margot came to Culpeper , VA to visit us.

†John left behind two children: Mark James‡ and Thomas Jay Coleman

‡Mark James has two children, Jeffery Howard and Carrie Elizabeth Coleman; they live in Parker, CO.

Serena (b. 3-21-62; d. 12-8-30) had training as a midwife, married a school teacher (Nils Tjeltveit) and lived on the mainland at Fister. My wife and I visited there in 1965 and saw their married son Hans who was a retired school superintendent and two of his children, Njål* and Oddrun. Serena also had a daughter Dårte Malena

* Njål Tjeltveit has two boys, Herbjørn and Malefrid.

Kari (born 1-12-68; d. 3-12-63) was seven when her father Jakob died and her mother Dorthe turned to her sister (Malena Jensdatter S. Vignes) and her husband Erik Knutson, who were childless, for help and they raised Kari as foster parents. Kari came to Fillmore county, MN in 1883 when she was 16 and later moved to Hendrum, MN and Fargo, ND then Medicine Hat, Alberta and Chilliwack, B.C. Her profession was dressmaking and her religious affiliation, Baptist. She married John Berg, a Baptist carpenter from Finskog, Norway and they farmed in ND and later Alberta, Canada near Seven Persons. We met her and her married daughter Dorothy Afton (Mrs. Oliver Fawcett, a teacher) who lives in LaCombe, Alberta, Rte 3. Two children, Jean Afton (a nurse)1 and Olive Carol Sadie (a nurse)2, live in the area; Her son John3 lives in Saskatchewan. Kari’s other children, Theodore Ellsworth3, Jacob Morgan4 and John5 lived in Chiliwack, B.C. She visited us when we lived in Mayville, ND. We have a news clipping celebrating her 90Th birthday. It mentions that she lives in a house built by John who also built their original farmhouse. The extended family are all Baptists.

1children of Jean Afton (Delparte): Terry Lynn and George Edward

2children of Olive Carol Sadie (Dunker): Richard Arthur6, Sandra Carol7 and Bruce Robert (they all live in Port Angeles, Clallam county, WA). Her husband is a contractor.

3John Dougard Fawcett , now a farmer, was married with no children; Theodore Ellsworth Berg had three children: Anne8, Gerald and Daniel Ellsworth, all of whom married.

4children: Fred, Carrie, Archie (curiously, he changed his name to Lance Bracken), Ray (killed in an auto accident) and Leona (all live in Chilliwack, B.C.) Jacob is divorced and farming.

5children of John Spande Berg: John, Patricia, Margaret and Larry Arthur, all of whom are married. John is a retired teacher living in Yale, B. C.

6children of Richard Arthur Dunker: Andrea Marie and Sean Hauser (adopted); Andrea lives in Pilomath, Benton county, OR

7child of Sandra Carol Dunker: Lindsey Marie (likewise lives in Philomath)

8Children of Anne Berg Hayward: Randy and Catherine

Jakob Randolv (b. 8-4-70; d. 3-4-52) (he consistently used the Norwegian “Spanne”* as occasionally did my father) came to Hendrum, MN in 1888 and stayed in the US for 8 years. Then he went back to the home farm to relieve my father and allow him to emigrate. He died at the home of his youngest son, Johan, who was taking care of him. He married Sigrid Arhus and had six children, all of whom married: Jakob (b. 8-25-07; d. 1952) married Gudrun Voll; children Jakob Rolv1, Gunnvor Marit2), Olav (b. 12-27-08; d. 5-27-98, married Borghild Vela; children Sigbjørg3, John4 and Njål5) Dorthe (b. 1-3-12) (Steinnes; children: Magnar (unmarried), Sigrun6 and Karen Margrete (Foldøy, no children)), Valborg (b. 8-8-15, d (recently)) married Sverre Vinningland; children: Eva7, Håkon8, Solvi9, Venke Sønøve10 and Gunn; all but Gunn are married; Johan (8-31-18; lives in , Nedre Vats, Rogaland; children: Synøve, John Arne (an electrician)11, Gudrun12, Inger and Bente Irene: only John and Gudrun were married, as of 1980); and Gunda (b. 2-6-22) (Vela, children: Ellen13, Ottar and Solfrid, she died in 1977). We have a small photo showing Jacob, his wife and son Johan, dated July 1937. We also have a splendid large studio photo (John Kjolvik, photographer, Stavanger) showing Jakob, his wife and children in an out-of-doors setting, probably on the farm. From the ages of the children, (Jakob, 17 years, Olav, 15 ½, Dorthe, 12 ½ , Valborg, 9, Johan 6, Gunda 2 ½) the picture was taken ca. August, 1924. Interestingly, when Jakob, Sr. died, some 28 years later, his survivors used his image from this photo for his obituary notice. He is buried near the Hesby church. When we visited Finnøy in 1965, we met Olav, Dorthe and Jakob, Jr. I hear from Olav and Dorthe each year around Christmas (their address: H160, Finnøy, Norway). Dennis Spande found a record of Jakob’s family in Norges Bebyggelse, probably published in the late 1950s or early 1960s; Johann and Valborg were missing, suggesting they were not living on Finnøy at the time. *Dennis Spande comments that in the 1860’s in Norway there was a movement to purge Norwegian of any Danish influences. Thus the old name Spande became Spanne and the island of Findø became Finnøy.

7children: Kristin, Valjbørg and Omund Fotland

1children†: Anita, Joronn 8children: Svein Atle and Øystein Vinnigland 2children: Kåre and Kim Såtvet 9children: Gry Helen and Anne Bente Skjeveland 3children: Roar Hadland, Olav Hadland 10children: Ronny, Sønnøv and Odd Asle Larsen 4children†: Rita, Olav 11children†: Heidi 5children†: Cesilie, Stina 12children: Stian Spanne Iverson 6children: Kurt, Morton and Geir Vestbø 13children: Oyvind and Jon Karstensen *(the above with no surnames are Spanne)

Thomas or Tomas ( b. 10-4-73; d. 10-18-58), my father, came to Hendrum, MN in 1895 to join his older sister Ellen and her husband on their farm. More on him below.

(Jake has compiled genealogical trees on the seven married offspring of my grandfather by his second wife. I have relied heavily upon these but have not incorporated vital statistics. These extend into the 1980’s; some such as Johann’s are incomplete. Jake himself immigrated to the US in April, 1929 then managed for many years the Rask farm for Oline and her two children, Harold Jr. and Allan, after the tragic death of Harold Sr. in Nov. 1929 in the flooded Wild Rice R. while trying to save some cattle. Jake then worked as supervising engineer (he had earned an engineering degree from U. of MN) for the Hokanson Constr. Co., building around the midwest, many large concrete grain elevators (e.g. at Portland, Grand Forks and Fargo, ND) as well as wooden and concrete elevators for the Peavey (PV) company and a sugar beet processing plant at Hendrum. My son John worked for him the summers of 1954 and 1955. It was during one of those summers that Jake fell at least 90’ from the top of the elevator under construction in Mayville, ND and landed in a pile of sand, where he lay unconscious for two days until discovered by accident. He often traveled to Norway and maintained an apartment in Stavanger for many years. He maintained a close friendship with Mildred Hall, the remarried widow of Harold Rask Jr.; she and her husband were with Jake when he died in the hospital at Halstad, MN in 1995 of heart disease. Jake had a close woman friend but never married.

