Emanuelson…Music filled their home

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By Eva Hallam Solberg

(published August 23, 1979, in PCN)

“To tell the truth, those days were pretty tough. There were no roads, no fences, no water. We had to walk where we were going. It took four years before we could buy some horses.”

Ada Emanuelson wasn’t complaining. She was simply telling the facts as they were, back in 1912. She and her husband, Henning, began their life on the homestead 18 miles east of Malta, near the farm where she now lives (8-79) with three of her sons: Gustav, Verner and Carl. (Henning Emanuelson died in 1972).

Born Oct. 27, 1889, in western Sweden, she was the oldest of eight children born to Alma and Adolph Johnson. Looking back in memory, she says going to Sunday School was one of her fondest memories. She was confirmed in the Lutheran church in Sweden as a girl of 14, and she has kept her faith in God over the years.

After completing seven years of schooling at that age, walking an hour each way, she began her long life of hard work, milking cows and doing field work, as well as housework for the family.

At age 18 she met Henning and went with him the following spring to the United States. They stayed with Henning’s brother in Chicago and were married in Michigan on June 27, 1908.

Read the rest of this story & many more in
"Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana"
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