Helmer Nelson was born August 10, 1912 on a farm near Glendorado. His dad came as a baby from Norway on a sailing ship in 1870. His mom was born in Norway and came to Minnesota at the age of 13.
Helmer wanted to be a veterinarian from the time he was little but he didn’t have the education he needed. He attended a one-room schoolhouse but his dad kept him home any time he needed him, and Helmer left school after the eighth grade. He loved to drive horses and had five horses on a gangplow when he was 14 or 15, plowing 3 or 4 acres a day.
Helmer often went with his dad to the neighbors to help de-horn cattle and by the time he was 16 or 17 he was doing it by himself. Farmers from the Glendorado area said, “We will risk our cattle if you will do it for us”. About 90% of cows had horns at that time. At first he would tie the cows up but later, Francis Knippling, a veterinarian in the area, bought him a cattle chute. In the beginning he charged 20 cents a head and in later years, $1.00 a head. He then modified a saw to cut the horns. After cutting them he had to pull out two arteries and cauterized them with a hot iron. He kept up his hard and bloody work until he was 80. Since vets were the ones expected to do this, Francis once told him hat he had saved him a lot of grief and thanked him for helping out.
He also used to butcher for the Santiago and Glendorado stores. He said, “I got a dollar a head. Boy, you could take a girl out two times on a dollar”.
In the depression Helmer said, “I was doing anything I could to earn a nickel at. A guy that had worked in South Dakota the year before got a letter saying if he would bring seven men out with him, they would get 20 cents an hour for ‘trasshing’.” When they got out here the man that was going to hire them said, “Well boys I can’t pay 20 cents an hour, only 15. I’m only getting 27 cents a bushel for the wheat.” We looked at each other and said, “What’s the use in going home, there was nothing, everything was dried up.” So that summer Helmer worked 176 hours at 15 cents an hour in heat up to 105 degrees. He was 20 years old at that time.
Edna was born in 1911 in Blue Hill Township about a half mile south of the Blue Mound. Her maiden name, Fall, was shortened from the Norwegian name Natsafalla. Her parents came from the Norwegian area of Eiedskogan near the Swedish border. Her grandmother on her dad’s side was Swedish. She had an older sister who was born in Norway and two younger sisters who were born about the time she left home.
For about a year after they came, her parents lived with her aunt, uncle, grandpa and grandma in a small house. Then they bought some railroad land and moved a house there to live in. When her grandpa died they moved into her grandparent’s house because it was a better house and twice as big. She was seven years old at that time and her favorite pets were the cats. She said her mother didn’t know much about cooking or baking but she could work with the cows and knew how to harness horses.
They called those that weren’t Norwegian, “Yankees.” Since Blue Hill had a lot of “Yankees” her folks were anxious to learn English. She went to school at the schoolhouse located on County Road 9 in the Wild Life Refuge. Her grandfather took the wood packaging material from the school desks and made a corncrib from them back in the 1920’s. They were supposed to speak only English while at school but at the school in Orrock the kids spoke Norwegian on the playground so one German boy learned to speak Norwegian just so he could play with the other kids.
Edna “hired out” at age 15 to take care of three children so the wife of a grocery store owner could help him. She boarded with them and worked without any days off. She thought that was the way it was done. Later she “hired out” in the Twin Cities as a maid. One lady she worked for was an opera singer and she loved being in that fancy house with her own room and a bathroom. The third floor of the house had a stage at one side and she got to wear fancy clothes and perform in some of their “in house” productions. She liked buying pretty things with the money she made and still feels bad that she didn’t send her folks more money. One time, however, she did give her mom $21. Her very delighted mom used the money to buy lead and pigment to make paint so she could paint the inside of their house.
Edna and Helmer were “up in their twenties” when they met at the Elk Lake Pavilion. Edna and her sister had gone to visit the outhouse and on the way back ran into Helmer and his cousin. His cousin said to Helmer, “You take the tall one (Edna was 5’8) and I’ll take the short one and we’ll ask them to dance.” They chatted for a while and started to date. Helmer (who’s parents spoke Norwegian at home) surprised Edna’s folks the first time he came to her house by listening to a conversation they were having in Norwegian and answering them. He said they smiled really big when they heard that.
After they were married in 1937 (Edna was 26), for a few years, they lived with Helmer’s folks in Glendorado. In 1938, when Edna’s dad went to Elk River to pay his taxes, the fellow in the tax office asked if he knew anyone who wanted to buy 80 acres under the hill for $500.00. Her dad kind of jokingly said, “Maybe for $300.00.” A few days later he got a note from the tax fellow saying he would sell it for that. Fortunately, Helmer was able to borrow the money, and he, then, bought the 80 acres.
In 1940 Helmer and Edna left his folks place with $5.00 in their pocket to work on the Nelson farm near Forest Lake. Helmer didn’t believe in fertilizer until his boss brought a ton of fertilizer up to put on the corn. It so happened that, while one of the other hired hands was planting, one side of the grain planter jammed so only part of the crop got fertilized. The difference in the yield was so dramatic that it made him a believer. He plowed with horses and was in charge of milking 61 cows while Edna worked as a maid. It was hard to get good help in those days because all the young men were being drafted. When they left the dairy farm, Helmer asked the farmer for a reference but he wouldn’t give him one because he didn’t want him to leave. “You come back and I’ll put you to work on anything you want,” he said.
