The Palm Family, Sand Island The History.

by Larry Tanning and Brian Tanning (2013, rev. 2015)

Hilda Hanson Dunkle, Bessie Nelson Palm, and Carrie Anderson swimming in East Bay on Sand Island (abt. 1920)

his is the story of the Palm family’s one hundred-year love affair with Sand Island – one of twenty-two islands surrounding the Bayfield peninsula in northern , and today part of the National Lakeshore. It is a living history of five generations, beginning in Norway in the 1800’s and ending in 2000 when the Palm’s twenty-five year lease with the National Park Service was completed. It is a story of simplicity, perseverance and joy, and also of heartbreak and loss. For without Sand Island, an important part of the Palm family’s identity has been lost.

This story began in Norway with Wilhelm Johannesen Palm (1833-1899) and Magdalene Hartmann (1840- 1933), a traveling tinsmith/tenant farmer and his wife. Kristiane Maria Palm (1860-1929) was the eldest of their eleven children. In 1890 at thirty-years-old, unmarried and a trained seamstress, she left Norway and immigrated to the United States; her name was eventually ‘Americanized’ to ‘Christine.’ In 1892, while still in New York, she married another Norwegian immigrant, Edwin J. Miller (b. 1870). Whether she knew him previously in Norway, or met him on the boat or in New York is unknown, but Christine’s marriage to Edwin Bonde ultimately became the Palm family’s link to this small island, three miles out in wondrous and dangerous . For unknown reasons sometime after their marriage in 1892 they changed their last name to Bonde.

Six of Christine’s siblings also immigrated to America – Wilhelm (Will), and Maria Palm came in 1891, Juliane (Julia) in 1895, Ludwig in 1905, Karl (Carl) in 1906, and Magnus in 1907. Their mother Magdalene, age sixty-six, also came over with Carl in 1906, along with Ludwig’s wife Laura and infant daughter Emma. Magdalene’s husband Vilhelm had previously died in Norway.

- 1 -

dwin Bonde (1870-1933) was a nursery man, a land-speculator, and a salesman – and extremely driven. He sold a range of products and concepts during his lifetime, including horticultural products, land, stocks, and bonds. And like the vast majority of newly arrived Norwegians, he and wife Christine soon made their way to the upper Midwest – first to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and then to Cottonwood, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Bayfield, Wisconsin. They only had one child, a daughter, Madeline Marie (1893-1926).

Edwin Bonde most likely visited Sand Island for the first time sometime around 1909, and in all likelihood went there looking for income-making opportunities. He had most recently been the president and manager of the Lyon County Evergreen Nursery Company Edwin Bonde (abt. 1923) in Cottonwood, Minnesota, and one of the salesman – possibly the only one – was his brother-in-law, Ludwig Palm. They both had ended working for the nursery by the summer of 1908, and soon Bonde was preparing and promoting Sand Island as a fruit-growing paradise. He bought available lots on East Bay, planting apple trees and ginseng and then buying newspaper advertisements in the Midwest promoting Sand Island specifically to the still growing Norwegian population. Between 1836 and 1930 over 852,000 Norwegians immigrated to the United States. By 1910 about 80% of the one million or more Norwegian Americans – the immigrants and their children – were living in the upper Midwest, with Minneapolis their unofficial hub for their cultural and religious activities. Farming and fishing were what the immigrants and their children already knew, so it didn’t take long for Bonde to attract prospects.

On Sand Island the 1914 Bayfield County tax rolls listed fifteen plots owned by nine individuals in Section-24 on East Bay. In 1915, after Bonde subdivided the lots, the tax rolls listed thirty-eight plots owned by thirty-two individuals. But the majority of new buyers on Sand Island would never do anything with their land, which meant that East Bay would largely remain undeveloped and pristine – even to this day. Five of Christine’s siblings – Carl Palm, Julia Kerr, Ludwig Palm, Magnus Palm, and Wilhelm Palm – all would at one time have physical connections or ties to land on Sand Island. Wilhelm and his family spent several years on the island between 1918 and 1921 – even investing $2,000 in the failed Sand Island Telephone Company; in today’s dollars (2013) this is the equivalent of $30,000 – showing his significant commitment to Sand Island. Ludwig and his family lived on the island through the winter of 1932-33. Carl Palm lived most of his life in Superior, Wisconsin beginning in the early 1920’s, and it is assumed that he continued to make occasional visits back to the island through the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Of the Palm siblings, only Magnus and his family made a significant attempt to live permanently on the island. Instead of buying plots from Bonde, Magnus Palm filed a 41-acre inland Sand Island homestead in 1910, for which he received a patent on in 1917. By homesteading, Magnus’s intentions were clearly to live on the island year-round. With limited farming potential, Magnus tried fishing and logging, and eventually mainly supported his family by working for other year-round and summer island residents. But by 1920, his wife Anna had contracted tuberculosis and she died in April of 1921. The family continued to homestead until 1924 Magnus & Anna Palm and family on Sand Island (1910's) and then relocated permanently to Chicago, Illinois.

