HW and Elizabeth (Betty) Mankell had nine children. The eldest 4 daughters were born in Northfield MN. Hulda was born in St. Cloud MN; the youngest four were born on the Mankell homestead in Kandiyohi County MN. There is an individual page for each child which will include highlights for some grandchildren.
In a December 1868 letter to his sisters Hermina and Augusta, who lived in Sweden, HW Mankell writes about his children (6 of 9 had been born at the time of the letter). Two of his children, Hulda and Oscar, had been baptized on December 4, 1868 by Pastor J. C. Moses, the first pastor of the newly incorporated Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran congregation, part of the Norway Lake Settlement in Monongalia (later Kandiyohi) County, Minnesota.. This congregation served primarily Norwegian immigrant settlers (and a few Swedish settlers, including the Mankell family before the 1870 establishment of the Lake Florida Mission Church) Here are some excerpts from the letter and it is evident that HW is proud of his children:
Betty has selected all the girls' names, and for the last one I am responsible...When the boy Oskar was baptized, your names were given as godmothers...Later we had the christening of Hulda and Oskar, after which coffee was served...We had prepared Hulda so that when the Pastor asked what her name should be she could say it. Hulda is short in stature, dark hair, dark eyes, healthy and cheerful. Mary is paler, a little bashful and somewhat sickly. She has large, dark eyebrows and is a steady worker. All have dark eyes except Amanda. Their hair is light when they are small. Anna is large and plump and has lots of energy...Amanda is the biggest and the plumpest, and she has a good disposition. Hulda is most amusing nowadays. And the boy, his mother's darling, weighs almost as much as Hulda. The children are all well-behaved and obedient, especially when I ask them something.The website has additional quotations from HW's 1868 letter--about the financial situation on the homestead and about the District 25 school district which he organized.