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NEW AMERICANS:

Herman Wilhelm (HW) Mankell (1835-1889 )
and Elizabeth Olson Mankell (1832-1914)

Kurt Mankell, owner of the Mankell homestead, and great-great-grandson of HW and Elizabeth, wrote this web page.

Herman Wilhelm Mankell (HW) left Gothenburg (see maps) bound for the United States in 1856. Most of the details on why he left are lost to history, but there is one oral record that HW was involved in some type of Mankell family conflict and was given travel money to leave Sweden. It is unknown what ship he took or what ports he arrived in. It was common for ships to sail to with Swedish emigrants to England first. They would then disembark and travel across the England to board another ship bound for North America with immigrants from other Europnean counties.

He arrived in America and by 1857 he was living in Red Wing, Minnesota. Minnesota was not even a state until 1858, so HW, by definition, was a territorial pioneer. Elizabeth Olson, his future wife, arrived in Red Wing from Gothenburg in 1857. Elizabeth and Herman may have known each other in Sweden and it is possible this relationship might have been a reason HW was sent packing.

HW married Elizabeth (also spelled Elisabeth Olsson; commonly called "Betty") at the Swedish Lutheran Church in Vasa, Minnesota in 1857. According to Orlynn Mankell, HW is said to have owned some type of store in Vasa which then burned down. By 1860 both HW and Elizabeth were living in Northfield, Minnesota and resided there until 1865. Herman made a living as a cabinet maker. This makes sense since his father was a piano maker back in Gothenburg. The 1860 U.S. Census lists the following:

Wm Mankell; age 26; Occupation: cabinet maker; Value of real estate: 23; value of personal estate: 30; place of birth: Sweden; Betsey, age 26 ; Jane (Jenny), and Mary.

Their time in Northfield came during the Dakota War of 1862 (Sioux Uprising) and the U.S. Civil War. Minnesota was involved in two civil wars during the late summer of 1862.

When the first English and French explorers entered Minnesota, Southern Minnesota was inhabited by the Dakota Indians, an eastern tribe of the Sioux Nation. Before the Dakota arrived, there were many other inhabitants, including the hunter who left his broken Paleo-era spear-point on the future Mankell farm in Kandiyohi County sometime between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. Human history can be documented on the Mankell farm from the time of the mastadon!

The Dakota War of 1862 was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought on U.S. soil. Between 500 and 800 settlers and soldiers were killed in less than a month all across Southern Minnesota. The Dakota were defeated by the U.S. Army in late September 1862 at the Battle of Wood Lake; but this was only the opening salvo of a war with the Sioux Indians that lasted nearly 30 years. The fighting reached its most well-known point at Little Big Horn in 1876 and its final point with the massacre of a Lakota tribe (Western Sioux) at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890.

The Dakota War unintentionally started at a split rail fence built in Meeker County (one county east of Kandiyohi County) by a very young Gunder Swenson in 1860. Gunder was one of Herman and Elizabeth’s future Norwegian neighbors in Kandiyohi County and he was also the father of their future daughter-in-law Minnie.

There are no records as to what HW and Elizabeth felt about the wars at this time. One can only imagine as to what they thought they had gotten themselves into traveling such a distance from Sweden for a new life. In Northfield they most likely heard the panicked news that the German immigrant town of New Ulm, a mere 75 miles away, had been attacked and burned by the Dakota. Maybe this was when Herman purchased the 1849 Pocket Colt revolver that Kurt Mankell owns today. They must have also heard news of the very bloody Civil War battle at Antietam Creek which filtered back to Minnesota at the same time. Thoughts of returning to their Swedish homeland and its traditional ways must have entered their minds.

As for duty in the Civil War, in 1865 Herman received a medical disability that prevented him from service in the Union Army. An examination giving him a medical disability was given by a team of Union army doctors, including Dr. William Mayo. Dr. Mayo later went on to start the Mayo clinic with his sons.

The 1865 Minnesota census listed the following: H.W. Mankle (sic); E; Jennie; Mary, Anna, Amanda.

Elizabeth, Herman and their young family then moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota during the Summer of 1865. No sooner had they arrived in St. Cloud than they purchased 4 lots in August 1865 totaling 170 acres of timberland near Norway Lake, Middle Lake and Lake Andrew in Monongalia county. This land was not the acreage where the farm sits today; they obtained that land later. It is a guess that they specifically traveled to St. Cloud to purchase land. These lots were purchased by Elizabeth. Herman and Elizabeth had one child while in St. Cloud, Hulda (born 1866). (Note: one of Hulda’s grandsons was Thomas Mankell Rees, a Democratic Congressman from California and thorn in the side of LBJ during the Vietnam War years. There is a famous picture of Bobby Kennedy appearing at the Ambassador Hotel in LA taken shortly before his assasination with Rees standing directly behind him).

