Part two of a series on Swede Bottom
Ben Benson turned eight years old on the Atlantic Ocean shortly after leaving Sweden with his family, among five families, on the way to the Root River Valley in Minnesota Territory. As a senior citizen, Ben left a written account, the basis for this series, which began last week with their arduous three-and-a-half-month immigration journey, including voyages across an ocean, a large lake and up a river along with rides on trains and covered wagons as well as long walks.
They had taken the Territorial Road into Looney Valley, nearing their destination – the Root River. The first night after leaving La Crosse, the families slept outside John Looney’s shanty, the first Minnesota residence they saw. The women and children had walked the previous day when the oxen they had hired “could not be found.” The next day, a man named Knutson, the first storekeeper in the village of Houston, sent two yokes of oxen to them.
As they waded the Root River, the water was so clear they could see the bottom. In that original townsite (later called Lower Town after the village of Houston was moved), Ben said Knutson lived in a wing log house and often traded with the Indians. A boot and shoemaker named Stafford had his sign out. Both were married. Stafford and his wife were originally from England, where she had been an actress. Ben recalled Stafford being a “smart man but a heavy drinker.” A man named Moore had a log house under the hill which he soon sold to Irish Hogarthy.
Ben continued, “We stayed in Lower Town only a short time and then moved over on Swede Bottom and pitched our tents. We took lots of tools along in chests to have to put up buildings with. In the old country, these tool chests, of which every family had one, had round covers, but we were warned to have flat-topped ones on board the ship. They were made of oak. Families took pride in their tool chests, and many of them were much decorated.”
Arriving on August 18, there was much to accomplish that autumn. They built a large log house, 18 feet square and all one room, where four of the families lived during that first winter. This was the first dwelling on “The Bottom.” The Redding family was too large to live with the others, so they built a separate house. There was a stable for the cows across a driveway from the larger house.
Ben’s father was Olaf (Ole) Berntson. Evidently, in English-speaking Minnesota, the family name would eventually be anglicized to Benson. That same autumn, Olaf and fellow immigrant Abraham Anderson went to Decorah, Iowa, and purchased a yoke of oxen for each family.
“Father bought a yoke of cattle and a cow, and they got an old wagon to ride in. They did not know how to drive the oxen, for in Sweden, they were always driven with a line. The oxen didn’t understand Swedish either. They didn’t know how to put the yoke on. They put it on wrong, and the oxen didn’t understand, and they danced around a long time. I had a pair of oxen once, and when you put the yoke on one, the other would come for quite a distance and put his head under the other side of the yoke.”
The five families staked out claims that first year on land that had just been surveyed. The surveyors had marked trees – where there were trees. Otherwise, they built up a little mound of earth and inserted a stick.
When the men pre-empted, they would have 10 or 15 years before the federal government asked for the money, $1.25 an acre. But what Ben called “sharpers” would lend gold to the pre-emptors, so they could complete the purchase immediately. However, they would charge 50% interest.
Too late to harvest a crop that first year, they purchased provisions. Flour was $15 a barrel. Pork was $25 a barrel, but they were cheated because there was side pork only on top. The rest was split heads. These had been shipped up the Mississippi to be purchased at Levy’s Store in La Crosse. They bought venison from the Indians and shot partridges and prairie chickens with flint rifles and cap shotguns.
As a senior citizen (1920s), Ben lamented that there were not fish in the rivers as there had been during his boyhood. “We used to catch three and four-pound black bass, and I tell you, they were good!”
For farming, breaking sod was laborious – for man, boy and beast. Ben said they had two or three yoke of oxen for each plow. “The plows were so clumsy that one team couldn’t do a thing. They were made by a blacksmith in town.
“In the low places, the sod was tough, a kind of muck. On the higher places, there was a sandy loam, which broke easily. My, I was tired driving oxen. I had to do it when I was too small, and I got hoarse yelling at them. I stayed with David Johnson after my mother died, and in 1855, I broke with oxen … I was barely 10 years old then.”
All winter, before that first sod-breaking spring, the men worked cutting and hauling logs for the houses they would build next spring. They worked together on each dwelling. For a roof, butternut or walnut was split straight. Later, they made shingles with a draw shave knife.
Site selection, however, was a hit-or-miss proposition to those unfamiliar with the terrain. Abraham Anderson’s house was the first built but too close to the road where it was swampy. So, he moved it back to a knoll.
The Lars Johnson house was also too low. “The first flood nearly drowned them all. The water was four feet up in the house before they woke up.” The dwellings for the Johnson families were not built until the autumn with the help of other settlers.
Source: “Ben Benson: An Immigrant’s Story,” as told to his grandson and later published in the Aug. 8, 15, 22 and 29, 1974 editions of the Houston County News
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