Norman Hans Nisson

Born 25 June 1884 in Preston, Idaho to Beate Olsen Petterborg and Hans Andersen Nissen
Married Mary Ann Olsen 12 October 1908 in Preston
Norman-Howard
Died 25 May 1949
Buried in Swan Lake

1910 Census
1920 Census
1930 Census

This was written by Norman's daughter-in-law, Jean. 

Norman Hans Nisson was born in Preston, Idaho on June 25, 1884. He had two sisters and one brother, Annie, Olive, and Clarence. Norman's father died when Norman was only four years old. His mother died when he was fifteen years old. Annie, Olive, and Clarence went to live with relatives, but Norman struck out on his own. He worked for anyone who would hire him. Often he slept in a barn or in a haystack. He knew what it was like to be a homeless orphan. He worked for the Joseph Davis family and they took him in and made him part of their family.

Mary Ann (Ane Marie) was born in Mink Creek, Idaho on Feb. 18, 1884. She had two brothers, Ole Peter and Henry Lawrence, and five sisters, Maren Sophia, Bodil Johanne (Hannah), Juliana (Julia), Christina, and Elizabeth (Lizzie).

Mary Ann and Norman were married in Logan, Utah on Oct. 12, 1908. They lived in Preston for a few years. Howard, Ken, and Helen were born in Preston. They moved to Banida where Lulu and Vera were born. Banida is a small community between Preston and Swan Lake. Lulu and Vera both died as infants and were buried in Banida. An effort was made to find the graves when Norman died, but no one seemed to know where they were and a stone was placed in the Swan Lake Cemetary in their memory.

Norman was a farmer and he admired a farm in Swan Lake. It was owned by the Quigley family and he called it "The Quigley Place." When it was put up for sale, Norman bought it. It consisted of some three hundred plus acres. It had a large barn, a two-story house, and a good well. Some of the land was dry farm and some of it irrigated. Most of it was on the east side of the highway, but some was west of the railroad tracks.

Frank, Ivan and Arlo were born in Swan Lake. The years after 1918 were good years, and Norman spent a lot to improve the farm. He had a herd of dairy cattle, a hundred or so pigs, about three thousand chickens, and some horses. He bought farm implements to plant and harvest the crops. There was a fruit orchard and a large garden.

Norman found satisfaction in his farm, and always looked for ways to improve it and make the work easier. He and Howard devised a plan to make a conveyor that would carry grain from the truck into the granary. It was powered with a gasoline engine and was the first grain elevator in the area. His dairy barn was always up-to-date. He piped water to a water trough near the barn for the livestock, and the chicken coops also had running water. He bought a tractor as soon as he was able, and he kept his farm implements in good working order. The Swan Lake store has always been the social center of the community. After the milking was done in the morning, and after they had eaten breakfast, the men would gather at the store in the winter to visit and exchange stories.

Norman had a good friend, Leo Beckstead. He was a cattle trader, and Norman would go with him to Idaho Falls, Blackfoot, Ogden to livestock auctions, and he enjoyed playing cards. The farm around the house and the barn was planted in grain and alfalfa. The farm west of the railroad tracks was pasture and alfalfa. It was marshy land and there was water for the cows.

Swan Lake was settled by Mormon pioneers and the people were close. They helped each other. They worked together and played together. The children were school mates from first grade through high school. The school in Swan Lake was open a lot for the youth to play basketball in. The Nisson boys enjoyed all sports and were active in baseball and basketball. By the time they reached high school, they were already teammates and played well together. When Ken and Howard were teenagers, they played with teams that would go to Oxford or Clifton or Downey or other places. Ivan was the happiest little kid around when they would take him with them.

We always read about the men and things they did, and how hard they worked, but the wives and daughters were as important and they worked as hard, sometimes harder. Mary was one of those really hard working ones. I never met her, but I have visited with people who knew her and her children have talked of her. From their comments, I picture a woman with a small frame, brown hair and a very gentle nature. It seems that everyone who knew her loved her and felt that she worked too hard. She gave her children a lot of encouragement and helped them to achieve. They all had a deep love for their mother. Norman had a hard time communicating with his children, and often their discussions would turn into arguments. They were all very bright, but they were a stubborn bunch.

As so often happened, money was spent on the farm buildings, and the farm implements and the livestock, but the house and the things women worked with were at the very bottom of the list of priorities. The house they lived in looked spacious, but there were two rooms upstairs where the boys slept. Downstairs consisted of a combination kitchen, dining, and living room; and a bedroom where the parents slept. One corner was curtained off for a bedroom for Helen. Upstairs was like gymnasium with a fruit basket on one wall to practice basketball shots. Often the windows were broken.

