Seward Peterson

Excerpt from From Norway to North America: The Descendants in Canada and the United States of Olaf and Caroline Pederson" by Jean E. Peterson, 1981 - Pages 31 to 32B.

Comments and Memories About Seward Peterson From Conversations of Ella Magnus and Lawrence Peterson, August 17, 1980; and Lawrence, Lyle, and Harlen Peterson, May 6, 1981:

Ella: Uncle Siewart, he was kind of clever. …He was smart. He was kind of a justice of the peace, before there was a court house around. …He had court and everything there, in his house. …Alfred has a book of his dad’s. …Uncle Seward, he had to write, well, a lot of that stuff; he had to write, you know, to settle it.

Lawrence: He married people and everything there, you know; that was a regular court. …He kept a record of everything.

Lawrence: There was a couple down (there), and, by golly, they wasn’t married, you see, and then, by golly, they made quite a fuss about it. So Seward was down there and was gonna try and make ‘em get married. And she was homlier than a mud fence – I never seen anyone so homely in my life. And the man said it was all right the way it was. “Well,” Seward says, “you better get married.” “Ah, will du ha Bukka da, du ha Bukka da?” (“You have her, then!”)

Ella: I can remember when that man come to our place to visit with Dad (Charlie), and boy, we were scart when he come over. We were really scart when he’d come over.

Lawrence: Whenever he went to Langdon, he’d stop to our place; he’d stop for coffee…

Ella: And he’d never want to sit at the table.

Lawrence: No, he’d stand up! …And they said, “Oh, sit down.” “No,” he said, “it runs down better this way.”

The man was carrying some guns, and Seward went down to talk him out of carrying guns, going armed. He told the old man, “I’m the constable, now.” “Oh,” he says, “I’m a constable now, too!” …So he got the best of Seward , too.

Lawrence: He couldn’t get by with that one!

 

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Seward was a trapper and hunter. Dad (Adolph) never done any trappin’. But Seward, he could put up a trap, you know, and catch a lynx or somethin’ like that … quick, then. He was awful sharp with trapping.

Lyle: Funny how those guys (Seward and Adolph) could be that much different between ‘em.

Lawrence: No, and Seward was not much for, never done any blacksmithing or anything like that. … But Dad and Pete done a little, but Seward didn’t want to.

And then we got to come down here, and there was an Indian out here, and he come talkin’, and they used to be up at Pembina, too, where Grandpa and the folks lived. And so Seward was trapping up there, too, and Indians were trapping, too. So this Indian was talkin’ about it, and he says, “My brother died from a heart attack out when he was trapping.” “Yeah,” Dad said, “My older brother is the one that found ‘im.” He found a dead Indian. …Oh, they really talked then!

Then, you know, Seward poisoned wolves, and coyotes; that was poison meat, so he hung ‘em up in a tree, away up in a tree. The Indians come around, ad they wanted the carcass. “Oh, no,” Seward said. “They’re poisoned; make man sick! Kill him.” “No, no, cook ‘em; cook ‘em good; poison all go out.” So they went to work and they cut the carcasses down and et ‘em. Cooked them and the poison went out!

Harlen: They knew that, eh?

Lawrence: Yes. Pretty smart.

Lyle: He didn’t get along too badly with the Indians there, then?

Lawrence: Oh, no, they was good friends with the Indians.

 

Memories and Stories Told by Lawrence A. Peterson in Conversations of U.S. Thanksgiving weekend, November 1981:

Lyle asked his dad to tell about the attitude of the older folks toward the coming of telephones to the Vang area:

Lawrence: Well, first, you see, it was Ed and I and the Huag boys put in a little one. Run it on the barbwire fence. Got over to a neighbor, he wasn’t gonna let it run on the barbed wire; afraid it would kill the cows! And we had to build a quarter of a mile of line; there wasn’t any fence, and we got that in. And, by golly, you know, when that got in, why everybody was telephone crazy then. And some of the older guys wouldn’t allow (us) to bore a hole to run the wire in. And Seward was one, you know. He wouldn’t have it – they had to lift up the window and put a wire in under the window. Herman and Alvin and them put in the phone, you see.