- 2 -

udwig Palm (1880-1955) was ten years younger than Christine, the tenth of eleven children. He had joined the Norwegian army at age 18 and became a sergeant guarding the King’s Oslo palace. He married Laura Marie Lauritsdtr in 1904 at age 24 and a daughter Emma soon followed. In 1905, Ludwig left Laura and Emma in Norway and immigrated to the US to find a new home for his family as times were very difficult in Norway. Laura and Emma followed the following year.

The family reunited in Minnesota and over the next seven years five more children were born – two dying very young, one in Cottonwood, MN, and the other in Ambrose, ND. Ludwig was Ludwig Palm, age 33 (1914) a likeable man who played the 8-string Norwegian Hardanger fiddle – as did his father in Norway. After living in Cottonwood for several years, Ludwig and his family moved to the Ambrose/Alkabo area of far northwestern North Dakota, continuing to sell nursery products but eventually shifting to selling life insurance for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. As a traveling insurance salesman he went from town to town across North Dakota, Minnesota and western Wisconsin. In the Fall of 1913, Ludwig’s wife Laura died from Typhoid Fever in Ambrose, North Dakota – not long after the birth of their daughter Myrtle.

essie Matilda Nelson (1894-1983), when Laura died, was in her early twenties, and had a history with Sand Island. Her father, Peter Nelson (1858-1900), was a fisherman on Lake Superior, and her mother was Constance Amelia (1875-1915), also with ties to Sand Island. Peter died in 1900 when Bessie was six, and her mother Constance then married Harold Edwin Dahl (1876-1928) in 1903. Harold also was a commercial fisherman, who would later die in 1928 in a tragic accident when his fishing boat disappeared in a spring storm off of Sand Island.

Bessie recalled first visiting the Sand Island in 1902 at age eight, but she most likely as a young child had been there before. By around 1910, the Sand Island lighthouse keeper even entrusted Bessie to maintain the light beacon when he had to leave the island suddenly for an emergency. The Sand Island light was one of the most important on Lake Superior and the first the ore boats and freighters would see as they went east from Duluth/Superior to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. To entrust that responsibility to a teenage girl, says much about Bessie Palm. She was a very responsible young woman indeed.

Constance and Harold soon had three children – Mabel Harriet (1904-1981), Carl Odin (1906-1985), and Melvin Bernard (1911-1996). Bessie was almost ten when Mabel was born, so she helped her mother Constance take care of her step- siblings since they were just newborns. She helped take care of other children on the island over the years also, including the Moes, the Loftfields, and Sand

Bessie Nelson, age 14 (1908) Island lighthouse keeper Emmanuel Luick’s family.

We don’t know exactly how or when Ludwig Palm first met Bessie Nelson, but he was the widowed father of four young kids (ages four months to nine-years) by 1914 – and she was obviously very experienced with children. He had probably visited Sand Island by the early or mid 1910’s as his siblings were establishing ties there, and at some point after their mother died, daughters Emma and Myrtle traveled by train to Wisconsin to live with Ludwig’s sister Christine for an extended period of time. By October, 1918 Bessie was moving to North Dakota with plans to marry Ludwig, and on January 1, 1919 they were married in Minot. Four children were born – in three different locations – as Ludwig continued the itinerant ways of a travelling insurance agent. Howard Ludwig (1920-1996), Genevieve Betty (b. 1922), Richard Warren (b. 1925), and Joan Constance (b. 1929).

- 3 -

y the mid-1920’s, after the Magnus Palm family had left, no Palms lived year-round on the island any longer, and fears and threats of a financial depression loomed large. Ludwig found it more difficult to support his family as the years progressed, and in early 1932 he sold his car and they moved to Sand Island to ride out a portion of the Great Depression.

