Recollections: Jim

I have an interesting, somewhat seminal story of my immigrant roots.  I had the foresight to gather assorted facts and information several decades ago when older relatives freely shared their stories. My father’s mother migrated from rural Norway and his father from Trelleborg the southern tip of Sweden near Copenhagen Denmark. I speak the languages and have visited their original neighborhoods, including historic cemeteries to gather a lot of interesting facts. Life was simple and yet some ways dreary.  Society was rigid with little mobility and few economic opportunities. The news of America was exciting and enticing for the adventurous young people.

My father’s mother Cecilia has a unique story. While very young she bore an out of wedlock child. Her future would be a predictable life with a poor farmer. She made a bold move to leave her baby in the care of her sister and seek passage to America. One way to have American sponsor pay her passage in return for 18 months of service as a domestic servant. My father’s father William had a different challenge. He was apprenticed as a steamfitter with little direct wage and found few opportunities to advance. I believe his family helped him pay for his long passage to Minnesota. He took a very low paying laborer job when he arrived in Minneapolis in 1906. My father’s parents met at a social gathering Dania Hall near the seven corners area in South Minneapolis. After a brief courtship they were married and continued to live in Minneapolis. As Minneapolis residences converted from coal to natural gas there was ample work and the family including my father and aunt thrived.

Later our family story had a heart-breaking challenge. My paternal grandfather, the breadwinner, developed a severe heart condition during the 1930’s and could not do heavy work. As a response, my father’s parents developed a novel solution. In the same South Minneapolis Scandinavian neighborhood, they found an empty underutilized building. They divided the building into 15 separate sleeping rooms and rented them to recent Scandinavian immigrants. Residents could obtain breakfast, a packed lunch and return at the end of the work day for a nutritious supper in a dining room with a radio and phonograph. My father and his lovely (accordion playing) sister grew up in the company of up to 15 adult males. Some of the most colorful family stories are remembered from this austere Boarding House era during the 1930’s.

My mother’s family name is Scanlon, almost pure Irish.   Immediately before living in Minneapolis, the Scanlon’s lived 40 miles south of Minneapolis in the small historic railroad towns Farmington and Elko where her father was Station Manager. Imagine my mother and her four siblings lived their childhood in a series of Railroad stations during my grandfather’s 50-year career for the Milwaukee Railroad.   My mother’s father Francis (nicknamed Pat) grew up in the small town of Adams, MN near Austin (famous for their Spam canned meat). James Scanlon, Francis’ father was born in Montreal Canada in August 1866. We know that James’s father was John Scanlon and his mother was named Jane. John was born County Wicklow and Jane in County Sligo in Ireland. They were married in 1848 in Ireland. The chief reason for the migration was The Great Potato Famine (a massive crop failure due to a fungal disease). While still a young man John migrated first to New York and served with the Union Army and fought in several Civil War battles including Gettysburg. After the war he migrated to southern Minnesota to participate in the rapidly expanding railroad industry and started a family of five children including my grandfather Francis.  My mother’s maternal grandmother Harriet was born in Vermont April 1865. I have names and relevant live dates of her grandparents’ parents that migrated there from England.

The eventful odyssey of   two families Nelson and Scanlon joined together in the late 1930’s.  The two families lived directly across the street from one another in South Minneapolis. My father was Walter Nelson and my mother Frances Scanlon, together was an old fashioned love story. They were married in 1940 and I was born in 1943.  My daughter, Kristin from my first marriage has Dutch ethnicity. Her grandparents immigrated to Minnesota in 1953. My current wife Nenita immigrated to Minnesota in 2012. Many of our social friends are immigrants from the Philippines, so we have an opportunity to explore and appreciate and preserve some of the beautiful and interesting details of each culture.

There are some common threads from my immigrant’s roots. The immigrant experience tends to highly value three human qualities. One is that all worthwhile achievements are the product of hard work. Second, our strong healthy family relationship are vital to our well-being. Third we should always be willing to lend a helping hand to those in need.