While my bones know only too well the disadvantages of getting older, my mind and heart appreciate increasingly the chance to have lived among five generations of our Andersen family and to reflect on the intertwined personal histories, economics and geographies of our clan’s beginning in Muskegon and North Muskegon, Michigan.
Having lived in North Muskegon for 63 of my 73 years, I thought I’d plumb the story that had its beginnings in John W. Johnson, born in Sweden, and Caroline Augusta Johnson, born in Norway, my great grand parents. They had emigrated to Muskegon where he was an edger in one of the 47 sawmills that rimmed Muskegon Lake in the 1880s, when Muskegon’s shiploads of white pine helped to rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire. One of their three daughters, Jennie Olivia Johnson, born in Muskegon in 1878, moved to Chicago in 1893 at age 15 and worked in a laundry and as a housekeeper. This was an economic decision, as Muskegon’s lumber industry was fading, and its manufacturing base was yet to develop. In Chicago she met and married Norwegian immigrant Arne Andersen Kjelsberg, born in Norway in 1866, a streetcar conductor. And in Chicago their four children, Arnold (7/14/00), Marvin(2/6/02), Elmer(6/17/09) and Caroline (3/31/16), were born.
Jennie would travel with the children to Muskegon summers to visit her parents, crossing Lake Michigan on the Alabama, one of the famed Lake Michigan steamships that sailed daily between Chicago and west Michigan.
We know little of the marriage of Arne and Jenny; Arnold and Marvin spoke little of those early days, and the other two were young when they separated. We do know that Arne was a strict, hardworking taskmaster, and that Jenny was a charitable soul, much given to spiritual searching, always seeking something more in another church. We also know that Arne was committed to sending money regularly to his ambitious tenant-farmer father, Gunerius and his brother Martin, that the family might purchase the Kjelsberg farm near Grue, Norway.
Perhaps the separation was born of irreconcilable temperamental differences, perhaps it resulted from differing economic and financial priorities. We don’t know, nor should we speculate. Jennie returned to Muskegon with the two youngest children, Elmer, 8 and Caroline, 14 months in the summer of 1917. She initially stayed with her two older sisters, Eleanor and Lilian in their home on Houston Avenue as her mother had died in 1912. Later that summer, Arnold, 17 and Marvin, 15 scraped together whatever funds they could gather, and boarded the Alabama for Muskegon. Reunited with their mother the young family moved into a home at 86 Smith Street in Muskegon. They never saw their father again.
Jennie Johnson Andersen took in laundry to earn money to help support the family while caring for the youngest. Arnold, the oldest at age 17, dropped out of Muskegon High School and went to work at the E. H. Sheldon Company. Mr Sheldon, a shop teacher in Chicago, invented a rapid advance wood-working vice, came to Muskegon with his invention, and started the E H. Sheldon Company to manufacture benches and laboratory furniture to be sold to schools. Marvin also worked at the E.H. Sheldon Company after school as did Elmer after school at age 14, then the legal age for factory employment.
Mr. Sheldon took a great interest in the young ambitious Andersen family, and all three boys went to work at Sheldon full time after graduating from high school - deferring their college educations. Marvin and Elmer went into sales. Marvin’s territory was in New York and Elmer was sent to Minneapolis. Caroline was still in school in Muskegon.
About this time several successful industrialists in Muskegon - L.C. Walker, E.H. Sheldon, George Cannon and Ira Wyant saw the opportunity for a real estate development stretching from Bear Lake to Muskegon Lake in North Muskegon. They formed the Interlaken Association and purchased approximately l00 acres, with frontage on both Muskegon and Bear Lakes. Each built a beautiful home there, two on Muskegon Lake and two on Bear Lake.
After several more homes were built , the local economy and home sales slumped. To encourage development of their real estate venture the four industrialist began to build “spec” homes and agreed to assist their key employees with financing if they would buy their homes in Interlaken. The young Andersen brothers were natural prospects for one of these homes, and after their mother died in early 1925 they pooled their resources, hired a house keeper, Mrs. Munsen, and all moved into 409 E. Circle Drive.
Arnold soon left as he had been assigned by Sheldon to install the casework and laboratory furniture for the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. He also enrolled in the University, and there in the Methodist Church choir met Eunice Northrup. In 1927 Arnold completed the installation work, and he and Eunice were married, returning to a new home at 432 E. Circle Drive, in North Muskegon.
As before, their Interlaken purchase was aided by Mr. Sheldon, across the street and down two houses from the original home. By this time Marvin and his new wife, Ella, married in April, 1931 had purchased the first home from the family, where Marvin Verne and Jeanne Marie were born. Elmer was permanently located in Minneapolis as a Sheldon sales representative. Caroline continued to live in Interlaken, moving into Arnold and Eunice’s home for several years until she attended nursing school at Columbia University in New York.
Barbara Lee Andersen Bolling was born while the family lived in that stucco home in 1930 and I was born while living there in 1934. However, economics again reared its head in that Depression year, and Arnold walked away from his investment, buying a modest home at 1714 John Street in Muskegon, and Eunice helped by directing three choirs and giving voice lessons. In 1944 our family returned to North Muskegon.
So, after often-difficult emotional moves and financially-mandated changes, two of the original American-born Andersens - Marvin, Sr. and Arnold - raised their children, Jeanne, Marvin, Barbara and Roger, in the little village of 3,500 residents that we still call home. Marilyn and I, married in 1957, moved to North Muskegon in 1958. Our little town has further nurtured our three, Marcia, Betsy and Jim, in a simple environment, difficult to be found anywhere today. Today our grandchildren are coming to love it as almost a step-back-in-time place.
There are prequels and sequels to this story, and my hope is that in issues to come others will be stimulated by memories of visits and family times to add to the North Muskegon/Muskegon Andersen story.