Grandma Bea

Yesterday would be the 110th birthday of my grandmother, Beatrice Berg.

I need to get a little clearer on some of my family’s lore – my immediate family has always been terrible at passing its stories down.  Near as I can tell, she was the older daughter of a Norwegian immigrant farmer and immigrant from Sør-Trøndelag, Berndt Græsli (anglicized to Gresley), born not far from Thief River Falls, MN.  She grew up in or near Middle River.

When she was in her late teens (as I recall the story) she took up with a couple of her aunts – who were, according to the accounts I’ve heard, the sort of thing that they’d write Lifetime movies about today; a couple of flinty, hard-bitten businesswomen who were in the business of starting photography studios around northern Minnesota.  Grandma worked at a few of these studios, learning the trade.

It’s there that Grandma Bea did something that, likely, most of you are acquinted with.  She was working at the studio of Eric Enstrom in the small northern Minnesota town of Bovey, when…

…well, I’ve never heard the definitive story; some of it, I got from my parents; others, from a Jamestown Sun piece from the 1970’s that I still remember.  The stories include various elements from the following narrative, all of which I’ll relate just for simplicity’s sake.  One day she met an old guy in a mainstreet cafe, Charles Wilden, a travelling salesman namedwith a striking visage, whom she introduced to Enstrom.  And then helped dress the set and assisted with the photo shoot, and helped do some of the hand-coloring of the print afterward (along with Enstrom’s daughter – like I said, the story gets complicated).

Whatever the facts were – and most of them certainly were true – the end result is upper-midwestern art history:

“Grace”, by Eric Enstrom

Nearly every dining room in the Upper Midwest seems to have a copy of “Grace” hanging on the wall – or so it seemed when I was a kid. It’s the Minnesota State Photograph.

Grandma went on to work at a slew of photography studios.  At one of them, she met my grandfather, Oscar.  They got married, had Dad…

…and then Oscar died.  Grandma ran the studio herself for the next twenty-odd years.

For all the yapping about “strong women” from feminists, I don’t suspect many of them could have carried my Grandmother’s purse.

6 thoughts on “Grandma Bea

  1. Thanks for sharing that. Recently (within the last 10 years) there was some type of local human interest piece done on the origins of “Grace.” Can’t remember which media it was in, but I was particularly surprised to learn that the portrait, which always struck me as looking European in origin, came from northern MN. I shudder to think what a modern-day rendition of the piece would contain…

    Grab all the family lore that you can from any family members that you can; be sure to write it down. Like yours, my families were not big on stories, but did tell them from time to time. I figured that I could always ask mom or dad, then they died. I pretty much assumed I’d get the true story someday from my senior-most relatives. Until the day I woke up and found myself in that position, and started giving vague answers to family questions posed by the generation after mine.

    Also, be attentive to your families’ medical history. A close family member was recently diagnosed with cancer. Her medical providers had a bunch of health-related questions that had to be left unanswered. Such data will become even more crucial as medicine becomes more intricate and genetics based.

    Like with WWII veterans, 19th and early 20th century immigrants and their first generation offspring are leaving us rapidly. With them also go the first-hand, personal accounts of a major piece of American history, and the only people who can dispute with credibility the “imagined”, revised, and rewritten accounts of events that the left may find unacceptable if recounted accurately.

    Everything you compile will be of great interest and a source of pride and practical use for you, your kids, and future generations. Don’t make my mistake …

  2. in 1918 Bovey was a town 6 X 9 blocks in size with populated by nearly 2 dozen bars/saloons, brothels and rooming houses for the laborers that inhabited it. Coleraine, on the other side of the DM&IR railroad tracks was for the management and merchant types. It was boom times for that end of the range with upwards of 20 mines in operation.Your Grandmother would feel right at home in modern day Williston/Bakken Fields.

  3. Great points, Joe. Another place that we discovered written family history after my grand mother died, was in her bible. We couldn’t believe all of the notes with dates and in some cases, time of day, on family events that we found in there. Some of those notes were almost like a journal, expressing her feelings. For instance, she lost two sons early in their lives. One was in infancy due to illness and the other at 18 after trying to rescue a friend from a burning truck. Although the rescue story was well known in the family, my aunts, dad and remaining uncle were able to express their sadness. Adults on the other hand, outside of crying, people back then rarely expressed themselves. It sure choked me up to read her account.

  4. Well, now you’ve done it Merg.

    Minnesota progressives won’t rest until it’s replaced with “Piss Grace” as the state photo.

  5. There are a couple of people in my family who have done a great job in researching and recording family history. But sometimes its nice to know something beyond birth/death dates/locations, homes, jobs. That sort of thing.
    My great grandfather came from Norway. Worked very hard. Went to school with the kids to learn English and about America. Wouldn’t allow the family to speak Norweigan in the home as he said we are Americans now. And what day did he pick for his wedding? July 4th.

  6. Chuck; Sounds like your grand father did the same thing that my maternal grand father did when they immigrated from Italy. Papa Pete made sure that he and his young children both learned English and became citizens as fast as they could. He always celebrated the Italian heritage, but America came first. When two of my uncles went into the Army during WWII, my mom told me that he was so proud of them that it brought tears to his eyes when he saw them in their uniforms for the first time. Unfortunately, I never got to know him, because he died of cancer when I was 3.

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