New York and the sight of land  was so welcome, a place to lose the sea legs and relax momentarily if you can call going through customs relaxing.  With four little children in tow and even though their belongings were few, getting to the train station for the next long journey required their bodies to  muster all the energy possible.

Once aboard a less than luxurious passenger car, just being able to sit down and having four little children sitting, must have almost brought a faint smile to grandma Christina Maria.  The long trip across the eastern half of the United States, taking several days, again tested the patience of a weary family.

Finally arriving in Ansley, Nebraska, they were met by a Swedish family who had arrived earlier, who transported them by wagon or buggy north a few miles to Westerville and then about eight miles on to an area called Dry Valley.  Clay hills with no trees or water is what they saw, a place where they would spend the rest of their lives.  Reports indicate they spent the first winter living in a cave or dug out, carved into a clay hill in a canyon not far from where I grew up.  Not much to bring a smile to one’s face.  This barren land was now available for homesteading, the same land where just a few years earlier the Souix Indians roamed and claimed as their home.

At the first sign of spring and frost out of the ground, they began building their first house, a soddy and shortly after a church, also of sod,  both quite different than the frame house they left in Sweden, and  the church, a beautiful structure that still stands today.  The house and church, made of sod, didn’t fare quite as well.  The house was lived in for about forty years and then replaced by a frame house.  The soddy church had been built close to the cemetery, on the farm where I was born, but they made the mistake of locating it on lower ground and a huge rainstorm flooded the area.  Being made of soil, the water that engulfed the church, reduced it to no more than a mound of dirt that was visible for many years in the cornfield that we farmed.

Although the hardships were many, maybe more than bargained for, they had gained their religious freedom  and were able to  worship in the little Swedish Baptist  church. built by their own hands, from the surrounding prairie sod, for about thirty five years.

In 1910 my grandfather was buried in the Swanson Cemetery, next to that little soddy church that he had helped build.  With no more hardships to endure, ten years later grandmother Christina Maria was laid to rest beside him, hopefully with a trace of a smile on her face.

*Regarding grandma’s name in the picture.

Actually, grandma Swanson died nine years before I was  born.  The contents of this story were handed down, partly from relatives who made that trip from Sweden to America.
I just wanted to show nine years later, my other grandmother could manage a smile!

Was it that life had gotten better, or was it the chubby grandchild ( me) she was holding?