Twelve years ago I wrote a post here thanking this country for taking my mother and her parents in (click here to read it). Today on the 250th, I want to honor my hard-working Norwegian ancestors, who came in the late 1800s.
My father, Larry Munson, with his Dad, Lawrence J. Munson in about 1940
Below are some excerpts from letters my Norwegian grandfather, born in Christiansand, wrote many years later to his son. He describes his emigration at the age of 6 with his family and their arrival in Brooklyn, N.Y., where there was an enclave of Norwegian immigrants. (click here for all the letters.)
What America was I did not know, but I had imbibed enough of family talk to realize it was a land of plenty and an interesting place to go to.
[…]
My first impression was naturally that of wonder at everything new and strange. It was a great adventure into new and different conditions. My second reaction was one I shared with my mother – that of disappointment at the dirt and filth in Brooklyn in the summer of 1884. Goats were walking the streets eating the paper that littered the street.
[…]Munson family in 1909 celebrating 25 years in America
My mother […] pictured the U.S. as wealthy and prosperous, and here was poverty and unrestrained drinking.
[…]
In our little Norsetown the streets were clean and in almost every house you would see potted geraniums or other flowers in the front windows. There were many poor people but they were clean and orderly, and there was no public display of poverty.
[…]
My mother with her family of eight children felt she was too busy to learn a new language, and the children did all the shopping. It was only later on as she would hear the children glibly jabber on in this new tongue, that she wanted to know more of this new language. Her children used English among ourselves – especially when we did not want mother to know of our exploits.
My grandfather would later marry a piano student of his, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants (who totally approved!). He wrote about their courtship in his diary.
