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Saturday March 8 , 1997 (The International Woman's Day)
Dearest Nancy and Martha.
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It made a great, not to say, tremendous impression on me what you wrote, Nancy, about identifying with the family-situation of Helle and her constant fight for her own children and for the movement of liberation of woman.
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Some clever words of Wirginia Woolf just crossed my mind maybe maching your own reflections:
"The past is beautifull, because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expances later and thus we dont have complete emotions about the present, only about the past."
It is really a good idea if you would like to translate the text of some of the Norwegian sources I am prepairing sending you in the nearest future. You can do it much better than I but nevertheless I will give you a small portion of summaries of some of the content of the various documents reg. your mother tongue and ancestors.
I shall see to that you get the documents back you so kindly send me. I have partly copied partly transcribed and digitalized your papers.
I have found out from the archive of the local senate in Minneapolis that Andrew O. Devold died 1940, not 1939 as we supposed. His wife, Katherine Devold, was born July 17, 1902 and died July, 1984, Hennepin, Minneapolis.
The travel-diary of JWC might very well have been in her possession or it was simply left in the care of Emil Mengshoel who died five years later. I have not and will not give up trying to find the original manuscript and will look for it also in the archives of local Historical Societies.
I will ask for the death Certificate of Helle, Emil, Andrew and Katherine Devold.
For all safety I am sending you a copy of the marriage application of Helle and Emil but maybe you allready have got hold of it.
Helle and Emil must have met sometime between 1896 and 1898. Here is in short what I know of their socalled whereabouts:
1896 Emil Mengshoel moves from Sioux City to Minneapolis.
1898 Helle Devold and Emil Mengshoel. Application for marriage, Hennepin County, Minneapolis.
1900 Helle, Emil Mengshoel, Olaf A. Devold og Agnes Devold living in a rented appartment in Minneapolis (1900 Census)
1901- Emil Mengshoel editor of The Republican, Lake Mills, Iowa.
1903 Helle and Emil Mengshoel in Lake Mills, Iowa.
Gaa Paa is published for the very first time.1904 Helle og Emil Mengshoel back in Minneapolis, carrying on the printing, publication and distribution of their newspaper Gaa Paa.
About Helle's immigration and where the family took their way:
I have checked the Moron Allen Steamship Directory for ships leaving Bergen, Norway, for New York in 1893. There were none that specified Bergen as a departure point, but two lines did depart from Scandinavian ports:
1) the Hamburg-American Line and the Scandinavian-American Line. Only the Scandinavian-American Line specified its departure port: Stettin, Copenhagen and Christiania.Given that Helle left Bergen on March 23td, one may assume the trip would take at least a week and probable 2-3 weeks. Also, since there appears to have been no departure directly from Bergen to New York, one may allow another 2-3 weeks for changing to a ship at another Scandinavian port. So, there were 5 ships on these two lines arriving in New York City between April 3 and April 29:
S-A Line: Norge, April 3
Hekla, April 10
Island, April 29
H-A Line: Italia, April 24
Virginia, April 28I have looked at all passengers listed on these ships with a homeland of Norway and did not find Helle or anyone with the surname Croeger. I also kept an eye out for Devold. No luck on this particular name either.
It is possible but I think very unlikely that Helle came by sailing ship. More likely she's went to another port, possible Hamburg (precisely like her father in 1854 but with quite another destination of course) or Bremen, to get the ship to New York. If so there is a dozens more ships to search.
One can easily imagine what complicated and prolonged a voyage this must have been to this little family, left alone after Helle and her children's departure from her mother, Johanne, in Bergen.
There is no additional information about the voyage in the departure papers from Bergen. Just another of these countless back eddies trying to track down this particular family and its vague trails. Mostly their footsprints fizzle out in the sand especially on the water of the Atlantic Ocean!
So don't you ever be a genealogist!
It was not only the liberation of woman itself but also the realization of the socialistic political party program that from the very first time seems to have attracted Helle.
Your great grandmother never felt attached to or participated in the struggle of typical single middle-class woman for emancipation even if she herself once had belonged to this social class by marriage.
In all what she said and wrote she was uncompromising in her struggle for freedom as she herself saw it mostly in visionary glimpses.
What she wrote confirmes that she always precisely like Mengshoel kept straight to the political point and case, and items taken from litteratur and so on, were always and carefully commented upon in the context of the socialistic philosophy.
In the labor newspaper Socialdemokraten (founded by Helle's comrad and friend Chr. Holtermann Knudsen, see copy of litografi) from 1889 (nb.75) Helle proclaimes:
"Kvinner, søstre. Lad os fordre retfærdighed for vore evners udvikling--- Det er paa tide, mine søstre, at vi nedbryder den kinesiske mur, som aarhundreder har hæmmet vor udvikling og fordrer fuld ligestillethed med manden. Sikkert har mange ligesom jeg i tærende længsel robt: "Skal jeg da aldrig, aldrig naa over de høje fjelde".
"Women, Sisters. Let us demand justice for the development of our abilities and creative powers. It's time, my Sisters, that we break down the Chinese Wall which for hundreds of years has hampered and retarded our personal development and demand full equality of status with men. Definitely many has in absorbing longing and yearning called out with me:
"Will I never, never overcome the high mountains."I am still waiting in the greatest of all exitements for the papers reg. the divorce between Niels and Helle Devold. The local State Archive has promished me access to these important documents assuming, of course, that they are available at all.
The papers will undoubtedly give us the final answer and the true premisses for the divorce. According to family tradition it was Helle who first broke out of the marriage (In her own written words: "I used the law against one of their sons, at that time a great scandal") and took the initiative in demanding this so to speak "happy" divorce.Later on I will comment a little more on the enclosed copies of only a very small part of Helle's letters to leading Norwegian socialists hoping that you in the meantime will not get entirely lost in the mess of the handwritten texts. Just try to keep them together as much as you can, will you?
Enclosed is a list of what I am preparing to send you gradually during the next two month but please be patient with me.
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I do like the photo you send us of you yourself and Martha surrounded by some family members.
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Jorunn & Åge