By John E. Xavier
Note of Introduction
The following Sktech expands on two current sources: on the one hand, Facebook posts from both "Sami Siida of North America" and my own page, and on the other, from the bulletin for Borghild's funeral. The Facebook posts were put up the first week in September of 2012, soon after family members received news of the passing from this life of Borghild Amanda Luella (Xavier) Selid.
A more detailed life Sketch will continue to evolve here in the immediate future, and will draw on a number of sources. This Sketch will attempt to capture a number of meaningful points of Borghild's life, illustrative of the "long reach" of what some writers would call a focused biography or a microhistory.
As for language and terminology concerns, this Sketch will refer to World War I using that name and the contemporaneous term of "The Great War." Other usages will be explained in text or with footnotes, if too lengthy or if risking off-topic meanderings. It will take a while to get the footnotes and appendix material to the same level of polish as that of the main body.
As this Sketch evolves, we will include at the end of the blog post a list including parents, siblings, immediate family, and descendents. Thanks to cousin Ruth Selid for her correspondence and assistance in assembling this Sketch. Thanks also to many others for their contributions.
Part One. Borghild (Xavier) Selid: Background to Her Skisse/Life Sketch
Borghild (Xavier) Selid passed away, September 4, 2012, at age 93. Great loss is felt by the extended Selid families out in the Pacific Northwest and all the extended Xavier, Larson, and other families, as well as friends throughout North America. All these mourn the loss of "Borgie" - a giant in the circles of those families and friends, and a woman of similar stature among several church and ethnic communities.
A more detailed life Sketch will continue to evolve here in the immediate future, and will draw on a number of sources. This Sketch will attempt to capture a number of meaningful points of Borghild's life, illustrative of the "long reach" of what some writers would call a focused biography or a microhistory.
As for language and terminology concerns, this Sketch will refer to World War I using that name and the contemporaneous term of "The Great War." Other usages will be explained in text or with footnotes, if too lengthy or if risking off-topic meanderings. It will take a while to get the footnotes and appendix material to the same level of polish as that of the main body.
As this Sketch evolves, we will include at the end of the blog post a list including parents, siblings, immediate family, and descendents. Thanks to cousin Ruth Selid for her correspondence and assistance in assembling this Sketch. Thanks also to many others for their contributions.
Part One. Borghild (Xavier) Selid: Background to Her Skisse/Life Sketch
Borghild (Xavier) Selid passed away, September 4, 2012, at age 93. Great loss is felt by the extended Selid families out in the Pacific Northwest and all the extended Xavier, Larson, and other families, as well as friends throughout North America. All these mourn the loss of "Borgie" - a giant in the circles of those families and friends, and a woman of similar stature among several church and ethnic communities.
Among Borghild's immediate family members, to whom she imparted unending efforts of joy and love, she leaves
her five surviving children: Becky (Selid) Mattson (Bill); Ruth Selid; Naomi (Selid)
Tweet (Steve); Rachel (Selid) Gunderson (Art); and Steve Selid. She was preceded in death by
her parents, Rev. Karl Xavier (1869-1924) and Bina (Kammerud) Xavier (1880-1931), husband Rev. Alvin Selid (1917-20??), and son Mark Selid (1950-2011), and all nine of her siblings. She leaves a large extended
family, including thirteen grandchildren and seventeen great-grand children, and countless
relatives and friends.
Borghild lived not only a lengthy life of sharing, energy, and love, but also lived one filled with interesting events and people. Indeed, Borgie was born into a world of drama, that of the overwhelming economic and military realities of World War I, then known as The Great War--soon to be followed by the additional shock of the great Influenza Epidemic of 1918.
Truly, from 1918 onward, given her long years and on-going commitments to family, it would be quite impossible to separate Borghild's life story from that of the Xavier Extended Family. Simply put, she was involved in nearly every major family event and in many of the larger social trends during the lengthy span that was her era--only a few years shy of a full century. Her lifespan covers the crucial times of vast change: from the rural-dominated America of World War I to that of our modern urban-industrial-information society.
Part Two. 1918-1927, Family and Early Childhood, in Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota
Born Borghild Amanda Luella Xavier in 1918, she was by 2012 the last surviving child of Rev. Karl Xavier, and his successive wives, Henrietta (Larsen) Xavier and Bina Kristine (Kamrud) Xavier. Borghild was also among the last surviving grandchildren of Nils Paul (N.P.) Xavier, (1839-1918) and Amanda (Norum) Xavier (1849-1934). N.P. Xavier is recognized in immigration history as the first Saami ("Lapp") to be trained in the United States for the Lutheran Ministry.
When Bina gave birth to Borghild in 1918, the Xavier family lived in rural eastern Nebraska (Bradish), near Albion, located in a Lutheran parish right on the line between Boone and Madison counties.The Bradish parish Karl and Bina served, sometimes also called by the name of Newman Grove, was among the premier Norwegian Lutheran parishes of Nebraska, comprised of the renowned Immanuel and Our Savior's (Vor Frelsers) churches.
Karl and Bina's family were active in Nebraska from 1910-1919, during the during post-frontier era. That decade marked the peak years of the political and economic power of rural America, on balance the equal of urban America. It was in those peak years, the "parity years," that the Xavier family was located in the much-storied Norwegian Lutheran area immortalized in various historical and literary works: those of Willa Cather, with South Dakota references by O. E. Rolvaag in Giants in the Earth, and in endless other local and church histories.
There in eastern Nebraska, in the salad days of rural America, Karl and Bina Xavier, lived actively, with an evident relish for life and with sincere and eloquent leadership worthy of their education and station. They carried out their efforts for family, church, community, music, and intellectual pursuits--living an almost baronial life. In today's dollars, Karl's compensation included a solid salary, by itself worth between sixty or seventy thousand of our dollars.
The Immanuel-Vor Frelsers Paris, prominent as it was, offered more than a salary. Karl's "letter of call," In addition to the solid salary, built into the compensation twenty-acre estate, with a spacious parsonage equipped with telephone and a large pastor's study, with church-funded coal for heat, with a well, and plenty of other attractive features.Notable among those attractive features were a large garden and pasture for a few family milk cows, and for horses (used in transportation before 1915).
Other features of the twenty-acre site included buildings for animals, supplies, and a carriage; feed and gas supplies for both horses and the "horseless carriage;" and the advantage of walkable proximity to the main church, Immanuel--just up a small hill at a distance equivalent to about four city blocks.