Christine Bonde had died in 1929, daughter Madeline in 1926, and the old cabin on the Bonde property in the middle of East Bay on Sand Island had been abandoned. In 1930 Edwin Bonde married Frieda J. Michael in Chicago, and the Edwin (seated in the middle) & Christine Palm Bonde (standing with her hand on his arm) with guests at their cabin on Sand Island (early 1920's) extended Palm family had little contact with him until his death in Madison, WI on July 17, 1933.

The run-down log cabin had two rooms – a living room and adjoining kitchen – plus two small bedrooms added to the back of the primitive structure. With their stockpile of purchases, the Ludwig Palm family moved in the Spring of 1932. They lived in a small guest cabin by the Loftfields for the first three months while they fixed up the Bonde cabin, moving into it in July. They brought barrels of flour, beans, prunes and staples. They bought milk, eggs, beef and potatoes from the Norings, and apples and fruit from the Loftfields. Howard snared rabbits, trapped weasels and sold the pelts. He cut firewood with his dad.

The Sand Island school had closed four years before so there was no school for twelve year-old Howard, ten- year-old Betty or seven-year old Richard that winter. Joan was only three. That next spring, Ludwig’s mother Magdalene, then 91, came out to live with them.

With the help and support of the Loftfields, Norings, Johnsons, Dahls, Hansens, Hills, and others, the Palm family survived the bleak 1932-1933 depression winter on Sand Island. It was not easy. There was no electricity, telephones, cars or tractors, and only a few horses, so everyone got around on the island by walking. In September 1933, the family moved off the island to a rented church parsonage in Bayfield so the kids could get back to school. Slowly, Ludwig’s insurance opportunities perked up and he was back on the road.

Looking back on their year and a half Sand Island experience, Ludwig said it was the best “vacation” he ever had. He enjoyed getting out from the burden of trying to sell insurance. Howard recalled, “we lived like kings. It didn’t cost anything. We didn’t have rent. We cut our own wood for fuel. It was a unique experience because we were so isolated, the things that happened were so different, things we couldn’t experience any place else.”

The impact of the Depression and World War II, along with declines in logging and agriculture, and the invasion of lamprey eels brought big changes to Sand Island in the 1940’s. Nearly all of the island’s younger generation had moved away when they became adults. Farming was extremely difficult, as was the entire island way of life. The Palms visited the island occasionally in the 1940s. In 1944 the last families living year-round on the island left for Bayfield, marking the end of over fifty years of people living year-round on Sand Island.

- 4 -

Ludwig & Bessie moved the family from Bayfield to Superior in 1936 and their four kids all later graduated from Superior Central High School. After graduating in 1940, their daughter Betty met and married Ervin Tanning, who came from similar Norwegian beginnings. Erv played the banjo, and both his dad and his grandfather also played the 8-string Norwegian Hardanger fiddle.

Days after their April 1942 wedding, Erv enlisted and eventually would get orders to join a contingent of twelve allied soldiers to enter occupied Norway to arrange the surrender of nearly 400,000 German occupation forces in Germany’s “Fortress Norway.” Erv was one of the translators because he knew Norwegian by growing up around it as a child in northern Wisconsin. Erv then spent months in Norway that allowed him to trace his roots directly back to the 1550s in a remote hamlet in a fjord about 60 km from Bergen.

Following their World War II service in the Navy and Army, Richard and Howard Palm returned to Sand Island. Howard recalled, “the cabin was a mess, the roof leaked and was Carl Dahl’s Egersund at Sand Island (early 1940's) falling in, the logs were rotting, it hadn’t been taken care of at all.” In 1947, Richard Palm went with his father Ludwig to Washburn and bought the old Bonde property – 13 acres with 280 feet on the East Bay shoreline, paying $75 for the back taxes and transfer of ownership. In 1959, brother Howard purchased a share of the property, paying Richard $1 to make it legal.

ith the baby boom following the war, the 1950s brought a new era to Sand Island - an era of kids. The Carl Dahl and Melvin Dahl kids were born in the 1930s and 1940s. The Tanning and Palm kids were born in the late 1940s and 1950s. And there were many kids. In many ways during those years, East Bay was one big family; the Palms, the Tannings, the Hauglands, with their cousins – the Dahls.

