Tidemand (Tideman) Jensen Klevgaard was born in Norway on Dec. 24, 1821. On March 22, 1856, he married Marit Torsdatter Gansager. Marit was born in Norway on July 23, 1832. Tideman and Marit came to America in 1866 as part of a large wave of over 15,000 Norwegian immigrants in that year. With them were their 10-year-old daughter, Betsy (who was known as Berit in Norway) and their 6-year-old son, Teodar (known as Thor in Norway). The family had departed from Bergen on the bark Leif on June 1 and arrived in Quebec on July 7. The ship was carrying 215 other steerage passengers and 11 cabin passengers. The Leif was built in 1857 and made only two trips to America, in 1857 and 1866. The ship was a bark, which is a small, three-masted sailing vessel that was used for Atlantic Ocean crossings in the mid-1800s before steamships came into common use in the 1870s.

Tideman, Marit, and their two children made their way from Quebec to the United States and settled first in Brown County, Minnesota. In 1871, they moved to Lyon County and settled in Nordland Township. Tideman and Marit had four more children in the next few years. In 1873, when Betsy was 17, she married Ole Engebretsen in Madelia. The couple lived in Brown County for two years before moving to Lyon County in 1875. They filed a homestead claim in Grandview Township close to Betsy’s parents and siblings.

Life on the prairie was often times a struggle for families in the late 1800s. The winter of 1872-1873 was extremely severe, the grasshopper scourge stopped immigration to southwestern Minnesota for a period of time, disease swept through Minnesota from 1876-1883, and the winter of 1880-1881 was long and frigid. Betsy and Ole’s 3-year-old daughter Barbo died on Aug. 12, 1877. The cause of death may have been diphtheria, which swept through Minnesota during this time. In 1878, Betsy gave birth to a son, who died at the age of 3 at the end of 1881 of scarlet fever.

The traveling exhibit New Land, New Life: Norwegian Immigration in Minnesota, 1825-1925 is on view at the museum until Sept. 30. The traveling exhibit is co-sponsored with the Vennskap Canby Sons of Norway Lodge.

The Lyon County Historical Society is a nonprofit, member-supported organization. For more information on membership, research, volunteering, or the museum’s collection, please contact us at 537-6580 or director@lyoncomuseum.org. Like our page and follow us on Facebook.