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Meet Ole Evinrude

When people hear the name Thomas Edison, they instantly think of the lightbulb. ole Evinrude (oh lee ev in rude) may not be as famous as Edison, but to people who love boats, his name is just as familiar. If you’ve ever puttered across a lake in a small motorized boat, you have Ole to thank. Ole loved boats. He helped make outboard motors a common sight on Wisconsin lakes. Little did he know that the idea he had one hot summer day to put a motor on a boat would make his name and Wisconsin famous for outboard motors.

Ole Evinrude was born on April 19, 1877, on a farm about 60 miles from Christiana, the largest city in Norway. Christiana’s name was changed to Oslo soon after Ole was born. Oslo is still Norway’s biggest city and its capital.

Ole was born on a farm near Christiana, the largest city in Norway.

Ole was the oldest boy among his parents’ 11 children. His father, Andrew, was a strict and practical man who worked hard to make a living running the family farm. Ole’s mother, Beatta, was a gentle, quiet woman who came from a long line of blacksmiths and metalworkers. Perhaps it was from Beatta’s side of the family, the Dahls, that Ole inherited his engineering skills. Ole’s earliest memories of Norway were of the lake near the Evinrude farm. He loved to play on its shore and watch the boats go by.

When Ole was 5 years old, the Evinrude family moved to America in search of a better life. Even at that young age, Ole’s fascination with boats and engines was obvious. He spent as much of the trip across the Atlantic Ocean as possible in the ship’s engine room. He loved to watch the giant engines do their work. His mother and grandmother considered the engine room an unsafe place for a small child. They spent the entire trip dragging him out of the engine room, only to have him wander back at the first opportunity.

Ole came to America on a ship like this. This ship, the Bergensfjord, was part of the Norwegian America Line.

The dining room onboard the immigrant ship Bergensfjord.

The deck of the ship that brought Ole to America looked something like this.

Arriving in America, the Evinrudes settled on a farm in Cambridge, Wisconsin, near Lake Ripley. Ole’s education in America was divided between the old and the new. For 8 months of each year, his schooling was in English. He attended a Norwegian school for another 3 months. This may sound like a lot of school—most kids in America today get the whole summer off—but Ole didn’t stick around for long. He left school after finishing third grade. By that time, however, he could already do the math that was usually given to eighth graders. Actually, it was pretty common for kids to leave school early in those days. Many children worked on their families’ farms and did not go to school at all (even though Wisconsin had a law requiring that all children ages 7 to 14 attend school for at least 12 weeks a year).

This wheat farm was in a Norwegian community close to Cambridge where Ole lived.

A dairy farm in Christiana Township in Dane County around 1875. Christiana Township was named after the town in Norway that Ole’s family came from.

Although Norwegians have a long history of sailing and boatbuilding, Ole’s father, Andrew, wanted nothing to do with either. Three of Andrew’s uncles had been lost at sea back in Norway. He saw the seafaring life as dangerous compared to the relative safety of farming. He wanted his son Ole to follow in his footsteps as a farmer. But boatbuilding seemed to be in Ole’s blood. One of his uncles was a sailor who had been all over the world. He would sometimes visit Ole’s family in Wisconsin in between his adventures on the sea. Ole loved hearing his uncle’s tales. From his uncle, Ole also learned all about the different types of boats and ships.

As Ole got older, he was given more responsibilities on the farm. By the time he was 10 years old, he was working alongside his father in the fields full-time. He quickly showed a talent with tools. He was often able to fix things on the spot that normally would have required a trip to the blacksmith shop in town. During the winter, when he was not helping his father on the farm, Ole worked as a sorter in the nearby tobacco warehouses. Ole used his money from that job to buy a subscription to a magazine about mechanical science. Ole loved to try out the engineering knowledge he gained from the magazine around the farm. He would spend hours tinkering with his father’s farm equipment. He tried to find ways to improve the way the equipment worked.

But farm equipment was not Ole’s true love. What he loved most of all was boatbuilding. When he was 15, Ole started building his first boat. He knew his father would not approve of this activity, so Ole had to keep the project carefully hidden in the woodshed. One day, Andrew discovered the partially built boat. In a fit of rage he smashed the boat to pieces and threw them into the woodstove. Ole was crushed by his father’s action. A lot of people may have given up after such a disappointment. But Ole Evinrude was not the kind of person to abandon his dream so easily.

Ole worked on a tobacco farm like this one in the winter.

After Andrew destroyed the boat, Ole simply started building another one. He didn’t want to disobey his father, but the urge to build a boat was overwhelming. This time, he found better hiding places for the boat parts. He hid the pieces in different places around the farm. Ole figured that even if his father found one of the pieces, he wouldn’t be able to tell that it was part of a boat being built.

Many people liked to go boating on Lake Ripley.

Working at odd hours whenever he could find the time, Ole finally finished building his 18-foot sailboat. He put it in the water and waited anxiously to see how his father would react. To Ole’s surprise, his father did not get mad. Andrew simply said, “I’d hoped to make a farmer out of you, but I guess you’re cut out for something better, son. You’ve built a right nice boat.”

Once he had won his father’s approval, Ole was ready to put his new boat to work. That summer, he charged sightseers 25 cents to ferry them around on Lake Ripley. Customers kept him busy on the lake all day on some weekends. When the weather was nice, Ole could earn as much as $5 on a Sunday. That was quite a lot of money in those days. You could buy about as much for $5 back then as you can buy for $100 today.

A historical marker was dedicated to Ole in 1955.