Anders Larsson Vambheim

On a fjord extending back from Bergen, Norway is the small village of Ulvik in the province of Hardanger. Anders Larson Wambheim lived there with his wife Brett,a Leone. Of this union six children were born, Lars the oldest, then John, Anna, Iver, Edmund and Martha.
I, Edmund, the fifth child, born July 18, 1853, was six years old when I was sent over to grandparents "Leone" to live and help them as they were getting old and needed someone to run errands. The older boys in the family had tried the job and did not stay long, but I got along fine. I had to do the chores and errands and when I was older I hauled hay and feed for the cows and looked after them. I was thirteen grandfather died and willed me ten dollars in payment for the last two years I had worked for him.
I was confimed the next year and later hired out for a year to an uncle on mother's side, Nils Hakestad. I was about fifteen years old then and uncle paid me twenty-five dollars for the year.
Ole Howheim, who was married to a sister of father's, had a sloop and when he went fishing he needed a boy around the packing house to help and also to go out on the boat once in a vhile. So I worked for him two or three months and then had a chance to go out and learn the carpenter trade, which appealed to me, as I wanted to get into something that would give me a trade. I went with sister Anna's husband and the two of us worked for a contractor for about two years for twenty-four cents a day, plus board and room. We also took a job for a man from Bergen who had a bakery and wanted it remodeled and an addition built on. We were paid fifty cents a day for that.
I was nearing twenty-one years of age and knew I would be listed for military service. So to avoid that I decided I would like to go to America where mv oldest brother John had been for ten years and brother Iver seven years. I wrote them saying I was planning on going to the States and sister Martha would accompany me. Just at that time they decided to make a trip home to Ulvik, which they did, and when they were ready to leave again the four of us left together the latter part of March, 1875. The fare from Bergen, Norway to New York was about thirty dollars.
The boat we left on was a small sailing boat having an auxiliary steam drive. We went by way of England, It took us fourteen days from Liverpool to New York. There were around four hundred persons to a compartment on this boat and a hammock was hung for each. 'A young man I knew accompanied us. He had had a rough time trying to get out of Norway. He had stowed away on the boat from home to Bergen as he had beat up a guy at Ulvik and the police were looking for him.
He wanted to go to America then but did not have enough money and he had to clear the police in Bergen before he could get passage. I finally broke down and gave him five or ten dollars. He was the happiest man I ever saw when we pulled out of Bergen. His •ticket only called for New York and when we arrived there and were about to leave him he cried and wanted to borrow money to get to Stoten, Wisconsin where he said he had relatives. I finally broke down again and gave him enough for his ticket. When we got to Madison, Wisconsin, where we parted, he gave me his overcoat and a watch for security on the loan. I told hi-m 1 would leave them at Lodi, Wisconsin with Uncle Leone and when he got enough money he could redeem them. After I had been up in the pinetree country for about a year, I went back to Lodi and sure enough he had been back and left the money. I never got to see him again, but heard he had gone to the eastern part of South Dakota and taken up a claim and made good.
Arriving in this country, we went to Lodi, Wisconsin as I mentioned before, John, Iver and I. John and Iver stayed a couple of days visiting and then went up to Weeks' Mill, northwest of Stevens Point. They had worked there before they went back to Norway, so their jobs were waiting for them. But as they did not know whether I could get a job there, I stayed around Lodi to wait for a letter from them. After a couple of weeks, word came to take the train and come up. They told me to take the train to Wisconsin Valley Junction and then change to the train for Nassau and get off at the first station (can't remember the name). Not knowing any English I could not read the signs so I had to memorize Wisconsin Junction so as not to miss it.
In all of the excitement, time seemed to drag on the train and I was beginning to think I had passed the station. It was pitch dark outside and I could see nothing out of the window. Finally the train came to a stop,' and just as it was starting up again the Conductor called out "Valley Junction. I thought he was calling the stop we had just left, so I grabbed my satchel and made a run for the door and down the steps. The train had gotten up some speed, but I made a big jump into the darkness. It so happened to be a high grade and I landed, rolling over and over with the satchel still in hand, down the bank into a marshy ditch. In the darkness I picked up and climbed up the bank again to the tracks only to find that the train had gone but a few hundred yards and stopped at the station. The conductor and brake man came running back towards me, with their lanterns, trying to find me. I don't know what they said but they did a lot of talking. At this crossing there was a hotel, and as the other train was not due until the next afternoon, I got a room and went to bed.
