N is for Nilsen kids

I am participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (April 2016), where we write 26 blog posts featuring each letter of the alphabet.

N is for Nilsen kids

Nils Arthur Nathaniel Nilsen and Agnes Hilma Carolina Lundquist were my husband’s maternal grandparents. They married 29 Nov 1917 in Hilmar, Merced County, California in the Swedish Mission Church in Hilmar by Arthur’s father, the Rev. N.M. Nilsen.[1] They were the parents of ten children, seven who lived to adulthood.

Hilmar was a farming community, settled originally by Swedes. The Lundquist had come from Montgomery Co, Iowa, and Rev. Nils Malkom Nilsen had come from Harcourt, Webster County, Iowa, where he was pastor of the church there.

Living on a farm was hard work but the kids probably still found time to have fun. Here is a photo of the five oldest Nilsen children, taken probably around 1928. My mother-in-law, Thelma is on the left, the only girl among those brothers.

rear: Arnold, Ernest, Leonard. front: Thelma, Raymond

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[1]Merced County, California, Marriage Certificates, Book H, pg 126, 55160, Arthur N. Nilsen to Agnes H.C. Lundquist, 1917.

Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.