Document 15.4 Gro Svendsen, Letter from a Homesteader, 1863
Gro Svendsen | Letter from a Homesteader, 1863
Many of the settlers who moved to Minnesota and the Dakotas migrated from northern Europe. Most did not speak English, left behind family members, and experienced geographical and emotional isolation. Women played a significant role in running farms, as shown in the following letter that Gro Svendsen wrote to her family in Norway about her life as a homesteader in Minnesota in 1863. Svendsen offers a typical account of the challenges many settlers faced.
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Source: Gro Svendsen, Frontier Mother: The Letters of Gro Svendsen, ed. Pauline Farseth and Theodore Blegen (Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1950), 39–40.
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