At the designated station the next day Brother John was there to meet me. We had to walk out to the Weeks! Mill which was nearly ten miles. John had gotten me a job to build a house for a man by the name of Campbell, who lived ten miles west of the Mill. Campbell had bought his lumber from Weeks, but could get no one to put it together. The next day he came with his oxen to pick me up and to get more lumber. The trip back was through dense virgin forest. Campbell was a Pennsylvania Yankee and was a good man. His wife was a good cook and I enjoyed staying with them and liked the job very much, They had a lot of fun trying to teach me English. All we went by to begin with was signs, but made out just fine. I believe Campbell paid me two dollars a Cay with board and room. When the job was finished, I went in to the Mill to see the boys, but Iver had gone to Iowa. He had been running the rotary saw, but somehow they had replaced him with another so he quit rather than take another job. John was also ready to leave the mill, but instead of going to Iowa, he had another job to finish a house for a widow and her daughter, who were Irish. The house was partly built, so we went out and finished it. They were very nice people and both the mother and daughter were very much in love with John. The mother tried her best to soften up old John, but he couldn't see it.
After that Job was done, John went back to Weeks' Mill and 1 got a job to finish a log house for a fellow about ten miles away. I was to get two dollars per day with room and board, but the board was terrible. The woman baked bread as hard as rocks. She gave us lots of beans and burned coffee and as it was in the fall of the year, she gave me roasted corn three times a day until finally 1 came down with dysentery. 1 had the house far enough along so the family could move in, so I told them I was going to quit. The man got mad and would not pay me and as he would not take tools back to the mill for me, I had to go over to a man who lived about two miles away and bargain with him to take me and tools back to Campbell's place, which he did in a few days. I walked back to the mill about twenty miles and stayed there for a couple of days, when the mn came in and paid me in full.
Campbell came in about that time and had a deal on to trade his oxen for a pair of horses, but had no cash. So he asked me if I could help him out, which I was glad to do, without a note or security of any kind. In a few months he came in and paid me in full with interest and a bonus.
Weeks then put me to work building a store, with four rooms above for living quarters, and as soon as it wag finished, John and I had one of the rooms and they kept it up for us, changing and cleaning it up every Sunday. I was now getting $2.50 per day. After I finished the store, I wanted to go out to Washington as one of chums from Norway by the name of Nels Hawheim, who lived near Stanwood and was doing quite well, had written me to come out. But when Weeks heard I was quitting he• said, "Is it more money you want?" When I told him the reason, he said he would give me fifty cents more a day if I would stay. So I got soft and stayed.
About two years after I went to Weeks' Mill, Weeks asked me one day to make a bull saw. It was a large saw they used for cut-off purposes. I was up to one make of the frame pieces out and of found some that heavy it timbers was too like wide, 6xg. so I was cutting proceeded to rip it down to size. The piece was several feet long, maybe eight feet, and the saw I was using was not large enough to make it in one cut. I thought I would make the one cut, then turn it over and make the other. As it came to the end of the piece, the saw let go and the timber overbalanced, tipping up. hand slipped off and down on the turning saw, cutting off entire thumb. I grabbed left wrist with right hand to stop the flow of blood and then walked up to the house where Mr. Weeks' daughter was, who had had some experience in first aid. She got a small rock and tied it on the artery up near the elbow. This did not stop the bleeding entirely. They got a pair of horses and a sort of wagon that had two seats on it, and with Brother John and Weeks we started for Stevens Point thirty miles away. The first eight miles was nothing more than a trail so it was slow going, but we finally made it. I had lost a lot of blood and the blanket they gave me to cover up with was badly covered with it. The only doctor in Stevens Point was an old ax. doctor who had retired and did not have much to work with. He had no anesthetic to give me, but put me on a bed and was going to cover up my face so I could not see what he was doing, but I told him I could stand it. First he had to find the main artery that had been cut, and when he did, he had to pull it out so he could tie it up. That really hurt, but the rest of the operation was not so bad.
I stayed in Stevens Point for two weeks and hand healed fast. In the meantime, I went down to Lodi for a visit, then went back to the mill and on the job again.
On many trips to Lodi I had become acquainted with the Moses Johnson family that was farming just out of Lodi. He had a lot of girls and they were all very popular. interest turned to Bergetta, and in the fall of 1878 we were married and moved to Northwood, Iowa. Brother Iver was working in this town in a wagon works factory. I also got a job there. It was in this town that I became acquainted with so marv Norwegians who came from the same place in Norway as I did.
In the fall of 1879, Haldor and Per Sponheim had gone up to the Goose River country in North Dakota and taken up some land and everyone was talking about going west. I made up mind to go too and as I had heard that good friend, Mike Hylden, was going, I sent word down to St. Ansker to ask if he had any extra room in his emigrant car for my cow and some furniture. It was agreeable to him, so we nBde our plans to go the next spring.