By 1915, three years prior to Borghild's birth, the Xavier family transportation was mostly by state-of-the-art automobile, a Model T Ford of that same year. The Model T, often known in that era as a "Tin Lizzie," was a gift from the Bradish parish in honor of Karl and Bina's tenth wedding anniversary. The Xavier Tin Lizzie would furnish more than transportation, as it became among other things an attraction for the photographic experiments of Magdalene, who never went by her birth name of Karen. "Mag" or "Mugda," ever the free spirit, was Karl's eldest daughter and Bina's ever-challenging step-daughter), had full access to the photo lab at St. Olaf College. But beyond photography, Mag also was known on occasion to take herself for a country spin in the Model T, and more than once to have driven on a rim, or even two at a time, due to her lack of training in the changing of tires.
By 1917 however--and this is one of the most important howevers in U.S. history--the salad days of rural America began to run out. Not only had industrialization tilted economic and political power away toward urban America, but also in 1917 the Great War became an American war as well. In a few words, at the time of Borghild's birth in September of 1918, both the nation and Nebraska itself were caught up in two main issues. The first was World War I itself with its deadly one-two punch of wartime economic restrictions (including a "gas famine" for personal autos") and mounting military casualties. The second of the main issues was the great Influenza Epidemic, itself bringing chaos and mass death to the most remote corners of America.
Borghild's family was directly caught up in both the Great War itself and the Influenza. Borghild was born just seven months after her uncle, Gothard (Garth) Waldemar Xavier of the Twentieth Engineers (U.S. Army) was torpedoed while aboard the troop ship Tuscania. Garth survived, but there would be other family and war-related worries for Karl and Bina. (See blog post "Karl Xavier's Poetry of Hope After A Difficult Year").
Just weeks after Borghild's birth, the Influenza of 1918-1919 struck Nebraska. Borghild, even as a newborn, quickly showed her unique role in the Xavier household of twelve or more: she did not even fall ill from influenza when everyone else around her did. This was at a time when the influenza on a world-wide basis was killing more people than the Great War itself, and doing so in a way that the reports were calibrated in units of a million. Medical personnel, most particularly rural Doctors or urban nurses, were themselves often overwhelmed by extended hours of work or succumbed to the influenza itself.
In the manner of so many survivors of the epidemic, Karl and Bina emerged from the influenza epidemic in a state of weakened health, further complicated by early-stage tuberculosis. That last disease, usually known as TB, was often transmitted in rural areas to people from the cows they kept for personal dairy production. In urban areas, incidences of TB went on the upswing due to the weakened health of much of the population. Thus it was that at the end of Great War, there would be much rapid and far-reaching change ahead for the Xavier family, as well as for America as a nation.
Borghild, even as a newborn, quickly showed her unique role in her entire family household of twelve or more, as she did not even fall ill from influenza when everyone else in the Xavier household did. This was at a time when the influenza on a world-wide basis was killing more people than the Great War itself. Medical personnel, most particularly rural Doctors or urban nurses, were themselves often overwhelmed by extended hours of work or succumbed to the influenza itself. In the manner of so many survivors of the epidemic, Karl and Bina emerged from the 1918 influenza epidemic with weakened health, further complicated by early-stage tuberculosis. That last disease, usually known as TB, was often transmitted to people from the cows they kept for personal dairy production.
In 1919, Borghild moved with the Xavier family to Thompson, Iowa in Winnebago County, right on the Iowa-Minnesota border (very close to Intersate 35 in our time). In Thompson, father Karl, had accepted a "call" to a smaller parish, more befitting to his slowing physical health. The move included several adjustments, including the sale of the beloved Model T Ford, and the newness of electric lights in the home. Later, in 1924, family fortunes were greatly altered, following Karl's sudden death, while hospitalized in Sioux falls, in the wake of a household accident and a stroke.Thus, before her sixth birthday, Borghild lost her father.
The newly widowed Bina was much aggrieved, was responsible for seven children, and would have to move out of the baronial parish site. This added complication was simply that, as residents of church-sponsored housing, the family would have to move, and soon to make way for the next pastor and family.
Fortunately, Bina was greatly assisted by close relatives from Minneapolis, Uncle Rev. Anders O. Aasen and Aunt Marith (Xavier) Aasen. Marith was Karl's sister, younger by only five years, and her husband Anders had known the Xavier family since the 1890s. The Aasens persuaded Bina to move with Borghild and her six other siblings to Minneapolis, rather than to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a city "Uncle Aasen" dismissed as a "cow town."
In contrast to the inadequacies of Sioux Falls, Minneapolis was favored by the Aasens as they lobbied Bina for a move to the "Mill City"--already with the sister city of Saint Paul recognized as a major metropolitan since the 1890s. Accordingly, Bina and her family would be surrounded by a national center for Norwegian Lutheran communities, with plentiful opportunities for education, work, medical care, transportation, and cultural events. Most importantly, the Aasens promised to arrange housing in the very neighborhood of their own home and Immanuel Church, which was served by Rev. Aasen.
Bina chose to follow the Aasens' advice, and she made the move with her family to Minneapolis. In that move began a period of both testing and perseverance for the Xavier family. This would be especially in the financial sense, for the 1920s were an era well before Social Security survivor benefits--an era also marked by not only by lack of social safety net, but also by inadequate church pension benefits for survivors of pastors.
Karl, however, had left some money for financial support of his beloved family. Karl had both a small pension account accumulated from just over twenty years of service in the Norwegian Lutheran Church and a basic life insurance portfolio (approximately $60,000 in 2012 dollars). The life insurance portfolio had been funded since the early 1910s by the generosity of a well-off farmer in the Bradish, Nebraska parish, whose name has unfortunately been lost in the mists of time. The generous farmer had been greatly concerned about the possible risks to the large Xavier family in event of Karl's death. Along that line of thinking, the farmer-parishioner took the step, a bit unusual for the times, of paying for Karl's life insurance portfolio.
Here it is helpful to recall the evolving financial context of that era of the 1910s, when many local or regional church leaders questioned the "lack of faith in God" they felt was implied in the purchase of life insurance. By contrast, most thoughtful regional and national Lutheran church leaders had for some years recognized the validity of such insurance plans. Among those thoughtful leaders were Anders and Marith Aasen, as shown by the presence of their daughter Dagny and son Paul on the charter member list of the Lutheran Brotherhood insurance society in 1917.
For widow Bina, Karl Xavier's life insurance portfolio provided a check every three months: about $80 (close to $2,000 in 2012 dollars), hardly more than minimal support for a widow with seven children ages 5 to 17. (The money would last about six years.) Bina planned therefore to rely on giving piano lessons for supplemental cash income. It was of considerable comfort to Bina that Karl's three oldest children Henrietta, Magdalene, Paul and Peter, were grown up and on their own by 1924.
