The roof must be up before the new crop was ripe. They were three timber-men, as Danjel and Jonas Petter were helping him. The walls grew a little bit each day, while Jonas Petter sang the timberman’s song. They were building higher than they had before — this main house would have two stories.
And the three ax hammers fell heavily against the solid timbers, in rhythm to the song:
What’s your daughter doing tonight?
What’s your daughter doing tonight?
What’s your timberman’s daughter doing tonight?
Four years had passed since the building song last was heard on this homestead. In the log cabin they had timbered them, two new human lives had been lit. Karl Oskar’s hands had changed the contours of the ground; many things had happened to them. For those who began life anew in Minnesota Territory, a span of four years equaled more than eight had they stayed in the old, quiet, unchanging home village.
It was the log cabin’s last summer as a home. One period was coming to an end in the lives of the immigrant family; their log-cabin days were ending.
X. SURVEYING THE FOREST
— 1—
On the twenty-fourth day of May that year, the immigrants from Sweden met in Petrus Olausson’s barn and formed the first Lutheran parish in the St. Croix Valley.
Fifty-eight grown persons were registered as members of the congregation, and forty children. Pastor Erland Törner was chosen as minister, and Petrus Olausson as warden. It was agreed eventually to construct a church, but until it could be built, a smaller building was to be erected and used for a school, parish meeting hall, and church.
In the sermon which Pastor Törner preached in the barn on the day of the founding of the parish, he said that the immigrants of the Territory were in the same situation as the first Christians were after the Master’s ascension: the disciples had also been without a temple in which to worship their God and had therefore met under the open skies, or in caves, or in shepherds’ huts. Here the immigrant Swedes were holding their meeting in a barn, which had been built for the storage of crops from the fields. But when Christ’s Church was founded today, ninety-eight sheaves of that nobler crop of human souls had been gathered.
The founder of Christianity was born in a stable. It was utterly fitting that the first Christian congregation in the wilderness be founded in a barn.
— 2—
May 24, 1854, was a great day for the Swedes in the St. Croix Valley; in joining together in this first congregation, they laid the foundation for a new community.
During the first years their most urgent needs had been for food and shelter for themselves and their animals. Not until these needs had been met could they make preparations to fill their spiritual needs. This order had been in effect for Man since the beginning of time.
These people came from the same land and they were already united in a common language, and by similar customs and usages. But the life of the Swedish village had provided an anchorage which they missed here; the church and the church green had been the community center, intimately involved with life’s great happenings. In their new land they were parishioners without parish or church. And so they now strove for a new center to replace the one they had lost when they emigrated.
In the home village the church and the church green had been the gathering place where both spiritual and worldly needs had been satisfied. From the pulpit they had heard both the Holy Word and important announcements concerning animals for studs, auctions, farms for sale. From the pulpit prayers were read for parishioners seriously sick, or lately deceased; the banns of matrimony were proclaimed. Everything of importance that had happened in the parish from Sunday to Sunday was announced from the pulpit. On the church green they met every Sunday relatives and friends and were made aware that they belonged to a group greater than the family.
The immigrants would now build a church and a church green and found a new parish for themselves.
They would have to begin — as with everything here — from the very beginning. They must find a teacher and a house for their children’s schooling; they must elect a governing board for their parish and school; they must establish a mediation board where disagreements could be settled in their own language; they must organize a district and elect representatives who could speak for them in the territorial government.
In the homeland they had been subjects of the Crown and its authority; here they were their own temporal and church authority. There were no laws laid down by authorities they had not helped to elect. Their new parish was a free parish; no bishops or deans had power over them; they themselves were the church power.
In their new situation, however, demands were made on them unknown in the homeland. There was no oppressive authority but by the same token they were without aid from any authority. They alone were responsible for their parish and could expect no help from others. Whether a church would be built where they could enjoy God’s Word, whether a schoolhouse were to be erected, if a parish hall were to be constructed for social gatherings depended on them entirely. They alone must decide and order, but they alone must also carry out their decisions and be responsible for them.
When immigrants established a new community, a price for their liberty was exacted of them. From the irresponsible, responsibility was demanded; from the selfish, a will to unified effort; from the arbitrary, willingness to listen to the opinions of others. From each of the settlers was required his ability to use his newfound liberty: in North America they were all faced with the tests of free citizens.
Because of the new country’s demands on the immigrants, capabilities would be developed for which they had had no use in the homeland. They changed America — and America changed them.
— 3—
Four of the Swedish-born settlers met early one June morning and walked together through the wilderness. They had set out to choose a place where their community could bury its dead; these four men had accepted the responsibility of selecting the cemetery site for the new congregation.
Once before they had walked in company through the forest. Then they had been seekers of land. They had gone out to choose the ground where they would settle down and live out the rest of their lives. Today they were selecting the ground where they were to be buried.
It was a calm and bright morning; the St. Croix Valley spread out under a clear sky. A heavy dew had nourished the earth during the night — grass, herbs, and leaves were still moist and exuded a fragrance as after rain. To the west the Indian cliff had doffed its night shawl of fog and vapor and turned its brown-gleaming brow toward the eastern morn. The fertile ground was beginning to warm itself in the suns fire. The oppressive summer heat had not yet begun but the earth was already in the cycle of fertility: growth had begun, fresh — green and potent, and the thickets were full and lush. The fields displayed their promise of crops in shoots and stalks, in buds and boughs, in blades and blooms, in grass and growth — in all the clear, shining verdure of the earth.
The four men walked southeast, through a deep valley with thick stands of leaf trees. They passed through groves of red oak and black oak, black and white walnut, elm, and linden trees. They penetrated thickets of raspberries and wild roses, blackberries and sloe-berries — huge, thorny bushes. Here wild plum trees stood in full bloom, here grew black cherries, the biggest of all the cherry trees, their smooth, thick trunks much taller than a man. Round and about the men was all the summer’s wild splendor, soon to bring forth berries and fruit. Today the valley displayed to them its greenery and glitter of blossoming light as if it would bud and bloom and gleam forever.