In their own words
Typed by handAs I Remember It
The memoir Pete Amoth typed himself. Eighteen pages, carried as far as 1951 and stopped mid-story in a Navy barracks.
Recorded, 2011 and 2013Teep
Pete on the North Dakota farm his family wasn’t allowed to keep, recorded by his son Carl in 2011 and 2013. He’s less guarded out loud than on the page.
IllustrationWritten home, 1895–96The Long Way to Langdon
Carl Aamodt and his brother Torval try Alberta for a winter and come back by wagon through Montana, writing home to Minnie and little Guy.
The family lines
Norway, NumedalThe Kjemhus Story
Numedal, a Norwegian valley, and the farms whose names became surnames.
Norway, the farmsNumedal
The valley the Kjemhus line came from, its farms on a map with who lived on each, and the place in North Dakota its emigrants named after it.
From the records, 1580–1997The family’s journeys
One map, played from the Lehøvd deed to the graves at Langdon: the Kjemhus farms up Numedal, the crossings of 1887 and 1905 with their ships, and the three homesteads on the Canadian line.
Scotland, from 1659The McGregor Saga
A weaver’s son from near Musselburgh, Scotland, who crossed the Atlantic as a boy and became the Old Scot Preacher, and the family that followed him west to Tennessee and Mississippi.
From the recordsKnute Stenerson
Clara Kjemhus’s grandfather left Veggli in 1887 and built lumberyards across the Red River Valley with his brothers. His daughter Bergit was Clara’s mother.
From the records, 1887The Rollo and the Toronto
Halvor and Kjersti Kjemhus sold the farm and took four children to Christiania, Hull, Liverpool and Quebec in steerage, bound for a railroad town in Minnesota. A fifth was born that October. Halvor had a year in America, or less.
From the records, 1894–1928North to the Line
Steinar Kjemhus filed on a homestead whose north edge was Canada, and his mother and brothers followed him to the hills above the Pembina River, to a settlement named Numedahl. How the farm’s name became the family’s.
From the recordsBergit Kjemhus
Clara’s mother, born at Møgstu two days before the Kjemhus family sailed. In 1905 she crossed in steerage on the same ship as her father, a deck above in second cabin, and married Tollef on Syttende Mai 1906.
From the recordsCarl Amoth
Pete’s grandfather sailed from Christiania in 1888 on a prepaid ticket to Chicago. By 1894 he signed himself Carl G. Amoth; his church went on writing Aamodt.
IllustrationFrom the local papers, 1913–24Days in the Life of Carl and Mina Amoth
Carl and Mina in the Moscow Township news: choir practice at the house, blueberries from the Pembina River and a Ladies Aid picnic in “Carl Amoth’s grove.”
From the records, 1903–1997Chris and Clara Amoth
A bashful boy at a confirmation in 1919, a sleigh ride in 1928, two homesteads bought, 960 acres farmed, and the day in 1953 the house burned down.
IllustrationA book, in draftThe Wild Fiddler of Numedal
Eighty-eight pages on the Kjemhus line and the valley it came out of, written as a book. A draft—read it as a work in progress and say what’s wrong.
Written at the time
Yours
Got one? Written down, recorded on a phone, or told to Carl over dinner: send it, and it goes here with your name on it.