Just north of the Bonde/Palm land by the old Johnson dock stood the old two-story Johnson frame house. It was owned by Herman “Hermie” Johnson, Jr. and had been unoccupied for years. Howard and Richard Palm bought it from Hermie for $250, and on a warm, sunny summer morning in 1957 a bulldozer was brought out to the island on a barge from Bayfield. The bulldozer pushed the dilapidated Bonde cabin over the bank onto the beach, cleared the site, and widened the old island road so it could handle the house. Then it slowly dragged the two-story house on rolling logs about fourteen hundred feet to the Palm’s and set it in place. Everyone on the island came to watch.

Richard Palm, Joan Palm, and Betty Palm Tanning Suddenly, the Palms once again had a home on Sand Island. at the Bonde cabin (late 1940’s) Immediately, Sand Island became the annual summer destination for the many Palm families in Minnesota and South Dakota. Howard and Richard Palm and their families spent much of their summers there every year. The Tanning family went every year also, and siblings Bill Palm, Leonard Palm, and Joan Palm Haugland and their families occasionally vacationed there too.

- 5 -

In the early 1960s, Erv Tanning helped Howard and Richard Palm add an enclosed porch across the front of the two-story house. It was spacious room that allowed for much larger extended Palm gatherings and card games on the island. And that was necessary with a dozen new children coming in the 1950s and 1960s. But always on most gatherings, tents would still be pitched on the bank overlooking the lakeshore.

The Palm house was on the south center of East Bay, at the south end of the sand part of the beach where it turned to smooth rocks and sandstone. Further south sat Gert Wellisch’s house, with impassable sandstone cliffs just beyond. The Carl Dahl and Melvin Dahl houses were on the north center of East Bay, five hundred feet north of the Palm’s.

For the kids, the 1960s and 1970s were magical times on Sand Island. There were always caves, beaches and old buildings to explore. Dams were built to block beach streams, and there were berries to pick, bonfires to build, and things to collect and enjoy. The kids could usually count on homemade lemonade if they ventured to Gert Wellisch’s—or later her friend Muriel Korfhage’s Plenty Charm cabin on the island.

But as much as the 1960s were magical, they were also foreboding with the government’s earliest Apostle Island park news. News that soon became a life force of its own. 1963 brought the first National Park proposal in a master A sign made by Erv Tanning at the Palm cabin on Sand Island (1967) plan, and the debate was on. The Palm’s did what they could do to try to stop it. Here is a portion of what Howard Palm testified for one of the government hearings:

“This is my plea for mercy. I am a lifelong resident of Sand Island… My grandfather, Peter Nelson, settled in Bayfield in 1890. My mother has been visiting and residing on Sand island since 1897. I have visited and resided on Sand Island since 1923. My children are the fourth generation to enjoy this beautiful area… Our roots are deep… One of the terrible results created by the confiscation of land is the unhappiness which is instilled in the hearts of people who are forced to leave the land they all love so dearly.”

In 1970 President Nixon signed the approval for the new National Lakeshore, and the Palms were given the choice to either accept a lump sum payment and leave the property immediately or sign a lease for a designated number of years, paying $250 per year in advance. The Palms opted for the 25-year lease.

oward Palm retired in 1985 after a long career working in the St. Paul corporate headquarters of the Northern Pacific Railroad. For the next decade he would live on Sand Island four months every year. The Palms, Tannings, and Hauglands, along with the rapidly growing numbers of children, grandchildren, and even great- grandchildren continued to visit. Another generation of kids enjoyed climbing rocks, damming streams, paddling through caves, swimming in icy water, and collecting rocks, water-polished glass, and driftwood.

Howard died at age 75 in June, 1996. His body was cremated and his ashes returned to Sand Island; the family continued spending vacations on Sand Island until the lease expired in July, 2000. The Johnson/Palm house was soon removed and the site turned

Howard Palm with Rachel into a campground. & Aaron Tanning (1993) - 6 -

From 1996 through 2000 Richard & LaDonna Palm spent summers as resident hosts for the Park Service, sharing their love and knowledge of the island with the many visitors.

