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I WOKE UNUSUALLY EARLY this morning but had no desire to burrow deeper under the covers against Samuel’s warmth. Last night’s discussion after supper haunted my dreams and surfaced the instant sleep cleared from my mind. I needed to get up and away from my husband to think about the questions that keep circling in my head. Even after all these months, I’m still not convinced we have made the right decision.
My warm toes quickly cooled on the plank floor as I hopped to the rug on the hearth. I added wood to the banked coals in the fireplace before dressing in front of it. The nights still cool down the house, even though it is almost April. Wrapping my heavy shawl around my shoulders, I slipped out the door into the ending darkness.
It was too early to start milking, so I walked down the lane and out the farm gate. I wandered through the meadow to where the woods creep to its edges and climbed up the gentle rise. Forests and rocks surround every pocket of farmland that has been cleared in this area. And both are always threatening to reclaim what the farmer has worked so hard to secure.
Without really thinking, I sat down on a large mossy rock where I could view the scenery around me. Although the leaf buds had begun to swell, I could still see through the bare birch trees to the sleeping farm below. The first faint slips of light were filtering into our compound. Gray was giving way to wisps of pink and yellow. Details of the house were becoming clearer as I sat in the silence.
Tufts of fresh grass rim the meadow, but there isn’t an overall hint of green as there should be this time of year. The lack of fall rain and winter snow has depleted the soil’s moisture, and it doesn’t have the strength to give its spring burst of color. Will nature change its course and provide abundant moisture for a good crop this season, or will it continue as last year? Samuel has decided we must not wait for nature to decide our fate.
There are eight buildings on the farm built around a square, and all face into the middle. There is a place for everything we need to sustain life. The buildings were constructed in this cluster to protect against the elements. Built of local timbered wood, most of the buildings look weather-beaten. Some shelters have a sod roof, others are thatched. The newer ones are covered with wooden shingles.
The hayloft sits on the northeast comer between the threshing barn on the north and the house on the east. The storage cellar is just south out the door from the house, with the privy to the left of it. On the west side of the farmyard are the cowshed, forage barn, and the woodshed. Narrow roads between the main buildings go out in all four directions from the middle. Outside the square are the summer cowshed on the edge of the meadow, a forage barn, smithy, and the well.
The original farm was called Kulla, but by now it has been divided into four sections. It is located in the Pelarne parish in Kalmar Län. The farm was split to support the first son’s family, and then again in each succeeding generation.
We are living on the part of Kulla that was owned by my husband’s parents. Originally painted a dark red, the house is a parstuga, having two large rooms with a small hall and chamber rooms between the two.
Samuel’s father, Johannes Samuelsson, came from Lönneberga in 1812 to work for Petter Jonsson, then he married one of Petter’s daughters, Anna Greta Pettersdotter, in 1817. They received a quarter acreage from half of the original farm,-in other words, an eighth of the original Kulla. They built this farm compound over time. On this place, they had ten children, five of whom reached maturity.
Now their children have grown and gone their separate ways.
According to custom, the oldest son, Carl Peter, should have inherited the farm from his father, and the other children were to leave home as soon as they were old enough to find employment. But Carl Peter gave up his rights and now owns and operates an ironworks shop instead. Bror August was not interested either, and Johan Anders never married. The youngest, Maria Christina, works as a maid nearby.
That left to Samuel, the fourth son, the chance to farm this land. We married six years ago and moved in with his parents.
Undantag Johannes has reserved rights, meaning that even though he is a retired farmer who has given up his land, he and his second wife may live in a spare room in the house and receives a share of the farm produce to live on. Johannes is also a churchwarden for our parish, so he is a prominent person in the community.
It is cold among the trees. Little patches of snow still skirt the north side of a few tree trunks. I pull my shawl over my head to cut the chill that penetrates my ears. Spring is around the corner, but it needs the morning sunshine to chase away the chill. It was partly out of habit that I headed outside early this morning and partly out of a need to put everything in perspective. No matter where we lived that particular year, my sisters and
I would head out to the woods very early spring and sit quietly to listen for our destiny. First, it was just Carolina and me, giggling nervously at dawn. Then Hedda joined us three years later as soon as she was old enough to catch up with us. Later came Mathilda, whom we took with us as a toddler because we thought she should be in on the tradition. The last siblings joined in as soon as they were old enough.