TORGER AND DORTHE HAGA (HAGE):

In the early 1850s there was a man named Klemmet Spande who had inherited and lived on the other Spande farm [there were two Spande farms on the island of Finnøy, side by side on the north eastern coast, total acreage estimated to be ca. 300 acres by TKS]. He was a bachelor with a younger brother Jens who married a widow named Kari Haga (born Kari Aslaksdatter S. Vignes; her first husband was Jakob Jakobson Haga, second was Jens Torgeirson Haga)* and lived on her farm and took the name Haga, i.e his name became Jens Spande Haga. The following were children born to that couple: Malena, Dorthe, Torger and Anna. Torger was in line to inherit the farm of his uncle Klemmet and when Klemmet died, he moved, at 17 years of age, to that farm with his two sisters Malena and Dorthe to keep house for him. In time, Dorthe married the widower Jacob K. Spande, on the other Spande farm and became my grandmother. Anna didn’t marry, Malena married Erik Vignes but had no children and Torger married Gunla_______and raised a family of seven daughters and one son, also named Torger (he was the same age as my father). He lived on the home farm. Betty and I visited him in 1965, an old man, who felt he was entitled to the family bible. Of Torger senior’s daughters, several came to America but only one, Jensine, came to stay. She married Johannes Kjesbo and they had 12 children, 3 of whom died in infancy; some lived in the Fargo, ND area. Surviving Kjesbo children were: Gudrun (Lovas, mother of Gay Lovas of Mayville, ND, a good friend), Marte (Lovas), Alida (Thorvik), Cora (Stenerson), Josephine (Overmoen, Overman), Hildren (Stennes), Talmer, Norman and Chester. The family lived for many years near Thief River Falls, MN and later in the Hillsboro, ND area. The other girls of Torger were Karen (Nordby) who has sons in the U.S., Anna (Kluntvedt), was mother of Rev. Nels Kluntvedt, Hannah, Thea (stayed in Norway, married a Lauvsness; some children came to the U.S.), Maria and Gunhild.

*Kari and her first and second husbands were all great grandchildren of Tore Jakobson Ø. Landa and Anna Hansdatter Ø. Mjolsnes, and thus second cousins. Another second cousin marriage, which was common on Finnøy as elsewhere, was the marriage between Jens Torgierson Haga’s first cousin, Klemmet Halvorson Ø. Landa and Kari’s first husband’s sister, Anna Jakobsdatter Haga. Klemmet and Anna were parents of Anna Klemmetsdatter, who had a son Jakob Jakobson by my grandfather Jakob Kristianson Spande between his two marriages. Jakob Kristianson Spande’s mother, Siri Bjørnsdatter Mjolsnes was also a second cousin of Kari and each of her two husbands! Jakob, himself, was a third cousin to each of the three mothers of his children. Two of these women, wife Eli Eriksdatter and mistress Anna Klemmetsdatter were first cousins and second cousins to his third wife, Dorte Jensdatter, my grandmother.

.

The first mention of the surname Spande in our direct line would be, interestingly on the maternal side, in the names of the couple Jens Danielson Spande (b. 1720; d. 1800) from Kjolvik, Jelsa (island way to the north of Finnøy) and Anna Jensdatter Spande (b. 1730; d. 1811) from Nesheim, Sternarøy (island immediately N. of Finnøy). She inherited a 1/3 rd part of one of the Spande farms (her birth name was Matiessen Lauvsnes). Her brother Mattias Jonson, owned 2/3rds of the second Spanne farm but chose to live on Folkvår in Høyland. Her mother’s name was Dorthea Jonsdatter Lauvsnes and was a sister to the wealthy landowner of five farms, Rasmus Jonson Lauvsnes. Their daughter of Jens and Anna, Dordi (or Dorthe) Jensdatter was born on Spande, Finnøy in 1754 (d. 1841) and became the wife of Torger Klemmetson Spande. Jens Torgeirson Haga *(nee Spande; probably only in Norway would “nee” be used in referring to a male, since their surnames changed with the fortunes of farm ownership) married Kari Aslaksdatter Vignes (her second marriage)† in 1825 at Finnøy. Dorthe Jensdatter Haga, my grandmother, also born a Spande, was their daughter. On my grandfather’s side: His father was Kristian J. Spande (b. 1789, d. 9-24-1839) and his great grandfather was Jakob Christianson Spande (b. 1766 in Hundvaag, Stavanger; d. 1833) but the name Spande is not seen in the paternal line any earlier. [See historian Dennis Spande’s excellent account of Norwegian naming practices in his monograph From Finnøy to Fillmore to… (written in 1980) and all the confusion that the system created, TFS]. Dennis has traced the Spande paternal line on Finnøy to Belest A.(probably Aslakson) Lauvsnes who came from Mehus on Rennesøy. His daughter Brigit married Finn Asbjørnson who lived on Spanne from 1605 to 1606, but probably before his marriage. He had a son named Rasmus (b. ca. 1600; d. ca. 1632) who lived on Spanne from 1627-1632. He had two daughters and was through them, the ancestor of Anna Gaulesdatter Hesby. She married Jakob Jakobson Haga, and had a son named also Jakob Jakobson Haga, who was the first husband of Kari Aslaksdatter. Jens Torgierson Spande, her second cousin, was her second (see above) husband and the father of my grandmother Dorthe.

*Klemmet Toreson, of the Landa farm married Karen Halvorsdatter Nearland and were parents of Torgeir Klemmetson Spande, who in turn was the father of Jens Torgeirson Haga, second husband of Kari. A brother of Torgeir was Halvor who lived on Spande before taking over his father’s farm, Landa.

†Kari’s history is a sad one. She first became a widow when only 25 years old. Dennis found and translated the following entry, dated 10-8-36, from the church book on the circumstances which made her a widow for the second time: “traveled Jens Torgeirson, 35 years, and Søren Pederson Hauskje Neset, 20 years, on a southern wind, and were never heard from again. It was assumed that they were lost to the waves, the first night, when there was a storm out of the southwest”. At only 38 years, Kari was a widow again with five children, aged two to 13, and a farm to run. On December 5th , 1843, her daughter by her first husband and second cousin (Jakob Jakobson Haga), Johanna Jakobsdatter, along with her fiance Lars Larson Hauskje and Lars’ sister were on their way to Stavanger when their boat capsized and all were drowned. Johanna, who was never found, had her estate† settled in 1845 and the farm was sold to her father’s brother Gaute Jakobson Haga for 725 speisdaler. Gaute, a shoemaker living on the Haga farm, already owned part of Kingestad, which he sold to buy out the Spanne farm. Kari Aslaksdatter, with her daughter Anna Jensdatter, then lived on the farm with him and his family for the remainder of her life, supported by a pension. Although not bearing the Spande name, Gaute Jakobson Haga’s history is entertwined with that of the Spande family. Of his six children, 4 lived to adulthood. The eldest son took over the farm, while the other three emigrated to the Scheie area of Fillmore county, MN. The second oldest boy, Jakob Gauteson, came over in 1849 with Elizabeth Kristiansdatter Spande and Tore Olson Faa. They remained neighbors in MN with the brother of Elizabeth, Rasmus Kristianson Spande, living across the road from Jakob. (Jakob was one of Dennis’ great great grandparents). Their youngest son adopted the name John Gauteson Jakobson and served in the Civil war.

†She was born 3 months after the death of her father yet inherited his farm. Her mother Kari would have inherited this share but not the right to sell the farm so called odal rights.

EARLIER HISTORY OF THE SPANDE (SPANNE) FARMS:

The origin of the name Spanne has to do with the Norwegian property taxation system. Taxes were paid in “spann” i.e. buckets holding about 20 lbs. of korn (grain of any kind). Some taxes could be paid in butter or fish. Some farmers set aside a portion of their farm as spanne land, i.e. land set aside to provide for taxes (the first was part of the Lauvsnes farm). Eventually they became separate farms. Another Spanne farm exists in Rogaland.