Bina and the children received much on-going advice and practical assistance from Uncle Aasen and Aunt Marith. As promised, the Aasens had by mid-summer of 1924 arranged an advantageous purchase of a house for Bina at 1414 Monroe Street in Northeast Minneapolis, on the same block encompassing both the Aasen family home and Immanuel Lutheran Church served by Rev. Aasen.
Nonetheless, in short order, the creative and good-hearted Bina, herself began to suffer ill health from tuberculosis. By 1925, family drama escalated as Bina was forced by her health to seek medical care in the Glen Lake Sanitarium for her tuberculosis. She and the Aasens arranged for the placement of the seven siblings among friends and family, some of whom were located as far away as Kansas.
By sending the the Xavier children to various homes, Bina and the Aasens avoided a potential county government intervention for removal of the family from Bina's custody. Such a removal, not unusual at the time, would have been on the basis of Bina's serious ill-health. Here, then, was a strategic approach to keep the option open for Bina to later improve in health and then once more to be united with her children. In the truest sense, the Aasens made it possible for the crisis-stricken family to maintain its long-term coherence. Borghild and her sister Mabel would thus return to Nebraska, in round-about fashion.
In 1925, six-year-old Borghild and eight-year-old sister Mabel stayed with older half-sister (an already vivacious and matriarchal figure) Magdalene Xavier. "Mag" was a schoolteacher in northern Minnesota, in Gilbert. Later Borghild and her sister, Mabel, would return to stay in Bradish, Nebraska. There, Borghild and Mabel were welcomed by the Blaalid family, active members of the old Immanuel parish.
Bina recovered sufficiently by late 1927 and early 1928 for her children to rejoin her in Minneapolis.However, plagued as Bina was by continued ill-health, she passed away in 1931 from tuberculosis. Her seven children continued to keep house together, sharing home and job responsibilities to make certain they all could graduate from Edison High School.
Part III. Early Youth: 1928-1941 in Minneapolis
In Minneapolis, Borghild grew up in the ever-interesting ethnic tossed-salad world of Northeast Minneapolis. That section of the city, then as now, was affectionately referred to by locals as "Nordeast." Nordeast boasted of a highly diverse ethnic and cultural mix, along with a great variety of jobs that supported the local economy. During Borghild's youth, church and family were ever-present, with the Aasen cousins and Immanuel Church on the same block as her home with her siblings. Other activity was based at nearby Edison High School. Edison High during this era attained national status as a prominent secondary school in many fields, including sports, music, debate, and more. To cite only one example of Edison High prominence, instance, the band was often called upon for civic events such as ribbon cutting ceremonies, including that of the M? Bridge. Even today, many locals refer to Edison as the "University of Edison." Borghild would graduate from Edison High (Class of 1936), as did all six of her siblings.
During the 1930s, two of Borghild's older brothers. Bjarne and Valdemar, were active in the Minnesota National Guard, following as they did their older half-brother, Peter. (Peter would go on to become a career Army non-commisioned officer, with the rank of Sargent.) Thus, during these years, Borghild had a true front-row seat to the Great Depression, witnessing social upheavals and changes in the economic and political orders. Gone by the 1930s was the America of rural-urban balance, of the "parity years," between between the economic and political aspects of rural and urban life. In the 1930s, the nation, and Minneapolis was attempting to find its footing in the new ways.
Included among the upheavals and changes in the 1930s was the long-term trend toward worker, or union organization. This trend included, among other aspect, national movements for Social Security pensions, improved wages, and collective bargaining (unions), and labor strikes to increase the pressure for economic and political change During the Depression of that decade, Minneapolis was a focal point of several major strikes where the Minnesota National Guard, with Borghild's brothers in uniform, actively preserved order. It was national news during this period of time that Farmer-Labor Party Governor Floyd B. Olson shook up the social order, for he had directed that the Guard remain truly neutral in strikes, notably during the great Truckers' strikes. Governor Olson thus forced employers to fairly negotiate with organized labor rather than, as employers were accustomed, to count on the Guard to crack down with military force against workers.
On the family front, Borghild witnessed several of the broadly destructive forces of the Great Depression. She saw constantly, for example, how her education-bent brothers Karl and Valdemar were forced to take reduced and long-postponed steps toward a college degree, in their case at Augsburg College, supplemented by occasional courses at "The U," (the University of Minnesota). Fortunately, both institutions were about a fifteen-minute streetcar ride away and were receptive to sporadic and part-time students.
1941-1945 World War II , Young Adulthood, Marriage, and Service in the Lutheran Church
With the advent of World War II, Borgie witnessed the disruption of civilian society by the vast scale of war. Half-brother Peter and brothers Bjarne and Valdemar were active in the U.S. Army. In 1942, Valdemar was on on leave to Minneapolis to visit his hospitalized sister Borghild, met a nurse at Swedish Hospital, Elna Johnson, his future wife of over fifty years. Borghild served as Maid of Honor in Texas for the wedding of Valdemar and Elna. As with other family members, Borghild shared the concerns, sacrifices, and losses arising from World War II, including the death of brother Bjarne, who died in France in December of 1944 from battlefield wounds.
The vast majority of Borgie's adult years were spent with her long-time husband, Rev. Alvin Selid. Alvin was a North Dakota native, from the Watford City area, now known for oil fields, rather than only the back-breaking work of wheat farms. He had studied at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and even taught country school for a year achieve a debt-free college degree. Alvin and Borghild met while Alvin was enrolled at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, finishing his seminary degree which would lead to his life calling of Lutheran pastor.
They married in 1943, at Immanuel, with the ceremony presided over by Rev. L.T. Larson, who had been Borghild's instructor for Confirmation at Immanuel Church in Minneapolis. In yet another of an endless array of family ties, Rev. Larson was a brother-in-law of sister Anna (Xavier) Larson, who had married Fritjof (Fritz) Larson in the 1930s. Alvin and Borghild began Lutheran parish service in Drake, North Dakota, in 1944, at the beginning of Alvin's half-century-plus of association with the Norwegian Lutheran Church and its successors.
1945-2012: Decades of Service to Church, Community, and Family
Al and Borgie resided in several communities, as they later served Lutheran parishes in North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington from 1945 to 1989. Their parishes included the rural, urban and suburban areas of twentieth-century America. Together they raised their family of six children, maintaining close ties to both the Selid and Xavier extended families, and to their mutual Norwegian and Borgie's Saami heritages. The Selids were always a front-and-center family when it came to reunions, weddings, anniversaries, and funerals, all interspersed with numerous visits to the historical base of the Twin Cities. It is worth noting that Borghild in her lifetime held memberships in churches in six states (by chronological order): Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington.
