Ove and Ragnhild Syverson: 52 Ancestors 2020 Prompt “Handed Down”

Ove Syverson: 1840-1882

Ragnhild Olsdatta Ve: 1848-1933

Handing Down a Family’s Cultural History: The Syverson Immigration Trunk

Our family was very fortunate to inherit a wonderful piece of our family’s history: a handmade and hand-decorated trunk used by my great-grandparents when they emigrated from Norway in 1869.

Ove Syverson was born on December 31, 1840, near Svalheim in the Orde Ardal area of Norway. He was a descendant of the Vetti family, who had purchased a farm property in the mountains back in the mid-1700s. The Vetti Gard, or Vetti Farm in English, still exists. The land has been farmed since the twelfth century, but was abandoned for nearly 200 years after the Black Death killed the residents in the fourteenth century.  Ove was probably born on land owned by the Vetti family descendants.

Ove married Ragnhild Olsdatter Ve in 1867, and their first child, a daughter also named Ragnhild, was born January 9, 1868. The following year, the family decided to emigrate from Norway. Ove was the sixth child in his family, so probably had few job opportunities available and little land that he could farm, making it hard to support his family. America, with the promise of free land offered under the Homestead Act, probably seemed like a golden opportunity. In addition, several of Ragnhild’s siblings and their spouses were also emigrating, so the Syversons would have the support of family in a new land.

Ove and Ragnhild packed their possessions into a large trunk that Ove had made several years earlier. The wooden and metal trunk is over three feet long, at least two feet wide, and two feet deep. The metal hinges were hand-made and feature embossed decorations and lettering. The interior is lavishly decorated with Norwegian rosemaling, a folk art featuring floral motifs.

 The front of the trunk features his name in flowing script: “Ove Sjurson”, which he anglicized to Syverson when he arrived in America. On the other side of the lock and key the script reads: “Svalem 1863”. Svalem is a variant spelling for Svalheim, which is the area near the Vetti farm where he lived.

A metal strip on the lid is hand-embossed with Ove’s initials, “O V S” or “O W S”, and the year 1863. No one knows whether Ove built and decorated the trunk completely by himself, or if he had help from family members. While rosemaling may seem like a feminine art form with the scroll and floral shapes and patterns, most rosemalers in the period from 1750 to the late 1800s were men, so the charming and brilliantly colored patterns may have been the product of Ove’s paintbrush. He decorated the lid as well as a small interior compartment where small precious items were probably stored. 

The Syversons carried the trunk over the Atlantic to their first home in Wisconsin, where son Syver was born in 1889. The family then moved to Brown County, Minnesota where at least two of Ragnhild’s siblings had settled. Ove made a homestead claim in Linden Township, which is where my grandmother Regina Syverson was born in 1872.

Tragically Ove was killed when he was kicked by one of his work horses. He died June 29, 1882 at the age of 42. Ragnhild carried on with the farm, helped by her children as they grew old enough. Presumably the trunk remained in her possession over the years, even after her oldest surviving son Ole sold the farm and moved into the nearby town of Hanska. She lived with him until her death on February 3, 1933. Ole died just months later.

Ragnhild Syverson on left.

Three of Ragnhild’s four daughters had preceded her in death, so perhaps that is how my grandmother Regina came to possess the trunk. By the end of 1933, only she and her brother Syver remained of Ove and Ragnhild’s eight children, and Syver was always on the move. 

Regina Syverson and husband Paul Peterson, my grandparents

When Regina died in 1952, my father, Juhl Peterson, was living on the family farm and the trunk passed into his care. When he married in 1957, he stored the trunk in the attic of our house, where it remained until my brother took over the farm following my father’s retirement. Fortunately, the attic was dark and dry, so the trunk and its folk art decorations survived into the 21^st century.

My dad, Juhl Peterson

My brother is the perfect guardian for this wonderful piece of family history. He will care for it until it is handed down to the next generation of Petersons.