Following is what I know from stories told by Roy, Clara, and Olga about their father Hans Christian Anderson (Figure 7) and his wife Martine (Tina) Hansine Petersen (Figure 13).

       His mother was not married to Anders Madsen (Figure 6) when she gave birth to Hans Christian. She was still not married to him when she gave birth to Anne Margrethe (Figure 8). At that time, her mother told her if she was still going to keep having children with him she better marry him, so she did.

       They were very poor and Hans was very young when he had to go to work for the landowners in the Skee area of Denmark (Figure 12). He was 20 years old when he was raking hay in a field and he had enough. He threw down his rake and said, "I am going to America". He must have saved some money and maybe he got a loan for the rest, but he sailed in March 1887 from Holbaek, DK on the ship "Island" to America.

       I believe he picked Racine, WI and than Franksville to go to because at that time Racine had the largest Danish population in America. There were people speaking his language and there were fish markets and bakeries like in Denmark. There were people from that area who had gone before and I am sure their stories had gone back to Denmark.

       He started again as a hired hand for farmers in the area. You lived with the farmer and that provided you with room and board and then you saved your wages. I am sure he picked Danish farmers at first as he spoke no English. He worked as far away as western Wisconsin over by Spring Green. He was not happy there because there was no Danish community there. He than came back to the Raymond and Yorkville townships and worked on farms around there until he had enough money to mortgage 100 acres of land in Raymond Township. The English from Cornwall, England had settled that area first and he bought the land from Thomas Moyle of Yorkville.

       The house started as a log structure in Yorkville. Thomas Moyle had a farm in Yorkville and had bought another 100 acres and called that his "North Farm". In the winter Thomas Moyle had 20 oxen pull the log structure over the snow to the "North Farm". Thomas Moyle rented the land to Danish farmers who lived in the log structure with their wives and children. By the time Hans Christian bought the "North Farm" about 1900, an addition had been built onto the structure consisting of a sitting room and a bedroom and an upstairs with three bedrooms and an attic. The kitchen was only a shed built unto the back of the house. A proper kitchen was not built onto the house until the 1920's. There was no bathroom in the house. There was cold running water in the kitchen. There was also a cistern with a pump that provided water for washing up. The bathroom and the remodeled kitchen did not come until 1959. The farm (Figure 36) barn, granary, and other sheds were all built in the center of the 100 acres. That was done so the farmer would not have so far to come in from the fields to his main buildings. There was a long driveway out to the main road. In the summer there were horse drawn wagons to get to the main road and in the winter there was always a horse drawn sleigh. When the automobile came there was always the problem of getting the snow plowed from the long lane in the winter. The farm remained in the Anderson family for over 100 years.

       Hans Christian hired an older widow lady to keep house for him and also a young boy who helped him with chores. He did his grocery shopping at a small store in North Cape where I believe he first met Martine (Tina) Hansine Petersen (Figure 14). She was from Langeland, DK and her older sister, Dorothy, lived in the area. In the Petersen family (Figure 18), Dorothy had come over first. She married a widower she met on the ship on the way over. They helped each member of her family come over. As soon as the sister or brother arrived Dorothy had a job lined up for them.

       Tina's job was in the North Cape grocery store. She was not happy with the job and that made her sister Dorothy very unhappy with her. Tina read about a Norwegian Laundry in Evanston needing women who could iron. She and all her family had worked on the large Skovsgaard farm (Figure 2) near Hennetved, Langeland. She had worked in the big house and knew how to do laundry (Figure 5). She took the train down to Evanston, IL and was hired in the laundry. Her brother Oluf had come over by that time and bought a farm in Yorkville. Tina would come up on the weekends to visit him and she would bring her friend Enga from the laundry. After the third visit, Oluf asked Enga (Figure 18) to marry him and she accepted. They were married 2 Jun 1900. Tina kept coming up to visit on Sunday. Hans Christian would come over to visit Oluf and Enga and, of course, to see Tina. He soon asked her to marry him and they were married 10 Nov 1900. They were both 33 years old. In Evanston, Tina had loved to dress up and go to parties. She would wear a gold watch on a black cord. After she became a farmer's wife, there were few occasions to wear that gold watch.

       The morning of his wedding day, Hans Christian drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigar before he went to Oluf and Enga's to marry Tina. He paid off the old widow woman who had been keeping house and also the young boy who helped on the farm. He no longer needed their services. I guess Tina was to replace two people. Oluf warned Tina that she should not marry Hans Christian as he was in debt over his head and would never get out of it. Tina retorted "I will work hard and help him and we will get out of debt". This they did and they were very happy when the farm was paid off. There was a party in the farmhouse the first year after they were married. They did a lot of dancing and the dancing shook the floor of the living room so much that some of the preserves that Tina had canned fell off the shelves in the basement below and they broke. They did not have dancing parties after that.

       The Danish farms were all right beside each other. They helped each other with harvesting the crops, with butchering, and with building farm buildings. They hired the sons and daughters of their neighbors to help with their chores. When the children hired out they were supposed to return part of their wages to their parents. They were a very close knit society and they wanted their sons and daughters to marry other Danes. It was not until the grandchildren grew up that there was intermarriage with the other nationalities in the area.

       Hans and Tina had their first child, a girl, by 1901. She only lived 8 days. Tina was heartbroken and went into depression. Hans asked her sister Dorothy to send her oldest girl over to stay with Tina for awhile to help her through her depression. Their second child, Roy, was born 26 Dec 1902. Their third child, Clara, was born 9 May 1905, fourth child, Olga, was born 26 Jul 1907 (Figure 20). There was another boy born later who died at birth.