The old name for the farm was Spanne, which in the 1600s became Spande, then in the 1800s, Spanne again. It was owned by the bishop of Stavanger from the middle ages. After the reformation hit Norway in 1536, ownership was transferred to the crown. In the early 1700s, a wealthy landowner, Nils Kristianson Sandborg, purchased it. It was then inherited by his son Christen Nilsson Sandborg who sold it on 6-17-1710 to Mathias Tanche, who lived on Reilstad. He sold it roughly a year later (7-4-1711) to Jon Mattison Lausnes, a farmer who also owned the farm Lauvsnes, bought outright from Christen Nilsson Sandborg (Jon Lausnes was the first farmer on Finnøy to own a farm outright, not just lease it). When Jon Mattison died, the Spanne farm was split between his two living heirs, Rasmus Jonson Lauvsnes and Dorthea Jensdatter who was married to Jens Sorenson Hoffman living on Nesheim on Sjernarøy. The skifle (estate settlement) of Rasmus Jenson Lauvsnes (3-2-1772) divided his property among his six surviving children and widow. He was among the most wealthy landowners on the island and owned all or part of five farms (Lauvsnes, Øure Mjolsnes, Randa, Lille Bokn and Spande) as well as one-third interest in the church (this church was originally owned by the king but had been sold by the king in 1724 to raise money). Spande was inherited jointly by the two oldest sons, Jakob Rasmusson Hesby and Kristian Rasmusson Austbo, but they rented it out. When Jakob Kristianson moved to Spande in 1784, he bought out these two brothers; he had also inherited a share in the farm. The current renter, Halvor Klemmetson, took over his father’s farm Øure Landa. The renting farmers on Spande before Halvor, Sven Danielson and his wife Guri Oldsdatter, who were childless and elderly, were provided a home on Spande by Jakob Kristianson. Jakob Kristianson Spande married in 1785, shortly after taking over the farm, Anna Klemmetsdatter Ø. Landa, a sister of Halvor Klemmetson and Torgeir Klemmetson Spande, the same Torgeir (or Torger) who in 1787 married Dorte Jensdatter Spande and moved onto the other Spande farm. Anna Klemmetsdatter died in 1786 and Jakob Kristianson married again in 1788, Gunhild Belestsdatter Søebo. By her, he had seven children: (1) Kristian, who took over the farm in 1808; (2) Belest (he took over his uncle’s farm Austbø on Hundvåg for his uncle was childless and the farm thus went to his brother, Jakob Kristianson, who gave it to his second son, Belest; (3) Anna Malena, who died at 3 months, (4) Gunhild, who died at one year, (5), Rasmus, who died at two weeks, (6) Gunhild (b. 1802, confirmed in 1817 but nothing more is known of her) and (7) Jakob, a cabinet maker, who married and moved to Hetland parish (may be the father of Knut, mentioned above). In 1808, Kristian paid 300 speisdaler ( ca.1200 kroner) for Spande and lived there for the next 25 years as a pensioner. When Kristian died, the farm was turned over to my grandfather Jakob. It was then valued at 400 speisdaler. Dennis has researched the crops and animals raised on Spande (and also Haga) from the middle 1600s through 1875. They were as follows on the Spande farm:

Animals: 1658 8 cows ; 4 calves

1667 2 horses +13 cattle

1723 2 horses +16 cattle + 26 sheep

1802 2 horses +16 cattle + 24 sheep

1865 2 horses +21 cattle + 75 sheep + 2 swine

1875 2 horses +17 cattle + 38 sheep + 2 swine

Crops: 1667 7 tonnes grain (barley and oats)

1723 8 tonnes grain + 56 tonnes hay (“avling”)

1802 6 tonnes grain + 56 tonnes hay

1865 1 tonne barley, 10 tonnes oats + 17 tonnes potatoes

1875 1 tonne barley, 12 tonnes oats + 18 tonnes potatoes + 100 tonnes root crops (not clear what is meant; could have been turnips, sugar beets, rutabagoes, mangels?)

A tonne was a volume measurement of 139.4 liters and would equal 90 kilograms of barley, 62 kg oats, 79 kg mixed grain . In 1801, 17 people lived on Spande; In 1865, 23 people lived there. (The Haga farm in 1865 had 51 people living there). Dennis points out, although the thin potato pancake “lefse” is now a traditional Norwegian food, potatoes were unknown in Norway before the early 1860s and were probably introduced by returnees from the US.

MY FATHER’S EARLY LIFE:

About two years after my father was born, his father died (in 1875 at age 52), leaving the family in desperate straits. My father wrote that his father “worked too hard”. “Once he and three other men were out fishing and a storm offshore threatened their lives. He rowed so hard that blood came to his mouth and he fainted. He got quite well but in his fifties, he got TB and died too soon. I was then two years old”.

Even though they owned their own farm, had a milkmaid to help out and were thought to be fortunate, they did not always have enough to eat. His mother Dorthe, was a good, kind mother but not always a very good manager. With three boys and 3-4 girls plus a half-sister to raise, there wasn’t much future for them on that little farm so all but Jensine and Serina eventually took off for America. We have a letter from my father dated 2-2-1953: “Kristian ran the farm from his age 14-20, then Johan took over til he was 18, then Jacob til he was 18, then it came to me and this one had to hang on. I couldn’t leave Mother alone til I was 22 and ready for military service”. In 1895, my father told his brothers that he didn’t want the farm and wanted to come to the US, so his brother Jacob came home from the US and my father emigrated. He wrote “I wanted to get some schooling but couldn’t see any way out so when Jacob promised to go home and take over, Kristian sent me money for passage and I stepped on the USA in New York on Nov. 1, 1895”.

I have a receipt for his ticket: 45 crowns for a passage from Stavanger to New York City. I also have his inspection card for the steamship Brittanic, which was stamped by the U.S. sanitary inspection point at Liverpool, England, Oct. 23, 1895 and a surgeon in NYC on Nov. 1, 1895. He had left Stavanger on August 11 on the ship Lyssture. I also have his naturalization certificate, dated May 5, 1913, issued from the district court of Wright county, Iowa.

When my father came to Hendrum, MN in the winter of ‘95/’96, he went to a country school (evidently called Wide Awake!) where John Sulerud’s mother was his teacher. The school was a mile and a half east on the road to Ada, MN (half a mile from the “Y”) and there my father learned some English. The next winter, he wanted to go to school in Hendrum but the snow was so heavy that he gave up trying to walk to school. That same winter he went out to join his brother Kristian in Butte, Montana but only spent a day or so in the copper mines. The early mining operations were evidently underground and my father did not like the work. He then went to join his brother Johan in Logan, Utah where Johan ran a furniture store. Kristian soon went back to Norway to start a hotel in Stavanger.

My father worked part time in the store and went to school at an Agricultural College in Logan. He and John got along well but John had married a Mormon girl and the predominantly Mormon community put pressure on my father to join the church and marry a Mormon girl. So after three semesters at the A.C., he returned to Hendrum and went to work for Ellen’s husband, Halvor Rask, as well as other farmers in the area. The Rask farm was four miles north of Hendrum.

By 1898, father had earned enough to go to school again and he entered Concordia College, Moorhead, MN. While he was there, in the spring of 1899, a typhoid fever epidemic struck the college. Two friends died. My father stayed a week in a rented room (he may have had no option as likely the college had been closed) to try and avoid it but came down with it anyway and was very ill. His sister Ellen came down from the farm with horse and buggy and brought him back to the farm where she nursed him back to health.

Ellen was my father’s favorite and was very kind to him. Betty and I have tried to repay this by helping her daughter Inga. In a letter to Inga, he refers to Ellen and Halvor as “Mama and Papa”. I have a letter from Logan, UT, written in Norwegian, by my father on April 6, 1898 to his sister Ellen at Hendrum. Among other things, he says, although he is sometime homesick for Norway, from every point of view, America is a much better land than the one he and Ellen left.