Al and Borgie's firs rural parish was out of Drake, North Dakota, as mentioned. Drake was a strategic town for switching and roundhouse (repair and storage) on the famous "Soo Line" (Sault St. Marie, St. Paul and Pacific) railroad, just about 40 miles from Minot,. The Drake parish came with a parsonage in the town of 1,000 or so, and was filled out with three more churches, rural Balfour, Kief, and Butte. in 1949, Alvin received a request to consider a move to another parish in Enderlin, being accepted for the new "call" without even preaching a guest sermon.
As Alvin recounted with some relish over the years, the Soo Line workers had been talking to each other in the course of track maintenance between Enderlin and Drake. Their favorable impressions of Alvin were backed up by the endorsement of Drake grocery and clothing store owner and part-time Soo switchman and Greek-American Gus Janavaros. His opinion mattered enough that many crewmen of The Soo purchased their winter gear--especially thermal underwear--from his store, and Gus boasted that all of his Soo customers were satisfied. Thus the Soo Line crewmen had decided ahead of Alvin's visit to make a formal request for his services as their pastor. Such were the community dynamics of a much gentler era.
Alvin and Borgie were succeeded in the Drake parish by my parents, Rev. Karl Astrup Xavier and Edith Bonita (Bethke) Xavier. Family and church ties were as a matter of course maintained, as Al and Borgie returned on occasion, particularly for the 50th Anniversary of the St. Paul congregation in Butte.
As for Enderlin, that second North Dakota parish of Uncle Al and Aunt Borgie, I recall with warm remembrance the years of their service at Enderlin, North Dakota, 1949-1956. This was a town in the more rain-blessed southeastern area of that semi-arid state, a rather tree-lined town at that. Tree-lined was an adjective not always applicable in villages of the drier central and western zones of North Dakota. We of the family of Karl and Edith (Bethke) Xavier by 1952 had left Drake and lived up on the truly semi-arid plains, the Coteau du Missouri, hard by the Missouri River fifty miles west of Minot. There my father had accepted a call to serve a parish of five rural churches, centered in a near-ghost-town unincorporated hamlet by the name of Coulee.
Living there in Coulee, from 1952-56, I recall clearly how our family looked forward each of those four years to visiting the Selids in Enderlin on our family treks to Edith's home town of Franklin, Minnesota. Enderlin not only represented a change from the semi-arid zone in which we lived, it offered a pleasant relief from the 20-25 miles per hour average pace dictated by the narrow and ill-paved North Dakota highways of that era. Those highways featured not only slow travel, often behind farm machinery or hopelessly trailing the slow and ill-smelling trucks hauling pigs or cows to market. Also included in the slow travel realities was the travel gauntlet of direct passage through an endless succession of towns and villages, often no more than ten miles apart, and all of which took excessive civic pride in the frankly unnecessary installation of stop signs and traffic lights.
Hampered by such low average speeds, the drive to Enderlin would drag on into double or triple what we would expect in 2012. We would arrive in Enderlin about late evening suppertime. We would take heart, however, as we were greeted by Alvin and Borghild. Then, my brothers Paul, Karl III, and I would would see all of our cousins lined up at a large dining table, all of them gifted with large, dark eyes turning to us, the new visitors. I treasure those moments of big-eyed welcome from my Selid cousins.
Alvin and Borgie were by the mid-1950s led to the Pacific Coast states, beginning a forty-year period of service. They began in Silverton, Oregon, later serving in Spokane Valley, Washington; Beaverton, Oregon; and in other roles, including chaplaincy. Throughout the Pacific Coast years, the Selids were closely involved with family and friendship circles, both in that area and in the rest of the U.S. This closeness was not limited to triennial Xavier Reunions. On the contrary, the Selids often visited their North Dakota and Minnesota relatives for various family occasions. This was similarly true of Borghild's West Coast sisters and their families, the Howard and Mabel Teermans of Silverton and the Fritz and Anna Larsons of Tacoma.
In retirement years, most particularly, Borghild was a tireless family promoter of her Norwegian and Saami heritages. On several occasions, she and Alvin, and other family members visited both the Valdres region of Norway (home of her Kamrud ancestors) and the Saami territories (home her Xavier and Tornensis forebears). I recall her mentioning also he contacts with others in the relation circles, including Dagny Skattebol, sister of Signe Skattebol (who had married Prof. Johan Ulrik Xavier (1870-1963) at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU)..
I want to share a particularly endearing account here. For a guest speech Borghild delivered at PLU, she is recalled among the Saami North American communities. Those communities claim Johan U. Xavier, Borghild's uncle, as a prominent example of Saami North American success, and in like manner take pride in Borghild's first-class performance in speaking at the re-dedication ceremony of Xavier Hall. PLU had renovated this fine building, named in honor of Borghild's uncle, Johan Ulrik Xavier, one-time President and nearly forty years a professor at that institution. (An account of this event was reported upon by Arran, the Saami North American Newsletter, and we will soon post that information.) Bill and Becky (Selid) Mattson were generous in sharing a videotape of Borghild's speech. That speech is recalled by long-time Saami North American leader Arden Johnson of Duluth, Minnesota, who attended that ceremony, as both well-delivered and having great substance. This was while Borghild was in her 80s!
As for the world of Xavier Family Reunions, Borghild attended every one of those assemblies, from 1946-2010. In her unsinkable and optimistic way, she had already registered for the 2013 Reunion prior to her final illness! Of course, we will add more material to Borghild's Sketch, and also refer readers to related posts or links to external meterial on the Internet.
Part IV. Borghild: A Bringer of Light to This World
There are individuals who are difficult to sum up, and my Aunt Borghild was one such. So, I venture out on a rhetorical limb here, with the following brief words. In contend,in the largest sense of the phrase, that Borghild was a bringer of light to this world. She shone. We will miss this marvelous woman, this woman of greatness and modesty, this servant of God and of humanity.
Notes:
Despite rural depopulation in the past century, Immanuel survives even today as Immanuel-Zion (IZ) Lutheran
Kamrud Family Tree.
Carol R. Byerly, Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, c. 1989.
Nancy Gentile Ford, Americans ALL!: Foreign-born Soldiers in World War I. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
Arnold R. Mickelson, Ed., A Biographical Directory of Clergymen of The American Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972 (p. 844, Alvin)
Gerald Giving, John Peterson, Olaf Lysnes, A Biographical Directory of Pators of The Evangelical Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1952 (p. 493, Alvin)
Appendix
List of Parents, Immediate Family, Descendents and Siblings of Boghild (Xavier) Selid
Parents:
Rev. Karl Xavier (1869-1924) - father, born in Alta, in Sapmi (formerly known as Lappland), Norway.. Emigrated 1873, educated at Luther College, Decorah, IA, University of Minnesota, and Luther Seminary, Robbinsdale, MN. First wife, Henrietta (Larsen) Xavier (1864-1904). Rural and parochial school teacher in Minnesota. Later Pastor, professor, church leader, and author in Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska.
