An Egebo Story

Where Signe first lived

Signe (on the left) stands next to the house where she was born during a visit to Norway with family and friends in the early 1990s.

Bogstad Gard (As it looks today)

Johan and Lena (Hansen) Johnson were among about 65 employees in the early 1900s who served the owners of Bogstad Gard outside of Oslo, Norway. The several hundred acre estate once belonged to Peder Anker who was named Norway's first prime minister in 1814.
"My dad worked in the field. You know there was a lot of land there," Signe recalled of the stories her parents told her.
Johan was one of the farm managers, likely tending crops such as oats, potatoes, and grass hay.
Lena, one of five milk maids at Bogstad, helped care for about 100 cows at the farm's large dairy.
"My mother milked 20 cows in the morning and 20 in the evening," Signe said. "You see the milk wagon came at 7 O' clock in the morning from Oslo to get the milk and 7 O'clock in the evening because you had to get it fresh from the farm (then)."
Lena woke at 4 a.m. to milk every morning. After she was finished with the milking she could have breakfast and even go back to sleep if she wished. And then it started all over again that afternoon with the second milking.
One of Signe's uncles, a Hansen, was the dairy manager.

Signe's story

Signe Marie Johnson came from very humble beginnings. She was born July 14, 1908 to Johan and Lena Johnson. At the time of her birth, her parents lived in a rented gatehouse on Bogstad Herregard, a prominent farming estate near Oslo, Norway that dates back to the middle ages.

Why I am writing this book

For those of you who ever had the pleasure of sitting down with Signe to listen to her tell one of her favorite stories, I hope you will enjoy my book, An Egebo Story. I am in the process of writing it and as a tool have created this blog to help me sort through the mountain of photos, documents and stories I have collected during this several year process. Many of the stories came from interviews that I and my uncle Warren (Signe and Isak's only son) did with her in the later years of her life.

The inspiration for this book and now this blog came from a family history book written by Milt Anderson, a cousin of my father's. Several years ago he wrote a family history of the Pearson and Anderson families in both Sweden and America. He traced back the family some 150 years -- from 1880s Sweden across the ocean to the eastern South Dakota community of Center. His work led to a great collection of photos, stories and family trees.

Researching Isak's and Signe's stories has not been easy but it's also been rewarding. I hope you enjoy the results.

Their first meeting

On a Spring Saturday night in 1931, two young and pretty women took a stroll down Phillips Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to catch their favorite band, the Brekke Orchestra from Baltic.

All the Norwegian immigrants who had settled in the Sioux Falls area loved the music and fellowship at Mandskor Hall and Signe Marie Johnson and her best friend were no exception.

Born in Oslo, Norway, Signe, now 23, came to America with her family when she was just three years old. She moved to Sioux Falls a couple of years earlier to find work as a nanny and housekeeper for some wealthy families.

As she and her friend walked across the dance floor that night, Isak Salvesen Egebo, a tall drink of water with a thich Norwegian accent, took notice. He had watched her dance with other men during previous Saturday nights at Mandskor Hall but had never had the courage to approach her.

The 24-year-old immigrated to America just four years earlier from a little town called Konsmo in southern Norway. He used his skills in road construction from his native country to get a job in South Dakota as a road boss in Centennial Township. That was a good in that time, with as many as a quarter of the people out of work in the depression days of the 1930s.

When Signe neared Isak's chair along the wall that night, Isak knew it was his chance. Signe, in an interview some 70 years later, remembers the meeting fondly. "He said 'Where are you girls from?'," she recalled. "And so I thought, I'll try dancing with him. And he was about the best dancer I have ever danced with. It was my future husband."