Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [7]
2 MOTHERHOOD ON A MINNESOTA PRAIRIE
They were very poor and desperately needed
money living in a one-room sod shanty.
It must have been very hard for Helga
after living well in her childhood.
—THELMA PORTCH, GRANDDAUGHTER
We lived out on the prairie.
We never mingled with anybody.
—IDA ESTBY, DAUGHTER
Helga’s walk across America was not her first major journey undertaken to create a better life. At eleven years old, Helga traveled from Norway with her mother, Karen, on the ship Oder and arrived in Manistee, Michigan, on August 12, 1871. Her stepfather had gone ahead to America to start life anew and had settled in this lake town, a thriving economic center for the Scandinavians working nearby in the twenty-four lumber mills.1 Although a devastating fire destroyed the prosperous town that same year, by 1873 two hundred new buildings reflected the expectation and determination of the optimistic population. Helga attended schools in America for enough time to become proficient in written and oral English, and she loved her new country. A bright child, she found great pleasure in reading. As an only child, she enjoyed how her bilingual ability helped her Norwegian mother and father negotiate in their new land.
During the 1870s, with a growing population of nearly 10,000 residents, Manistee was embroiled in raging debates over the “woman question” and a women’s suffrage referendum on the 1874 ballot. Given the controversial nature of this topic, as a young girl Helga inevitably overheard conversations on what rights women should have in America. Although the ballot failed at the state level, the vote from the town of Manistee, and the local editorials showed support for the amendment. The failure led to strong determination by local women to “fight out this battle with a zeal that shall know no discouragement, a courage that shall never tire.” They invited Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to lecture. In a town this small, their visits introduced Helga to the importance of women’s rights.2
But something far more important affected Helga directly. At only fifteen, she discovered she was pregnant and her life changed dramatically. In Norway, young women from the rural farmlands sometimes became pregnant before marriage without disgrace, but it usually led to a marriage with the father of the child. However, Helga was not a rural farm girl living in Norway; she was the stepdaughter and only child of an immigrant merchant living in America. Circumstances surrounding the fifteen-year-old’s pregnancy remain mysterious. She may have been raped while working as a maid in a wealthy home, or an irresponsible father walked away when she became pregnant, or perhaps she entered a relationship with a man her family did not approve of for religious, ethnic, or character reasons and they intervened. No one knows. What is known is this unplanned pregnancy radically altered Helga’s future.
Helga’s mother, Karen Hendriksdatter Johanssen, was widowed when Helga was only two years old. Helga’s stepfather, a merchant with the surname Haug, brought the family to Manistee, Michigan, when Helga was eleven.
Photo circa 1870s, Courtesy Portch/Bahr Family Photograph Collection.
On October 12, 1876, sixteen-year-old Helga married Ole Estby, a twenty-eight-year-old non-English speaking immigrant from Grue Solor, Norway, who had arrived in America in 1873. He worked in logging camps near Manistee, Michigan, although he initially trained as a carpenter in Germany.3 Grue Solor is the same region her stepfather came from in Norway, so they likely knew each other earlier. Her marriage to Ole, a Norwegian bachelor, seemed