When my father died, he was buried in the same little country cemetery (Immanuel Cemetery, Hendrum, MN) where Ellen was buried (he officiated at her funeral); the only reason he asked to be buried there, was that Ellen was there. When my mother died, we buried her there also.

I remember that shortly after Halvor died in 1929, Ellen called father and asked if he could come out to Kalispel, Montana, where they had been farming and raising fruit, to help her. My father dropped everything and went out to Montana immediately.

Some years after my folks retired and were living in Kenyon, MN, my cousin Everett Larson visited them with his wife and my father gave his wife Ellen, the great sea chest that my mother’s mother had brought with her from Norway. It was beautifully made of hardwood and had iron bands and rosemaling. It was really my mother’s to give and not my father’s. Later I realized it was because my cousin’s wife’s name was Ellen—that was all that was needed!

MY FATHER’S TRAINING AND LIFE AS A LUTHERAN PASTOR:

After my father finished college at the Hauges Synod’s Red Wing College and Seminary (1899-1903), he went to the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago (1903-1905). So most of his seminary work was in Chicago because he felt that he needed preparation in English (at Red Wing Seminary, courses were still mostly in Norwegian). My father was ordained in the Hauges Synod on June 13, 1904 (Dane county, WI) which was a low church Lutheran group that followed the emphasis of the great lay preacher, Hans Nilsen Hauge, in stressing piety, lay activity, sovereignty of the congregation and the Christian promotion of business to help the unemployed. My father continued to study on a part-time basis at the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago until 1905. His first parish was at Deerfield, Wisconsin. There as pastor, he served two churches, Cambridge and Hauge Lutheran, from 1904-1911.

My mother and her family had moved to Lynd, MN in Lyon country since her father was not well and had sold his store in Deerfield, where my mother had worked. It was at the time of his death, when they came to Deerfield to bury him, that my father and mother met. They were married on April 25, 1909 and were honored by one of the two wedding receptions ever given at the Hauge church. I was born on Feb. 29, 1910.

About two years after they were married, my father accepted the call to a parish in Eagle Grove, Iowa. There were three congregations there, one in Eagle Grove, one in Holmes and one, called Norway, in the country. The country church closed down after a few years when cars became more common. I was about one year old when my parents come to Eagle Grove.

My father served there from 1911 to 1926 when he resigned because of ill health. The congregation offered him a year’s leave but he felt his best hope of recovery [probably from hepatitis; he was yellow “like a Chinese” with jaundice] was to be free of all responsibility, so he insisted on resigning.

However in 1926, while the family was visiting Ellen and Halvor Rask on their 40 acre fruit orchard in the Flathead River valley near Kalispel, MT for the entire summer, he was repeatedly urged to come to East Immanuel, St. Paul, MN. The congregation had split up and they appealed to him to come and try to patch it up. He agreed to come for two years. It was patched up (only one schismatic family failed to rejoin) and then he insisted in 1928 on leaving. His health was still poor, in fact it was worse. So he retired to Minneapolis for a year of rest.

In 1929, He and mother went to Peterson, MN, where he served one of the Lutheran churches in town and a large country church named Arendahl (also called South Fork Lutheran Church) in Preble township in Fillmore county in the extreme south-eastern part of MN. He served here until 1940, at which time he retired after a total of 36 years in the ministry and mother and he moved to Kenyon, MN. He and my mother later entered Ebenezer Old People’s home in Minneapolis, where in 1958, a brief note in “Morning Glory”, a religious newsletter, remarked on the occasion of his 85th birthday ”He is known as a pastor who loved the unsaved unto salvation and one who could build up the believer in the faith.…He is a faithful man of God. He loves the Hauge Federation…He was employed as one of the Federation’s part-time evangelists at one time. He is yet of sound mind [this is probably stretching the truth as his wife Clara was increasingly concerned about his tendency to wander off from their home and to drive on the wrong side of the road, before they were admitted to Ebenezer, ( TFS with information from Dora Larson)], but his strength is such that he must keep to his bed a good deal of the time”. He died later in that month (of influenza?). Jacob and Kristian are listed as pallbearers (probably honorary?).

MY MOTHER’S BACKGROUND:

My mother’s father, Knute Mickelson Voog, was born July 22, 1836 in Skjold, Norway. He came to America in 1871 and in 1873 married Karen Sophia Olson (Duberg). She* was born in the Kopervik area, Haugesured, Norway in 1844. She came to the U.S. in ?. She had a six week’s crossing of the Atlantic and was in quarantine outside of Quebec for a long time [maybe up to 6 months as TKS recalls it], as there was cholera aboard ship. She was 78 years old when she died in 1922 at our home in Eagle Grove Iowa. She was buried in my father’s parish in Eagle Grove. I remember her as a lovely, cheerful old woman. When she lived with us in the period before her death, only Norwegian was spoken in our home as she understood very little English. She had 3 sisters, Gjertrud, Celia and Susanah and a brother Knute. Gertrude went to Idaho and married a Johnson and had 3 boys and a daughter, Inger who married a Kerr. Celia married a Waldeman and had 5 children: Willie, Amelia, Mary, Lizzie (when her mother died, she was adopted by Ambles; married a Leitzinger) and Lava. Susanah† was married three times and raised a large family of her own children and those of two (or three) husbands, one of whom (Lars Mydland) died in a cholera epidemic. Other husbands were Gudmund Strand (a lay preacher) and Ole Hauge. Knute lived in Lakefield, MN and had at least one child, a son Gust. I stayed with him a month in June of 1928 or 1929.

*She was sent out to work when she was eight, during a time of great famine due to the blockade by the English of grain ships going to Norway. [Evidently Norway had an alliance with England’s enemy, France]. People lived on Barkbread—bread made with a little grain and ground tree bark. Adults survived; small children died of it. Her brother [maybe this was a half-brother?; he evidently was not Knute] was a ship captain and owned his own ship. He was enroute to New Zealand to sell his ship (his regular voyages were from Norway to Australia and back with grain for Norway) when he disappeared and nothing was ever heard from him again. The New Zealand government had no records on this. [TKS said that some of the china and porcelain he owns came originally from this brother of his grandmother.]

†THE INCREDIBLE SUSANAH: She had one son by Lars Mydland, born during the great cholera epidemic in southern Wisconsin. Susanah had stayed home on the farm while Lars went to town to sell some grain, probably in Stoughton, Cambridge or Deerfield. When he did not return after two days, she walked to town to find out why. He had died of cholera and had already been buried. Half the town was boarded up. Susanah found many helpless, desperately ill people. She helped as much as she could, then she went out of town, found a clean barn, put down fresh straw and had her baby boy. This son (Engel?) later worked at the Univ. of MN, one of his children worked in the post office in St. Paul. His daughter married John Sulerud who had a hardware store at Halstad, MN. Mrs. Sulerud the grand daughter of Susanah, after her husband John died of a heart attack early in life, married Ivers. Susanah and Lars also had a daughter Olena, who died in infancy. After some time Susanah married Gudmund Strand, a widower and lay preacher, with several children. Two of these were Anna Kimbel (d. ca. 1909 in Nebraska or about this time) and L.G, Johnson (d. 1901, a carpenter in Slater, Iowa (he died at work on a door lock for the local preacher) who were from Mydland’s first marriage He and Susanah also had several children together. These were Jens Johnson (Seattle, WA), Julia (Chicago, IL), Martha (Moses) of Pasadena, CA; Gregor Johnson (d. 6-20-1892 at Madison, WI) and Gustavus who died in infancy. When Gudmund Strand died, Susanah was still in good health and active with a large family. She then married a man named Ole J. Hauge. He was married to her in overalls! He had at least four children of his own by a wife Madelina: Lena Kung (d. Apsen, CO 4-1893), Albert Johnson (Cambridge, WI), James Johnson (Grover, CO) and Carrie Kringel (d. 2-1888 at Walnut, Iowa) and evidently only one with Susanah, a girl named Mollie. I was told by my mother [who I believe is responsible for a penciled list of Susanah’s children whom she knew of, which comes to 14; TFS] that she was mother to about 25 children, which suggests that her three husbands had other children of their own. I did meet Mrs. Sulerud.

