HOIBY

1871

They left because they were starving. Nothing of the beauty of the country side could hold a family who cannot be supported by the land. Hilly terrain, rocky soil covered with pine, birch and mountain ash trees. Not enough land. Haldo’s farm was three acres. He also had a job in the saw mill. Not enough fish. Lake Selbusjoen was small and the sea was miles away. Wood for fuel had largely disappeared. Women routinely begged for their children’s food and clothes. For generations farms had been getting smaller as children divided the lands of their fathers. Only recently had any legislation been passed to combine properties into larger units.

Marriage was the only means to improve social position. Women outnumbered men by 1.2 to 1. The member of a cotter (tenant farmer) family might be lucky and be picked by someone in the owners family as a mate. More girls than boys moved upward this way.

Strict civil laws regarding adultery and fornication had been repealed in the 1840s. Little rebuke would be expected for the farmer who had relations with his female servants. The young hired people who slept in the barns were free to enjoy each others company. The custom of "night courting" and "night roaming" was wide spread in all classes, but more so among the cotters. Typically, informal relations went on until a couple was married at age 30. In the Trondheim area there were 58 illegitimate live births for every 100 marriages. It probably didn’t help that only 11 per 1000 people reported being friends of temperance.

This was Selbustrand, a small community four and one-half kilometers northwest of Selbu and thirty kilometers south east of Trondheim, Norway.

The Hoiby family from Selbu arrived in Minneapolis during July 1871. Most likely this consisted of :
Haldo (Henry), father; Segri (Sarah), mother and children:
Beaver, Brunhild, Enoch (Einar), Henry, Ole, Sarah, Anna and Juliea. (To keep given names between parents and children distinct, I will use old country names for the parents.)

Although Sarah claimed [falsely] to birth in Minneapolis in order to establish citizenship, it may be that only one child, Hansina (Hanna) was born in the U.S.A..

Minneapolis was not much more than a generation old when the family landed there. St. Anthony was separated from Minneapolis but their combined population was less than 20,000 and would swell to 47,000 by 1880. The first steam locomotive had arrived only ten years earlier. The streets were dirt and the sidewalks, boards. The Winslow House hotel was 6 stories tall and constructed of stone, but most everything else including the suspension bridge over the Mississippi was wood and less that 4 stories. Three years earlier a tunnel being constructed under Hennepin Island collapsed and wrecked the mills. Attracted by the lumber industry and other immigrants that preceded them the family made it home.

The Hoiby family name is explained in an affidavit of Enoch Hoiby dated 13 July 1914. Enoch said,

Haldo found work in the saw mills of Minneapolis. While substituting for another employee he was caught in a belt and killed. He was fifty seven and left eight children and a pregnant wife. The children were forced to quit school and work. The brothers became blacksmiths. These boys skills transformed into carriage building, bicycle building and automobile repair. The girls worked in cigar factories and as seamstresses.

Back row left starting with a man seated in a chair and ending right with a man seated in a chair:
Henry, Brunhild, Enoch, Ole, Sarah, Beaver

Haldo and Segri
FGR 49

I can not imagine the feelings and conditions facing a family immigrating to Minneapolis in the early 1870’s. There is obviously a complex and wonderful story here, but I am not going to write it. Since I can’t read Norwegian, I can’t read the books written about them. The resources I have tried did not give me what I wanted. I am not clever enough to invent it. There are no contemporary accounts by family members of conditions they left. Surely there was support from those who preceded them, but starting new and abandoning whatever they had in the old country must have meant the rewards were significant.. When Betty and Bud Onan went to Selbu Norway farm in 1971 they reported that the living conditions were bleak. It did not look to them like things had changed in 100 years.

We must remember that there was no government welfare programs. Everyone was on their own. When Haldo died, the kids had to quit school and go to work to support the family. To further complicate things, Segri was pregnant with another child. Hansina was born prematurely with a physically deformed hunched back. The tragedy of Haldos death was compounded, and they did not have Hillary Clinton’s village to take care of the children.

The earliest records of where they lived is 1875 at 110 20^th Avenue North and in 1895 at 2405 North 4^th [street]. In 1900 Ole bought a house at 2326 Washington Avenue North which became his residence with all the unmarred girls and his mother.

Segri lived the rest of her life with Ole. The wonderful picture of her with her spinning wheel was take by Ole with his 5x7 camera using glass plate negatives. No pictures of Haldo exist, but we have at least two very good ones of Segri.

                [p24p2] Segri Hoiby                                                           [p312] Segri at her spinning wheel