Baby Nelson

My husband often teases me when we drive by a cemetery, pointing out "It's a cemetery!  Should I stop?  Do you want to take a picture?"  I assure him that I do not, in fact, routinely tour random cemeteries.

But on this afternoon in August, he wasn't along, so shhhhh...  My mom and I were on our way to northwest Iowa when we passed this little cemetery, two miles south of Fairview, South Dakota.  We didn't have any relatives there, but something about it was pretty in a long-forgotten, wistful sort of way.

I would love to know who Baby Nelson was and who mourned his or her death in 1889. Someone couldn't afford to buy a gravestone but also couldn't bear to leave the grave unmarked. I love that little sign of devotion.

Baby Nelson, d. 1889
Fairview Cemetery - Lincoln County, South Dakota

Umps

Argusleader.com (the website of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, newspaper) is featuring a story on Amanda Clement of Hudson, South Dakota, who was the first woman paid to umpire a baseball game.  What a great story!

Tombstone Tuesday: Gurine Nordtvedt Nordseth

grave of
Gurine Randine (Nordtvedt) Nordseth (1867 - 1945)
Canton Lutheran Cemetery
rural Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota
photo: May 2007

Gurine was my great-great-grandmother and the wife of Jens Peter Nordseth. She was also the great-granddaughter of my "black sheep" ancestor, Søren Johnsen Nordtvedt, though the family seems to have been well established as successful carpenters and ship builders by the time she was born in 1867.

Gurine was born in Trondheim, Norway, as the third child of Søren Gerhard and Elen Marie (Solberg) Nordtvedt. When my mother and I traveled to Norway in 2003, I even got to see the house where Gurine was probably born. Her childhood has always seemed sad to me--her mother died when she was around 5 months old, and all family stories indicate that her stepmother was not very fond of her stepchildren. When the family immigrated to the US, 13-year-old Gurine began working as a servant on a farm. She eventually became the teenage bride of a handsome older man and raised a family of 8 children.

She is one of the long-gone ancestors I can most easily imagine as a "real" person, perhaps because my grandfather remembers her. He lived with her for a while, so he could go to high school in town. Years ago I also met a distant cousin, who told me more of the Nordtvedts' story, along with bits and pieces, like the fact that Gurine had red hair.

I wish she had kept a diary. I would have liked to know Gurine.

Tombstone Tuesday: Jens Peter Nordseth

grave of
Jens Peter Nordseth (1849 - 1922)
Canton Lutheran Cemetery
rural Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota
photo: May 2007

Jens was my great-great-grandfather. He was born in Klæbu parish, near Trondheim, Sør-Trondelag, Norway, and emigrated to Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota. There he married a girl from Trondheim and raised a family of eight children. One was Eline Marie, featured in a previous Tombstone Tuesday.

Jens was one of my first genealogical focuses and will probably always be near and dear to me.

Tombstone Tuesday: Eline Marie Nordseth

grave of
Eline Marie Nordseth (1892 - 1897)
Canton Lutheran Cemetery
rural Lincoln County, South Dakota

Marie was the 4th of 8 children born to my great-great-grandparents, Jens and Gurine Nordseth of Canton, South Dakota. She was only 4 years old when she passed away.