In 1943 they bought Edna’s folk’s 80 acres. They raised corn, rye, and alfalfa. Helmer, having learned his lesson, always used lime and fertilizer on his fields. They also had dairy cows and 300 laying hens. Edna used to get up at 3:45 a.m. to let the young chickens out so they wouldn’t huddle in a corner and smother themselves. They would get from 30 to 50 cents a dozen for eggs but when the price went down they sold all the chickens.
Edna loved baking. Her favorite stove was a wood-burning Monarch that they had in a shed next to the house. She could make 8 loaves of bread at a time or 4 pies and liked to make the biggest batch of cookies possible. She also make many wedding cakes and it was Helmer’s responsibility to deliver them safe and sound. Everyone said she made the best “egg” coffee’
The drought of the 1930’s and the 40’s had dried the soil out so much that, in order to keep the soil from blowing away, the Government began paying farmers 3 to 5 cents a piece to plant evergreen seedlings. Helmer spent many days plowing furrows and Edna and her folks would follow behind planting the seedlings. He did plowing for other folks as well.
They didn’t have a phone for the first 2 or 3 years they were on the farm and they worked hard to get electric power in 1946 or ’47.
Their house was right across the road from the Refuge Schoolhouse and they had a garden where the parking lot is now located. In the late 50’s they bought another 80 acres of tax-forfeited land, which included the “Mound.”
They remember the mound always being covered with big oak trees and big rocks. There were no pine trees and the prairie didn’t start until south and west of the hill. You could see Blue Hill from as far away as Santiago to the west and 3 miles south of Zimmerman on Highway 169. But now that the trees are cut it has lost its height and color.
In the old days there was a stagecoach stop south of County Road 9 at the base of the hill. The road went around the hill and northwest from there over the Brand Bridge (the first time Edna saw the bridge it was broken in two because a man with a wagon full of potatoes and gone through). Later on, Edna’s sister and brother-in-law lived on that place. They were told that the lady who lived there before them was the Postmistress and that she used to walk to Elk River and back twice a month to get the mail.
There was also a popular story, at that time, about a stagecoach rider that had buried a box of gold on the west road going around Blue Hill. And a well known character, called “Old Sherburne,” who had a cabin on the southeast slope of the hill was also supposed to have buried gold on the hill.
Helmer remembers a man with a shovel that stopped by one day while he was cultivating and asked if he could look for the money that was supposed to be buried there. Helmer said, “Finders keepers, Losers weepers,” and continued on with his cultivating. He didn’t care and the man didn’t find anything either. Helmer eventually had the hole bulldozed and filled it with stumps and dirt.
Helmer and Edna never had any children but Helmer decided he wanted to build a ski slide on the mound, “for the pleasure of the kids,” in the area. His friend Alfred Johanson had a dozer so in 1960; Helmer said to him, “Let’s make a slide out of the hill.” Helmer paid for the gas and Alfred did the dozing. They put in a towrope and the first year operated it with a gas engine. He was a little concerned about liability so his attorney told him to put up a no trespassing sign by the road and he wouldn’t have to worry. In 1963 the Lions Club in Princeton got interested so Helmer leased it to them for a dollar (which he paid himself) to make it legal. They put in a power pole so that could use electricity for the towrope. It was a really popular place.
In 1964 a motorcycle club, from some place to the east, asked if they could use the hill for climbing in the summer. He gave them permission providing they would smooth the grooves for the skiers when they left. One Sunday there were around a thousand people there. They planned to come back the next year but “Wild Life” people disallowed it.
The first church in Orrock was a log cabin schoolhouse. When the congregation decided to build a real church they got into an argument about what synod to go with and split. The free Lutherans didn’t want to belong to the old synod because they thought the Kind of Norway would be able to tell them what to do. One group built a church called the Eidskog Church, which is now the Hope Lutheran Church in Orrock. Two years later, the Orrock Lutheran Church, that Edna and Helmer attended, was built a mile and a half up the road. It had a beautifully ornate steeple on it but it was destroyed by fire some years later.
Helmer was chairman of the Orrock Cemetery Committee for 10 years. Over the years he dug over 20 gravesites for friends. The cemetery (on 3+ acres) is located by the Hope Lutheran Church. He was also on the church board for 22 years, directory of the Creamery board for 12 years and was on the Blue Hill town board for 18 years. The town hall was originally a mile and a half north of the Refuge Schoolhouse. It was later moved to its present location on County Road 3.
Helmer and Edna fought the “Wild Life” people from 1963 until 1971. He farmed the land in ’71 and then the sheriff came and told them they had to leave. At that time, they had 240 acres of land. Helmer was getting up to 100 bushels of corn and 40 bushels of rye and alfalfa to the acre. They were saving the money that they made from the crops to build a house near the schoolhouse.
When they were forced from the farm in Blue Hill, they took all their equipment and animals and moved to a farm in Greenbush Township. Helmer continued to milk his 17 cows until the day he turned 65 then he said, “No more cows,” and sold them. They enjoyed the place in Greenbush and Edna, who like to garden, planted 300 gladiolas. The farmhouse had sand in part of the basement and it made a perfect spot for wintering over her many plants.
In 1994 they sold the Greenbush farm and moved to a house in Princeton. Then, in December 2003, with both of them in their nineties, they sold that house and moved to the Calley House in Princeton.
(From an oral interview with Helmer and Edna Nelson by Herb and Corrine Murphy in February 2005)