Sister Martha, who was working just across the Minnesota line, heard about our going and she decided to go too. We loaded the car with machinery, feed, tools and a pair of horses and a cow which belonged to Mike. He went with the car, while his wife Breta and my sister Martha and wife Bergetta and our first baby Matild and I went by passenger train. It was a mixed train, some freight cars. We had planned to go to Grafton, North Dakota as the Torblaas' were already there and we understood there was land available to the west Of them up near Park River.
This was the spring of 1880 when we arrived in Grand Forks and unloaded the car along side of the tracks and took the horses and hitched them to the wagon, loaded the wagon with what provisions we needed and tied the cows behind and with the rest of us on top, we started out.
The snow was mostly gone, but when we got north of Grand Forks to the First River, they used to call it Turtle River, we stayed over night . From there on was a lot of snow, but somehow we managed to borrow a sled so we made it up to Torblaas the next day. The following day I walked to a settler's place to see if he knew where there were accommodations. It so happened that across from his place there was a log house put up by Gunder Midgarden who had gone away for the winter and had not returned. So we thought we might as well take over until we could get settled on our own places. This Midgarden cabin had a log floor, and as the snow was melting rapidly, due to a recent chinook, everything was about under water. We could not step out of the house without wading in knee-deep water. The poor cow had found a small straw stack that was little more than a manure pile close by at Ljones l place, and she could stand on that and be above the water, but had nothing to eat. Ljones told me a man to the east had put up some hay in cocks in the fall, but had never done anything with them. He told him to take the cow down there. He did, and It did mako good forage. I had to go back and forth ever day wading in the water.
Due to the soft ground, we could not take a team and wagon to Grand Forks to get our feed and machinery. We left our families and the log house and Michael and I started out on foot. The walking was bad an we had to wade in the mud and water all day. Mike had high boots on, but, these filled up with water ag quite often we had to wade through places that, were knee deep. This made quite a load for him, while I Just had ordinary shoes, and got along better.
We made Christiana the first„ day. We tried to wash the dirt out Of our boots, but the water was go full of gumbo that I gave up and put them back on and went into the vacant cabin there and lay down on the floor. The next day we made it into Grand Forks, which was about sixteen miles. As I had had some experience in the use of river barges, we decided to float our equipment down the Red River to Acton. We made two rafts out of twelve-inch boards, twelve feet wide and the same in length, with twelve-inch sides. These I caulked and pitched so they were fairly tight. At least we could keep them bailed out. These we built on the banks of the river, and when they were completed, several men who had been watching us, helped us put them in the water. The top of the rafts had only loose boards on which we piled the five wagon loads of provisions and machinery. It was rather a big load, but we managed to get it all on, including a lot of oat sacks that Mike had taken along. We had bought many provisions with what money we had, so we only had about a dollar and twenty-five cents between us. We had been told that it would only take a day and a night to make Acton, our destination.
On Sunday evening we were all set and with a box of crackers and some cheese we set out, steering the raft down the middle of the stream by some improvised oars. Everything went fine but it was a pitch black night and the river banks were heavily wooded so all we could see was straight up. About midnight a cloud came up and how it did thunder and lightning, then rain. It came down in big drops and soon we were all wet and sleepy. We spied a cabin on the bank by the light of the lightning flash so we headed our raft for the bank, tied up and bailed out the water. The cabin was empty so we tried to build a fire to dry out and then get some sleep, but the wood was so wet all we got was smoke. We thought we might as well go on, but as we were so sleepy we finally made a bed out of the oat sacks. A canvas from the machine binder served as a cover to keep the rain from pelting in our faces, for by this time we had left the cabin and used the raft. One of us kept the raft In midstream while the other slept. At dawn we sighted another house and thought we were nearing Acton. 'We stopped and walked up the bank. A lady came to the door and we inquired about something to eat, but she said she had nothing. We finally got her to sell us a loaf of bread, which we went away eating dry.
The next night we were passed by a river steamer which came near to eing a disaster. We knew that the waves would wash overboard and swamp he raft. To avoid this, we steered for land and then used boards held on the wave side to stop it from coming over. By this method we saved ourselves from a ducking, as the river may have been deep at this point.
At the end of the second day we sighted Acton and pulled Into shore about a mile below the dock where there was a cabin on the bank and the bank wag not as steep ag at the dock. After tieing up and Bailing out again we walked up to Acton. The town had two lodging houses. We passed up the first one, but %ent to the second and inquired about something to eat, as it wag after dinner time. We %ere told they would fix us something, so we gat down. All they brought us was a few doughnuts and sane bread and coffee. We had not had anything to eat for twenty-four hours and were very hungry. We ate that, then more, but to no avail. They said they had no more, so we refused to pay fifty cents each for the meal. We were going to leave for the other lodging house, but the proprietor, a big Irishman, jumped fran behind his counter and pulled his gun on us which changed our minds. So we paid him. This took all of our money and we were still hungry.
