Marit Arneson Phelps – AKA: Mary Phelps is Ann Haggen Roushar’s great grand aunt.
An Immigrant’s Story in the Turtle Mountain Star: Rolla North Dakota, February 11, 1960, by JFM
When I had a visit the other day with Mrs. Mary Phelps, better known as “Grandma Phelps”, of rural St. John, who celebrated her 90th birthday January 28th, it seemed like I was talking to a woman 20 or 25 years her junior. Her eyes are clear, she doesn’t wear glasses, her hearing is perfect and her mind is as active and alert as ever. She uses a cane when she goes out as she suffer slightly from rheumatism, but said she doesn’t really need it, but carried it to use in case her son-in-law C.M.Bryant III (Bill) got out of line. She has made her home with the Bryants for the past 22 years.
She attributes her condition to a life of hard work. To live to be 90 is not particularly unusual. To be in her condition of health and to possess all her faculties to such a normal degree is unusual. She led the life of a pioneer mother, as so many others did, but I suspect had it just a little harder than most of them, perhaps not. Mrs. Phelps had 12 children of her own after coming to North Dakota and marrying, and reared another boy, Fred Messier, now of Woodland California. She never had a Doctor when any of her children were born, but more about that later.
Nine of her blood children are living, in addition to Mr. Messier. Mrs Phelps has 58 grandchildren, 88 great grandchildren and 11 great great grandchildren. It is an understatement to refer to her as a pioneer “mother”. She did not come to Turtle Mountains until 1900, so was several years behind the first of our Rolette County pioneers. Before this, however, she spent several years in other parts of Dakota Territory. But to get back to the beginning of this story.
Mrs. Arneson was born near Bruflat, Norway, January 28, 1870.
[Note: the Bruflat Church records show her birth date as January 28, 1871 and her baptismal date as April 6, 1871. She was born at Hestekin Farm, Sor Aurdal, Norway. This information was obtained from Stasarkivet-{State Archives} – Hamar, Norway. Gordon McMann]
This [Bruflat] was about four days drive with horse and buggy from Oslo [it was Kristiana then]. Her father’s name was Sivert Arneson. Her grandparents had come to the United States, so her parents decided to leave for the new land. There seemed no future in Norway. The large farms were owned by rich landlords and the Arneson family lived as tenants on a small piece of land, although they did own their own livestock. The grandparents were at Northwood, Iowa, so Sivert, his wife and four children, including Mary and three brothers, set sail from Kristiana in the summer of 1878. The voyage from Kristiana to England was made in a small vessel, and they boarded the Allen Lines Steamship there for the two week voyage to New York, then by train to Iowa.
Sivert Arneson had two brothers near Portland, North Dakota and the next spring [1879} Sivert[sic] and his family, including Mary, the eldest child incidentally, started for Portland. Two young men, brothers, were making the trip in a covered wagon and Sivert[sic] paid them $10.00 to take his family along. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs and a few personal belongings. There was no bridge across the Red River at Fargo-Moorhead, and the covered wagon, drawn by a team of horses, crossed by ferry pulled by a windlass. The river was much wider than now, or so it seemed to the little girl, who had just turned nine.
The father filed on a pre-emption about 12 miles from Portland, they built a sod house and barn, and lived there a few years, then moved to the Cooperstown area and filed on a homestead in Griggs County. Lumber was used to build the one-room house, but they covered it with sod in the winter, for warmth. Twins a boy and a girl, [Milla who later became Grandma Mikkelson and Uncle Oluf] had been born to Mr and Mrs Sivert[sic] Arneson while near Portland and two more daughters [Aunt Gina and Aunt Clara] were born to them in the Cooperstown area. Six of this family of eight are still living and they had a reunion in Minneapolis last August. Most of them live in the Glenwood, Minnesota community.
Mary Arneson was working as a waitress in a hotel at Hope, North Dakota, when she met a young man who had a way with him, named Tom Phelps. He was a good baseball player and also played violin in a dance orchestra. The team and also the orchestra often came to the hotel to eat. On December 24, 1888 at Cooperstown, Mary Arneson of Griggs County and Thomas Phelps of Steele County were married. They had six children when they came to the Turtle Mountains in 1900. Hutchinson Township was not yet open for homestead filing so they squatted on the west side of Jarvis Lake in a shack which the late Tom Blixhavn had built. This was on May 9, 1900. Three days later a disastrous forest fire swept that area and Mr. and Mrs Phelps and their six children were driven out to seek refuge on the prairie. They went to Gronna and stayed in John Hunt’s cabin. Mr Hunt operated a cheese factory in Rolla.
