Ingvald Theodore Anderson (1893-1958) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 17) Theme: "Land"

Ingvald (sometimes spelled "Ingwald" as it was pronounced) was my maternal grandfather. He was born 3 January 1893 on the family farm west of Grafton, North Dakota to Andrew and Jorgena (Torkelson) Anderson and baptized at the South Trinity Lutheran Church at Grafton on 31 March of that year. The new state of North Dakota had just been established in 1889 but no civil birth records can reliably be found until 1899; thankfully, the Lutheran church in America had a strong tradition of maintaining its own records, a practice that had long been established in Norway.

Birth/baptism record for Ingvald - first entry at the top of the page

He had five older siblings, plus a sixth who had died at the age of 3 in 1885. Another brother Arnold was born the year after Ingvald; tragically, this younger brother also died very young. Some time after the birth of his youngest sister Gladys in 1903, his mother Jorgena's mental health declined to the point where she was admitted into an institution in Yankton, South Dakota. Shortly thereafter, Ingvald's father moved his family to a ranch in South Dakota, perhaps to be closer. With the family story being that she had died, it isn't clear that the children ever actually visited her.  His mother basically disappeared from his life when Ingvald was about 12.

Andrew and Jorgina Anderson family c.1904; Ingvald is they young boy on the far right

The only incident we know from Ingvald's youth is described by his son Bob Anderson:

In 1905, Ingvald met with a near-fatal accident when a friend's shotgun accidentally discharged, the full blast catching him in the left shoulder just above the lung.  He almost bled to death before a doctor reached him, and lay close to death for many days following.  The left arm and hand were  to remain permanently stunted, though not of too great a hindrance to work.  Fifty years later, suffering from neck and shoulder pains, he thought it might be the old wound.  X-rays revealed many shotgun pellets lodged in bone, muscle and skin in the shoulder and neck.

Ingvald in back row centre (see arrow) at Business College, 1909

A few years after the move to South Dakota, Andrew sold out the ranch and bought a hardware and implement business in Haynes, North Dakota.  Ingvald clerked there as a youth. It seemed for awhile as if Ingvald planned to join his father with a career in business but the land seemed to call out to him.

Canada had been encouraging farmers to take up land in its western prairies. For a $10 registration fee, qualified individuals could file at a Dominion Land Office for a selected  "homestead" of 160 acres (1/4 section) of land. Certain requirements to build and reside on the land and to cultivate it had to be met in order to have the land title transferred into the name of the homesteader; this was called "proving up" the land. One of the requirements for obtaining title was that the homesteader be a British subject. A second adjacent quarter-section could be obtained by a process called "pre-emption". Uncle Bob describes Ingvald's reaction to this opportunity:

By the time Ingvald and brother Clarence were of age, arable land in the American West had just about all been settled and a large part of the most accessible acreage of the Saskatchewan prairies had also been settled.  Areas such as the Lancer-Abbey region -- still with no rail service closer than Swift Current -- were still available.  To this area in 1909 came Clarence (age 19) and Ingvald (age 17) and their friend Hans Berg (age 22).  They filed on homesteads on the "flat" between Abbey and the South Saskatchewan River.  Ingvald's homestead quarter was SE6-22-20-W3M.  He had to stretch his age to get it, 18 being minimum age to qualify for a homestead.  They came with horse teams and wagons which held their few belongings all the way from Park River, North Dakota. They journeyed through eastern Montana and north into Western Saskatchewan -- a treeless stretch of prairie.  They mentioned having to pull ranchers' fence posts for fuel to cook with and for heat at their night camps. Clarence and Ingvald both felt extremely fortunate in getting a homestead with a creek running through it (Spring Creek).

Ingvald (right) probably about 1906

On 9 March 1911, Ingvald made application for his homestead; he had proved up his land and received title on 23 July 1914. To fulfill the requirement that he be a British subject, Ingvald became a naturalized Canadian citizen in June of 1914.

Although his original homestead application was for the SE quarter, he eventually built his home on the SW quarter of Section 6.

Ingvald's Homestead Grant (top line) in the Dominion Lands Records

When World War I broke out in the Fall of 1914.  Ingvald went to enlist, but was turned down when the medical examiner told him he looked as though he had already been through the war.  (This was no doubt because of the shotgun accident he had had as a boy.)

