Journey to America
From Andvordhaugen beneath the mountains of Lom to the open prairie of North Dakota.
Before America
The Haugen family journey to America did not begin at a railway station or on the deck of an immigrant ship. It began among the mountains, valleys and farms of Norway.
John’s father, John Hansen, was born on July 20, 1845. His church record identifies his parents as Hans Rasmussen of Kjøstadbakken and Kari Johnsdatter of Drivdalen.
John’s mother, Marit Olsdatter, had been born four years earlier, on July 9, 1841. Her parents were Ole Nielsen of Storøgaarden and Kari Arulsdatter.
John Hansen and Marit Olsdatter married on May 21, 1872. They made their home in the countryside around Andvord in Lom, beneath some of Norway’s most dramatic mountain country.
John Is Born at Andvord
Five years after his parents married, their son John Johnsen was born on May 12, 1877. His baptism survives in the Lom church register as record #59.
When John and his older brother Ole were born, the family was associated with Andvord. Years later, John’s confirmation record—record #42—gave his birthplace as Andvordhaugen. Ole’s confirmation record similarly places him at Andvordhaugen. This record trail provides the strongest explanation we have for the family’s later use of the shorter name Haugen.
A Life Shaped by the Land
John grew up in a landscape of steep mountains, narrow valleys, forest, pasture and cultivated ground. Beauty was everywhere—but nearly everything the family needed still had to be earned by work.
Children became useful members of the household early. Animals needed feeding and water every day. Cows had to be milked. Barns and stalls were cleaned. Firewood was cut, split and stacked. Fences were repaired. Stones were removed from fields. Water was carried and tools were sharpened or mended.
Summer brought urgency. Grass had to be cut for hay, dried and placed under cover before rain spoiled it. Potatoes and other crops were planted and harvested. Livestock might be moved to summer grazing. Berries and other food were gathered and preserved.
Every summer task carried an unspoken reminder: winter was coming.
Winter altered the rhythm without ending the work. Animals still needed care. Snow had to be cleared. Wood had to be carried to the stove. Clothing, harnesses and tools were repaired indoors while the family carefully managed the food and fodder stored during the warmer months.
By the time John reached manhood he would have understood farming not as an occupation chosen from a list, but as a way of life learned from childhood.
Where Could John Build a Farm of His Own?
Norway’s cultivated land was limited by geography. Farms could not be divided indefinitely and still support every child of every generation. A son without sufficient land might remain a laborer, learn a trade, move elsewhere—or look beyond Norway.
Across the Atlantic was a very different proposition.
America had land.
The Idea Takes Root
The family was not considering America in complete isolation. Earlier family research records that their uncle Knut Ekle had emigrated to America in 1870.
No surviving letter has yet been found showing exactly what Knut told relatives in Lom. But nineteenth-century immigrant communities depended heavily upon family chains: one relative went first, sent news home and often became the destination for those who followed.
John and his older brother Ole would have heard stories of wages, railroad towns, Norwegian settlements and available farmland.
The exact conversations between the brothers were not recorded. The following is an informed reconstruction, not a quotation or documented event.
Perhaps Ole looked across the familiar fields of Lom and wondered aloud how many young men could build independent farms there. Perhaps John had already been thinking the same thing. In America, at least according to the stories reaching Norway, the horizon itself seemed to promise room.
Eventually they decided to leave.
Walking the Roads of Andvordhaugen
These are not modern recreations. They are surviving photographs from the same landscape and era in which John grew up. Together they help us see the valley, roads, buildings and mountain setting that formed the background of his childhood.
John’s church records place the family at Andvord and later Andvordhaugen. The photographs above document Lom, Andvord/Rødsheim and the surrounding Gudbrandsdalen landscape in roughly the 1880s and 1890s—the years of John’s childhood and youth. They show the physical world he knew, even where we cannot yet identify the exact road or farm building he personally used.
The Britannic Arrives in New York
Here the family story moves firmly into documentary evidence.
The passenger record identifies John Johnson Haugen, age 21, traveling with Ole Johnson Haugen, age 25. Both were Norwegian, both were listed from Lom, and both were bound for Canton, South Dakota.
The ship was the White Star Line Britannic, arriving in New York on September 30, 1898.
Most important of all, the manifest records the person they intended to join in America: Uncle N. Ekle.
The old family connection had become the brothers’ bridge into a new country.
From the Atlantic to the Prairie
New York was not the destination. It was the doorway.
After the Atlantic crossing came another enormous journey, this time by rail across the United States. Cities gave way to farms, forests and then the increasingly open country of the northern plains.
For men raised among the mountains of Lom, the Dakota horizon must have been startling. The mountains were gone. The sky seemed larger. Land stretched outward in nearly every direction.
This was the country that had drawn them across an ocean.
Across England and the Atlantic
The mountains of Lom were behind them. Ahead lay Hull, Liverpool, the North Atlantic—and a continent neither brother could yet see.
The First Crossing
For Norwegian emigrants traveling west in John’s era, reaching America was not one voyage but a chain of journeys. The brothers first had to leave Norway, cross the North Sea and reach the east coast of England. Hull became one of the great gateways through which Scandinavian emigrants passed on their way to America.
