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THE WAUPACA COUNTY POST November 15, 1990 WHEN THEN WAS NOW By Wayne A. Guyant Christian Neilson was born on a
small farm near Copenhagen, Denmark, a son of Neils Christianson and Christine
Jorgenson. Christian had a brother, George, who was older than he, and a
sister, Mary, who was younger. Neils
Christianson also had a daughter, Anna, and possibly a son by a previous
marriage, of whom there seems to be no record. Neils Christianson, the father, was
the owner of a small farm near Copenhagen where he lived and cultivated the
land. Neils Christianson sawed ship
lumber to help in making a better life, until that day in 1845, when he was
killed by being struck by a log. Christian was born on the farm near
Copenhagen, on December 3, 1828. He was only 17 years old when his father was
killed in that accident. As a young
boy, Christian herded the cattle and the geese on the farm, as there were no
fences to keep them within their boundaries. After the death of his father in
1845, Christian remained on the farm for another year, attending school in the
meantime until he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Frederiksborg, Denmark, a
small community near Copenhagen, to learn the shoemaker trade. He served his five year apprenticeship while
living with his employer and received his living as compensation. After his apprenticeship he worked another
three years to become a master shoemaker.
He then moved into Copenhagen and opened his own business. He often had shoes from the King’s Palace to
repair and was often paid in used clothing. By now, he was using the name of
Christian Nelson. Christian Nelson was
united in marriage to Miss Julie Marie Pauling Jorgenson, in Copenhagen, on
June 5, 1854. She was a daughter of
Hans Jorgenson and Johanne Marie Christensen. She was born December 23, 1827.
She received her education and special training as a seamstress. Five children were born to this union of
which two boys and a girl died in Denmark.
The two sons to survive were Julius, born in 1858, and Thorwoldt, born in
1861. At the time American steamship
companies sent special agents to the European countries to encourage people to
come to the United States to live. Some
worked on a commission basis. It was an
Episcopal minister, named Sorenson, who sold Christian Nelson the tickets for
himself and his family. They left their home at Number 2,
Spring Street, Copenhagen, in early May of 1863. Julius was five years old and
Thorwoldt had his second birthday while in Liverpool, England, where they met a
group of Norwegians who were on their way to Scandinavia, Wis., to join some
relatives who had settled there. Their ship landed in Montreal,
Canada. They traveled together as far
as Grand Haven, Mich., when they ran out of money. Their Norwegian friends
turned out to be more than friends; they offered to loan Christian the $40 to
complete his trip, and assured him that their relatives could put the family up
until something came along. Upon arriving at Scandinavia, the
situation was not as rosy as it was first thought to be. The relatives’ home was not as large as they
had thought and the Nelsons moved into a one-room log shed with no windows or
doors to keep out the cold. It was also
located about a mile from Scandinavia.
They lived there until after the fall harvest. The neighbors gave them milk for the two boys for the first week, From there Christian walked to
Waupaca where he found employment with a shoemaker who paid him $10 a
week. Julie did any work that she could
find to supplement their income. Within
four weeks Christian had paid back the $40 loan. Christian walked to Waupaca, a
distance of about eight miles, every Sunday evening or early Monday morning and
returned to Scandinavia every Saturday night, so he could spend Sundays with
his family. At harvest time Julie gleaned wheat
from the farmers’ fields and ground it in a coffee mill for bread. When fall came they had saved enough money
to move to a home in Waupaca, on Granite Street. Christian Nelson worked for Louis
Larson in his shop on South Main Street.
It seems as if a Mr. Parrish owned a shop next door to Mr. Larson’s and
he also wanted Christian to work for him.
Christiain wondered just how he could do justice to both parties and
show equal time to both, so he bought a two-room house at 211 N. Division
Street, where he worked for both men.
He used the front room for his shop where he repaired shoes. He also made new shoes, and on some Julie
did decorative stitching. Someone
convinced Mr. Larson that there was a wonderful opportunity in the state of
Kansas raising corn and hogs, so Christian bought him out and ran this shop on
South Main Street for a few years. Later, Christian bought a building
on the river bank on East Fulton Street.
At this location there was a big drop from the street level to the
river, so the shop was built up in several levels form the river bank to the
street level, with the shop located on the street level. It was not connected, however, so a narrow
bridge was built from the street to the shop. The family lived in the bottom room,
below the shop. Each room was on a
different level with steps from the lowest level to the next room. The third room was two steps above the
second room, and this was the sleeping quarters for the two boys. This room was not high enough for a man to
stand erect. Julie’s health became poor during
their residence in the basement, and their doctor advised them to move to their
place at 211 N. Division St. It was during these years that a
young man by the name of Chris Wied came to America from Denmark and worked for
Christian Nelson and made his home with them.
When young Chris Wied had earned enough money for the passage of his
family, he sent for them, but his mother wrote back that his father had passed
away and she didn’t feel that she could make the trip alone with the other five
children. Sometime later Christian Nelson went
to Denmark for a visit and brought Mrs. Wied and her three sons and two
daughters with him to Waupaca where they moved into the basement under the shoe
store, where they lived until they moved to the Town of Lind where William
bought a farm. The William Wied family
was well known in this area. Christian’s next venture was to buy
a lot on Water Street, where he built and operated a shoe shop for a couple of
years. It was here that Thorwoldt, his
youngest son, started to learn the trade from his father, at a very early age.
He was only 13 years old when he quit school, but his brother, Julius, was
interested in school and was among the first class to graduate from Waupaca
High School. Christian was helping Julius finance
his education, so to even things he bought Thorwoldt a farm in the Granite
Quarry District when he was 17.