As this photo from the US Department of Interior – Bureau of Land Management photo shows, the Turtle Mountain Wilderness has an untamed beauty, but is not exactly paradise.
A man whose name Mrs. Phelps does not remember had built a house on the island in Jarvis lake to use during the winters while cutting wood. Other woodcutters from many prairie towns had stayed there on their trips to the mountains. The Phelps family returned to the area just a few days before Christmas, when the lake was frozen over, and occupied that house. The children went out and cut a pretty birch tree, some colored ribbons were rounded up and the family had a Christmas party, meager as it was.
Then came the homestead filing on the land still occupied by a son, Floyd, the struggle for a living, the eventual clearing of 60 fertile acres [Floyd has cleared some more] and all the experiences of the typical family who came to the mountains. The area was solid timber and clearing was grueling work for them, as for all the other, Mrs Phelps remembers the first three years when the source of income was cutting and selling wood. This was the schedule: Mary and son Selmer would cut one cord a day, while the father, Thomas was hauling a load to St John about eight miles distant. Thomas would return late in the afternoon and cut another half cord, often working late into the night. The average load then was a cord and ahalf. The first winter the merchants in St. John paid them .60 cents for the load, later it was a little more. They could not get cash for the wood, only a due-bill on the store for food and merchandise.
How did they survive? Well they had brought six cows and some chickens from Cooperstown and even .90 Cents bought quite a lot in those days. What about meat? Didn’t they kill some deer? There weren’t any deer, she said, and Bill Bryant explained that the deer did not come into the woods until settlement got a good start with meadows, haystacks, herds of livestock and people. there were no deer in the woods until settlement was well underway. The first two deer that Mrs. Phelps ever saw were in a cleared meadow with the cows many years after they first came into the Jarvis Lake area. There were bears but no other game animals in those first years.
Oh yes, about those babies. Mary’s mother, Mrs. Sivert[sic]Arneson, had been trained, and practiced, as a midwife in Norway. She was living near her daughter both in the Cooperstown area and at Jarvis lake, where six more children were born to Mr. and mrs.Thomas Phelps. So there was no need for a doctor and none was ever called either before or after the birth of a child. when 
Hutchinson County was organized Mrs. Thomas [Mary] Phelps was appointed official midwife and has bought a lot of babies into the world successfully, even being called down on to the prairie in the early days. She got her training from her mother and also studied all the textbooks her mother had brought from Norway. She showed me a birth certificate she has kept, one of the supply she had when she was practicing midwifery and I was surprised to see that the heading is “Certificate of Attending Physician or Midwife”. And the births were all properly recorded in accordance with law I didn’t even know existed. In the early years Hutchinson was full of white settlers but most of the land has been sold to the government and only a handful of the original families remain. Here is an example from the period of a similar certificate used in Illinois.
Thomas Phelps died 25 years ago. Mrs. Phelps remained with her son Floyd on the home place for about three years, then came to make her home with her daughter, Mrs. Jessie Bryant.
The Surviving children are Mrs. Florence Materne, Spokane, Washington, Mrs. Laura Anderson, Nez Perce, Idaho, Mrs. Sarah Fluker, Cartwright, Manitoba, Mrs. C.W. [Evelyn] Holum, Rolla, North Dakota, Floyd, Rural St. John, Mrs. C.M. [Jessie] Bryant III, Rural St John, Mrs Felix Durocher [Annie], Kalispell Montana, Henry, Havre Montana, C..M. [Kelly, Kinsington, Minnesota and Fred Messier. All but Mrs. Durocher, Henry and Kelly were back for the bidg birthday party, January 28.
Note: When J.F.M. wrote this Grandpa Arneson’s name was spelled Sivert[sic]. I never changed it as I was unsure about the correct spelling. As it happens the correct spelling is Syver as confirmed by Grandma Mikkelson’s Birth or Baptismal Certificate.