Bina (Kamrud) Xavier (1880-1931) -mother, born near Starbuck, MN. Teacher, musical director (Choral Union), and active pastor's wife. Educated Mayville Normal School, ND; Lutheran Normal School, Sioux Falls, SD.
Rev. Alvin Selid (1917-??need years) - husband, born and raised in northwestern North Dakota, near Watford City, Williston area. Educated public schools, Concordia College (Moorhead, MN), and Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Rural school teacher in North Dakota. Later Pastor in North Dakota, Washington, and Oregon.
Rebecca (Selid) Mattson (b. 1946)
Ruth Selid (b. 1949)
Mark Selid (1950-2011)
Naomi (Selid) Tweet (b. 19--)
Rachel (Selid) Gunderson ( b. 19--)
Stephen Selid (b. 19--)
Half-siblings, mother Henrietta (Larsen) Xavier:
Magdalene X. Visovatti (nee Karen Magdalena Xavier)
Paul Neuberg Xavier
Peter Laurentius Xavier
Full siblings, mother Bina (Kamrud) Xavier:
Valborg Henrietta (Xavier) Houghtelin
Anna (Xavier) Larson
Bjarne Kamrud Xavier
Karl Astrup Xavier
Valdemar Ulrik Xavier
Mabel (Xavier) Teerman (earlier Carlson, divorced)
Close relative living in family:
Mabel Holtan (Kamrud side), niece of Bina, therefore first cousin of the seven children of Karl and Bina.
Truly, from 1918 onward, given her long years and on-going commitments to family, it would be quite impossible to separate Borghild's life story from that of the Xavier Extended Family. Simply put, she was involved in nearly every major family event and in many of the larger social trends during the lengthy span that was her era--only a few years shy of a full century. Her lifespan covers the crucial times of vast change: from the rural-dominated America of World War I to that of our modern urban-industrial-information society.
Part Two. 1918-1927, Family and Early Childhood, in Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota
Born Borghild Amanda Luella Xavier in 1918, she was by 2012 the last surviving child of Rev. Karl Xavier, and his successive wives, Henrietta (Larsen) Xavier and Bina Kristine (Kamrud) Xavier. Borghild was also among the last surviving grandchildren of Nils Paul (N.P.) Xavier, (1839-1918) and Amanda (Norum) Xavier (1849-1934). N.P. Xavier is recognized in immigration history as the first Saami ("Lapp") to be trained in the United States for the Lutheran Ministry.
When Bina gave birth to Borghild in 1918, the Xavier family lived in rural eastern Nebraska (Bradish), near Albion, located in a Lutheran parish right on the line between Boone and Madison counties.The Bradish parish Karl and Bina served, sometimes also called by the name of Newman Grove, was among the premier Norwegian Lutheran parishes of Nebraska, comprised of the renowned Immanuel and Our Savior's (Vor Frelsers) churches.
Karl and Bina's family were active in Nebraska from 1910-1919, during the during post-frontier era. That decade marked the peak years of the political and economic power of rural America, on balance the equal of urban America. It was in those peak years, the "parity years," that the Xavier family was located in the much-storied Norwegian Lutheran area immortalized in various historical and literary works: those of Willa Cather, with South Dakota references by O. E. Rolvaag in Giants in the Earth, and in endless other local and church histories.
There in eastern Nebraska, in the salad days of rural America, Karl and Bina Xavier, lived actively, with an evident relish for life and with sincere and eloquent leadership worthy of their education and station. They carried out their efforts for family, church, community, music, and intellectual pursuits--living an almost baronial life. In today's dollars, Karl's compensation included a solid salary, by itself worth between sixty or seventy thousand of our dollars.
The Immanuel-Vor Frelsers Paris, prominent as it was, offered more than a salary. Karl's "letter of call," In addition to the solid salary, built into the compensation twenty-acre estate, with a spacious parsonage equipped with telephone and a large pastor's study, with church-funded coal for heat, with a well, and plenty of other attractive features.Notable among those attractive features were a large garden and pasture for a few family milk cows, and for horses (used in transportation before 1915).
Other features of the twenty-acre site included buildings for animals, supplies, and a carriage; feed and gas supplies for both horses and the "horseless carriage;" and the advantage of walkable proximity to the main church, Immanuel--just up a small hill at a distance equivalent to about four city blocks.
By 1915, three years prior to Borghild's birth, the Xavier family transportation was mostly by state-of-the-art automobile, a Model T Ford of that same year. The Model T, often known in that era as a "Tin Lizzie," was a gift from the Bradish parish in honor of Karl and Bina's tenth wedding anniversary. The Xavier Tin Lizzie would furnish more than transportation, as it became among other things an attraction for the photographic experiments of Magdalene, who never went by her birth name of Karen. "Mag" or "Mugda," ever the free spirit, was Karl's eldest daughter and Bina's ever-challenging step-daughter), had full access to the photo lab at St. Olaf College. But beyond photography, Mag also was known on occasion to take herself for a country spin in the Model T, and more than once to have driven on a rim, or even two at a time, due to her lack of training in the changing of tires.
By 1917 however--and this is one of the most important howevers in U.S. history--the salad days of rural America began to run out. Not only had industrialization tilted economic and political power away toward urban America, but also in 1917 the Great War became an American war as well. In a few words, at the time of Borghild's birth in September of 1918, both the nation and Nebraska itself were caught up in two main issues. The first was World War I itself with its deadly one-two punch of wartime economic restrictions (including a "gas famine" for personal autos") and mounting military casualties. The second of the main issues was the great Influenza Epidemic, itself bringing chaos and mass death to the most remote corners of America.
Borghild's family was directly caught up in both the Great War itself and the Influenza. Borghild was born just seven months after her uncle, Gothard (Garth) Waldemar Xavier of the Twentieth Engineers (U.S. Army) was torpedoed while aboard the troop ship Tuscania. Garth survived, but there would be other family and war-related worries for Karl and Bina. (See blog post "Karl Xavier's Poetry of Hope After A Difficult Year").
Just weeks after Borghild's birth, the Influenza of 1918-1919 struck Nebraska. Borghild, even as a newborn, quickly showed her unique role in the Xavier household of twelve or more: she did not even fall ill from influenza when everyone else around her did. This was at a time when the influenza on a world-wide basis was killing more people than the Great War itself, and doing so in a way that the reports were calibrated in units of a million. Medical personnel, most particularly rural Doctors or urban nurses, were themselves often overwhelmed by extended hours of work or succumbed to the influenza itself.