We went back to the raft, tired and hungry but decided we had better unload and get on our way. We piled all of the machinery and supplies alongside the empty cabin on the When this was done, we started to walk west to Torblaas' place, and after had covered about five miles we were too tired and hungry to go any farther. Just then a dog started to bark, so we walked toward him and found the cabin; but, the dog would not let us near the building. After some time the owner came to the window and wanted to know what we wanted. We pleaded for something to eat and told him we were broke. He called to his daughter, whas was sleeping in the attic above. She said there was only a pan of sour milk and some bread. The pan of sour milk was set before us and the started to cut the bread. The race was on--we ate bread as fast as he could cut it and drank the sour milk. We both agreed we had never tasted anything better. Whue we were satisfying our hunger, the owner came over close to me and took a good look, inquiring if I had been in Grand Forks last Sunday, building a raft. Then I remembered that he had been sitting on the bank of the river, watching me while he was waiting for the boat to take him down the river. We thanked and blessed the man as we felt so good after getting the food.
We started out again on our journey, but we were so tired and sleepy that we decided to use the man's haystack, which we had noticed when we approached his place. We felt that if we could just get a little sleep we could go on. But his dog kept barking, so we had to move on and come back when the dog had gone to sleep. As we walked farther on, we came to another haystack, which was surrounded by a regular lake of water, but we waded out to it and climbed up on top and dug in. It was nice and warm and we were soon fast asleep. We had gorged ourselves on the sour milk and bread and we will never forget what a stomachache it gave us that night.

Our next move was to find some land for our future homes. We spent a day walking up north of the river and to the west, but that section was fairly well taken up. The next day, Ljone took us in his wagon, south and west. We found several pieces of land down near the present town of Vesteville, but Ljone talked us out of it, saying it was too sandy. He told us to put some of the dirt in our mouths and chew it— that was the way to tell. We had heard that out by Devils Lake there  was a lot of land to be had, so Mike and I walked out there, taking some food with us this time. The first day we followed the river west and by nightfall came to what is the north end of Golden Valley and to the home of John Saul. We stayed there that night and in the morning we could see a forest of trees to the south, so we thought we should look it over.

We came up to Christianson's place. He was clearing and fixing up a saw mill. From there we went down to where Borgeson now lives. He vas digging himself a cabin in the side of the river bank. Ramseys had built a cabin to the south. We decided to give up the idea of getting some timber land but were satisfied with the valley. We started going back north to Peter Johnson's place. The old people had a very small cabin and suggested we go over to John Pederson's place to the west, which we did. He had a fairly large cabin, partly built under ground. It was almost like coming home for they had come from the same place in Norway as we did. An enjoyable evening was spent with them. They let us sleep on the floor. However, we did not sleep much, as the bugs were bad. When dawn came, I nudged Mike and whispered, "Let's go.” We slid out without waking them, starting east. We got up on the hills overlooking the valley and {mediately stopped to strip off all of our clothes and give the few bugs that were left the air, at least we never felt them after that.
Having decided to build in the valley, near Park River, we had to go back to Acton for our supplies. It had been several weeks since unloading our goods there, but when we arrived back there we were very much surprised when we found all of our belongings intact. Nothing had been touched since we left them.
I hired a man, by the name of Jorgenson, who had a pair of oxen to haul mine. While in Acton that day, we stopped at the Acton Hotel—the one we had passed up on our first visit--and who should I see in the barroom but the man who had given us the sour milk and bread. This was our chance to repay him for his hospitality and food. As he was a German and liked beer, we saw to it that he had his fill that day.
On our way back to the valley, just east of Grafton, there was a large slough that we had to cross and when we got about to the middle of it, we got stuck fast and I had to go for help Thile Mike and Jorgenson carried the lighter things across. There was a man a short distance away who we learned had helped many a man out of the slough. He was very willing to help us, so in a short time we were on our way again and he would not take any money for it. In after years he ran for a county office and I was more than glad to campaign for him.
When we got our supplies to our land, we helped each other to build our crude log and sod homes. We were anxious to get them livable so we could get our families and be able to build and plan for the future
Not too many years later we built a substantial home on this place in the valley and reared our eight children, Matilda, Andrew, Iver, Lars , Johanna, Johnnie, Eddie and Martha .
Originally our name was spelled Wambheim, but when I arrived at Ellis Island, not being able to speak English, the Immigration Officer made out the passport with my name spelled Wambem, which I accepted and never changed. My father died in Ulvik, Norway, our old place