There was no plumbing in the house, and that means no bathroom, and no kitchen sink. The cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens had water at their houses, but Mary had to carry every bucket of water she needed from the well. The well had an electric pump, but it takes a lot of water for drinking, for cooking, for washing and bathing and for the laundry. She had a kitchen range that burned wood or coal. It heated the kitchen in the winter (and in the summer). It was used to cook the food and to heat water. There was always a tea kettle full of hot water and a coffee pot on the stove.

When electricity was brought to the homes in Swan Lake, Norman bought an electric range. It was wonderful in the summer. I'm sure Mary enjoyed having it. In the summer Mary would have a huge garden, and it was hers to weed and water and care for. She canned hundreds of jars of fruits and vegetables, which were stored in a cellar for the winter months. It took two days to do the laundry and the ironing. Baking bread and cooking for a family as large as hers was a monumental task. Mary fed the chickens, gathered hundreds of eggs every day, cleaned them and put them in crates to be sold. The cream separator had to be washed twice a day.

In her lifetime, she never had a bathroom, she never had a kitchen sink, she never had a refrigerator, she never had a furnace or a carpet for her floor. She never had a parlor or a living room. She didn't have a dress to wear to church. She didn't go to church, she didn't go shopping, and her education didn't go beyond the eighth grade.

She enjoyed her neighbors, and shared her garden produce with them. She had a raspberry patch. They're a lot of work, but after she picked them and put them in jars for the winter, she'd share with her neighbors. She loved her children and they always felt her love and spoke of her with reverence.

Mary gave birth to eight living children, buried two babies, and suffered a number of miscarriages. She died at the age of forty two and left some children who needed her gentle influence in their lives. Arlo was eleven, Ivan was thirteen, and Frank was fifteen. Howard, Ken and Helen were older, but still living at home. Norman was lost without her.

Swan Lake was a good place to grow up. It was like one great big family, and you were accepted literally "warts and all." The boys all liked to play baseball and basketball. The school house was open most of the time; it was just through the field, and the boys spent a lot of time there. One evening Ken and Howard were playing, and Mary and Helen took Arlo and Ivan to the game. Ivan had followed Ken and Howard around often enough that he knew the rules of the game and the words like foul shot, bucket, out-of-bounds, dribble, etc. He had also learned some colorful phrases to yell at the referee. That evening he really embarrassed his mother. Norman would never go to the games because he thought it was a waste of time. Mary had a special love for Arlo. He was small and quiet, he never went out for sports, and was not included in their activities. I'm sure they all missed her, but I think she spent more time with Arlo because there were no more babies. Ivan missed her for a lot of reasons, but the main one was that she always loved and accepted him. Mary was very ill for a time before she died. Her death certificate records the cause of death as kidney failure and heart problems.

In 1938, the chicken coops and all the chickens burned. They were lucky to save the other buildings. The coops were never rebuilt.

In the short time that I knew Norman, I never heard him lose his temper or get angry. From what I saw and what Ivan told me, I got the impression that when things stressed him, he just left. The boys all did a lot of work on the farm. When Norman died and the farm was sold, as we divided up things, I felt especially sorry for Arlo, because his home was being dismantled and no one seemed to care much.

I think it was in 1948 that they fixed up the kitchen and put in some cupboards and a kitchen sink, and bought a refrigerator. They had an oil furnace and they bought an electric water heater, but they never had a bathroom or a telephone.

I'll add a couple of things that Ivan told me. One of Norman's was sayings, "One kid, good kid, two kids, half a kid and three kids, no kid at all." Ivan said that in the winter when the lake froze, they could skate all the way to Red Rock. Red Rock is an interesting geological feature of that area. It is a divide. On the north of it, the water flows north, and on the south of it, the water flows south.

I want to pay tribute to Helen. When she needed a new dress for a school dance, there wasn't enough money, but the boys could have money and take the car for their dates. Helen cared for her mother when she was ill, and she helped with the babies and the cooking and the laundry and all the tasks that were done around the house. After her mother died, she did her best to replace their mother. When she and Rex were married, they lived in Swan Lake. Rex managed a service station there, and they built a small house near the Nisson home. She cooked the meals, and did their cleaning and their laundry and helped them to get to school every day. Even after she moved to Pocatello, she did all she could to care for them. While Ivan was in the service, she took care of the money he would send home, and write letters for him. She would buy the gifts he gave to me. He always appreciated all she did.

