Olive Olsen

Born in rural Norway in 1866 as Olea Margrethe Myhre, Olive married Albert Olsen at age 18 in September of 1885. A year later their first child was born, Maria -- and the new family, infant in tow, soon boarded a steamship for America, following in the footsteps of her sister, Marie, Albert's uncle Even -- and the quarter-million Norwegians who emigrated during this time period.

Coming to America

Albert, Olive, and their infant daughter stepped into the Trondheim police office on May 4, 1887, and declared their intent to move to America. They would sail for England the next day, where a steamer would take them across the Atlantic. Destination: Chicago. (But who did they know in Chicago?)

The family landed in Wisconsin, where Uncle Even Larsen (Mindrum) had been living for more then a decade, and where Olive and Albert's first American child was born -- Louis Oliver Olsen, in 1888. But the west coast called, and two years later they were in Washington State, in Tacoma.

In the new "modern" world, Olea Margrethe gradually modernized her name, moving to the English translation -- "Olive" -- for Johanna's birth in '92. She was "Olive Olsen" by the 1900 census. But the Myrhe name (and various efforts by Western ears to spell it!) still popped up: The name Myhre is seen in a document from the 1909 wedding of her daughter, Johanna, to the dashing German doctor Emil Mohrmann, for example.

The family never seems to make it out of poverty, unfortunately; Albert is consistently described as a "day labor" in records, despite years of solid work at the Willamette Casket Company. When he died ("horribly mangled," the paper gruesomely reports), he is buried in Pauper's Cemetery, and one assume his wife and children are left with very little.

After Albert

After Albert's death, Olive's life is harder to piece together. Mathilda is born four years later in 1900, the daughter of Irish immigrant James Braden, and Bill is born two years after that, to James Hughes from Washington. The family seems to have struggled to make ends meet .... perhaps Olive was making money the only way she knew how.

Regardless, Olive did not remain alone: She remarries, to William Walter Vick, though marriage records are impossible to find, for some reason. William Vick died in 1935. Olive ultimately followed in 1950. She was 83.

Sjømand Albert Olsen f. 1857, hustru Olea M. Myre f. 1866 og barn Marie Edvarda f. 1886 utvandret fra Namsos til Amerika i Mai 1887.