August Lundberg Correspondence

August Lundberg Correspondence

• 1941 (Creation)

Five page corresponce between Harriet Lundberg and her great uncle August Lundberg and the story of his immigration to the United States. Also included is correspondence betwen Florence Bensen Lundberg and PLU professor Janet Rasmussen regarding the gift to Pacific Lutheran University of his writings.

Biographical Note

August Lundberg emigrated from Stockholm, Sweden, the spring of 1881 at age twenty-one. He landed at Quebec,Canada and took the train to Chicago, Illinois. Here he worked in a chemical works plant for three months. During this period he marched in the funeral procession of President Garfield, as he was a member of a fraternal order. He worked for a building contractor and later at a large sawmill during the Sioux Indian uprising. He then left for Crookston, Minnesota, where he got a job with a lineman rebuilding the telegraph along the road.

He secured 160 acres in Marshall County, Minnesota, for himself and did work on farms, in the woods, as a fireman on the railroad, and as a traveling salesman. When he had had enough of prairie country he headed for the Pacific Coast, ending up in Seattle. After the Great Fire of 1889 in Seattle he went to Port Townsend for awhile to work in the Irondale Smelter. Returning to Seattle he rented land and became a market gardener, taking goods into town each day and mingling with many of the first pioneers of Seattle. Floods forced him into the retail milk business for many years.

He also had jobs teaming by contract, working in Glass Works at Renton, at two breweries, at a hop field in California, at a winery, and back again to Seattle in the milk business and truck farming. During the World War he worked as a machine man in Ames ship yard, later as a fireman at a saw mill. He finally retired at the foothills in the Cascades and raised chickens.