My mother’s father, had two brothers, Hans and Mickel and one sister Kari, who all came to the U.S. Mickel and Hans lived in the Deerfield and Marshal areas, respectively; Kari went to Nebraska*. Knute was a sailor/ fisherman who lost a gangrenous leg at sea to amputation by the ship’s carpenter. He came to America in 1871 and married Karen Sophia in 1873. She claimed he could climb up the rigging of a sailing ship as fast as any man, even though he had a peg leg. But he decided to come to the U.S. and try for some other way to earn a living.

*Children of Mickel Mickelson (he later took the name Voog†); Hannah, Carl, Amanda (adopted); Children of Hans Mickelson: Tore, John, Peter, Sarah; Kari died shortly after marriage by breaking her neck in a fall from a haystack.

†The origin of this name and the reason for changing his name seems shrouded in mystery; some remaining family opine that he had to distinguish himself from all the other Mickelsons abounding in the area; his bothers evidently didn’t change their names: Dennis Spande considers it certain that the Voog name came from a farm named Vaag (Våg) in the parish of Skjold and that the name Voog was adopted by some family members as the result of a campaign in the Norwegian-American press to replace patronymics with farm names, [ Dennis stresses that Spandes have always used the farm name and never patronymics (except maybe for illegitimate children?)].

Knute married Karen Sophia Olson Duberg and had 9 children of whom the following survived to adulthood: Martin, Gust, Lottie, Theodore, Minnie and Klara (my mother). A child, Lottie died at age 1 1/2 but I do not know the names of the others who died as children. I remember all but Lottie and Gust. Martin married Bessy and had three children, Hazel, Gordon and Charlotte who were all frequent visitors of my parents. Gust married Mary Hoverson and had a son Harlowe*. Theodore married Minnie Hende and had two children, Ayris and Duane† (now both deceased). Minnie married Albert Larson and had 6 children: Wallace‡, Luther, Stanley, Everett§, Dora and Dorothy (twins) . Knute died before Klara married, probably in 1908(?) and is buried in Deerfield, WI alongside his wife Karen.

*Harlowe had two children: Cathy and James

†Ayris had a son. Duane was best man at my wedding (he had no children).

‡Wallace married Sylvia Olson and had a daughter Judith: She has three children, Douglas, Linda and Brad. Linda was killed in her home in a robbery attempt in 1994. Luther married Irene Aten but had no children.

§Everett married Ellen Hakonson and had a son Derek.

Dora and Dorothy did not marry. Both were trained as nurses and practiced together in the early 1950s at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN then later joined their bother Stan to assist him in his clothing store in Spokane, WA. Dorothy died of metastatic breast cancer in late 1997, after a valiant struggle using alternative medicine.

Knute started out in southern Wisconsin as a pedler, had a cart and horse and went around. He did fairly well and seeing a good location in Deerfield, he built a store and dwelling combination there (we have a photograph of the store which also served as a post office and my wife, Elizabeth Thias Spande, depicts it in a painting). My mother was born in Stoughton, WI before they moved to Deerfield. She finished the 8th grade and then had to quit school to clerk in the store. She said in the early days, there were many Indian customers. She was there in the store when my father came to Deerfield to be the pastor of the little Lutheran church there.

I remember some of the in-laws of our family only faintly--but uncle Albert (b. 5-18-73 in Deerfield; d. ?; buried at Eagle Grove, IA), who was married (2-14-1911; St. Valentine’s Day!) to my mother’s older sister, Minnie--I remember very well. He was a tall thin man who was not well. He had had several economic reversals-including losing, to fire, a grain elevator, that he was a partner in. Later he lost a farm. A grocery store he started, failed too. He was unfailingly good humored and generous to a fault—when he gave Minnie, his bride-to-be, a gold watch, he gave my mother one also. Granddaughter Helen now has this lovely watch. My first tricycle and roller skates came from uncle Albert. He died when his youngest children, the twins, were but 17. His parents were Gulick Larson (b. 4-1-1818 in Voss, Norway; d. 1-18-99 in Deerfield, WI; buried with his wife in Liberty Cemetary ) and Anna Brunberg (also from Voss; m. 1-9-1847 in Albion, WI(?)) who had in addition to Albert, ten other children*. Mother’s brother Ted was married to a girl, also named Minnie; to distinguish her from mother’s sister, she was always referred to as Ted’s Minnie. She was a congenial, fat, good natured lady. Mother’s brother Martin’s wife was named Mary. I remember Dad said her house always looked so helter skelter as if she had just moved in and wasn’t through unpacking and putting things away. Dora sent a photo showing my parents, Albert and Minnie and I think, Ted and his Minnie.

*These were Martha (b. 2-4-48 in Norway; d. 10-1925 in Deerfield, married Gundar Bergland); Louis (b. 4-10-49 in WI; died unmarried in SD); John (b. 1851 in WI, d. at World’s Fair in Chicago); Berge (b. 8-16-1853 in Deerfield; d. 1918; m. Anna Bergland on 4-30-1881); Andrew (b. 6-30-1855 in Deerfield; d. 12-1933 in Deerfield; m. Mary Stowe on 2-25-1885; she died 6-8-1942); Nels (b. 1-18-1857 in Deerfield; d. 10-1943 in Deerfield; m. Julia Dustered in 1887); Od (b. 1859 in Deerfield, d. 1903); Dora (b. 1-13-1861 in Deerfield, died 12-1911; m. Albert Shenk); Annie (b. 4-14-1862 in Deerfield; m. Eduard Leland and died in MN) and Olaus (b. 11-4-1891 in Deerfield, died in 1958). This data contained in WI State Genealogical Soc. document of Wallace Larson, supplied by Dora Larson)

MY EARLY LIFE:

My parents moved to Eagle Grove, Iowa in 1911 and lived there until 1926. Dad was pastor of Samuel Lutheran church in Eagle Grove and _______Lutheran at Holmes plus Norway Lutheran, a rural church near Eagle Grove. Minnie Larson, mother’s married sister (two year’s older), and all her children moved there during my early years. Previously Minnie had been church organist at the Hauge church in Deerfield, Wisconsin. I don’t remember when they moved there from Lynd, MN (Lyon county) or a time when they didn’t live nearby. The Larson family were very important to my life in Eagle Grove, especially Stan , with whom I’d walk to school, play games in the neighborhood, walk out to the Boone River to go fishing and swimming or just hunt for nuts. We had bikes but occasionally we’d go in the Model T that Wally and Lute were allowed to drive, usually to go swimming or camping overnight at the River. Albert had some ups and downs during this time.