       The English settlers had come first and had the first school in that area in Yorkville. When the Danish children started school they spoke no English and the English children were not very kind to them. The teachers always blamed the Danish children if there were head lice in the school. If an English boy threw a spit ball at a teachers back, the Danish boy would get blamed and he would get a whipping. Roy was blamed for something he did not do; he got a beating at school. When he went home, Hans Christian also beat him so bad he could not milk the cows that night. A school board member later told Hans Christian that Roy had done nothing. Hans Christian felt very bad about the beating he had given him. Finally one year there was a Danish teacher and all the children were treated fairly.

       Hans Christian (Figure 19) was called "Big Hans" or "Strong Hans" by his fellow Danes. His brother-in-law, Max Sorenson, (Figure 17) had a wheel come off his wagon and he did not want to take the load off to fix the wheel. They were together with wagons hauling crops to Milwaukee. Hans got off his wagon and lifted the axle and slipped the wheel on. That story was told for many years.

       Hans Christian did make a trip back to Denmark in 1895 before he married. His youngest brother, Karl (Figure 10), remembered him thumping him on his head and saying, "When are you coming to America, boy"?

       Neils Peter (Figure 9), his next younger brother, did immigrate from Ringsted in February 1890. He also sailed on the ship "Island". When he got to Franksville, he lived on the neighboring farm to Hans Christian. He met Birthe Marie (Mary) Petersen, another Danish immigrant in the area. They married on 14 Sep1901 (Figure 15). Their first child was a stillborn daughter in the winter of 1902. Their son, Herman (Figure 16), was born 4 Feb 1904 and than Gilbert (Figure 22) in 1909. Birthe Marie (Mary) was a wonderful seamstress and would sew for other women. They both worked very hard. Niels Peter was working in a field and his tractor rolled over on top of him, breaking several ribs and other injuries. He became sick with pneumonia. There was not much the doctor could do in those days. Hans sat by his bed all night and held his hand when he died on 13 Apr 1911. It was a great family tragedy. A letter came from Anders Madsen in Denmark that Hans Christian must now take care of Mary (Figure 35) and the boys as if they were his own and this he and Tina did the rest of their lives. I believe that this happening may be one of the reasons that no other siblings of Hans Christian or Neils Peter immigrated to America.

       Hans Christian's three children (Figure 25) attended and became members at the Yorkville Methodist church. I believe they picked this church as it was close enough for the children to walk to church. Hans Christian bought cemetery plots in the Yorkville cemetery. Roy (Figure 23) liked the ministers of that church and even hoped to become a minister. He would go into a room and practice reading the bible out loud. Of course that was not to be, the oldest boy was to continue on with the farm after the parents were gone.

       All the Danish families got together on Christmas Eve at one of the houses in the community. They would light the tree with real candles and sing Danish songs. They would talk about news from the old country. All of the children were encouraged to recite a poem or sing a song they had learned. They were lucky if there was money for a doll for the girls and maybe a teddy bear for the boys.

       Roy almost died when he was a teenager. He was very sick and rode a horse to Racine to a doctor. He had a ruptured appendix. He was in the hospital in Racine for months. Hans and Tina thought he was going to die. He was lucky that there was a young surgeon training at the Racine hospital. He saved his life. Roy was riding his horse to Yorkville to register for World War I on the day the war ended. He saw horses coming at him and people were yelling, "The war is over".

        Olga was a very determined young girl. She would ride a horse until she had broke it or she would keep falling off while she was trying. Neighbors would wonder why Hans was letting Olga ride such a wild horse; they just did not know how head strong Olga was.

       Tina was a wonderful cook and a good baker. She was known for her good cakes. When anybody else tried her recipes, it never turned out as good as Tina's. They wondered if she changed the measurements before she gave it to them. She would save the chicken fat from cooking chickens and use that in her pie crusts. It made a wonderful, flakey pie crust. Tina also used psychology with the kids encouraging them that because they had such small hands they would be really good at planting small seeds in the flower and vegetable garden.

       Hans Christian (Figure 24) subscribed to two Danish papers all of his life. They always spoke Danish in the home. I find it interesting that a lot of these Danes never became US citizens. It was not required of them and they saw no need. In 1939 when the trouble with Germany was starting there was talk that they all would need to take the citizenship test and become citizens. Roy, Clara, and Olga worried that their parents would not be strong enough in English to take the test. That never came to pass as they both died in 1940. Their children were automatic citizens because they were born in America.

       Hans Christian in later years was able to buy another 40 acres with a small house on it. Roy and his wife Martha lived there when they first married (Figure 28) and he continued to farm with his father. The oldest son in the Danish families was expected to carry on with the farm. The boys only went to the school in the winter months when the farmers could not work the land. None of the boys graduated from the 8th grade. My father, Roy, only finished the 5th grade. Clara was able to go on to high school and than to Evanston to train to become a registered nurse. Olga also finished high school and went on to Chicago and trained to become a secretary.

       Hans and Tina (Figure 27) were very proud of Clara being a registered nurse (Figure 26). She took Tina on a trip out west in the 1930's. They went to visit Tina's brother Oluf and his wife Enga in the state of Washington. Tina was very close to this brother and his wife and she was so happy to see them again.

       Hans Christian always smoked a pipe or cigar and he liked his beer. His wife, Tina, had become very interested in Carrie Nation and her crusade in America against alcohol. She did not allow alcohol in the house and she made sure that her son, Roy, signed a pledge never to touch it. Hans would hitch up the team on a Saturday evening and drive to North Cape to go to a tavern to have his beer. The horses were so well trained that they knew the way home if he was not able to drive.

       In his later years he developed what the doctor's than called "farmer's lung". He finally died from that. He died on 3 Jan 1940 and his wife, Tina died on 24 Mar 1940. The family said she died of a broken heart. The flowers were still frozen in the snow from his funeral when they went back to bury Tina. They are buried in the Yorkville cemetery.