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The interview was conducted with Anna Haugen on April
4, 1983 in Seattle, Washington. This interview contains information
on life in Norway, family background, famous relatives, school and
church life in Norway, Christmas traditions, work in Norway, WWI in
Trondheim, preparation for emigration, voyage to America, life in
North Dakota, learning English, voyage to Tacoma, work in Tacoma and
Seattle, reasons for marrying late, and return trips to Norway. Also
available are two photographs of Anna Haugen at the time of the
interview. The interview was conducted in English.
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Anna (Aunli) Haugen was born on December 24, 1897 in
Hemne, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway, and was one of seven children by
Ingeborg and Andreas Halvorson Aunli; her father, Andreas, was a
fisherman and did odd jobs. She went to school, and attended church
in Kyrksaeteroera, which was a forty-five minute walk away, where
she was confirmed at age 14. After confirmation, she worked for two
years as a housekeeper for a minister in Trondheim, and after she
finished school, she worked on an estate haying. In March 1915, her
older sister, Ellen, who was married and lived in North Dakota, sent
Anna a ticket to come to the U.S. At that time, Anna was milking
cows on a different farm in Selva, Norway, and she went home to
Hemne and stayed with her family for a month before leaving. She
went through Liverpool, England, and the ship had to travel a
different route because of the threat from German war planes and
submarines, a redirection that made the trip last two weeks instead
of one. The ship landed in Montreal, Canada, and she took a train to
Chicago and the Milwaukee Road line to North Dakota. She got a job
in a restaurant owned by a Danish woman, Mrs. Evans, starting as a
dishwasher and then advancing to cook status. When Anna had been in
the U.S. for six months and was living in Bowman, ND, Ellen died;
because she was only 17, Anna then needed a guardian. Her
brother-in-law did not want the responsibility, so Markland, a
Swedish hardware store owner from Scranton, ND, took over her
guardianship. Anna moved to Tacoma on July 4, 1916 after the Sagens,
neighbors from Norway, heard of Ellen's death and invited Anna to
live with them. She was first employed in Tacoma by an English lady
with two children, but she soon quit this job because she could not
burn a light in her room. Her second position was with the Dempseys,
a prominent lumber family in Tacoma, where she took care of the two
children for two and a half years. After this, she cooked at Camp
Daniher (?), a lumber camp in Darrington, WA that was named after
Mr. Dempsey's father, until WWI was over in 1918 [sic]. She later
worked at Camp #3 in Clear Lake until the lumber camps closed in
1921. She then got a job at City Dry Cleaners in Seattle, where she
worked for 22 years. Before she took her first trip to Norway in
1930, the owner of the dry cleaners died, and the shop changed hands
and was renamed Troy Cleaners. Anna worked at Troy for five months
and then transferred to I. Magnin where she worked in alterations
for two years; she then returned to Troy Cleaners. She first met her
husband, John Haugen, at a Christmas party at her rented house on
Minor Street in Seattle. John came to America in 1924 and worked in
the woods at first; he later worked at Puget Sound Window Cleaners.
They married in 1942 after knowing each other for twenty years
[sic], and had no children. Anna revisited Norway in 1965, traveling
alone because John was feeling too ill to go; he died of a heart
attack while she was in Hemne, and it took fourteen days before she
could get a plane back to the U.S. She has been a life member of the
Sons of Norway but does not participate in the activities. She also
states she is an "old-fashioned Lutheran," though she seldom attends
church. |