In 1914, I went to Norway when I was four to visit the home farm at Finnøy. I got lost in the mountains on the mountain side on the mainland near Fister. I saw the Kaiser’s yacht dock at shore. During this visit, I remember the aroma of some baking, that was strange, sweet and spicy and the smell of the ocean as I experienced it standing on the shore of Finnøy. I remember the rough water on the North Sea, my parents being ill and the sailors playing with me, but I have no memories of people that I met during this trip. Dad had wanted to visit his brothers and sisters who remained in Norway and perhaps to consider returning there. After we had been on the island a few weeks, he realized that he preferred America. While we were there, one summer evening, we saw the German royal yacht coming down from northern Norway, where the Kaiser had been. One of my father’s brothers said “There must be trouble, they are leaving early!” In a few days the First World War had started and we hurried back to the US. On our return trip we shared our stateroom with a married couple with two girls who were desperate to get out of Europe but who had made no reservations.

I remember down in Iowa when I was a very small boy, of going with my father in the horse and buggy to the country churches and in the wintertime, of riding with him in the cutter. When I was 7 or 8 years old, we got our first car, a huge, clumsy Overland. Then, when I was about 13, we got a Buick. It was a touring car with a “California top” (an imitation leather rigid top with sliding glass windows held in place with screw-down rubber stoppers). [Dora Larson remembers TJS occasionally surreptitiously smoking a cigar in her presence; confirmed by TKS].

My first job was a month’s employment on a farm with two old people when I was 15 years old. All I did was cultivate corn, day after day. The first week or so, I was so homesick, I cried every night. I got room and board and a dollar a day.

My next job was working on a farm near Wilmer, MN. I was there all summer. I spent quite a bit of time working with a road crew driving four horses on a “Fresno”, a large dirt mover. My boss was one of the county road commissioners. I also learned to do all the usual farm work of the growing season. [Probably it was during this time that my father, TKS, learned to handle dynamite for blasting stumps. I was always impressed that his parents allowed him to blast stumps around the parsonage with dynamite, TFS]

The next summer, I taught church school for a month in Lakefield, MN and stayed with my great uncle, Knute. After the month was over, I worked for a construction crew tearing down old buildings on farms and putting up new ones.

I was very much aware that I was the only child in the family. My folks had attempted to adopt one of Uncle John’s daughters (when John died*, his seven children were all young) but the Mormon church objected. I was fortunate however that the Larsons moved to Eagle Grove soon after we did—they had 4 boys, one of whom (Stanley) was only 8 months older than me. I was with those four boys most of the time, as they lived across the street from us. It was fortunate for me that I could share their family life because things were pretty quiet around my house, partly due to my parents being older when I was born and my being an only child. There wasn’t much there to interest a young boy. I had chores (some house duties because mother wasn’t strong) and some usual yard and garden duties like most boys had. But even so there was a lot of free time. My childhood was not a hard one, although my parents were very strict disciplinarians and there were many things I was forbidden to do But I had a lot of time for playing outdoor games and fishing and roaming around in the woods, foraging for nuts, etc. out by the Boone river. Most of these things I did with the Larson boys.

*After John died, my father traveled to Logan, Utah to retrieve the family bible which had been in John’s possession, even though John was not the oldest boy in our family [Kristian was]. It is not known why Johan had possession of the bible [I speculate that perhaps it was given or loaned to him by Kristian who had been traveling with Johann, TFS]. His widow was most unhappy in parting with it but my father was adamant that it should stay in our family. The fact that it had reposed with Mormons did not help matters either. It is inscribed “Torger Spande, 1718” and is in Danish in old German Fraktur script.

After my father resigned his parish duties in Eagle Grove for reasons of ill health, we left Eagle Grove and went to Kalispel, MT where Ellen and Halvor had retired from, but not sold, the big Red River valley farm (estimated at several sections by my son, John D. Spande, who worked two summers on that farm in the 1950s) and had bought 40 acres in the beautiful Flathead River valley. It is interesting that in his trouble, my father seemed instinctively to head for Ellen. Later on, after her husband died in 1929 and she was in trouble herself about her property and children, it was my father who dropped everything and went out west-this time to help her. In the settlement of Halvor’s estate, my father was asked to advise Ellen about the disposition, between the two surviving children, of the valley farm and the Montana property. His recommendation to Ellen, which was acted upon, to give Inga the valley farm, since she had sacrificed a chance at an education and marriage to look after Ellen, and to give the university-educated Olav, the Kalispel property—of considerably less value made of Olav, a lifelong enemy.

We spent the summer out there in Montana. All summer long, my father kept getting letters from a congregation in St. Paul, MN-East Immanuel. They were in trouble-had a split congregation fighting about a pastor (O. J. Nesheim). They believed my father could heal their troubled congregation and pleaded with him to come-so finally, though he was still not well, he agreed to come for two years. In those two years, he succeeded in mending the congregation and all but one of the families who had left returned.

By now, my father felt even more in need of rest and he left the congregation and retired to Minneapolis for a year of complete rest. After a year in Minneapolis, he accepted a call to Peterson, MN, where he served a church in town and the Arendahl congregation in the country.

When we came to St. Paul, I (age 16) too, was not feeling very well and it was decided that I had appendicitis. The doctor operated but something went wrong afterwards. The incision became infected and broke open and I was in the hospital for a long time and later at home for a long time—seven weeks altogether. So I missed one whole semester of school.

MY EDUCATION AND TRAINING:

To occupy my time the second semester, I went to the Lutheran Bible Institute, at that time, over on Hamlin Ave. in the old United Lutheran Seminary building. I went back and forth by street car. The building wasn’t much; later they built their fine building in Minneapolis on Portland Ave. and then finally, out at Golden Valley. Although the facilities were poor, the staff was tremendous. Dr. Samuel Miller was the dean and most popular teacher. Then there was Dr. Sedergren, A.B. Anderson, Odd Hornitzka, all exceptional men. When the next school term began, I went to St. Paul to attend for one year, Luther Academy, also called Phalen Luther because it was near Lake Phalen in St. Paul. This was a Lutheran Church school run by the Ohio Synod, before the union of the Ohio, Buffalo and Iowa Synods in 1930. It was at the end of this school year that we moved to Minneapolis and then I went to Augsburg Academy. I graduated from Augsburg Academy in 1929. Because there was also a college there, I was allowed to take some college courses.

In the fall of 1929, I enrolled at St. Olaf College. By this time my folks were at Peterson, MN. After two years at St. Olaf, just before my third year was to begin, many banks, including the one my father and I had money in, failed so Dad said maybe I had better go to Minneapolis to Augsburg College where I could get a job while at school. This I did and since my senior year at the Academy, I had already accumulated a few extra hours of coursework at Augsburg College. With these credits, I was able to finish college that year, i.e. in three years. I graduated from Augsburg College in 1932. Each class chose a spokesman to represent the class at graduation exercises. I was chosen and my theme was “Happiness is the Essence of Success”. It was right in the middle of the Great Depression and everyone seemed to think that the only thing that mattered was getting money—making a living. My idea, though very naively put, was that there was an inner kind of happiness that makes the successful life-not money. For some time I had felt I should go into some type of church ministry. My father had never encouraged me to do so, in fact he said “Don’t go; into the ministry, unless you have to”—by which he meant , don’t go into the ministry unless God won’t give you any peace unless you do.

The next fall, in 1932, I enrolled at Luther Seminary. When I entered the seminary, the times were still hard. Out of 70 students that applied, they only accepted 36 of us-some of the students from the previous class still didn’t have parishes. My interest then was world missions. At that time Dr. Gullitson was the president and the faculty were nearly all quite elderly—in fact in a few years they would all be retired. But they were fine teachers. Dr. Boechman was still teaching part-time. Dr. Wee, Dr. Bruce, Dr. Brandt, Dr. Tanner and Dr. Weswig were others, also some visiting lecturers were brought in for special courses. Dr. Wesswig on Church History and Dr. Tanner on Dogmatics were two of the most outstanding teachers I had. I finished the seminary in 1935, but due to a conflict, which I had better take some time to tell about, I did not receive my Bachelors of Theology degree until 1936. As I grew older, the following seemed less and less important.