In 2013, Betty Palm Tanning is active at age 91, Richard Palm is very active at 88, and Joan Palm Haugland plays golf twice weekly at 83. For the three siblings and their respective families, Sand Island slips mainly into memories.

ant-Karl, as he was popularly called, was a legendary Norwegian fiddler and is regarded as the father of Norwegian folk music. He is also credited for bringing the Joan Palm Haugland, Richard Palm, waltz tempo to Norway. In 2008, research identified that he was in all probability Betty Palm Tanning (2008) Karl Rosenberg (1775-1855), the great, great grandfather of Christine Bonde, Wilhelm Palm, Julia Kerr, Magnus Palm, Ludwig Palm, and Carl Palm. Karl was also a Roma gypsy or ‘Traveler,’ a gelder, and fiddler player who traveled from town to town across a large expanse of Norway; his songs continue to be played in Norway to this day.

‘Fant-Karl’ or Karl Rosenberg married Magdalena Berredatter in 1798, and one of their daughters, Maria Karlsdatter (b. 1802) married Johan Vilhelm Palm… and Vilhelm Johannessen Palm – the father of Christine, Wilhelm, Julia, Magnus, Ludwig, and Carl – was an offspring of these two.

The Palm family members who immigrated to the United States for the most part left their Romani 'identities' and culture behind, and as a result, subsequent generations of Palms were unaware of their Traveler backgrounds until recent years. The one thing, however, that was been passed down is music. Richard Palm played the violin, and in the Tanning family music continues to play a significant role in their lives.

In 2013, Sand Island slips mainly now into memories for the Palm family, especially now that it has become more difficult to get there and with no cabins to stay in. But Ludwig Palm’s legacy lives one—through ten children, twenty-one Grandchildren, thirty-one Great-Grandchildren, twenty-six Great-Great-Grandchildren, and two Great-Great-Great Grandchildren. A total of ninety blood descendants, and another fifteen through adoption and step-marriages.

With Little Sand Bay and the island so different now, maybe that slipping away is a necessary stage. A part of the Palms will never be the same without Sand Island. The closeness and interaction of the many family members on the island is now just a distant memory…

Howard Palm waving at visiting campers from his dock on Sand Island (late 1980’s)

- 7 -

pilogue

Bob Mackreth is a retired National Park Service ranger and historian, stationed at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore from 1992-2005. He got to know Howard Palm well from years of contact on Sand Island, he still has extensive ties to the Apostle Islands, the surrounding area, and its rich history. On June 24, 2013, Bob shared the following post on the Palm Family Genealogy Facebook group site. This tribute about Howard effectively expresses the love for Sand Island that Howard had, and also the love that he had for his family and his roots.

On this date seventeen years ago, my friend Howard Palm passed away. Later that week, I went to the island that he loved to open the ranger cabin for the season. Here is a portion of the year's first entry in the station log: (1996)

"My pleasure in beginning the season is alloyed though, with a sharp sense of loss, a loss felt by everyone connected with Sand Island. On June 24 – Monday of this week – Howard Palm, long-time resident of East Bay and friend to all who loved Sand Island, passed away. Howard was a link to the island's past – the son of parents who met on the island, the grandson of a man who fished the lake waters for his living. He could tell of the winter he spent on the island during Depression days, or bring life to old photos by saying, "That's my mother!" Or "Father," or "Uncle," and telling us how the picture came to be taken.

"Howard meant more to us though, than merely guide on a historic tour, no Howard Palm (1995) matter how well he filled that role. Howard was my friend, and Gene's, and Nancy's, and Rose's, and Stewart's... of all of us who shared the island that he loved. Another man might have kept himself apart from the National Park Service – after all, the agency did buy out his holding – but that was not Howard's way. Howard was a sweet man, and vindictiveness and resentment were foreign to his nature. This sweetness in no way implied weakness -- he could not have accomplished all he did without great inner strength. Instead, Howard displayed what I – though a purely non-religious man – can recognize as the embodiment of Christian charity. I was not the only one, either, to reflect that Howard was truly a gentleman, in all senses of the term.

"We will miss you, Howard, but we know that you will always be part of Sand Island. Your funeral was a celebration of your life on the island, and last night at the Chautauqua show, your friend Ann Reed – folksinger and briefly a resident of the island – dedicated a song to your memory. That memory will remain fresh and alive so long as waves lap at the shore of East Bay, so long as the lighthouse shines its beam across the open lake, so long as the moon rises over Raspberry Island. We'll miss you Howard, but we will remember you."

Sunrise at East Bay on Sand Island, with Howard's flag at half-staff (1996) - 8 -