Monongalia County was still the true frontier in 1865. (Monongalia County was consolidated with Kandiyohi County in 1870.) The county had just been opened up to settlement again after the evacuation that had occurred during the disastrous and bloody Dakota War in 1862. The U.S. Army had established a patrol line which existed until 1866 just west of Norway Lake. Anything west of that patrol line was still a frontier to white settlers. A sod fort was established on the west side of West Norway lake in 1865 and was used by 2nd Regiment of Minnesota Cavalry. If Herman and Elizabeth were trying to get as far away from Sweden they could, this was the end point of that journey. They had purchased land literally as far west as they legally could go. It was time to put down permanent roots. Those roots remain to this day.

They travelled to their newly obtained lands in late 1866. They almost certainly had a slow and arduous journey by wagon. The new four lane State Highway 23 was pure science fiction at this point. The “roads” that existed in the Monongalia County were either old buffalo or Indian trails. They had no alternative than to take these trails since the new St. Paul and Pacific Railroad had barely crossed the Mississippi in 1866 near the Falls of St. Anthony in Minneapolis. (note: The St. Paul and Pacific main line through Willmar later became the kernel the Great Northern Railroad and finally as the well-known Burlington Northern Santa Fe of today.)

The Mankell family built their first home in the woods between Middle Lake and Lake Andrew in 1866. It was a crude dugout home. The dugout hole of this first home still exists as of 2008.

It should be noted the contrast of Herman and Elizabeth’s life in 1866 to life back in 1866 Stockholm. Was his artist brother Otto August Mankell having one of his well known kaffe parties at his villa on Lidingo island? Had uncle Carl Abraham Mankell yet met his friend playwright August Strindberg? Or was his army captain cousin Julius Mankell (a.k.a. Malborg) still being chased by Cossacks in Poland after trying to persuade his buddy Swedish King Karl XV into a war with archenemy Russia (Note: Julius Mankell’s 1863 plan for war was eventually stopped by French Emperor Napoleon III). Well, perhaps a dugout is better than being on the pointed ends of Cossack swords.

In 1867, Herman received 160 acres of the virgin and very treeless prairie in Lake Andrew Township as part on the Homestead Act of 1862 (T121N; R35W; NW ¼ Section 20). The homestead was about 3 miles away from the dugout. The land was obtained free of charge with the only requirement that it be farmed for 5 years before the U.S. government would give the owner title to the land. (deed) It isn’t known if they had known of the 160 acres in Section 20 when they left St. Cloud or received the free land once they had already arrived in Monongalia County.

In the Summer of 1867 it is documented that they built a house on the new home farm with “rough” lumber. It is thought that the log base of this home still exists in 2008 as the base of the old granary. (More on this later). Other children were born to Herman and Elizabeth while on the new farm. They were Oscar, Sophia, Otto and Esther.

There is also a record of Herman buying 43 acres of land southwest of Alexandria, MN in 1867. (T128N, R39W, Section 32). No stories have been passed down as to what this property was used for or if they even visited it. Perhaps it was purchased by a still restless Herman who then finally decided to stay put in Lake Andrew Township rather than move his family again.

The land in the Kandiyohi and Monongalia County area was rapidly being settled in the 1860’s by Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Irish and British settlers. It seems free land disappears fast. (A side note: while not nearly as well known as the Scandinavian settlers, the British settled major portions of the northern half of Kandiyohi County. A few British names still exist: Hawick, Burbank, Harrison Township, and Harrison Presbyterian Church. However, the local town of “New London” was named well before most of these British settlers arrived, but the name is still appropriate).

The initial farm life must have been hard. While there are probably many stories of the Mankell families’ pioneer life, most are lost to history. However we are very fortunate that some stories were documented by Gabriel Stene, a Norwegian neighbor of the Mankells, who wrote stories for his column in the Willmar Weekly Tribune in the 1920’s. Here are two of Gabriel Stene's stories about a certain family he met on Section 20 of Lake Andrew Township in 1867. Orlynn Mankell, great grandson of Herman and Elizabeth, also wrote about the history of the Mankell family and Kandiyohi County. Here is one of Orlynn's stories about prairie fires and an early threshing scene on the Mankell farm.

