Our two featured ancestors today are “shirttail” relatives, biologically related to only certain branches of Larsons, but both of them are important to our family story.
First, born in Värmland, Sweden, this date in 1833: Olof Erickson.
Brush Creek Cemetery, Wisconsin
Olof (Swedish spelling) is the only Swede I know of buried at Brush Creek with Ole Larson and all the Norwegians. Note, however, that his wife came from Gudbrandsdalen, Norway. In fact, they lived in Norway together before immigrating. They were some of the earliest settlers in “Norwegian Valley,” donating a corner of their land for the Brush Creek church and cemetery.
Olof’s eldest son, John Erickson, married Anna Caroline Hanson. She was a niece of Ole Larson, thus Isaac’s first cousin. The families were further connected by a later marriage with the Samuelsons. That’s the biology; now, the story.
Another son of Olof Erickson became close friends with Isaac and his brothers, following a few years after them to the North Dakota homesteads. This son, Oluf Erickson, was a writer, educator, and politician, whose work I recently discovered through his grandson Eric Sizer, and through my late Uncle Ivan. Read more …
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Died on this date in 1893: Ole Ellefsen Sletten, patriarch of the Sletten clan so richly intermarried with the Larsons. Also buried at Brush Creek. Read more …