The North Sea could be rough and uncomfortable. Contemporary accounts describe crossings commonly lasting several days. For a young man raised among the farms and mountains of Lom, the crowded docks, steamships and industrial waterfront of England would have presented a world very different from Andvordhaugen.
From Lom to North Dakota
Follow the route one stage at a time. Each image can be enlarged.
Large numbers of Scandinavian emigrants landed at Hull and continued by rail across England. Their through-tickets could include the feeder steamer, railway journey and transatlantic passage.
Across England by Emigrant Train
From Hull, emigrants were moved westward by railway. The route passed through the industrial heart of northern England toward Liverpool. Purpose-built facilities at Hull handled the flow of Scandinavian travelers, and long emigrant trains carried passengers and their baggage across the country.
For John and Ole, this stage of the journey would have been a succession of unfamiliar sights: crowded railway platforms, smoke from locomotives and factories, English towns flashing past the windows, and finally Liverpool—one of the busiest ports in the world.
The Atlantic Lay Ahead
At Liverpool the scale of the journey changed again. Here emigrants joined thousands of other travelers waiting for the great Atlantic liners. The White Star Line operated regular Liverpool–New York service, and the Baltic, launched in 1903 and placed on the Liverpool–New York route in 1904, was among the largest ships of her generation.
Our surviving passenger manifest is one of the most important documents in John’s story. It places the brothers together on the Atlantic crossing and preserves details recorded at the moment they were leaving Europe behind: their names, ages, occupation, destination and American contact.
The manifest is not simply an illustration of immigration. It is evidence created during the journey itself. When displayed here, the original scan remains linked directly to John in the family archive.
Between Two Worlds
Behind John were the mountains, farms and family connections of Lom. Ahead was America, where land and opportunity seemed possible but nothing was guaranteed. For days the ship carried him through a landscape consisting almost entirely of water and sky.
When the American coast finally appeared, John had crossed more than an ocean. The farm boy from Andvordhaugen was about to begin the part of his life that would eventually lead to North Dakota—and to the Haugen family whose story followed.
John Goes to Work
By 1900, documentary evidence places John in Leonard Township, Cass County, North Dakota, working as a farm laborer in the household of Charley Palm.
Exactly how John came to know of the Palm family or the opportunity for work has not been discovered. Like many Scandinavian immigrants of the period, he may have learned of the opportunity through contacts in the Lutheran church, friends from Norway, or word of mouth from other farm workers.
After crossing the ocean in search of opportunity, John began his American life doing the work he had understood since childhood.
He farmed.
A Family Takes Root
John had crossed an ocean looking for opportunity. In North Dakota, the story became larger than one immigrant’s journey. It became the story of a family.
John and Mary
Among the Norwegian immigrant community of North Dakota, John’s life became joined with Mary Englebretson. Like John, Mary belonged to the stream of Norwegian families building new lives on the northern prairie.
The surviving Lutheran church records preserve their marriage. A church ledger records the couple in the early years of the twentieth century, giving us something more enduring than family tradition alone: a handwritten entry made by the community in which they lived.
There are conflicting transcriptions among the surviving church sources about the exact marriage entry. Rather than conceal that uncertainty, the family archive preserves the original ledger so the evidence can be examined directly.
Building a Home
For John, America had promised land and opportunity. Marriage changed the meaning of that promise. He was no longer building a future for himself alone.
Farm life on the northern plains demanded many of the same skills John had learned as a boy in Norway, but the landscape was profoundly different. Instead of mountain valleys and steep pasture, the Dakota country opened beneath an enormous sky. Fields could stretch toward a horizon that seemed almost without boundary.
The work remained relentless. Horses had to be fed, watered and harnessed. Ground had to be broken and planted. Hay was cut and stacked. Grain was harvested and threshed. Machinery, harness and buildings required constant repair. Livestock needed care regardless of heat, wind, snow or illness.
Inside the home, Mary’s work was equally essential. Meals were prepared from what could be grown, preserved or purchased. Water and fuel had to be managed. Clothing was washed and mended. A household had to be kept through winters in which a North Dakota storm could make even a short journey dangerous.
The farm was not simply where the family lived. It was the work that sustained the family from one season to the next.
The Haugen Family Grows
John and Mary’s children carried the Haugen name into the next generation. Among them were Oscar Martin Haugen, Joseph Haugen and Adolph Gerhardt Haugen.
Those children are the reason John’s journey did not end with one man’s arrival in America. From them came the later generations of the Haugens of North Dakota.
Explore the family in the interactive tree →A Life Cut Short
John’s years in America were tragically few.
Contemporary family research and the surviving newspaper notice place his death in 1909. The Kensal Journal and North Dakota State Journal reported his death in its February 4, 1909 issue and noted that the funeral would be held Friday.
Family testimony preserved by Dorothy Briss remembered the cause as double pneumonia. That testimony also explains an important discrepancy in the family record: John’s gravestone was ordered later and carries a different death year. For this history, the contemporary newspaper evidence is given greater weight.
John had come from Norway as a young man, crossed an ocean, worked the Dakota soil, married and begun a family. Then, while still a young father, his life ended.
The family he began remained.
Mary and the Children
John’s death did not end the Haugen story in North Dakota. Mary was left to face the years ahead with their children—and the next chapter belongs to the family that carried on after him.