It seems that drought and prairie fires were not the only issues dealt with on the prairie; Orlynn Mankell wrote the following anecdote about the Stene family whose homestead is just west of the Mankell homestead and east of Lake Mary:

Iver Stene (was) hauling wood from the Norway Lake woods while driving through the H.W. Mankell property. Son Gabriel (was) with. (For some) unknown reason Herman hit Iver with a stick. The next morning Herman was arrested and brought before attorney J.W. Arctander. The following day, Elizabeth, Jenny, Mary and Anna came in tears and pleaded (for Herman to be freed).

Orlynn continued with some background to the story:

Iver Stene was told by Mankell in 1866 or 1867 about a fine piece of land by Lake Mary. The two walked over the Stene hill and H.W. showed them around. Gabriel, Ole, Fred and Henry Stene (Sons of Iver) would court the oldest Mankell girls. Mankell didn’t like this. Mankell would chase them presumably because they were Norwegian. For this reason Stene refused to sell the Stene East 80 acres to Mankell which Mankell said he wanted after showing Stene the land the first time.

Pioneer Mankell recognized the growing needs of his family and other area settlers. In 1868 HW and neighbors petitioned the county to create an organized school district; the first classes of District 25 were held on the Mankell homestead. Then in 1872 HW and neighbors successfully petitioned the county to create a new Lake Andrew Township out of a portion of Norway Lake Township.

In 1870 Herman bought two lots in Willmar from the St. Paul and Pacific railroad (Lots 8 and 9 of block 25). As of 1870, the Mankells owned 373 acres total farmland and woodland plus two lots in Willmar. Herman purchased an additional 40 acres of farmland sometime before 1884 (T121, R35, SE ¼ SW ¼ Sec 17). The title abstract lists the original owners of this 40 acres as the St. Paul and Pacific railroad and its Dutch investors.

In 1880, the family moved to Willmar so that the children could be educated. While in Willmar, Oscar was confirmed in the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and took business classes at the Willmar Seminary. During this time HW owned commercial lots on the main Willmar business district at that time (Pacific Ave). It is thought he attempted to open some type of furniture store to make cabinets and other pieces of furniture. He certainly had much timber to choose from amongst the oaks and maples on the lots near the lakes. Herman is listed in the 1880 Willmar census as “carpenter”. He is known to have built a house in Willmar that still exists in 2008.

One piece of furniture built by HW Mankell, a cabinet, is known to exist

While in Willmar, the farm still needed to be worked. There is documentation in the farm title abstract of renting the farm in 1884 to Per Hoej (a Danish name and is also seen as “Per Hoy” in abstracts ). Per Hoej farmed all the Mankell land until 1888. As is obvious, the Mankell farm has not been farmed continuously by Mankells from 1867 to present times. The land currently has been rented by Lonnie Fosso since 1993. (As a side note, Kurt always wondered why there were a few quarter sections north of the farm and South county highway 40 that had no homesteads. It turns out the railroad had them first, not homesteaders.)

Herman Wilhem Mankell died in 1889; Elizabeth Mankell died in 1914. Both are buried at the Lake Florida Mission Church , southeast section of the cemetery. Near the Mankell headstone are their individual graves, marked "Father" and "Mother". HW's obituary was published in the Willmar Republican Gazette on April 4, 1889:

An old settler of the county, Mr. H.W. Mankel (sic) of Lake Andrew passed to eternal rest on Sunday last. He had been sick but a short time, and his death was rather sudden, although not entirely unexpected. Mr. Mankel was fifty three years of age (note: an “old” settler at 53!): he came to America thirty three years ago and has been a resident of this county twenty three years. He leaves a wife and family of eight grown up children. Funeral services will be held today.

Elizabeth Mankell's obituary was in the November 4, 1914 issue of the Willmar Tribune. Here are some excerpts:

Another of our worthy pioneers left this earthly home on Sunday, October 25th, when the death of Mrs. Mankell occurred at the home of her son, Oscar Mankell, after an illness of only three weeks...She came to America in 1857, locating first at Red Wing, Minn. Later she made her home at Northfield and St. Cloud. At the latter place she resided until after the Indian outbreak, in 1867 when she came to Kandiyohi County settling on a homestead in section 20, town of Lake Andrew where she lived until her death. Her death was caused by congestion of the lungs resulting from chronic heart trouble...

Here is a picture of the farm house in about 1890.

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