BESTEMOR’S COLLECTION, AND MORE
A September 4, 2015 e-mail from Ruth to Don announced that
“I have maybe a thousand letters from a bag full in Dolly’s attic. The earliest so far, 1872.”
It turned out that this collection was Bestemor’s, covering her married years 1855 - 1929. She had written relatively few of them herself - they were mostly Nils Torbjorn correspondence until he passed away in 1877, and then were largely letters from her children. The “bag full” had evidently migrated to the Mill house in Zumbrota through Bestemor’s daughter Sigrid, then to her grand daughter Ruth, then on to her great grandson Johnny. After Johnny died in 2012 and Dolly thought to sell the house, the attic revealed the treasure trove and it was then sent off to Johnny’s sister Ruth.
Bestemor’s own children who had lived some distance from the Erstad farm were faithful in keeping her advised of their lives - she lived, in some sense, for her mailbox. Thus Johan wrote to her from Freeborn, near Albert Lea, and from Decorah; Olaf wrote from Luther and then from California after he had contracted Tuberculosis; Ivar wrote of his pastoral duties in Montana and North Dakota; Johanna wrote often from Norway Lake where her husband, Daniel Jordahl, ministered; Nikolaus wrote to her from Luther, and then mostly from Fergus Falls where he had a church for twenty years.
The collection contained some 925 letters, about half of which were NTY’s mail and, aside from those from her children, there were letters from Norwegian relatives and from Jens Ness, her nephew and a good friend of Andreas going back to their days in Norway. The large majority of the letters are in Norwegian, with exceptions in English intruding as the young adjusted to life in America. When the collection came to our attention, it was in no special order and some organization of it was needed, this despite undated letters and the like.
By February Ruth had begun thinking of a permanent repository for the letters. Early contacts with St. Olaf and Luther were promising but lagged, while Mormon genealogy centers in Madison and West Bend ultimately located one Amy Meyer in West Bend. She scanned the entire collection to a flash drive, thereby ensuring its preservation. We owe her a lot - she did this as a part of her Mormon mission, and for free!!
(On a sad note, a flood in Port Washington in August of 2018 reached the garage level of Ruth’s apartment, and the collection of original letters, in the trunk of her car, was lost. Their scans had fortunately achieved a wide distribution by then, and their continuing access was assured.)
In June of 2017 Paul’s collection of letters became available. He’d followed Bestemor’s example by keeping all the letters that came to him. As he had corresponded regularly with Olga, Anna, Erling, and others, there were on the order of 1,000 letters, a valuable addition to the ones in hand. Paul had also recorded a good deal of family life with his camera, taken up in the early 20’s. Along with many others taken during John’s time in Africa, for example, another dimension could be added to the study of Ylvisaker history.
The collection of letters was largely complete by 2019 but their organization was far from done. Important progress in this was enabled by Mark’s dating of letters with suitable identifiers. The formation of categories of letters and photos then took place, if gradually.
Google Drive was the chosen method for housing and transferring files. An improved version of the website was announced in November of 2019. It provides access to over 2,000 letters and on the order of 200 photos. There is essentially unlimited capacity for more, and we hope people will feel free to add relevant family history for the benefit of others, and even material for searchable storage.
-Don Ylvisaker