In the manner of so many survivors of the epidemic, Karl and Bina emerged from the influenza epidemic in a state of weakened health, further complicated by early-stage tuberculosis. That last disease, usually known as TB, was often transmitted in rural areas to people from the cows they kept for personal dairy production. In urban areas, incidences of TB went on the upswing due to the weakened health of much of the population. Thus it was that at the end of Great War, there would be much rapid and far-reaching change ahead for the Xavier family, as well as for America as a nation.
Borghild, even as a newborn, quickly showed her unique role in her entire family household of twelve or more, as she did not even fall ill from influenza when everyone else in the Xavier household did. This was at a time when the influenza on a world-wide basis was killing more people than the Great War itself. Medical personnel, most particularly rural Doctors or urban nurses, were themselves often overwhelmed by extended hours of work or succumbed to the influenza itself. In the manner of so many survivors of the epidemic, Karl and Bina emerged from the 1918 influenza epidemic with weakened health, further complicated by early-stage tuberculosis. That last disease, usually known as TB, was often transmitted to people from the cows they kept for personal dairy production.
In 1919, Borghild moved with the Xavier family to Thompson, Iowa in Winnebago County, right on the Iowa-Minnesota border (very close to Intersate 35 in our time). In Thompson, father Karl, had accepted a "call" to a smaller parish, more befitting to his slowing physical health. The move included several adjustments, including the sale of the beloved Model T Ford, and the newness of electric lights in the home. Later, in 1924, family fortunes were greatly altered, following Karl's sudden death, while hospitalized in Sioux falls, in the wake of a household accident and a stroke.Thus, before her sixth birthday, Borghild lost her father.
The newly widowed Bina was much aggrieved, was responsible for seven children, and would have to move out of the baronial parish site. This added complication was simply that, as residents of church-sponsored housing, the family would have to move, and soon to make way for the next pastor and family.
Fortunately, Bina was greatly assisted by close relatives from Minneapolis, Uncle Rev. Anders O. Aasen and Aunt Marith (Xavier) Aasen. Marith was Karl's sister, younger by only five years, and her husband Anders had known the Xavier family since the 1890s. The Aasens persuaded Bina to move with Borghild and her six other siblings to Minneapolis, rather than to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a city "Uncle Aasen" dismissed as a "cow town."
In contrast to the inadequacies of Sioux Falls, Minneapolis was favored by the Aasens as they lobbied Bina for a move to the "Mill City"--already with the sister city of Saint Paul recognized as a major metropolitan since the 1890s. Accordingly, Bina and her family would be surrounded by a national center for Norwegian Lutheran communities, with plentiful opportunities for education, work, medical care, transportation, and cultural events. Most importantly, the Aasens promised to arrange housing in the very neighborhood of their own home and Immanuel Church, which was served by Rev. Aasen.
Bina chose to follow the Aasens' advice, and she made the move with her family to Minneapolis. In that move began a period of both testing and perseverance for the Xavier family. This would be especially in the financial sense, for the 1920s were an era well before Social Security survivor benefits--an era also marked by not only by lack of social safety net, but also by inadequate church pension benefits for survivors of pastors.
Karl, however, had left some money for financial support of his beloved family. Karl had both a small pension account accumulated from just over twenty years of service in the Norwegian Lutheran Church and a basic life insurance portfolio (approximately $60,000 in 2012 dollars). The life insurance portfolio had been funded since the early 1910s by the generosity of a well-off farmer in the Bradish, Nebraska parish, whose name has unfortunately been lost in the mists of time. The generous farmer had been greatly concerned about the possible risks to the large Xavier family in event of Karl's death. Along that line of thinking, the farmer-parishioner took the step, a bit unusual for the times, of paying for Karl's life insurance portfolio.
Here it is helpful to recall the evolving financial context of that era of the 1910s, when many local or regional church leaders questioned the "lack of faith in God" they felt was implied in the purchase of life insurance. By contrast, most thoughtful regional and national Lutheran church leaders had for some years recognized the validity of such insurance plans. Among those thoughtful leaders were Anders and Marith Aasen, as shown by the presence of their daughter Dagny and son Paul on the charter member list of the Lutheran Brotherhood insurance society in 1917.
For widow Bina, Karl Xavier's life insurance portfolio provided a check every three months: about $80 (close to $2,000 in 2012 dollars), hardly more than minimal support for a widow with seven children ages 5 to 17. (The money would last about six years.) Bina planned therefore to rely on giving piano lessons for supplemental cash income. It was of considerable comfort to Bina that Karl's three oldest children Henrietta, Magdalene, Paul and Peter, were grown up and on their own by 1924.
Bina and the children received much on-going advice and practical assistance from Uncle Aasen and Aunt Marith. As promised, the Aasens had by mid-summer of 1924 arranged an advantageous purchase of a house for Bina at 1414 Monroe Street in Northeast Minneapolis, on the same block encompassing both the Aasen family home and Immanuel Lutheran Church served by Rev. Aasen.
Nonetheless, in short order, the creative and good-hearted Bina, herself began to suffer ill health from tuberculosis. By 1925, family drama escalated as Bina was forced by her health to seek medical care in the Glen Lake Sanitarium for her tuberculosis. She and the Aasens arranged for the placement of the seven siblings among friends and family, some of whom were located as far away as Kansas.
By sending the the Xavier children to various homes, Bina and the Aasens avoided a potential county government intervention for removal of the family from Bina's custody. Such a removal, not unusual at the time, would have been on the basis of Bina's serious ill-health. Here, then, was a strategic approach to keep the option open for Bina to later improve in health and then once more to be united with her children. In the truest sense, the Aasens made it possible for the crisis-stricken family to maintain its long-term coherence. Borghild and her sister Mabel would thus return to Nebraska, in round-about fashion.
In 1925, six-year-old Borghild and eight-year-old sister Mabel stayed with older half-sister (an already vivacious and matriarchal figure) Magdalene Xavier. "Mag" was a schoolteacher in northern Minnesota, in Gilbert. Later Borghild and her sister, Mabel, would return to stay in Bradish, Nebraska. There, Borghild and Mabel were welcomed by the Blaalid family, active members of the old Immanuel parish.
Bina recovered sufficiently by late 1927 and early 1928 for her children to rejoin her in Minneapolis.However, plagued as Bina was by continued ill-health, she passed away in 1931 from tuberculosis. Her seven children continued to keep house together, sharing home and job responsibilities to make certain they all could graduate from Edison High School.
