This week we mark the recent passing of Port Oneida/Glen Arbor favorite son Leonard Thoreson, beginning a series based on him and his home farm along Thoreson Road. Leonard contributed countless hours of oral history interviews and a family photograph collection— all now preserved in the Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear Online Archive. The following is adapted from the chapter on the Thoreson Farm in “A Port Oneida Collection,” produced by Tom Van Zoeren in partnership with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear.
Over the generations leading up to and through the 1800’s, the arable lands of Norway became divided into smaller and smaller plots. The government, largely controlled by the Church and neighboring Sweden, exercised firm control over the affairs of the Norwegian people. Two of the many who joined the wave and left that situation, in 1877, were Ingeborg Sakariasdatter and John Thoreson.
Although they crossed the Atlantic on the same ship, family lore has it that the two never really met there. Ingeborg “danced above” with the higherpriced ticket-holders, while John remained “down in the hole” with the lower-fare travelers, and “didn’t see sunlight” most of the journey.
