Tollef Halvorsen Kjemhus

Tollef Halvorsen was born at Kjemhus in Veggli in January 1871, the second son of Halvor Stenersen and Kjersti Tollefsdatter. His father farmed and dealt in timber until a slump, debts he had guaranteed and failing health cost him the farm, sold in 1886. In May 1887, at sixteen, Tollef left with his parents and brothers and sister on the Rollo to Hull and the Toronto from Liverpool to Quebec, bound for western Minnesota. Bergit Knudsdatter, whom he would marry, was born at Møgstu, the next farm, two days before they sailed. His youngest brother, Peder, was born at Dawson that fall, and his father died within a year.

The 1895 census still has him at Dawson. His obituary fills in the next years: a winter in the woods, work on the railroad, and a sickness in Minneapolis, after which he came north to Langdon, caught a ride to the Torgerson place near Elkwood, and walked to his family in Fremont Township, on the Canadian line. His brother Steinar had filed there in 1894 and his mother in 1897. Tollef filed on his own quarter in June 1899, and the 1900 census found him on it, twenty-nine and single, the farm his own. In the early years he cut timber in the winters and hauled it to Morden and the other Manitoba towns to trade for food and clothing.

On May 17, 1906, at Grand Forks, he married Bergit, who had come over alone the year before. Their only child, Clara, was born the next January. They farmed in Fremont Township for decades and were members of the Nore church at NumedahlNumedahl A Norwegian farming community in Cavalier County, North Dakota, named by its settlers after Numedal, the valley in Norway. Tollef Kjemhus farmed there, and his grandson Pete spent boyhood summers on his farm. Numedal and Numedahl →, where they kept their fiftieth anniversary in 1956. Pete Amoth, Clara’s son, spent boyhood summers on the farm, and the old man called him gutten, the boy.

In the fall of 1961 Tollef and Bergit moved to Langdon. She died in April 1962. Clara cared for him through the winter; in February 1963 he went into the nursing home at Walhalla, and nine days later he was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in Langdon with pneumonia. He died there on February 16, 1963, at ninety-two, and is buried beside Bergit at Lebanon Cemetery in Langdon.

The family comes north

Steinar’s claim on the border, the three homesteads, the railroad years and the walk from the Torgersons’, and the rest of his life on the farm.

Bergit’s story

Her crossing in 1905, the wedding on Syttende Mai, and the farm and Langdon.

The crossing, 1887

The Rollo and the Toronto, and the week Bergit was born.