Inga Lydia Olsen Christopher

     Inga was born June 28, 1882 in Hurdal, Akershus, Norway.  She turned  one years old in mid-Atlantic when her mother, Mina Kristine and father Ole Kristian Olsen, were coming to American from Norway.

     Ole was a shoemaker in Nannestad, Norway.  The Olsens came first to St. Ansgar, Iowa, then to High Lake, Iowa, then to Graettinger, Iowa and finally to Pequot Lakes, Crow Wing County, Minnesota, in 1898.  Ole and Mina are buried there in Pequot Lakes, Minnesota behind the Lutheran Church they attended for years.  For many years Ole was know as Christ Olsen.  The census records of 1900 show Inga living in Brainerd, a nearby town where she was working as a servant in a boarding  house.  She was only 17 at the time.  Carl is also listed on the 1900 Census for Crow Wing County. He apparently sold his property in Iowa to buy section 24 of Peterson Township, Medina, North Dakota where they moved to after they were were married in Pequot Lakes Lutheran Church on March 31, 1902.
     Raising the eleven children and helping on the ranch kept Inga very busy, yet she maintained a calm and quiet manner, never complaining.  She suffered from a knee injury during much of her life.  She was on crutches and wore a brace for fourteen years.  This didn't seem to stop her as she still went everywhere to help the neighbors and friends around them  They took many trips back to Rochester, Minnesota to the Mayo Clinic for medical help for her leg.  They also took many trips back to Pequot to visit relatives and attend funerals.  The doctor bill for her surgery caused them to sell all of their furniture and farm machinery and move to the Olsen family homestead in Pequot Lakes, Minnesota around 1933.  They were then closer to the clinic.  Their son Bob remembers attending High School at Pequot Lakes with the Evans boys, Inga's sister Clara's children.  Then to be close to most of their family, they retired to Arlee, Montana around 1936. They lived near the Jock River and enjoyed being near many of their children and grandchildren. Inga died on July 13, 1949.

     Stories from Bob and Ken: "We boys always told our mother we wanted a blackbird pie like we heard in the rhyme: "Four and Twenty Blackbirds baked in a pie." So we kept after her to make us a blackbird pie. So finally one day she said, "You guys get the blackbirds, I'll make you a pie."  So we went out and got twenty blackbirds.  It was easy to get blackbirds then we just kept shooting until we got enough.  We cleaned them with her help.  She made us a pie out of those blackbirds and it wasn't bad."

"After they moved to Arlee, mother had a hobby of making hooked rugs out of anything, even old jeans.  She had hooked rugs all over the place and she believed in saving everything.  In those days there wasn't much money to go around."

Ken tells the story of when they had lots of skunk grease around the place.  "All of us kids trapped skunks.  We used it like goose grease to rub it on our shoes.  It sounds like it would smell, but it doesn't smell anymore than goose grease.  Mother used to rub it on our chests.  Bob is glad he was down the line, because he doesn't remember getting any skunk grease on his chest!"

Inga with grandchild Ester

Christopher Homestead

This classic picture shows the Christopher Homestead around 1915 with some of the children in the Franklin motorcar, one of many cars that Carl owned over the years.  He sold this Franklin motorcar in his estate auction in 1917 and bought a new 1917 Model Ford.   The house had 1 large bedroom upstairs for all the children and one downstairs for the parents.  Carl was a very hard worker and sometimes worked 24 hours a day to keep the farm going.  All the children helped and learned the meaning of work very early.  Carl raised all sorts of animals from sheep, ducks, turkeys, chickens, geese and even rabbits and skunks to sell for furs. The winters in Medina were very cold and the children often had to take horse and sleigh to the one room school house one mile away..the Peterson School.  Carl was easy going, liked to visit with people and had a great sense of humor. He wrote the news of Peterson Township for the local paper called The Medina Citizen from 1915-1932.

Quotes from the paper: "For Sale:  1917 model Ford and a couple of haystacks.  Inquire at the Christopher Camp but not too early in the morning or you may find the owner in bed."
Quotes from Ken and Bob: "Pa had a model T touring car and was coming home from town one day when the kids spotted him going from one side of the road to the other.  What had happened was a radius rod had  come unhooked and he couldn't hold the car on the road.  Within a couple of days he traded it for a Page car.  It was a big old car but they were living in style when they rode in this car.  Sometime later that old car just quit so Pa said to the kids, "You kids can have that old car."  Well that was just like giving the kids a truckload of candy.  They tore it apart until there was nothing left of it.  They didn't even attempt to put it back together.  They just left the parts scattered all over the place!"

Quotes from Ken and Bob about their childhood days

"Mother had a remedy for anything that was wrong with you."  She would always give us chicken soup.  It was a Norwegian remedy that wa considered a cure for all."

"Dad didn't like the Christopher kids to fight but he had one sayING that was pretty good advice:  "If you have to hit someone, hit them hard the first time or they might come back and whip ya.""

"We didn't have any problems around the table.  We all sat down and ate.  We were hungry I guess."

"There were a lot of days we didn't have any fancy food, but we always had meat and potatoes.  We raised a lot of chickens and we milked cows all the time.  We had a lot of pigs.  In the fall the neighbors would get together and help each other butcher.  We'd have maybe four or five hogs.  So we would butcher them and hang them outside to freeze. So we would set them up in the room on the east end of the house that we didn't use in the winter time.  We'd put them in there and set them up on their legs. So us kids would always be in there riding those pigs. Every time we would want to cut something off, we'd cut off a chunk of meat and cook it up."

"We used to have a lot of fun when we were kids. We used to go out in the evening: moonlight/snowbanks/ and way way below zero temperature.  We'd spend half of the night carrying water from the well up to a little hill where we could make a bump to ride over with our sleds.  We'd build the snow up just the way we'd want it and ice it (the water would freeze as soon as it touched the ground.)  We would get it so we could come down the hill and sail up over those bumps.  Then we'd spend the rest of the night doing that over and over again.  I lot of time we wouldn't get to bed until the wee hours of the morning, especially on a Friday or a Saturday  night when we didn't have school the next day.   On the other days we still managed to get up and go to school.  We used to walk barefoot to get the cows in each morning.  It was frosty so when our feet got
cold, we just stepped in a warm cow pie and warmed our feet up.  Of course we'd have to wash our feet before we went to school.  Most people won't believe it, but it's true!"

Carl and Inga's Children

Glenn Arthur : Jan. 7, 1904-May 31, 1984
Alfred Clifford:  March 24, 1907-Jan. 2, 1945
Roy Willard:  August 10, 1910-Feb. 20, 1945 
Ruth Lillian:  August 10, 1912- May 22, 1991
Lauren Ivan: August 5, 1914- Sept. 18, 1994
Lester Carl:  August 5, 1914-June 9, 1988
Kenneth Orvin: Sept 7, 1916-April 7, 2009
Otto Vernon:  Dec. 19, 1918-May 2, 1944
Robert Norman: March 29, 1921-Dec. 9, 2004
Doris Ester: June 10, 1923-July 11, 1976
Don Edwin: Sept 10, 1925-Sept 17, 1982


Starting with next week's blog, short biography's of each will be highlighted along with some family pictures.  Those of you who know them well are welcome to send me pictures, short stories/events or comments that I could  include with the bio's.  So watch for the next 11 weeks to learn more about each of Carl's and Inga's children and their families.