Norman worked hard and was well thought of in the community. He was always willing to help his neighbors when they needed him. He lost both parents at an early age. When things seemed to be going well for him, a series of events happened that would be hard for anyone. To see two little baby girls die would be heart breaking.

Right after they were settled in Swan Lake, the ward decided to build a church house. At the time, the ward members would have to raise the funds for the building. The members were asked for pledges that would be due when the crops were harvested. The bank would loan money to the builders using the pledges as collateral. One summer, the crops were late and were not harvested when the notes came due. The bank foreclosed on some of the notes. Norman's note was one that was foreclosed on. He became very bitter toward the Church, and never attended church any more. He didn't lose his testimony, but he had bad feelings for some of the church members. His bitterness spilled over to some of his children, and it became an excuse to stay away.

Norman had borrowed a lot of money to improve his farm, and when the stock market crashed in 1929, he was hurt. He sold a train car load of pigs for almost nothing, and had to scrimp to save his farm, but he did. When his wife died in 1935, it had to be terribly hard. In the forties he watched three sons march off to war, not knowing if he'd ever see them again. He did his best to keep the farm going and to keep a home for Arlo.

After Helen and Rex moved to Pocatello, Norman and the boys moved into the house that Rex and Helen had built. Ivan and I were married in 1946. Ivan worked for the PFE (refrigerator cars for the railroad). He would be laid off in the summer because potatoes were the chief cargo. We would go to the farm. Ivan knew his Dad would do what he could to help us, and he could use the help with the crops. I cooked and cleaned for them. I've never worked any harder. They had a cold water tap in the kitchen, but no sink. They didn't have a refrigerator, and there was no bathroom. They weren't what you would call fastidious housekeepers. They hated to do the laundry, and when they needed a clean shirt, they'd throw the dirty one down the basement stairs, and go buy a new one at the store. I would spend about three weeks getting the laundry done, but it would last most of the next winter, until I came again. We'd get meat from the frozen feed locker in Downey and keep it in the basement. One day when we got the steaks up to cook for lunch, they had maggots in them. I couldn't eat meat for a long time. I would fix their breakfast while they were doing the milking. They had about thirty dairy cows that had to be milked twice a day. The barn had been fixed up and they electric milking machines. They wanted eggs and bacon or ham, hash browns and toast or pancakes every morning. I would just get the beds made and the dishes done when it was time to start dinner (dinner was the noon meal). I always made a cake or a couple of pies, and I'd have to do it every day. They were grateful for the work I did and were always very good to me. One day I had some spare time in the afternoon, so I made a cake for dinner the next day. Ivan and I went to bring the cows from the pasture to be milked. When we got back, the cake was gone. Arlo had eaten a big piece of it and fed the rest to his horse.

Norman's health failed and he was quite ill the winter of 1948-1949. He asked Ivan and me if we would move to Swan Lake and, with Arlo, take over the farm. He wanted the farm to stay in the family. Ivan was without work at the time, so we moved to Swan Lake. Boyd was just a year old. Grandpa really enjoyed him. He liked to sit and watch him play. He'd take him with him to feed the calves. I liked to watch them. Boyd had to stop every other step and check out a rock or a stick or a bug, and Grandpa was so patient with him. Grandpa loved little children. The first summer that Ivan and I were married, Frank and Lorraine brought their little boy, Terry, and left him for a week. We all enjoyed him so much, especially Grandpa. Dennis and Renee stayed with us a couple of times. It was always fun to have the kids there. I especially enjoyed Renee. I didn't feel quite so out-numbered.

We had only been there for two months in 1949 when Grandpa died. He enjoyed going to Lava Hot Springs and soaking in the hot tubs there. He had heart attack at Lava and was taken to the hospital in Pocatello. One evening we went up to see him. They let us take Boyd to see him. He decided to go home with us. We left and went to Helen's. He got up out of bed, unhooked the oxygen tube and got dressed. The stress was too much for his heart and he passed away. Some of his children were with him. After his death, it was decided that the farm would be sold. I guess that the saddest thing is that most of the grandchildren never got to spend any time there. The people are wonderful, and it's a beautiful little place.

Many of the things I've written are things that he told me just before he died. One day Ivan and Arlo were working to repair something and Grandpa got disgusted with them and came in the house. He said, "I'd never do what they're doing It might take me a week, but I'd think of an easier way." I always thought, "Yeah, and in a week it'll be done, and maybe that's the easy way."