So then it was a bad snowstorm; and, by golly, he run out of tobacco. He (was) pacing the floor and pacing the floor, and finally, he shut a couple of doors and got into where that telephone was. And he called up Lars, and he wanted to know if he had any tobacco? “Oh, yes,” he had lots of tobacco; “Have you got any flour over there?” Yah, he had lots of flour. “Well,” he said, “we could follow the fence and we won’t get lost.” And he said, “You strike out with a sack of True-Smoke and I’ll have about 25 lb. of flour,” and so they met, you see. And then they turned around and come back and, boy, he was whistling like everything, then. He was smokin’! …So the next telephone meeting he was one of the first ones there!

Lyle: He figured it was something really served a purpose, then!

Lawrence: There were 60 telephones on barbed wire fences before spring. … I and the different ones, you know, was on the phone; and there was an old nosy guy there and he was rubbering all the time, listening to us. Finally he said, “Why don’t you boys go to bed so I can get some sleep?” I says, “All you gotta do is hang up that receiver and go to sleep. We won’t bother ye!”

 

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Jean: Your cousin Alfred plays the fiddle, too?

Lawrence: He plays the fiddle and he’s got a mouth-organ – the biggest blame mouth-organ you ever saw – there were many of ‘em all in a row, around. And he really could play that mouth organ! …And Lester plays the comb.

Oh, we was down to Oberon, you know, where they had that reunion, [The Peterson Family Reunion at Oberon, N.D. was held on Saturday, 28 June 1975.] ....

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When it was mentioned that Marilyn Christianson wrote that Seward and Anna’s cabin had been moved to the museum at Dresden, N.D., Lawrence replied:

Ellen and I was over there. You see, that’s west of Langdon and a little north. “Tisn’t too far, but it’s only open Sunday afternoons. But there’s a lot of history there of Langdon. The one that was lookin’ after it, you know, why I knew a lot of them from way back; and, by golly, I told her more than she could tell me about things! She said, “Boy, that’d been interesting!”

The old Doc McQueen’s office was there. He was kinda the original doctor in the area – he was the old standby. And, of course, he didn’t do any operatin’; and there was a pair there, you know, McQueen and Stromberg. They were together, and Stromberg says, “Well, you gonna go for anything for medicine, well, you better go to McQueen, because he has got it over on me, but,” he said, “when it gets to the knife, why then I’ve got it over on him!” He pulled quite a few through tough operations.

Nineteen--, I would say it was about 1915, why one of our neighbors went down to Mayo Clinic) and they told him to go home and get ready to die because he wouldn’t live more than a year; and he come back, and, of course, felt down-hearted. Dr. Stromberg was new at Langdon. So Dad kept talkin’ to him and wanted him to go in and see Stromberg. So he went in there and Stromberg examined him, and “Well,” he says, “Mr. L., your chances ain’t so good; but, I give you one chance out of nine of being a man again. But you’ve got to take that chance today, because I won’t touch you if you go any further.” Oh, he started talking about the chores and stuff. “Oh,” Dad says, “don’t you worry about the chores. Nellie and the little girl, they can stay at our place.” And he operated on him and he slept with him the first night. And, by golly, you know, that man lived for 40 years after that!

…Strong, husky fella. Well, he was a fine doctor. Alvin, my cousin, he got shot right through the stomach, you know; he had 5 holes and 3 tears in the intestine, and he’s still livin’! …Yah, he was quite a doctor. He didn’t live to be very old – too hard on himself – on the go all the time. During the flu there three months he never hit a bed. He slept in his rig while they were haulin’ him around.

Lyle: When did Stromberg come into that area?

Lawrence: Let’s see, I think he come in there about ’12 or ’13 (1912 or 1913), something like that. … Before that, it was McQueen and Sample.

 

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