It is an old Swedish custom to listen for the first call of the gök in the spring. Its call tells you what will happen to you in the next year. The cuckoo bird only calls from the first sign of spring until the first cut of the hay, and then it doesn’t speak again until the next spring.
You must sit quietly to discern the direction of his call to find your answer. A call coming from the west brings the best tidings; a call from the east means comfort and consolation. A call from the north or south means that sorrow and death lie in wait for the listener. After we heard the call, we would conjure up all sorts of guesses as to what the New Year would bring. Of course half the time we couldn’t agree on what direction the call came from, so that made for interesting conversation. We thought good tidings always meant a boy being interested in one of us. Marriage proposals loomed in our minds as we grew older. We tried not to hear a call from the north or south because we didn’t want to face the possibility of death in our family.
When we lost baby sister, Helena, I thought back to our first spring day that year before she was born and wondered which direction the gök call comes from. It is just a superstitious thing, but it made me wonder back to that year’s outing. It was six years ago, and the last time we would all make this outing together. Carolina and I were both getting married and moving to our husbands’ homes. Hedda was soon moving out of the house to work as a maid. Moder was about to deliver her seventh child.
We all heard the call from the north but made excuses. We didn’t want to believe the call would mean that death would follow us soon.
Carolina and I both married on the same day, June 10. I married Samuel Fredrik Johansson and transferred my belongings to Kulla.
Carolina moved in with her husband, Gustaf Otto Jonsson, to Gebo, where he inherited his father’s farm. Two years later he died, leaving Carolina with a one-year-old girl. But she has since remarried to Johan Erik Jonsson, who moved onto the Gebo farm, and they have had a daughter.
Moder delivered Helena Maria on June 20, but the little girl lived just beyond a year.
We know the deaths had nothing to do with the bird’s prediction, but it has always been a sign to consider, no matter our age or where we heard it.
Until I married at eighteen, I was the daughter of arrendator Samuel Amundsson, a tenant farmer who had never owned his own land. He and my moder, Anna Lena Nilsdotter, have spent their entire lives tending other people’s land. The little tenant houses we lived in were crowded with all of us, and we always wished for better, but we knew life would never change. We would always be poor farmers working for others.
We lived in several places as I grew up. Fader was first a servant at Gronshult, where he and Moder were married. My oldest sister, Carolina, was born at Södra Wi, Hedda and I at Rumskulla. The next four, Mathilda, Carl Johan, Sofia, and Helena, were born at Wimmerby, although on two different farms. Sometimes they were better land and houses, sometimes worse. We children didn’t know why we moved so often. It was the only way of life we knew. We didn’t understand the reasons behinds good years and bad, crop failures and taxes due.
Fader paid his rent with cash. So in years where we had a drought, like last year, he didn’t have enough crops to sell to pay the landowner—or the tax man. Moder had to watch her favorite milk cow being taken away this winter because there was no money to pay the taxes.
Carolina was Moder’s helper, but I was Fader’s because there were no sons among the oldest children. I tagged along while we tended the animals, worked in the fields and gathered the harvest. I carried out enough rocks from those farm fields each spring to build my own castle.
I thought life would be better as a farm owner’s wife instead of a tenant farmer’s daughter, but we still have debts to worry about and mouths to feed. The fields will never be clear of stones, nor will my castle be built. My lot in life will be the same as my parents. Except that we have decided to leave our homeland and venture to another. Next month we are sailing to America and leaving this rocky land forever.
We talked late last night with Johannes and Stina Kajsa. They know our reasons for wanting to leave, but they have been trying to persuade us to change our minds. We are leaving behind the old generation to help the new one. We all know the reasons why, but it does not ease the pain of the permanent separation coming soon. “This place was good enough for you children and us. Why isn’t it good enough for you? The weather changes every year, and you know there will always be good years mixed in with the bad. You are the only son that wanted this farm. Now you want to give that up?”
When Samuel and Johannes argue back and forth, Stina and I sit and listen. Johannes is arguing because he knows he will lose his son and grandchildren forever, but he doesn’t want to beg Samuel to stay. It looks bad that the churchwarden’s son is leaving the parish. Samuel argues because he wants to be a free man free from his father, his debts, and this land.
