A Titanic Story: Ole Soholt and the Straws
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As a youth, a story was related me that has stuck with me all these years. The story regarded Ole Soholt, an elderly local carpenter and brother to Ingeborg Bakken, a next-door neighbor. As told, he had a near-miss with being on the Titanic when coming to America in 1912. Ingeborg and her husband Iver lived on a farm directly across the road from the one where I grew up. The farm that could have been built anywhere on Iver's land, was sited by him directly across the street from the Johnson's who owned it before my grandparents. Possibly there was some collaboration between the bachelor Iver and the father and son Johnsons? More research is needed.
Ingeborg and Iver's place was so reminiscent of traditional Norway in style and ambiance that some locals called it "Little Norway". The whole farm was nestled snugly within a grove of towering spruce planted by Iver decades before. Iver had come to America and built the farm before World War Two, marrying Ingeborg and bringing her over after the war. As a lifelong World War Two enthusiast, I wish I had been prescient enough to interview Ingeborg.
Today, while the house is preserved, the rest of the once immaculate farmstead has sunk into ruin. Finely crafted buildings, built with the precision of Norwegian craftsman, slowly sinking into oblivion, are hard to look at. It is possible that Ole, as a local builder, constructed these as well. Untended, surrounded by land doused with heavy doses of toxins each year, even the once stately grove looks increasingly decrepit. It won't be long before the bulldozers come to erase the past in the name of a few more acres of corn.
To get from our farm to the house meant trudging a path through a veil of towering pines that Iver had meticulously tended for decades. I used to enjoy exploring that rare sylvan world in the middle of the prairie. One could push through to hidden clearings so insulated from the outside, that it was like being in another world. At least a football field depth of trees buffered the north side, while thinner bands extending southward enveloping the farmstead. The south side facing our farm was only lightly veiled by a few rows that could let in winter sun. A wise design that sheltered the farm like no other.
The trees were home to countless mourning doves whose evocative evening call, easily heard across the road is one of the sounds that populate the memory of my youth. During hunting seasons, I could stand with a shotgun and get a limit of birds as they flew back from a day at the Elm River in the evening. I have also done the same with deer as they moved between the food of the river bottom and the rare shelter of that pine forest. A unique biotic community existed within and emanated from that few acres of pines on the prairie.
The reason the Titanic film had struck me so was that the story I had heard was eerily similar. As I remember, the story related how Ole, traveling with several others, ended up taking the Olympic, sister ship the Titanic to the U.S. At the same time, the others waited for the Titanic. The Olympic left Southhampton on April 3rd and the Titanic a week later on April 10th. The Olympic would arrive in New York on the 10th with Ole on board as the arrival document above attests. What was his relation to the other Norwegians listed with him on the form?
The story seared into my memory, relates how they drew straws or sticks. The person who drew either the short or long straws would have to wait. While sitting around Ingeborg's table, I might have heard this story when helping her make homemade lefse on the giant cast iron cookstove in the basement. As a young kid I often helped her mow and do yard work, so it could have been one of those times. It may have also been during one of the daily coffee sessions she held when Amos Pladson, the mailman, would stop in to hand-deliver the mail. Invariably, there would be a few others who stopped in there as well, discussing all manner of issues. The daily coffee sessions were sort of a local institution at the Bakken farm. Some days, Dad and I would walk across the road to join in. It may have been during one of these sessions that the story was told. Although a youthful mind misses much in adult conversation, stories about famous ships are heard and remembered. The story stuck with me, and at times I have tried to follow it up.
State Historical Society of North Dakota holds recorded cassettes that I listened to several years ago. I hope they have backed them up on new media and digitized them by now for their preservation. Interestingly, when I listened to the recorded interviews with Ole done by Clifford native and former Bismarck state senator Joe Satrom, this aspect of the story was not mentioned. He does mention the Titanic. I need to listen again to refresh my memory of Ole's eventful life.
Later, I read Titanic, 31 Norwegian Destinies, a book by Norwegian author Per Christian Sebak. The book details several Norwegians from the Soholt region that had connections to the central Red River Valley and Soholt in Norway. I contacted the author by email, and he replied that the story was intriguing but had no more information. The key to unlocking the mystery is in discovering how the several Soholt Norwegians were connected. It is hard to believe that in a lightly populated rural region; they were not connected somehow. Five of the Norwegians on the Titanic were from the Soholt region. According to my email from Sebak, "The Aalesund police emigrant records are available on the Internet, and indeed, Ole Iver Hansen Soholt was registered on March 22nd, 1912. This would mean he left Aalesund for England within 1-2 days. He is listed as going to Portland, North Dakota, and below him is listed Berit Odegaard, also going to Portland. As I find more documents, the story may get more apparent."
As more historical records come online, I might one day piece together the rest of the story about Ole's connections to some of the other Norwegians.
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