Part III. Early Youth: 1928-1941 in Minneapolis
In Minneapolis, Borghild grew up in the ever-interesting ethnic tossed-salad world of Northeast Minneapolis. That section of the city, then as now, was affectionately referred to by locals as "Nordeast." Nordeast boasted of a highly diverse ethnic and cultural mix, along with a great variety of jobs that supported the local economy. During Borghild's youth, church and family were ever-present, with the Aasen cousins and Immanuel Church on the same block as her home with her siblings. Other activity was based at nearby Edison High School. Edison High during this era attained national status as a prominent secondary school in many fields, including sports, music, debate, and more. To cite only one example of Edison High prominence, instance, the band was often called upon for civic events such as ribbon cutting ceremonies, including that of the M? Bridge. Even today, many locals refer to Edison as the "University of Edison." Borghild would graduate from Edison High (Class of 1936), as did all six of her siblings.
During the 1930s, two of Borghild's older brothers. Bjarne and Valdemar, were active in the Minnesota National Guard, following as they did their older half-brother, Peter. (Peter would go on to become a career Army non-commisioned officer, with the rank of Sargent.) Thus, during these years, Borghild had a true front-row seat to the Great Depression, witnessing social upheavals and changes in the economic and political orders. Gone by the 1930s was the America of rural-urban balance, of the "parity years," between between the economic and political aspects of rural and urban life. In the 1930s, the nation, and Minneapolis was attempting to find its footing in the new ways.
Included among the upheavals and changes in the 1930s was the long-term trend toward worker, or union organization. This trend included, among other aspect, national movements for Social Security pensions, improved wages, and collective bargaining (unions), and labor strikes to increase the pressure for economic and political change During the Depression of that decade, Minneapolis was a focal point of several major strikes where the Minnesota National Guard, with Borghild's brothers in uniform, actively preserved order. It was national news during this period of time that Farmer-Labor Party Governor Floyd B. Olson shook up the social order, for he had directed that the Guard remain truly neutral in strikes, notably during the great Truckers' strikes. Governor Olson thus forced employers to fairly negotiate with organized labor rather than, as employers were accustomed, to count on the Guard to crack down with military force against workers.
On the family front, Borghild witnessed several of the broadly destructive forces of the Great Depression. She saw constantly, for example, how her education-bent brothers Karl and Valdemar were forced to take reduced and long-postponed steps toward a college degree, in their case at Augsburg College, supplemented by occasional courses at "The U," (the University of Minnesota). Fortunately, both institutions were about a fifteen-minute streetcar ride away and were receptive to sporadic and part-time students.
1941-1945 World War II , Young Adulthood, Marriage, and Service in the Lutheran Church
With the advent of World War II, Borgie witnessed the disruption of civilian society by the vast scale of war. Half-brother Peter and brothers Bjarne and Valdemar were active in the U.S. Army. In 1942, Valdemar was on on leave to Minneapolis to visit his hospitalized sister Borghild, met a nurse at Swedish Hospital, Elna Johnson, his future wife of over fifty years. Borghild served as Maid of Honor in Texas for the wedding of Valdemar and Elna. As with other family members, Borghild shared the concerns, sacrifices, and losses arising from World War II, including the death of brother Bjarne, who died in France in December of 1944 from battlefield wounds.
The vast majority of Borgie's adult years were spent with her long-time husband, Rev. Alvin Selid. Alvin was a North Dakota native, from the Watford City area, now known for oil fields, rather than only the back-breaking work of wheat farms. He had studied at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and even taught country school for a year achieve a debt-free college degree. Alvin and Borghild met while Alvin was enrolled at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, finishing his seminary degree which would lead to his life calling of Lutheran pastor.
They married in 1943, at Immanuel, with the ceremony presided over by Rev. L.T. Larson, who had been Borghild's instructor for Confirmation at Immanuel Church in Minneapolis. In yet another of an endless array of family ties, Rev. Larson was a brother-in-law of sister Anna (Xavier) Larson, who had married Fritjof (Fritz) Larson in the 1930s. Alvin and Borghild began Lutheran parish service in Drake, North Dakota, in 1944, at the beginning of Alvin's half-century-plus of association with the Norwegian Lutheran Church and its successors.
1945-2012: Decades of Service to Church, Community, and Family
Al and Borgie resided in several communities, as they later served Lutheran parishes in North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington from 1945 to 1989. Their parishes included the rural, urban and suburban areas of twentieth-century America. Together they raised their family of six children, maintaining close ties to both the Selid and Xavier extended families, and to their mutual Norwegian and Borgie's Saami heritages. The Selids were always a front-and-center family when it came to reunions, weddings, anniversaries, and funerals, all interspersed with numerous visits to the historical base of the Twin Cities. It is worth noting that Borghild in her lifetime held memberships in churches in six states (by chronological order): Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington.
Al and Borgie's firs rural parish was out of Drake, North Dakota, as mentioned. Drake was a strategic town for switching and roundhouse (repair and storage) on the famous "Soo Line" (Sault St. Marie, St. Paul and Pacific) railroad, just about 40 miles from Minot,. The Drake parish came with a parsonage in the town of 1,000 or so, and was filled out with three more churches, rural Balfour, Kief, and Butte. in 1949, Alvin received a request to consider a move to another parish in Enderlin, being accepted for the new "call" without even preaching a guest sermon.
As Alvin recounted with some relish over the years, the Soo Line workers had been talking to each other in the course of track maintenance between Enderlin and Drake. Their favorable impressions of Alvin were backed up by the endorsement of Drake grocery and clothing store owner and part-time Soo switchman and Greek-American Gus Janavaros. His opinion mattered enough that many crewmen of The Soo purchased their winter gear--especially thermal underwear--from his store, and Gus boasted that all of his Soo customers were satisfied. Thus the Soo Line crewmen had decided ahead of Alvin's visit to make a formal request for his services as their pastor. Such were the community dynamics of a much gentler era.
Alvin and Borgie were succeeded in the Drake parish by my parents, Rev. Karl Astrup Xavier and Edith Bonita (Bethke) Xavier. Family and church ties were as a matter of course maintained, as Al and Borgie returned on occasion, particularly for the 50th Anniversary of the St. Paul congregation in Butte.
As for Enderlin, that second North Dakota parish of Uncle Al and Aunt Borgie, I recall with warm remembrance the years of their service at Enderlin, North Dakota, 1949-1956. This was a town in the more rain-blessed southeastern area of that semi-arid state, a rather tree-lined town at that. Tree-lined was an adjective not always applicable in villages of the drier central and western zones of North Dakota. We of the family of Karl and Edith (Bethke) Xavier by 1952 had left Drake and lived up on the truly semi-arid plains, the Coteau du Missouri, hard by the Missouri River fifty miles west of Minot. There my father had accepted a call to serve a parish of five rural churches, centered in a near-ghost-town unincorporated hamlet by the name of Coulee.