Many people from the area are moving to America this spring. Why shouldn’t we be among them? There are vast amounts of free land overseas. Why should we stay here and keep pushing these rocks around? What happens when we run out of food for us and the livestock? How are we going to survive?
Questions on the subject of emigration have circulated through the parish all winter as people try to find answers to this dire situation. Amerikafeber is catching on with the young people in our parish. There are six families and a dozen single servants already preparing to leave our parish next week. The pull of hope for something better is always catching. You can be rich in America! Why not leave everything behind for a better life in the land of opportunity?
We have listened to the emigrant agents that are always trying to sell tickets for the ship liners heading for America. Ever since the steamships replaced the sailing ships of the old days, ships have left the major ports of Sweden three times a week for America. The agent’s job is to fill each ship to capacity. They come to our area regularly, holding meetings wherever they can assemble a crowd. Samuel picks up written information at every meeting and pores over it in the light of the evening fire.
American railroads have also campaigned actively to attract settlers to their land. They hire Swedes who have moved to America to come back to the Old Country to recruit people and escort them overseas.
America’s Civil War has ended, and stories of the vast lands available in the newly opened western territories have spread across the sea to us. The Homestead Act gives people land free for the asking. All we would have to do is build a house, clear five acres, and live in it for five years. The way people talk, plowing American soil would be like cutting warm butter with a dull knife compared to our stony earth. As for the five-year stipulation, after we leave this country and obtain land, why would we want to move again?
“Cheap fare to the land of plenty. You can get a job by just standing on a street corner in New York. Food is abundant and cheap. You’ll never go hungry again!” claims the agent. But we know he is trying to make a living himself, and many of these agents have never set foot on the faraway soil they are trying to sell. Can we believe their tales of happy endings?
Old newspapers from the big towns circulate around the community. When Samuel obtains one, he reads out loud its reprinted letters sent from people who had moved to America. They describe their adventures with sumptuous word pictures, anxious to justify their journey and to rest their worried parents’ minds. “The trip only took three weeks, and I found work as soon as I was on land. I make four dollars a day, get free room and board at my job, and am free to do as I please on Sunday.”
Are they telling the truth, or are they trying to mask their homesickness by exaggerating their accomplishments? Most people think the writers were bragging, not admitting the real hardships they are encountering. Even though people are skeptical, they read and reread the letters describing America. Everyone is envious of the writers’ daring escapes from our country’s poverty.
The person who convinced me there might be a better life in America was a son of a poor neighbor who came home after being gone for six years. To escape a bad master, he had fled to the port of Goteborg and signed up as a sailor on a boat heading for America. Upon arriving in America, he worked for the Union government during the Civil War, then homesteaded land on the western prairie. He came back to visit his parents and to convince his sweetheart to return to America as his bride.
None of us recognized him at first. In Sweden, a person’s station in life is identified by his occupation, manner of speech, and form of dress. He had left our district in homespun rags, woolen cap, and wooden shoes. This young man returned in a store-bought suit, a handsome hat, and boots of fine leather. He left with no money in his pocket but returned as the owner of 160 American acres, which he said was larger than most of the estates in our parish. What made me a believer in his story was that he did not bow or back away when he met a member of the gentry on the way to church one Sunday. Instead, he held out his hand to shake the other man’s hand because he considered himself an equal, not a servant of the past.
He said there are no class divisions in America. The large farm holder, sheriff, or pastor is no different from anyone else. Your lowly occupation does not limit you. One person is just as good as another. If you work hard at any honest occupation you are respected. Anyone can save money and own their own farm or store in due time. The fact that women are called either Miss or Mrs. in America sounds good to me. Here there are four different ways to address a married woman, according to her social rank, and the same applies to an unmarried woman. Before I married, piga, meaning maidservant, always preceded my name. My station in Sweden may never be higher than it is now.
I sit in the numbing cold, thinking of last year’s heat and drought. Trying to survive last year was difficult. Last spring started with optimism as we worked and planted the fields. The thin topsoil was turned along with the little rocks that continue to work their way to the surface. Samuel tried to ignore the telltale signs warning of no moisture in the soil, and he planted the precious seeds that were supposed to turn our lives around. Our emotions changed later to concern and despair over the shriveling crop and dwindling grain storage. Our fields depended on moisture from the sky, but it only produced hot winds. Every night I prayed it would rain, but I never got the answer I needed. The rocky soil absorbed the unusually high temperatures, and the intense sun baked the crust so hard that a spade couldn’t chip it, let alone a tender seedling penetrate it. We couldn’t deny the damage that was progressing daily.