When I was in the Senior academy at Augsburg, I started dating a girl who was a Junior in college. I was in love with her—though as I look back on it, probably some of it was the prestige—going with her let me into associating with Juniors and Seniors in college, pretty exciting to a young boy in the Academy (which was the same as High School). At any rate, we became engaged and remained engaged until I met Betty. My roommate, George Gustavson, at the seminary and I were sent up to the north shore of Lake Superior for the summer of 1934. We were sent by the home mission board and were to teach and preach in the small towns along the shore. Gustavson was to cover the north and I covered Castle Danger south to Knife River. This included Beaver Bay and Two Harbors. Betty was assigned by the Two Harbors’ pastor, E.J. Tetlie, to be my assistant at Vacation Bible School. We fell in love and when I saw the other girl that fall, I told her that I wanted to break our engagement. She did not like that but agreed tentatively. When I notified the Seminary of this, they insisted that I have a letter from her stating that this was mutually acceptable. She flatly refused to give me such a letter. I should say that at this time, the Seminary demanded complete control over the lives of the students. They did not approve of students marrying while at school (only two or three exceptions were granted in the whole student body while I was there). Well the upshot of my problem was that the foreign mission board was no longer interested in me. I was to have gone to Madagascar as a missionary. The girl to whom I had been engaged did go. She came from a prominent church family, which may have helped her but she was a well-trained teacher and that was the main reason she was sent. Not only did I not go to Madagascar, I was not approved for graduation. Partly this was because I refused to admit to the Council of Bishops that I was interested in another girl—I knew that if I did, then Betty would get dragged into it, which would make trouble for her (and really be of no help to me either). The seminary did not flunk me out (I was one of the top students) and I was put on probation for a year. Through the seminary, I was given a chance to go to New York City and work in a parish on Long Island (Trinity Lutheran, St. Albans) where Gunmar G. was pastor.

Another possibility I considered was a scholarship at Columbia for one year’s special work in social welfare, if I would agree to work for the city of NYC for three years. Also there was a group of young men starting a trailer company (this was 1936 and car trailers and campers were just beginning) who wanted me to join them.

However I went to Long Island. I had board and room and $20 a month and two days off a week. I enrolled at General Seminary (an Episcopal seminary in downtown NYC) for two graduate courses, which I liked very much, especially Dr. Burton Scott Easton’s course on St. John. I enjoyed my year out there; G.G. and his wife, Gladys were good to me. There was however, open strife between G. and the congregation because G. was so deeply involved with the Oxford Group Movement, later called Buchmanism or Moral Rearmament. He was a good-hearted man and a good preacher but he got so disgruntled with this experience that the left the ministry and went into full time work at the post office where he had once worked part-time. While at graduate school during this year out there, Dr. Weswig came out to visit and see how I was doing. He hinted very strongly that things were going to be all right.

The bishop of that district had died and Dr. Aasgaard was temporary acting Bishop as well as president of the church. He called me in the spring and said that he had a home mission congregation in Madison, Wisconsin that he thought I should take and that it would be best if I got married before I went down there. In spite of my lies that there was no other girl, the old man was pretty sure there was and it was all right with him. He told me later that he had insisted that I be reinstated. He had told the council of district presidents that if he had been in the spot I was in, he probably would have done the same as I did. Compared to policy now, it seems almost unbelievable that I was disciplined as I was but there were like situations other years. There was even the story of a young seminarian who was seen to kiss one of the seminary president’s house maids and was told by president that he must either marry her or leave the seminary. When Dr. Aasgaard asked me to take St. Marks in Madison, there were still men from last years’ class who had no calls so I considered myself very fortunate and always felt grateful to Dr. Aasgaard.

MY FIRST PARISH:

Back to Betty. (Betty was born Feb. 11, 1911). We were married in Two Harbors by my father and Rev. E.J. Tetlie on August 26th , 1936 and left immediately for Madison Wisconsin via Minneapolis and Peterson , MN (where my folks lived). I was ordained in Peterson on August 30th ; the certificate of ordination is dated Oct. 9, 1936 and made out in Dane Co., WI. My father furnished transportation to Madison as we did not have a car until Tom was several months old. I covered the parish in south Madison on foot.

At St. Marks, in the depression, I received a salary of $100/ month of which $45 went for rent. After we were paid, we had about $30/ month to live on. After Tom was born, my father gave us a used Chevrolet coupe.

My good friend and seminary roommate, George Gustavson, was up at Elison Bay, Wisconsin and had to leave because he was almost starving. He called and asked if he could recommend me to come up there and I told him that we would just as soon stay in Madison and starve there. The congregation had some very fine people. Even for those who had good jobs, life was almost on the poverty level. Really, we never missed a meal. We were poor but Betty was a good manager, though her father had warned me that “she will spend money like a drunken sailor”. That wasn’t true at all. That we were always able to pay our bills was due to her good managing. We relied heavily on our garden for canned vegetables and lucky for Tom, he liked green beans!

We lived on Olin Ave. in a very nice house and rented the furniture of the pastor (H. Hanson) who preceded me at St. Marks. He went out to NYC where he went to school for a year. We paid one-half of our $100/ month salary for rent and the used furniture.

Just before Tom was born, we moved to Potter St., where we rented the house of a University teacher for the summer. Then, in the fall, we moved to Edgewater Court where we lived until we left Madison. John was born roughly a year after we moved into this house. It was a very modest neighborhood but a good one. We had several very good friends there, including Dr. Marsden, one of the best surgeons in Madison, who delivered both Tom and John and later on did surgery on me for adhesions [probably a result of the earlier botched appendicitis surgery, TFS].

MY LIFE IN THE ARMY:

While in Madison, I became Protestant chaplain for the local Reserve Officers unit, at their request. This unit covered the area of southern Wisconsin. Near the end of April, 1941, I received unexpected orders to report to the Reception Center at Ft. Custer, Michigan on the 7th of May for one year of active duty with the 1605th Service Command Unit. Betty and I had to close our activities in the congregation in a terrible hurry. The bishop told me to get whomever I could to take over the parish when we left. Luckily, Sorenson from the small town of McFarlane was willing to take over.

I found a house in Battle Creek, MI and the family moved down as soon as possible. Life in the army in pre-war days was pretty much like any job—regular hours, etc.

But on Sunday, Dec. 7th we heard on our radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I was no longer on one year’s active duty and I was transferred from post duty as asst. post chaplain at Ft. Custer to duty as a combat command chaplain with the 49th regiment of the 8th Armored Division at Ft. Knox, KY with a rank of first lieutenant.

Shortly before I was transferred, Robert was born. This was a very traumatic time for Betty as we had been told, I would be transferred to a combat unit soon. But at least I was still there when Robert was born after a difficult delivery. Not too long after my transfer to the 8th Armored Div., which was being reorganized, at Ft. Knox, we were able to find a house in Louisville, KY and moved there. But life in a unit training for combat was quite different from post duty. I was lucky to get home a couple of times a week.

We had thought that when I was transferred to a combat unit that I would soon be going overseas. But they decided to use our division to train cadres for more armored divisions so we were constantly having groups of men shipped out to start new divisions. This meant for those shipped out, good ratings for enlisted men and quick promotions for the officers. Though I stayed with the division, I was soon given a captain’s rank.

While we getting ready to go to Camp Polk, LA, four of us chaplains were sent to chaplain’s school at Harvard. By this time, we four were used to both field and camp work with the highly maneuverable armored troops. Chaplain’s school was taught mostly be men who had never been with troops in the field and was a waste of time we had to live through. [I remember Dad talking enthusiastically about the famous ���glass flowers”, he had seen at Harvard at this time and eventually saw them myself, TFS].