Thorwoldt left his father’s shop and went to live alone on the farm. His mother made regular trips to see
Thorwoldt to do some baking and cleaning. The land was rocky, and some years
passed when he realized that most of his time was spent in clearing the rocks
from the land. He took pride in his
horses, especially fast-driving horses that let no one pass him on the road. At that time the Granite Quarry was
doing a booming business and Thorwoldt did some hauling of the granite for
them. He also cut and hauled logs to Waupaca.
He stamped the ends of each log with his initials TN. This was done so each logger’s logs could be
identified at the mill. The logs were
rolled down the hill from Main Street to the river just south of the City Hall.
In the spring when the ice broke up, the logs would float downstream to the
sawmill. Thorwoldt played the fiddle and the
accordion at country dances. In 1883 Christian sold his shop and
went to the state of Washington to try his fortune there. His wife, Julie, then went to live with
Thorwoldt on the farm. In Washington, Christian worked for a shoemaker, who was
forced out of business and Christian no longer had a job, so he returned to
Waupaca and stayed for a year on his farm that he had previously purchased. Julius had finished his high school
education and went on to attend the University of Wisconsin and John Hopkins
University and received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He then became professor of biology at
Rutger’s University, at New Brunswick, NJ.
He married Nellie Chase of Madison on August of 1888. They had six children. Julius died in March 1915 and Nellie died in
1935. In 1888 Christian Nelson bought back
his former shop on East Fulton Street from the widow of Mr. Peterson, and went
back to shoemaking, the occupation he continued at this location until he
retired about 1902, but not before he had razed the old shoe shop in East
Fulton Street and rebuilt a new modern one on the same location, that stands
today at 109 East Fulton, owned by Attorney Laurie W. Anderson and used as his
law office. Thorwoldt was married on May 2, 1888,
to Miss Anna Caroline Peterson, who was a daughter of Soren and Karen Marie
Jacobson Peterson. After Thorwoldt was
married, Christian built a small house for Julie on the farm close to the
Granite Quarry, where she lived until Thorwoldt left the farm and she moved
back to Waupaca and lived in the rooms above Christian’s shop, which was
nothing more than a loft. One day Thorwoldt returned to the
farm and told his wife, Annie, “I guess we will move to town; father needs help
in the shop, and wants me to work for him.”
So the spring of 1898 found them in Waupaca in the house at 211 N.
Division St. There was plenty of land
for gardening, a barn for a pair of horses, with a stable beneath for a cow, an
island for the cow to graze in the summer and a playground for the
children. Thorwoldt built a small
bridge to the island. On this island
the children picked violets, climbed the butternut tree and had picnics with
the neighborhood children. The children
played house in a little box house that the boys had made. This island was removed in 1934 to
make way for progress. This island was
dug out and deposited back of the City Hall to provide access to the rear
entrance of the buildings there. This
altered the course of the river and it no longer ran close to the rear of the
buildings. There is a nice playground
area here today. Thorwoldt and Anna had nine
children: one died at birth and was
buried in the garden behind the house on the farm in the Granite Quarry
District. The children that grew to maturity
were: Julia, who married Clarence
Nelson; Harry, who married Marjorie Sherman; Walter, who married Grace Wied;
Mabel, who married Myron Godfrey; Clara, who married Kenneth Cristy; Esther,
who married Earl Granberg; George, who married Agnes Kolb; and Reuben, who
married Gertrude Manson. Sometime just before the 1900s,
Thorwoldt went to work for Ed Churchill in his shop on Union Street opposite
the jail. Christian told Thorwoldt to
take the job, because it was more than he could pay. In 1903 Ed Churchill decided to move to the west coast and he
sold out his stock and business to Thorwoldt and moved away. Thorwoldt then moved back to his father’s
former place on West Fulton Street on the north side of the Courthouse
Square. He did some remodeling and was
open for business in 1904 at his new shop, The Stone Front Shoe Store. Here he sold new shoes and repaired old
ones. Thorwoldt used the same repair
bench that Christian, his father, brought from Canada. Although all of the children at one time or
another helped in the store, Walter really became the manager from the time
that he graduated from high school until he enlisted in the Army in World War
I. After the war, Walter became the
postmaster for Waupaca. Seth Ballard and a Mr. Todd were hired as clerks during
the war years. The store was sold to Harold Harrington, but Thorwoldt remained
at his bench until 1947, working for Mr. Harrington. In the Waupaca County Post,
dated February 13, 1947, there was a picture of Thorwoldt Nelson working at his
cobbler bench which he had used for 55 years.
He was 86 years old at the time.
Mr. Nelson’s greatest fear was the day that he would have to retire; he
said that he felt like 50 and was good for another 10 years. Thorwoldt Nelson did retire in 1947,
and died January 5, 1959, age 98 years.
His wife, Anna, preceded him in death on December 20, 1943, age 84
years. They are buried in the family
plot in the Waupaca Lakeside Memorial Park. Julia, Mrs. Clarence Nelson, who is
now 101 years old, living in Fort Wayne, IN, is the last survivor of Thorwoldt
Nelson’s family. It is through her
memoirs that much of this material was taken. Tom and Eloise Godfrey have most
graciously loaned me her papers, that she had written as she had remembered
things as a girl growing up. Tom Godfrey is a great-grandson of
Christian Nelson and has in his possession the old cobbler bench that his
great-grandfather bought secondhand in Canada, well over 100 years ago. ************ WHEN THEN WAS NOW November 21, 1990 I wish to apologize for omitting the
names of the other two living descendants of “Thorwoldt and Anna Caroline
Nelson in my last article that appeared in the November 15 issue of the Waupaca
County Post. They are: Clara Marie Christy who is living in a
nursing home in Woodstock, Ill., and just had her 94th birthday on
November 14, 1990, and Esther Jeannette Granberg, who is still living alone in
Oshkosh and just had her 92nd birthday on November 9, 1990. |