Ingvald as a young homesteader

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It was likely in the Fall of 1917 that Ingvald first met Idella Edwards when she started teaching at nearby Wayne Valley School. The two were married in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in late 1919. Children started arriving a year later with the birth of my Uncle Bob, followed by his sisters Kathryn, Eunice, Elinor (my mother), then John "Jack", and finally Helen.

Ingvald back row, second from left
Front row: daughters Elinor, Eunice, Kathryn, probably about 1929

With Della pregnant as winter approached in 1927, the family moved to be near Della's father Charles Edwards in Everett, Washington. This is where younger son Jack was born in December of  1927. While there, Ingvald worked in the lumber industry. But when spring arrived, he made his way back to his Saskatchewan land.

Ingvald on the left, in Washington State about 1927

The Anderson family lived in an unpainted shack made up of a main part that was 12 X 16 feet with a north lean-to 10 X 16 and an east lean-to 6 X 12 feet, the latter containing bunk beds.  There was a plank cribbed cellar under the north lean-to for vegetable storage and cooling milk.  In the winter, snow was melted in a wooden barrel for household use.

The land that Ingvald had homesteaded was to prove challenging over the years, no more so than during the "Dirty Thirties" of the depression and drought. This was the time that my mother and her siblings were growing up; the children seemed to have taken things in stride and had a happy childhood. However, for Ingvald and Della, things must have been very difficult. Trying to feed and clothe this growing family with the economic hardships of the time must have been a challenge.

Uncle Bob described the situation in a story he wrote in 1986 about how local governments tried to help reduce pest problems by declaring a bounty on gophers and rabbits:

In those desperate Prairie years of the early 1930s many things came together to drive farm families into deep poverty. Grain and livestock prices sagged to all-time lows and continued drought resulted in crop failures and reduced herds and flocks. Weeds, grasshoppers and cutworms further thinned the stands of grain. Gophers ate their way in from field edges, gathering and storing grain. Jack rabbits roamed field and pasture, eating at feed stacks in winter.

Horsing Around with Family and Neighbours c1938

Dust was everywhere in the summers and the winters were bitterly cold. Uncle Bob described how the wood fires often burned down by midnight, leaving water in the tea kettle frozen atop the stove by morning. There was no coal to heat their small homestead shack. The prairies were not generally a good source for wood, but Ingvald and elder son Bob would make an annual trip to scavenge what they could, quite often for poplar, willow and black birch in the nearby Sandhills. The following is an account written by Uncle Bob in 1986:

I was down cleaning out the barn that late fall afternoon when the stranger in his shiny new car drove into our yard. Dad was at our wood pile. He had just started, with bucksaw and axe, to convert the huge pile of poles into stove-length pieces to use in the coming winter. 

The stranger stopped his car by the wood pile and got out. In moments I heard Dad's voice, loud and angry-sounding. I couldn't hear what was said, but it upset me just the same. I had never before heard Dad speak to a caller in this way. 

I watched as the stranger paced out the length and width of the pile of uncut poles. I thought I saw Dad hand him some money. The stranger wrote on a piece of paper, handed it to Dad, jumped into his car and left. I thought I'd better finish my job and let Dad cool down a little before I went to the wood pile to ask him who the stranger was.

Later, when Bob could see that Ingvald had calmed down, he learned that the stranger was a government man who had fined them for taking the wood. Bob still had  the receipt in 1986 when he wrote the story.

Received: the sum of six dollars. From I. Anderson. On account of: Dues for six cords fuel wood cut in trespass. Signed (officer's name) Department of Natural Resources. 

Ingvald was diagnosed with diabetes and suffered complications such as poor circulation in his legs and removal of a kidney. Daughter Helen reported that it aged him tremendously.

Della never loved the land the way Ingvald did. By the mid 1940s the family moved to Swift Current where she operated a boarding house. In the summers, Ingvald would return to farm his land in the Lancer area, eventually joined by son Bob. My memories of my grandfather are of a quiet gentle introverted man with a warm sense of humour.

Ingvald about 1955

My brother John and sister Sandy and I were staying with our grandparents at their farm in the summer of 1958 when Ingvald died very suddenly of a heart attack at the age of  65. Sandy had gone with him to deliver a load of grain to the local elevator when he collapsed in his seat. He died, not on his own land, but nevertheless while conducting his farming operations.

Some Resources:

• Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, Homesteading; located online at https://www.saskarchives.com/collections/land-records/history-and-background-administration-land-saskatchewan/homesteading
• Anderson, Robert W., various writings in possession of the author (many hand-written, some from articles printed in the Western Producer newspaper in the 1980s)