While we were gone, the division had been sidetracked at Camp Campbell. Finally we took off for Polk. But back home in Louisville, Tom had come down with mumps. Inga Rask was visiting us then so she offered to stay with him while I took Betty, John and Rob in the car. Our household goods were put in storage. The Army said that we could only have one more furniture move and recommended that we save it for when the division went overseas and families moved back home. Soon after our arrival, Inga brought Tom down on the bus.

We lived in two different houses in Lee Hills (a government housing project outside Leesville, LA) each for a month, until we got our own house. By this time I was Asst. Div. Chaplain and held the rank of a major. This period was my best time in the army. My cousin Stan was also stationed here with an armored division and I visited with him on several occasions.

The 8th Armored Division went overseas in Nov., 1944 and Mrs. Tetlie came down to go with Betty and the boys back to Two Harbors for the duration.

Our ship landed at Southhampton, England after a dismal, stormy crossing in a huge convoy. Ships were being torpedoed constantly and it was with considerable relief that we landed in England.

We were issued personal and division equipment, including tanks, half-tracks, artillery, etc. and shipped across the channel right after Christmas , in time to get into the Battle of the Bulge. I saw Stan again several times during this period, as his division was also part of Patton’s Third Army. Our division was in three major long battles (the Ardennes, the Rhineland) in France, Holland and Germany and ended patrolling the Sudentenland, Czechoslovakia to hold the Russians back until the Czechs had their election. Finally we were ordered home. We sailed out of La Harve, France to Hampstead Roads and finally arrived at Ft. Patrick Henry and then to Camp McCoy (where I received my discharge effective when my accumulated leave was over). Actually, I came home to the family for Thanksgiving but was officially in the Army until Feb., 28, 1946. [Dad had sketchy notes on observing Russian influence in Prague, a Jewish cemetery and a scene at Staat (?), also the Huss celebration at Rochezany. [The Jewish cemetery refers, I think, to a search of some mass grave sites to see whether any American “dog tags” or clothing could be found indicating that captured American troops had been executed and buried there by the retreating Germans. Dad was appointed to a panel to investigate this. As I recall, they found no evidence of American burials. TFS]

Our Div. Chaplain, McArthur, had been killed in a jeep accident in Czechoslovakia, so for a few months, I was Acting Division chaplain. Because of that, I received a promotion to Lt. Colonel while I was on terminal leave.

My main regret about Army life is that I saw very little of my boys in those five years. I see that now, though at the time it was so typical in so many families that most of us didn’t think much about it.

SOME ARMY MEMORIES:

The first Easter service at Ft. Knox was held in Ft. Knox Bowl. The R.C. service was to be held at 8:00 and the Protestant service at 10:30. The men were to assemble on the company streets and march down by regiments. I had gotten one of the division commanders to lead the Protestant men of my regiment down—after a little hassle with Col. George (regimental commander) who said he didn’t want men of his regiment marched, by order, to church. I convinced him that it was all on a voluntary basis. That morning, I couldn’t find the division commander and Col. George heard me rushing around in the officer’s quarters and when I told him what the trouble was, he said that he would do it. When we stepped out of the officer’s quarters and he saw the men lined up on the streets with the regimental and national colors and battalion guidons, he said, “They look good, don’t they?”.

The next Easter, we were on maneuvers and held the service out in a valley. I was asked to preach. There were about 5-6,000 men for that Protestant service. I preached on the simple Gospel promise that we have in the resurrection of our Lord. Later some of the Catholic chaplains who had stayed for the Protestant service , came up and thanked me for my message.

The Easter service I remember most was during combat. We were on the move and about 10AM, we stopped on the outskirts of a German town, when the combat commander told me that we would be there a couple of hours and there was a school building available if we wanted to have a worship service. My assistant and I set up right away and by noon, we had had half a dozen services, each for 10-15 minutes. No sooner had the first service started than we could hear the guns on the other side of town and they kept on all morning. Men from other outfits heard there was an Easter service being held and they would come in and stay awhile and then someone from their outfit would come to the door and beckon them away—and off they went to the fighting on the other side of town. In spite of the constant gun fire, I had an attentive audience—we sang a few hymns, had some prayers and then I spoke for a few minutes on what Christ’s resurrection can mean.

I had some very interesting relationships with Lutheran pastors in Germany; with one exception, they were relieved to see Nazi Germany come to an end. The exception denounced us for not joining Germany against the Russians and refused to let me use his church (Eisenhower had ordered chaplains to get permission from pastors and priests to use their churches and never to use them without permission). Later this pastor sent for me and told me “You may use my church” and asked me to forgive his bitterness, “I just lost two sons on the American front”.

I think it was out of the war that I came to value security and peace-maybe too much. But in the war--when you are in actual combat--your security is constantly threatened and there is no peace. When I say my security was constantly threatened, I don’t want to picture myself as being constantly under threat of bullets and bombs. In fact, that was rarely so for me but often somewhere some of my regiment was.

The chaplain was often sheltered—we were ordered not to take unnecessary chances. “Your church or your government has got too much invested in you, for you to be careless, etc.” I remember in one of our first engagements, when my battalion commander took me into his forward command post near where his men were fighting and I asked it I could go up to where Jim Rankin (a special friend of mine), the company commander of “Ace”, was fighting. He said no. “Jim’s in a hot spot up there and has his hands full. If you go up there, he’s got the added job of protecting you”.

So what I tried to do—since as Asst. Div. Chaplain, I had no specific troops in combat commands or personnel to minister to---was to cover the forward aid stations—which sometimes the other chaplains couldn’t reach or didn’t know where they were. At these aid stations, I would visit the wounded men and sometimes offer simple assistance to the aid men, surgeons, etc.

After I was separated from the Army, I went to the headquarters of the Norwegian Lutheran Church to report to Dr. Bergsaker, a tremendous man and Secretary of the Synod. Hearing that I had a call to the parish of Pekin, ND, he urged me to go out there. We left Two Harbors in the middle of February and arrived at Rask’s farm in Hendrum on February 18th. After a two week’s delay at the farm due to a storm and impassable roads, we came to Pekin on March 3. Most of the able bodied men in town had been at work shoveling immense snow drifts (10-15 ft. high) for several hundred feet in front of the parsonage to permit the moving van to reach the parsonage and unload.

Brief Chronology:

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (mission congregation), Madison, WI, 1936-1941

Chaplain in U.S. Army 1941-1946

Pastor of Pekin Lutheran Church, Sheyenne and Sigdal congregations 1946-1952

Pastor of Mayville Lutheran, Mayville, ND 1952-1975

Pastor of Trinity Lutheran church, Willcox, AZ (a mission cong.) 1975-1978

Retired to Culpeper, VA 1978-present

Dad added this line to his notes after Mom died: “On our life together; it was easy to keep her pleased and happy. She died Aug. 23, 1990, just 3 days short of 54 years of marriage”.

[Reverend Thomas K. Spande died peacefully in his sleep early in the evening of April 16th, 1998 in his room at the Culpeper Health Care Center, Culpeper, VA where he had been a patient for only 10 days. He had been in failing health for several months, losing weight steadily and suffering the effects of congestive heart failure (pulmonary edema; erratic heart beat). His son Thomas had been looking after him for six months while he was recovering from a break to his upper left arm (Sept, 1997) and a broken left hip (Dec, 1997). His prostate cancer, which had metasthesized to bone, seemed to be in remission as a result of two sessions of radiation (six sessions, 1996; nine sessions, 1997) at UVA Medical School, Charlottesville, VA. He was buried on April 24th in the National Cemetery at Culpeper alongside his wife]