The Ruth Blomquist's Unwed Family

Olaf & Mathilda Miller

Ruth Blomquist’s mother, Rasmus and Torina Ordahl’s daughter Mathilda, gave birth to Ruth Elizabeth on July 31, 1903. Ruth began her life as a single child amid the scandal of having an unwed mother. 9 The father, Gust Brown,10 in all likelihood the husband of Mathilda’s sister, Minnie, left the Glenwood area after the indiscretion and moved with his family to Peaver, South Dakota, where he worked as a butcher for several years. In subsequent years, they lived in Long Beach, California, where Gust labored in the oil fields building tanks. Gust and Minnie had six children: Alice, Rubel, Mildren, Kenneth, Elenor, and Laverna. Although Gust and Minnie’s children were probably Ruth’s half-siblings, circumstances and

Sven and Emma had five children: Peter, Henry, Pernella, Olaf, and Christina; before Emma passed away in 1868. Sven remarried and his second wife, Hannah, gave birth to five children: John, Anna, Cecelia, Maria, and Nils. The family’s history in the United States began when the two eldest sons, Peter and Henry, emigrated from Sweden in the late 1870s or in the early to mid-1880s. Either on their arrival or on a subsequent date the two brothers began identifying themselves with the surname, Miller. They traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they worked in the dairy industry, earning enough to finance the passage of their parents and siblings. Payment for the passage from Sweden came with a stipulation that the family members reimburse the brothers by working for them. The family journeyed across the ocean to American probably in either 1888 or 1889 and once they arrived also adopted the surname Miller. While on-board ship, the youngest four children contracted tuberculosis and tragedy struck shortly thereafter, when Cecelia died from the disease. Peter and Henry acquired a farm less than three miles north of Center City, Minnesota, which became home for the extended family. The Miller family attended the Chisago Lakes Lutheran Church of Center City and buried three children in the church cemetery as Maria, Anna, and Nils all succumbed to

Prior to the war, two monarchs reigned over the majority of the northern reaches of the European continent. One monarch, ruled over Denmark and Norway from the Danish capital of Copenhagen. The other sovereign governed Sweden and Finland from the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Initially, Denmark attempted to remain neutral in the war raging across the continent, which pitted France against a majority of the rest of the European countries; including England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. However, after an English preemptive attack on their capital city, Copenhagen, to prevent Napoleon from capturing the formidable Danish navy, the Danes allied themselves with the