Adolph and Marie​

(from Brenda Samuelson)

              Chris Anderson had a farm helper named Adolph Gregersen.  On Armistice Day, November 11, 1919, Pete and Mary Vesgaard had a family over for supper.  Adolph had heard there was a new hired girl at Pete Vesgaard’s place, and so after he had been in Alta for a parade, he went to Vesgaard’s house to make a call at suppertime.  Marie, “the new hired girl” recalls she and Adolph didn’t exchange more than four or five words at their first meeting.  However, while she was still living at the Vesgaard place she did go to a movie in Alta with Adolph.
             On March 1, 1920 Marie moved to her brother Niels’s farm six miles away.  Niels had rented another farm and needed Marie to keep house for him. He also had hired men working for him, one of whom stayed with him.
             Adolph owned a roadster car, a “runabout”, with no doors in it.  It was a little red car, Marie recalls.  It was a second-hand car when Adolph purchased it and he only kept it five or six months.  He would go to visit Marie at her brother’s farm in his little red car.
             On July 4, 1920 Ingemon Ibsen came to Alta and talked with Adolph and Marie who were making plans to get married.  He made a verbal agreement with them that when they married, they could take the farm he was renting near Riceville with the debts.  Ingemon had lost his brother to the flu and wanted to return to Denmark.
            On a Saturday night a week before they were married, Marie and Adolph went to Storm Lake and shopped at Dumbaugh’s for a new wedding dress.  Marie bought a long ivory dress, satin on one side, and cotton on the other for $30.00.  Later after her second child was born, she dyed it a blue-gray but it didn’t turn out so good.
On Niels Nielsen’s place on August 29 or 30, 1920 some friends of Adolph and Marie’s gathered to give them a wedding party before they left to be married.   The group gave Adolph and Marie a gift of $35.00 and the party broke about 10:00 p.m.
              On Wednesday, September 1, 1920 Adolph and Marie were married by a minister in the Storm Lake Courthouse.  Marie wore the new dress.  Jon and Nora Vesgaard were with them.  They ate dinner together in a café after the ceremony and at 7:30 p.m.  Marie and Adolph, with all their belongings, left on a train for Riceville. They stayed overnight in a Waterloo hotel and the next day, after dinner, took a train for Riceville, where they arrived about 3:00 p.m.  Somehow, they got out to Saratoga that same day, most probably via a rented car.