Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [75]
2 | MOTHERHOOD ON A MINNESOTA PRAIRIE
1. Ida Estby, daughter of Helga and Ole, Oral History at Cheney Cowles Museum, Spokane, Wash., 1973. Ida was a young girl when she watched the great Spokane fire destroy the heart of the business district in 1889. Because of this, she was included in a collection of transcribed oral interviews. The material provided valuable information on the Estby family far beyond her observation of the fire.
2. “History of Manistee County,” (Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society files, 1996), 8.
3. Ida Estby, oral history interview.
4. Doug Bahr, “Grandma Walks from Coast to Coast,” Eighth grade Essay, Almira, Wash., 1984. Not until after the walk across America, did the fact that Ole was not Clara’s father become well known throughout the family. In her twenties, Clara formally changed her last name from Estby to Doré, which led to speculation from family members that this might be the name of her biological father. Her stated reason for the change was for “business purposes.”
5. Census Records, Minnesota, 1880; Doug Bahr, “Grandma Walks”; T. Portch, interviews. During Clara’s childhood, Helga listed her birth as November 26, 1877, in census and family records, making her look like a legitimate child of her marriage with Ole.
6. J.D. Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups (St. Paul, Minn., 1981), 221. In July of 1877, the government granted land patents to Ole and sixty-four mostly Scandinavian settlers, including two women, on fertile lands near the tributaries of the Lac qui Parle River in western Minnesota.
7. Thelma Portch, first interview by author Almira, Wash., 1984.
8. Thelma Portch, second interview by author, Almira, Wash., 1986.
9. D. Bahr, “Grandma Walks.”
10. Thelma Portch, family artifacts, Helga Estby notebook.
11. Ida Estby, oral interview.
12. Willa Cather, My Ántonia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918), 342.
13. M.S. Brinkman and W.T. Morgan, Light from the Hearth: Central Minnesota Pioneers and Early Architecture (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1982), 14.
14. C.D. Ruud, “Beret and the Prairie in Giants of the Earth,” Norwegian American Studies 28 (1975), 217–245.
3 | THE CRUCIBLE YEARS
1. J. Narvestad, The History of Yellow Medicine County (Granite Falls, Minn.: Yellow Medicine County Historical Society, 1972).
2. A. P. Rose, An Illustrated History of Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota (Marshall, Minn.: Northern History Publishing Company, 1914), 123.
3. G.O. Sandro, The Immigrant Trek (Minn.: Self-Published, 1929), 44.
4. J. Narvestad, The History of Yellow Medicine County.
5. M.S. Brinkman and A.W. Morgan, Light from the Hearth: Central Minnesota Pioneers and Early Architecture (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1982), 18.
6. L.G. Davis, A Diphtheria Epidemic in the Early Eighties (Sleepy Eye, Minn.: Minnesota Medical Report, 1934), 435.
7. Circular No. 1, Minnesota State Board of Health, 1880.
8. Ibid., 5.
9. Ibid., 7.
10. Yellow Medicine County 1887 Court Records, Homestead sales.
11. Thelma Portch, second interview by author, Almira, Wash., 1986.
12. R.P. Herriges, Fire on the Prairie: Memories of Lac Qui Parle (Madison, Minn.: The Heritage Press, 1980), 37.
13. “Black Friday,” Canby News, May 15, 1885, 4.
14. “Minnesota Storm Damage,” Canby News, June 24, 1885, 1.
15. T. Portch, second interview.
16. Settler’s Guide (Spokane Falls, Wash., 1885), 56.
17. Ibid.
18. Thelma Portch, family artifacts. Helga kept both an advertiment for carpenters and an advertisement for “Residence Lots Cheap” from the Spokane Falls Evening Chronicle of September 21, 1886, in a scrapbook of memorabilia.
19. J. Rasmussen, New Land, New Lives: Scandinavian Immigrants to the Pacific Northwest (Northfield, Minn.: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1963), 7.
20. Spokane City Directory, 1888.
4 | SUPRISES IN SPOKANE FALLS
1. Spokane Falls, Washington Territory: The Metropolis of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho 1889 (Spokane, Wash.: