The Family Name

Lars Jonsson begat Daniel Larsson begat Daniel Danielson begat Per Danielson .... begat Frans Persson begat ...

I stem from stout Scandinavian stock, Swedish & Norwegian immigrants. My immigrant grandparents were Nelson, Johnson, Pearson ... and Hoplin. What? Where did that come from?

Many Scandinavian family names were originally patronymics consisting of the father's personal name with the ending '-sson'. Place names are also quite common (endings such as -berg, -strom, -stedt). This is why Scandinavian genealogy is such a nightmare. Every generation can have a different name.

A patronymic name (pater=father, lat.) is a name constructed from the father name. In Norway, the name Ole is very common, and therefore it was necessary to identify people by something more than just their given name. So, if Ole's father was "Hans", he would be "Ole Hansson". His sister Marta would be Marta Hansdotter or "datter" or "dtr" as a suffix for females. In some sources the male suffix "sen" or "son" used also for females, often seen in passenger lists. 

However, there might be several people in a village with the name of "Ole Hansson", so it was common to add the farm name for closer identification. e.g. "Ole Hansson Solem",  his full name from being christened "Ole" and his father’s name "Hans", and living on the "Solem" farm. In this way the names tell quite a bit about a person. But it is another complication for genealogists because people moved around. When a person moved from one farm to another, he would be known by the name of the farm he moved to. So if Ole Hansson Solem had moved to another farm, he would have become Ole Hansson Berg, or Dahl or whatever name the farm had. Some people moved many times during a lifetime, and will thus be known by many different names.

Many of farm names are very old, dating back to the bronze age, and they have a meaning. They are often descriptive of the landscape. Solem, Solum or Solheim describes a farm on a place with a lot of sun. The prefix is "Sol" (sun) and suffix "heim" (home). "Dahl" is valley. Moen is moor. Braaten is slope. Vik is bay or cove.  

[Editor note:  For a short list of the most common Norwegian surname=farm name, see
http://www.sigdalslag.org/PDF/NorwegianFarmNameMeanings.pdf   

For the ultra curious, see the Oluf Rygh database of Norwegian Farm Names at the "Dokumentasjonsprosjektet" web site. http://www.dokpro.uio.no/rygh_ng/rygh_form.html ]

[Editor Note: The name Nesjo, which appears frequently in the Hoplin ancestor lists, is an example of this. From the Rygh website above the Nesjo is farm # 71.

Nesjo. Udt. næ2ssjó. -- Nedesiø NRJ. II 196. Neßiø 1559. Neße 1610. Næßioe 1664. Nessiøe 1723.
Forklares af O. R. i Thj. VSS. 1891 S. 217 som sms. med sjór m., Sø, hvoraf -sjo i
Udtalen kan ansees for en forstenet Form. lste Led kan mulig være det Nit-, der findes som Stamme i flere Elvenavne. Den lille Elv, som gaar gjennem det Vand, ved hvilket Gaarden ligger, maa da have havt et af denne Stamme dannet Navn. Gaardnavnet tilhører da opr. Vandet og har intet med Ordet nes at gjøre.]
[Editor note:  Send me your translation!]

It gets more complicated. When a couple was married and had children, the custom was:

     First son: named after paternal grandfather
     First daughter: named after paternal grandmother
     Second son: named after maternal grandfather
     Second daughter: named after maternal grandmother

UNLESS, when a man married a woman and took over her father's farm, then usually the first born son was named after the maternal grandfather. 

OR, when one of the spouses died, and the widow/widower remarried. The first born child of the same sex as the deceased was named after him or her. 

OR, if a child died, the next born child of the same sex was usually named after the deceased child.  

{Editor note: So this is why my grandfather was named Ole. He was the first male offspring of Nils and Hannah after the death of of 5 year old Ole N. Hoplin in 1888, and according to custom was named for the deceased child}


Still with me?

The name Ole

My paternal grandfather's name was was Ole .

"Ole" is actually a Danish form of the Norwegian "Olav" or "Olafr", which is an old Norse name. The oldest known form is "Anulaibar", constructed of the prefix "anu" which means "ancestor", and the suffix "laibar" which means "descendant" or "heir". i.e. "ancestor's-descendant".  The most generic name derivation ever but a dearth of information for a genealogist. You probably don't want to discover an ancestor by the name of "Ole Olsen" if you do not have any other information. Dead end. In Norwegian, the Ole is pronounced "Olah" rather than the Americanized "Olee".  To bad we didn't stick with the original pronunciation. It might have eliminated a lot of bad jokes.  

The Hoplin Name

My great grandfather Nils' father was Olaus Jonson Risan where "Risan" was farm #29 in North Trondelag where he labored. So probably, my great grandfather's given name was Nils Olausson. Therefore, my grandfather should have been Ole Nilsson, my father Glenn Oleson and me: David Glennson.  But when Nils immigrated he took a name from the area near the Hopla Fjord above Trondheim, an offshoot of the Asen Fjord. There was  sawmill on the Hopla fjord named “Hopla Mill” and he might have worked there. So where did "Hoplin" come from. Nil’s citizenship papers show Nils O. Hopland”, and how it transmogrified into Hoplin, I do not know. Perhaps a census entry error?  I've often wished the name would have remained Hopland - or Olausson. Life would be easier.  And, while we're at it, was it Nils or Nels?

A further complication is the frequent Americanization of names, sometimes accidentally. 

Here's a typical census taker tale from the early 1900's.

Census taker: “What’s your name?”
—Anders Olafsen
“Okay” (as he writes Andrew Olson on the census form) “And your wife?”
—Mette Evensdatter
“Right” (and he writes Martha Evanston on the census form)


But sometimes a rename was intentional.  Persson becomes Pearson. Jonsson becomes Johnson ...   When my maternal grandfather's brother got tired of the mailman mixing up all the Pearsons along that Iowa county road, he changed the family name to Nyren, which was supposed to indicate "new line".

And perhaps you know the bad Ellis Island joke about how a Swedish immigrant got the name "Sam Ting"?

Hopla Mill - 1917 

Copyright © 2016 Dave Hoplin

Miss Wood's Training School for Teachers of Young Children

Kindergarten was slow to be adopted in the USA.  It was a European idea after all. Stella Louise Woods was a pioneer advocate for early childhood education and she did more than advocate, she acted. She founded kindergarten programs in Michigan and Iowa before joining the staff of a kindergarten training school in Minneapolis in 1896. She transformed it and it became "Miss Wood's School", an innovative 2-year elementary teachers' training college in Minneapolis. She served as principal and instructor for 50 years.

Miss Wood's "Training School for Teachers of Young Children" was a "laboratory kindergarten" focusing on practice teaching. Initially, students lived in boarding houses and classes were held in a Nordeast settlement house.  Classes were taught by an assortment of instructors from the Minneapolis Institute of Art to the U of M.  In 1917 a permanent home was found on Bryant Ave So.  Her graduates taught in schools far and wide in the United States and were in great demand as the school became known for its high standards.


As you might infer from the photo, Miss Woods was the epitome of propriety and proper behavior. Her reputation grew and took on national significance, being named president of the International Kindergarten Union in the 19-teens.  She was internationally renowned for her story-telling.

In 1948 the school became an affiliate of Macalaster College when then Governor Luther Youngdahl made an appeal to Minnesota's liberal arts colleges to produce more elementary school teachers in the face of the charge of the baby boomers.  Miss Woods was in her 80's at the time and recognized this change was necessary to assure the school's continuation.  She died in 1949 before the transition had been completed.  The "Stella Wood Center" with is bright blue door and the sound of pre-schoolers at play echoing across the Macalaster campus lasted for 30 years and was the backbone of Macalaster's education department - but is no more. 

In its 40 years, Miss Wood's School graduated more than 2000 students and had alumnae in 44 states.

Ruth & 1st Grade class

One of those graduates was my aunt Ruth, who attended Stella Wood's Kindergarten Academy for two years, graduating in the class of 1947.  She taught kindergarten and 1st grade for 40 years in North Branch, Watertown and Lake Johanna Elementary in Mounds View.  She loved children, though she had none of her own but she adopted 28 each year and doted on her nieces and nephews. {Editor note: If you were lucky enough to get an overnight, you had all the pepsi and snickers you could handle}  

In the 50's and 60's, she spent nearly every summer in Lowry helping her mother Esther.

Ruthie embodied Miss Wood's tenets. It would be a far better world if more us would follow suit.

Lessons from Miss Woods

“Adjust yourself harmoniously – not with your elbows sticking out.”

“Have a voice with color in it.”

“Keep directions when teaching caution on the plane of information – not fear.”

“Place insulators between the sparklers when things seem too lively.”

“I would praise more and blame less.”

“Don’t thank God for Friday. Thank God for Monday.”

“Race prejudice is so unintelligent, so un-Christian, so dangerous. Children catch it from adults.”

“May you always keep that freshness of spirit which means love of your work, justice to the children, and a deepening respect for your profession, which we all agree is one of the noblest in the world.”

“It would be a really patriotic contribution if every teacher who finds hers a satisfying profession would say so and convince others that there are many rewards other than financial ones with which to measure the value of it to yourself and your community.”

“Life is such a wonderful adventure, and so full of richness and joy. .. Joy abounds when you are giving the best you can in service, and loving folks all along the way.”

“The measure of a person’s character is what they would do if they knew they would never be found out.” 

Ruth Hoplin was born on December 15, 1924 in Starbuck Hospital, the first offspring of Ole and Esther so privileged. Esther came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve. Would you believe 8 days in the hospital? Buddy stroked her head and said “poor pumpkin head”, a profound statement as he was only 2 1⁄2 and known at the time as “Silent Cal” {Editor note: this reference is a history test – Ruth is always the teacher.} 

Ruth attended grade school at District 30 in Lowry through the 8th grade and graduated from High School in 1943. She spent two years at Augsburg and then trained as a teacher at Stella Woods Kindergarten for two years + summer school, graduating in the class of 1947. The Woods school was later absorbed by Macalaster where Ruth received a B.A. in 1957.  

Ruth taught 1st grade for 1 year in Watertown @ $1800/year, sharing a room with the 3rd grade teacher.  She was recruited by North Branch, spending 6 years there and then and a total of 30 years in the Moundsview School system, teaching kindergarten, 1st & 2nd grade at Lake Johanna, Ralph Reeder & Valentine Hills Elementary schools, retiring in 1984.  She died in Minneapolis in 2008.

According to Olaf’s notes, she bought a Plymouth car in 1954 and later had a Buick Skylark I wanted badly to buy. No deal.

Copyright © 2016 Dave Hoplin

Brandon Farm

When I was growing up in Lowry, the Brandon farm seemed to me like a hobby farm, somewhere my grandfather would spend time in the summer playing farmer.  Ignorant grandson. For the son of an immigrant, that farm was a sacred bond to his 1879 immigrant father's dream of land ownership and the struggle for a better life for his family.

My great-grandfather Nils emigrated from Norway,  worked on the railroad until he had accumulated enough "wealth" to purchase some land, which he added to over a 20 year period.

What follows are memories of the "Hoplin Farm" from my father, Glenn Hoplin, written for me as part of a "Hoplin Family History" I assembled nearly 10 years ago.

{Editor note: I think you will be surprised – and possibly bored – by the level of detail in these descriptions. I find it fascinating and the type of record unusual in a family history. The author of these epistles was notorious for his curiosity, particularly about mechanical apparati. This was all dictated to me from memory.} 

The Hoplin farm is located in Brandon Township, Douglas County, Minnesota on the south shore of Little Chippewa Lake. Nils O. Hoplin emigrated in 1879 from Norway and purchased pieces of land, accumulating about 200 acres. Much of it is spread out, but connected with many hills and sloughs. Nil’s wife Hanna died in 1923 and Nils in 1927, leaving the farm in estate. Ole was the administrator. Bessie and Nettie were daughters living on the home place. Somehow Ole, Bessie & Nettie became owners and began operating the farm. The farm was managed with the help of numerous hired men over time: Dan Fry, Bill Jacobson, Frank Bartos, August Lehn, Wencil Simek, and others. Field work was done with horses, a team of “blacks” – Bertie & Coalie – very dependable and well matched. The second team – Beauty & Min – with Beauty very high-strung and Min lazy - was not quite the same story. All four were used on the grain and corn binder and at times on the manure spreader and gang plow.

The house was built of logs and had a stone cellar with an entrance from the outside through double cellar doors. Potatoes and canned goods were stored here. Through the years an addition to the north provided an entry, a pantry and kitchen. 

An addition to the south provided a little used living room. It had a pump organ, a davenport and a few chairs.



Upstairs over the living room was a large bedroom. The central area of this log house was a combination living-dining room and kitchen with a wood burning stove. There was a small downstairs bedroom to the east which also contained a very steep stairs to the upper level. There were two upstairs bedrooms as well as access to the added south bedroom. The front bedroom was always for the hired man. Most hired men worked the winter months for $12/mo and room, board and laundry. From May to October, they were paid $30/mo. There was no indoor plumbing. The outhouse was in the willows behind the house. I slept many nights in that first bedroom, often needing to visit the outhouse in the night. Occasionally, to avoid the steps I relieved myself through an open window, with a rusty screen as incriminating evidence of the misdemeanor.

Nils & grandchildren by the "summer kitchen"

The house was essentially abandoned in the summer months except for sleeping, as the separate summer kitchen to the north became the living area. The summer kitchen was divided in half, the north for food preparation and everyday living area. It had a wood fired kitchen range and a dining table. There was a window near the table that allowed us to observe what was happening outside. 

"Mail route" road between house and barn

A mail route ran between the house and the barn. The south half was used to feed the threshing or silo filling crews. Sometimes there were fifteen men to feed. Nettie and Bessie prepared the meals. They usually would go into the yard and snare a number of chickens, chop off the heads and prepare them for the work crew. Good eating. The summer kitchen had bare studs but the kitchen was wallpapered with newspaper. An addition to the north added extra kitchen space and a well dug by hand in the corner produced no water so it was converted into a cooler with a box, with a rope and pulley for lowering the food into the well to keep it cool.

Hand washing was done on a metal washstand outside. Water was taken from the rain barrel next to the winter house. Since this was outside, you could empty the basin with a toss – no slop pail to deal with.

1941 - soon after the arrival of "electricity"

There was no electricity until REA became available in 1938.

Making ice

There was a building between the house and the barn for storing ice that was harvested from Little Chippewa Lake. All the ice was cut with a two handled ice saw. Ice was piled high and covered with sawdust. This building was later converted to a garage after Nettie and Bessie learned to drive their 1926 Dodge. 

The barn was built in 1900 and was a basement type. The west side was grade level with four doors opening to the barnyard. The east side was the hay storage level and accessible through large doors up a ramp.The barn had a cupola in the middle with a horse weather vane on top. I shot a couple holes in the horse and was severely chastised. The barn had a hay track going both ways from the middle of the driveway. It had an Olson Hay Carrier on the track that could be turned 180 degrees to deliver the hay north or south. The hay was cut with horse drawn ground driven mowers pulled by Bertie and Coalie. They seemed to know when a kid was driving as the would walk slow so the mower would plug up and they could rest. They also seemed to know when it was near lunchtime and they refused to turn and make another round. 

Nelson barn, but illustrates a haying operation

Hay was raked with a dump rake, put in windrows and then into individual cocks. From there it was pitched by hand into the hayrack. The hay slings were 1⁄2” ropes – two ropes to a common ring and individual rings on opposite ends. Some slings had three ropes.

After the load was half full, a second sling as laid on top of the hay so the hay could be unloaded by halves. When the load was full, the team pulled the rack to the barn. The team was unhooked and hitched to double trees for pulling the hay on each sling up into the barn. When the sling reached the top of the barn, the track below the ridge pole carried the hay to where it was desired and at trip rope released the sling and the hay fell into the hay storage area. Unloading was the easiest part of the haymaking process, except when the barn was full and the slings had to be dug out of the haystack. It could be desperately hot in the hay mow.

In the early ‘30s, the barn was modernized with concrete floors, manure gutters and mangers. Anton Olson was the cement contractor. The old plank floors were removed and liquid pits eliminated. A litter carrier was available at all four doors. The horse barn was on the south end. It had a sand floor and yearly, sand was hauled from the lake shore to replace the sand that went out with the manure. A lean-to to the south housed chickens that produced eggs to exchange for groceries. A small enclosure on the north held a hand-cranked cream separator, which was replaced with a DeLeval gas engine mounted on a stand. Belts drove a water pump that drew water from an open pit well below the barn and discharged into a large galvanized tank on the hay mow floor. It had a cover and hay was laid on top in the winter. The tank had an overflow pipe that drained to an outside stock tank. New drinking cups were connected to this elevated tank. Another belt drove the cream separator ending the need for the hand crank. Still another belt drove a generator for charging a battery that provided light in the barn to 6 volt lamps.

We carried skim milk in 5 gal buckets to feed the hogs. The hog house was about 200’ from the barn. South of the hog house was a shed where the binder was stored. Much of the milk for the hogs was wasted because the hogs would lie in the trough and spill it. The calves also got skim milk. The calf pens were on either side of the separator area. Nettie, Bessie and the hired man milked the cows by hand at 5 A.M. in the morning and again at night. The cream was brought to the Brandon creamery twice a week in five gallon cream cans.

In the late ‘30s, a milk house was built on the northeast corner of the barn. A 5” well was drilled by Haakin Peterson and it took all winter. An opening was made through the stone foundation into the barn. The milk house was on the same level as the barn floor and had an easy stairway to the ground level. The room above became feed storage. A deep well Red Jacket pump was installed with a pressure tank. Water was dug to the icehouse for summer use, but not to the house. A barrel was installed and elevated above the door of the ice house and a pipe was run to a shower in the front part of the ice house. The barrel was on the south and the sun warmed the water sufficiently to make the showering comfortable.

A granary stood to the south. It had upstairs bins for feed grains. Before gasoline driven elevators, the grain was sacked at the threshing machine and carried up a ladder and dumped into bins. The south and west sides had a lean-to that housed the horse- drawn machinery.

Harvest time always meant hard work. The grain was cut with a ground driven binder that tied the grain in bundles with twine. The bundles were stood on butt end against each other in a shock, about 8 bundles to a shock. These shocks were picked up with a three tined fork and loaded on hay racks. The grain on the farm was usually put in a stack head to toe. There were piled sloping down so the water would drain. After many bundle loads in the base, smaller bundle circles were made until the top was a point. An 8’ stack pole – smooth and round – was pushed down into the stack. The stacks were in groups of four, called a setting. All four stacks were threshed with the same setting on the threshing machine.

Silo filling came later in the fall and we stayed home from school to “tramp the silo”. Corn was cut with a corn binder and hauled to the ensilage cutter on hay racks. The corn bundles were unloaded from the hay racks onto a short moving conveyer that fed the bundle into revolving knives and blower paddles which blew the chopped silage through 8” galvanized pipes. The cutter was powered by a 15-30 McCormick Deering tractor using a 100’ endless bolt. I was in the silo when the conveyer broke and went into the the knives and blower, much of the debris blown into the silo. It was fortunate that the silo was nearly full and the distributor pipes near the surface of the corn so the metal didn’t’ turn into shrapnel. Cliff Augdahl was up the silo in record time to check on me.

No buildings remain. The log cabin house has been demolished. The barn has been demolished and the debris buried.  There is not even evidence of the road that passed between the house and barn.  

However, the perforated horse weather vane was salvaged by Uncle Bud. 

Copyright © 2016 Dave Hoplin

Uncle Dave

Dave Nelson was my great-uncle, brother to my grandmother Esther. He was "Uncle Dave", not just to me by to an entire town.  With his brother-in-law, Ole Hoplin, he purchased a hardware, implement, furniture & mortuary business in Lowry, Minnesota in 1916 that became known as Hoplin & Nelson,  a business was in continuous operation for 65 years. (see Hoplin & Nelson post)

Dave was the most generous of persons, but always insisting on anonymity. Many a young married couple, down on their luck, got incredible deals on appliances at H&N. He was a humble man, cheering on the underdog, the disadvantaged and the physically handicapped. He was conservative politically and in his personal life, but liberal with those in need.

Dave broke a hip falling from a tree in 1915. The bone was not properly set and the bones healed misaligned. As a result one leg was shorter than the other. He spent many months in Gillette Hospital in Minneapolis. He wore a special corrective shoe with a built-up sole, but he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He was often bedridden from the back pain that was a side-effect of his injury. He had a special spot in his heart for the handicapped and provided a model for the Hoplin children with his treatment of the disadvantaged. 

Nevertheless, he managed to get into the army in WW I by jumping over a table, demonstrating to the draft board that his disability would not affect his ability to be a solider. He was accepted for limited duty and served at Fort Snelling in a clerical capacity. This was on his third try at enlisting. He was intensely patriotic. He was discharged December 24, 1918.

Dave loved sports, especially baseball and I believe managed to visit every Major League ballpark of the day except two, including a special trip in 1947 to see Jackie Robinson break the color barrier. In those days, there were no Major League baseball teams west of the Mississippi, except the Cardinals, unless you count the St. Louis Browns. He was the driving force behind the establishment of the Lowry Town Baseball team of the Resorters League, which included Lowry, Brandon, Evansville, Hoffman, Kensington, Millerville, Holmes City, Miltona. Later Lowry switched to the Pomme de Terre league which included Cyrus, Starbuck and Hancock. There were some darn fine ballplayers hiding out in the countryside. Kids knew Dave for the nickels he gave for foul balls retrieved. Adults knew him for anonymous charity. He loved to play golf and was one of the pioneers developing the Minnewaska Golf Course, planting trees, and other improvements. He was on a bowling team with Bob Bennett and other Lowry luminaries.

He was often teased about being an eligible bachelor. In the 20’s, Pope County was proposing to build a new court house. Dave was certain it would never happen. He said, “When that courthouse opens, I’ll be the first to buy a marriage license.” The courthouse opened in 1928. He claimed he couldn’t get a license because he had asked every eligible female in the county and they all turned him down. He never married – although pursued by several – a bachelor for life, he adopted a town.

He was stoic, shy and stubborn, had a wry sense of humor with a mischievous side. His list of his pranks is long. Legend has it that: 1) There was a local braggart, named Mitchell, just discharged from the Great War, who claimed he was the best shot in the county. Dave set up a contest with targets against some hay bales. Unbeknownst, Dave had positioned a few sticks of dynamite behind the bulls-eye. 2) Hank Applequist was a traveling salesman and every time he arrived in Lowry he invariable rushed to the basement to use the hardware’s toilet facilities. On one occasion he discovered the toilet set covered with what turned out to be peanut butter.

Dave was convinced a vehicle not black and a Buick was showy. He made only one mistake and that was trying a black Oldsmobile in 1960. My father ended up getting a good deal on that car.







On August 31, 1967, Dave was honored by the Lowry community, much to his embarrassment. People came from near and far on that day. Old colleagues, Jack Hite, Dr. Hagebeck, and even a few politicians, gathered in the Lowry Town Hall to honor the man. It was said, “There are few men who have given more of themselves to a community and yet fought so hard to stay in the background.” “I never heard him raise his voice in anger, although he would have been justified on many occasions”. In response, Dave said: “They overdid it of course. People I’ve always regarded as upright and honest, told a lot of lies today. They weren’t true, but it was nice. I like to see people taken care of, and I think some of them like me.” {Editor note: The understatement of the century}.

Interestingly, Dave’s brother Olaf had been honored similarly by the City of New London 10 years prior. “But he was a lot smarter than I was.”

Dave lived with his sister Esther and her family for his entire life.

It was Dave who planted the majestic elm trees that lined the boulevards of Lowry, until they were devastated by Dutch Elm disease.















{Editor note: Although this life is an impossibly high standard, the responsibility of upholding the inherited title “Uncle Dave” has kept me on the straight and narrow – for the most part – and has cost me a lot of dinner tabs.}

Copyright © 2016 Dave Hoplin