Women as neighbors depended on each other for advice in cooking and raising children and for conversation. The men didn’t need much conversation, but they did need help from one another. In the beginning, if money was scarce, they swapped crops, and Lordor provided free milk for the children and cheese and butter for the adults in exchange for hay and wheat to feed his horses and cows.
In 1895, when the Swensens’ barn burned, the men all pulled together and had another one up in less than a week. And the next winter, when Katrina was so sick with childbed fever, Lars Swensen had ridden all night in a snowstorm to bring the doctor and, according to him, had saved her life. And no thanks were needed or expected. He knew Lordor would have done the same for him. And when they gave a dinner to raise money to build a silo, the Knotts donated a pig to be roasted, Birdie Swensen gave twenty of her chickens, and Mrs. Lindquist made the pies. Katrina baked the bread and the almond tart and brought cheese and coffee. It was a good dinner. Katrina loved the fried chicken. But since the pig had been a close relative of Sweet Potato’s, she passed on the roasted pork dish. It was a friendly and welcoming community, but there came a time when that was sorely put to the test.
In May 1897, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Mims came and settled in on a plot of land and then proceeded to borrow money from just about everyone to build their house. As time went by, it became clear the man was a drunk and of as low a moral character as they had ever seen. The wife was no better. When Henry Knott came to their house to inquire about a payment on a loan, she informed him she had ways to repay the debt, other than money, and nearly scared him to death. He ran out of the house so fast, he tripped over his own shoes trying to get back home to Mrs. Knott. They gave the couple another year, but no crops were planted nor debts paid. Lordor called a meeting.
One night, a few weeks later, while the couple was enjoying an unexpected invitation for a free supper at the Knott farm, their entire house was quietly being taken apart, board by board, nail by nail, and neatly packed in a wagon, along with all their belongings. By the time they got home, there was nothing but a packed wagon sitting in the middle of an empty lot. They got the hint and took off and never came back.
Nobody talked about it. It wasn’t anything they were proud of, but as Lars Swensen said to his wife, “Sometimes, Birdie, you just have to take the worm out of the apple.”
Katrina not only made Lordor a good wife and everyone a kind and dependable neighbor, she also helped grow the community with their own two children, first Teddy and then a little girl named Ingrid, in honor of Katrina’s mother.
In 1890, the U.S. Census had reported a population of seventy-four people resided in the community of Swede Town. By 1900, it had more than doubled.
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LONG BEFORE KATRINA HAD left Chicago, she had grown tired of the dirt and soot and the rush of city life. She truly loved the fresh air and the quiet of the country. But after giving birth to their first child, Katrina had found out firsthand what a hardship it was to be so far away from a doctor and to have to travel so far to the nearest store to buy the things required to run a proper home.
One day, she said, “Lordor, we need a real town here…with our own stores.” Lordor realized she was right. More and more farm families were moving there, and it was hard on the women to have to travel so far, especially in the winter.
That night, Lordor sat down at the kitchen table with pencil and paper and a ruler and drew up a rough set of plans for a downtown area. After they had brought in the crops that year, the men got busy and laid out four neat, wide streets, then planted elm trees on each side for shade. That completed, they sent off to Chicago for a Lyman-Bridges architecture catalog. When it came, they picked out some mail-order ready-made prefabricated stores, a church, a meeting hall, and a few houses for the merchants to live in. They felt that they were getting a good price. You could get a store for under eight hundred dollars and a church building with pews and a meeting hall all for around five thousand dollars, so they pooled their money and had it all shipped by rail.
Three months later, Lordor and some of the men met the train in Springfield, loaded their new downtown stores in wagons, and brought them home. After they had put up the new church, the stores, and everything they had ordered, they realized it would be good if they came up with a new name for their brand-new town.
A meeting was held in their new meeting hall, and some suggested calling it Nordstrom, Missouri, since Lordor had founded it, but he was against it. “No,” he said. “This is everybody’s town now.” One man said they should name it Brand New, Missouri. The Norwegian suggested Fiddletown, and after much discussion of fancier names such as Athens, Paris, Gastonia, and Utopia, Lordor suggested that maybe they should pick a more honest and simpler name. “We don’t want to mislead people,” he said.
A few hours later, they finally decided on Elmwood Springs, Missouri. “That’s not misleading,” said Mr. Knott. “We’ve got the elms and the springs. Now let’s vote, so I can go home and eat.” A vote was taken, and the name was passed with only one holdout for Paris, Missouri, from Birdie Swensen. At that same meeting, Lordor Nordstrom was unanimously voted in as their first mayor, and then Henry Knott went home and had cream noodles and apple dumplings for dinner.
With a new mayor, a new name, and new buildings, the next step for Elmwood Springs was to run an advertisement in the newspapers back east.
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ATTENTION: PROFESSIONAL MEN!
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We implore those who are contemplating traveling west to engage in business of any kind to come to Elmwood Springs, Missouri. No better or more desirable place can be found in the entire state. Situated in a green valley with some of the most beautiful freshwater springs, on as pretty a site as could be selected, and composed of a class of people who for energy and enterprise are not excelled. We need a doctor, a dentist, and a storekeeper to carry farm goods, medicines, ready-made overalls, and bonnets and notions for the ladies. Also, one Lutheran preacher. Not too fiery.
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Lordor read the advertisement Birdie Swensen had written and thought it might have been gilding the lily just a bit, but sent it anyway. They needed all the help they could get to lure professional men to move there.
All over the West and Midwest, small communities once called Little Poland or Little Italy or German Town were changing their names, becoming more American, and hoping to grow. Elmwood Springs was lucky. Within the year, they had a doctor, a barber who could pull teeth if necessary, and one Lutheran preacher named Edwin Wimsbly. Not too fiery, as requested.
1901