An Amazing Birth Day Ends in Grief
Elaine Trosdahl: April 11, 1929-April 11, 1929
Orrin Reeves Trosdahl: April 11, 1929-April 11, 1929
Mary Trosdahl: April 11, 1929-April 11, 1929
My preliminary research on my first cousin once removed,
Nels Alford Trosdahl, and his wife Lola Conway turned up five children, all
daughters, born between 1906 and 1917. I assumed the couple had no other
children; later census records listed only the five daughters. However, while
searching for Nels’ obituary on Newspapers.com, I turned up an amazing article
that revealed Nels and Lola had, for one brief day, three more children,
including their only son. This discovery is an example of how birthdays can
sometimes be days of sorrow rather than celebration.
 |
| Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 13, 1929 |
Nels Trosdahl was the child of my greataunt Marit Peterson
Joramo and her husband Johan Trosdahl. Nels was the fourth of their eleven
children, and the oldest of their four sons. Nels was born February 10, 1883,
in Lake Hanska Township in Brown County, Minnesota. At some point after Nels’
seventeenth birthday in 1900, the entire family moved from Lake Hanska in
southern Minnesota to Otter Tail County, 200 miles to the northwest.
Nels met a young girl from the area, Lola Conway, and on
December 29, 1905, the couple married. Nels was 22 years old. Lola was a child
of 14, already several months pregnant with their first child. Myrtle was born
May 7, 1906, three months after Lola’s fifteenth birthday. Four more daughters
followed, every two or three years, until daughter Doris’ birth in 1917.
In general, women from this time period have about a twenty
year period of fertility at most. However, twenty-four years after giving birth
to her first child, Lola delivered fraternal triplets, two daughters and a son.
The triplets’ youngest sibling was twelve; their oldest was grown up and
married.
The newspaper article noted that the triplets were the first
ever born in Battle Creek. This was a time before fertility drugs, so triplets
were quite rare. Of course, this was also before the advent of neonatologists
and NICUs. The triplets were probably very small and possibly premature. It is
doubtful a rural Minnesota hospital even had incubators for infants in 1929.
The triplets really didn’t have any chance of survival.
The babies’ birth day was the sole day of their lives. A day
of joy and anticipation for the parents turned into a day of mourning.
Fortunately, Lola survived the birth despite the high maternal mortality rates
of the era.
Little Mary, Orrin Reeves and Elaine Trosdahl were buried
together at Nidaros Lutheran Cemetery, their grave marked by a single stone.
The loss of the triplets seems to have placed a strain on
Nels and Lola’s marriage. Their youngest child, Doris, married young like her
mother, and was only 16 when she moved out in November, 1932. Lola and Nels
separated at some point following Doris’ marriage. By 1938, Lola was living on
her own in Moorhead, Minnesota.
By the time of the 1940 census, Lola and Nels had lost
another child—their daughter Doris. Following Doris’ early marriage to Selmer
Baldwin, the couple had two children, David Sylvester, born April 15, 1936 when
Doris was 19, and daughter Alphilde Marie, born September 28, 1937 when Doris
was 21. Yet just two years later, Doris was dead at age 23. It is unclear if
she died giving birth to a third child, or if she contracted an illness that
proved fatal.
Whatever the cause of Doris’ death, Lola Trosdahl stepped up
to care for her little grandchildren. She ended up moving in with Doris’ inlaws
who had custody of the two motherless toddlers. The 1940 census finds her
living as a “lodger” with John and Mae Baldwin, Selmer’s parents, and several
of their children, as well as David and Alphilde. Lola’s occupation is listed
as “caretaker” of “grandchildren”, with her job categorized as “unpaid family
worker”. Selmer is not living with the
family; he appears on a WWII draft registration in Grand Forks, North Dakota,
where he was living alone, unemployed.
Meanwhile, Nels Trosdahl appears on an April 1942 draft
card, living in Detroit Lakes on the property of a Mrs. Clara Hawkins, who he
lists as his employer. I was unable to find him on the 1940 census. I have found
no further records on his occupation or residence thereafter.
Lola died March 25, 1947 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota at age
55, far too young. Nels died June 12, 1958 in Mahnomen, Minnesota. He was 75.
Without my discovery of the tiny five-line story about the
triplets in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I would never have known about Mary,
Orrin Reeves or Elaine and their April 11 birthday in 1929. The usual searches
under their parents’ names on Ancestry and Family Search did not pull up their
birth and death records. Like so many babies who died shortly after birth,
their brief lives were quickly forgotten, as was the joy and sorrow their
parents experienced. These lost babies’ birthdays are so much more than the day
of their birth—they mark the entirety of their brief lives.