I struggled to keep the garden alive. Seeds we had saved and planted had to grow into food for the family. What were we going to eat during the snowy winter months if these plants didn’t mature? I hauled and poured buckets of water on the garden, hoping that the remaining plants had enough energy to produce tubers below the ground or fruit above. My hunger for something ripe and juicy to eat was put down each morning as I viewed the damage done by the hordes of insects intent on eating anything green. I took my frustration out by smashing potato bugs, but it didn’t cure my bitterness or their enormous population.
As the summer went on, bewilderment turned into disappointment. Then was disgusted that neither Samuel nor I could prevent or change our situation, and was angry that life was so hard for us. We were two young people starting a new life together. I wanted this farm to prosper, to yield abundance for our future.
We needed a crop desperately, but the weather did not moderate. There is no extra grain or money in reserve to fall back on if we stay and have another failure. And with no crops, we won’t have money for taxes or food. We finally had to face the fact that we can’t change what is happening on our farm and in our country. And if we lose this farm, our four-year-old son, Oscar, will never be more than a servant—as would be the lot for our two-year-old Emilia. And how many more mouths must we be able to feed in the future?
We exhausted ourselves trying to find a solution. We couldn’t lose hope because we had two small children depending on us. Finally, we have hope for another chance—we can start over in America, and it will provide us will everything we ever dreamed of.
Discussions have led to arguments, then back to discussions. Sometimes one of us is for the idea and the other against, then we switch sides. Whether we want them or not, we hear the opinions of other people. Whether it’s right or wrong, we don’t want it to cloud our judgment. Yes, we are young, but this must be our decision. We have to live with it for the rest of our lives. Should we wait another year and hope for better weather, or leave now before we get more in debt? It would take an excellent crop to pay off our bills and give us food and money to last for the rest of this year.
If we decide to wait a few more years, will there still be land in America, or will it all be given away before we get there? What happens to us if we get there and can’t find land, or they stop giving it away? How do we make a living? How will we finance the trip and have money to start over? We don’t own much, so we don’t have much to sell.
What is the current cost of the ship passage? Will we survive the trip? What about sickness on board and sea storms? How long does it take to get to America?
How much extra money do we need for train or wagon transportation, for food and board along the way? Where are we going to settle once we get to America? Can we get land near the boat dock, or do we have to go west? How far west? What kind of grains can we grow there? Is it different from here, and will we know how to plant and harvest it?
We can’t speak English. The questions and obstacles grow every day. Questions have been flooding our house, spoken and unspoken, for months.
Every December 12 we pour new-brewed ale on the roots of the vårdträd in memory of our ancestors who lived and died on this farm. This family tree in front of the house has become Samuel’s solitary thinking post. He stands out there many nights asking his mother what to do, arguing with a ghost as he tries to find the answer.
My searching thoughts have been part of my everyday tasks as I take care of the children, the cooking, and cleaning. Rarely have I had a moment like this to concentrate on the decision that faces us.
My concerns have been different from Samuel’s. I am confident he can provide for us with some form of employment, at least temporarily, until we find a farm. But I can’t decide if I am strong enough to leave our parents and sisters and brothers behind. We may never venture back to Sweden again. My head tells me to go for our children, but my heart tells me to stay with my parents.
The decision has been made that we will leave this May. We want to find land and get our first crop planted this spring so that we will have food and money for the rest of the year. I wish I were sure we are making the right decision.
I hear the first call of the gök. It came from the west. I’m relieved that the last time I hear this bird’s prediction, it is a good omen. Now I know it is the direction we must take this year. West, across the ocean to America.
I never imagined us leaving this spot on earth, but we have no choice but to make our way to a new land. We won’t have much to take with us, but reports of the Promised Land make us think we don’t need to bring much along. This trip is for the survival of my children. Besides providing them with food and clothing, I want to give them the chance to prosper on the land of their own. And the first step is to look for a new home across the sea.