Living there in Coulee, from 1952-56, I recall clearly how our family looked forward each of those four years to visiting the Selids in Enderlin on our family treks to Edith's home town of Franklin, Minnesota. Enderlin not only represented a change from the semi-arid zone in which we lived, it offered a pleasant relief from the 20-25 miles per hour average pace dictated by the narrow and ill-paved North Dakota highways of that era. Those highways featured not only slow travel, often behind farm machinery or hopelessly trailing the slow and ill-smelling trucks hauling pigs or cows to market. Also included in the slow travel realities was the travel gauntlet of direct passage through an endless succession of towns and villages, often no more than ten miles apart, and all of which took excessive civic pride in the frankly unnecessary installation of stop signs and traffic lights.
Hampered by such low average speeds, the drive to Enderlin would drag on into double or triple what we would expect in 2012. We would arrive in Enderlin about late evening suppertime. We would take heart, however, as we were greeted by Alvin and Borghild. Then, my brothers Paul, Karl III, and I would would see all of our cousins lined up at a large dining table, all of them gifted with large, dark eyes turning to us, the new visitors. I treasure those moments of big-eyed welcome from my Selid cousins.
Alvin and Borgie were by the mid-1950s led to the Pacific Coast states, beginning a forty-year period of service. They began in Silverton, Oregon, later serving in Spokane Valley, Washington; Beaverton, Oregon; and in other roles, including chaplaincy. Throughout the Pacific Coast years, the Selids were closely involved with family and friendship circles, both in that area and in the rest of the U.S. This closeness was not limited to triennial Xavier Reunions. On the contrary, the Selids often visited their North Dakota and Minnesota relatives for various family occasions. This was similarly true of Borghild's West Coast sisters and their families, the Howard and Mabel Teermans of Silverton and the Fritz and Anna Larsons of Tacoma.
In retirement years, most particularly, Borghild was a tireless family promoter of her Norwegian and Saami heritages. On several occasions, she and Alvin, and other family members visited both the Valdres region of Norway (home of her Kamrud ancestors) and the Saami territories (home her Xavier and Tornensis forebears). I recall her mentioning also he contacts with others in the relation circles, including Dagny Skattebol, sister of Signe Skattebol (who had married Prof. Johan Ulrik Xavier (1870-1963) at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU)..
I want to share a particularly endearing account here. For a guest speech Borghild delivered at PLU, she is recalled among the Saami North American communities. Those communities claim Johan U. Xavier, Borghild's uncle, as a prominent example of Saami North American success, and in like manner take pride in Borghild's first-class performance in speaking at the re-dedication ceremony of Xavier Hall. PLU had renovated this fine building, named in honor of Borghild's uncle, Johan Ulrik Xavier, one-time President and nearly forty years a professor at that institution. (An account of this event was reported upon by Arran, the Saami North American Newsletter, and we will soon post that information.) Bill and Becky (Selid) Mattson were generous in sharing a videotape of Borghild's speech. That speech is recalled by long-time Saami North American leader Arden Johnson of Duluth, Minnesota, who attended that ceremony, as both well-delivered and having great substance. This was while Borghild was in her 80s!
As for the world of Xavier Family Reunions, Borghild attended every one of those assemblies, from 1946-2010. In her unsinkable and optimistic way, she had already registered for the 2013 Reunion prior to her final illness! Of course, we will add more material to Borghild's Sketch, and also refer readers to related posts or links to external meterial on the Internet.
Part IV. Borghild: A Bringer of Light to This World
There are individuals who are difficult to sum up, and my Aunt Borghild was one such. So, I venture out on a rhetorical limb here, with the following brief words. In contend,in the largest sense of the phrase, that Borghild was a bringer of light to this world. She shone. We will miss this marvelous woman, this woman of greatness and modesty, this servant of God and of humanity.
Notes:
Despite rural depopulation in the past century, Immanuel survives even today as Immanuel-Zion (IZ) Lutheran
Kamrud Family Tree.
Carol R. Byerly, Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, c. 1989.
Nancy Gentile Ford, Americans ALL!: Foreign-born Soldiers in World War I. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
Arnold R. Mickelson, Ed., A Biographical Directory of Clergymen of The American Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972 (p. 844, Alvin)
Gerald Giving, John Peterson, Olaf Lysnes, A Biographical Directory of Pators of The Evangelical Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1952 (p. 493, Alvin)
Appendix
List of Parents, Immediate Family, Descendents and Siblings of Boghild (Xavier) Selid
Parents:
Rev. Karl Xavier (1869-1924) - father, born in Alta, in Sapmi (formerly known as Lappland), Norway.. Emigrated 1873, educated at Luther College, Decorah, IA, University of Minnesota, and Luther Seminary, Robbinsdale, MN. First wife, Henrietta (Larsen) Xavier (1864-1904). Rural and parochial school teacher in Minnesota. Later Pastor, professor, church leader, and author in Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska.
Bina (Kamrud) Xavier (1880-1931) -mother, born near Starbuck, MN. Teacher, musical director (Choral Union), and active pastor's wife. Educated Mayville Normal School, ND; Lutheran Normal School, Sioux Falls, SD.
Rev. Alvin Selid (1917-??need years) - husband, born and raised in northwestern North Dakota, near Watford City, Williston area. Educated public schools, Concordia College (Moorhead, MN), and Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Rural school teacher in North Dakota. Later Pastor in North Dakota, Washington, and Oregon.
Rebecca (Selid) Mattson (b. 1946)
Ruth Selid (b. 1949)
Mark Selid (1950-2011)
Naomi (Selid) Tweet (b. 19--)
Rachel (Selid) Gunderson ( b. 19--)
Stephen Selid (b. 19--)
Half-siblings, mother Henrietta (Larsen) Xavier:
Magdalene X. Visovatti (nee Karen Magdalena Xavier)
Paul Neuberg Xavier
Peter Laurentius Xavier
Full siblings, mother Bina (Kamrud) Xavier:
Valborg Henrietta (Xavier) Houghtelin
Anna (Xavier) Larson
Bjarne Kamrud Xavier
Karl Astrup Xavier
Valdemar Ulrik Xavier
Mabel (Xavier) Teerman (earlier Carlson, divorced)
Close relative living in family:
Mabel Holtan (Kamrud side), niece of Bina, therefore first cousin of the seven children of Karl and Bina.
