Hoosier Cabinet

Web picture of Hoosier very similar to ours.

    
A Hoosier cabinet (also known as a "Hoosier") is a type of cupboard popular in the first decades of the 20th century.  The base section usually has one large compartment with a slide-out shelf, and several drawers to one side.  The top portion is shallower and has several smaller compartments with doors. The top of the lower cabinet is a sliding enamel countertop. Often these cabinets included flour sifters, shelves and spice organizers. (Wikipedia)

My Grandpa (Adolph Gregersen) was friends with two neighbor boys while he was growing up in Denmark. The two boys were brothers, Ingamond* and Magnus Ibsen, and both were a few years older than Adolph. In hopes to better their positions in life, these two young men had left Denmark and had gone to the United States in 1915. They had gone to Riceville, Iowa to be with friends. There they had been hired to do road tiling.

At the age of nineteen, out of what he calls "the foolishness of youth” Grandpa decided to go to America in March of 1916.

Grandpa kept in contact with the 2 Ibsen brothers.  They had rented a farm near Saratoga.  In the fall of 1918 Magnus died of the flu.  Ingemon was so lonesome and hence wanted to return to Denmark. On July 4, 1920 Ingemon Ibsen came to Alta and talked with Grandma and Grandpa (Adolph and Marie) who were making plans to get married. He made a verbal agreement with them that when they got married they could take the farm he was renting from Charlie Brodersen** (near Riceville, Iowa) with the debts and Ingemon would return to Denmark. 

So Grandma and Grandpa moved to Saratoga.  Grandpa went to the bank and signed to take over the remaining debt for farm machinery and household items and livestock. (This information comes from the document A Family Account January 1, 1976 by Brenda L. Samuelson)

 The phrase “household items” gives us the starting point of this Hoosier Cabinet.  It was part of the furniture left by the Ibsens in Grandma and Grandpa’s first farm.   That Hoosier then moved with Grandma and Grandpa through 4 farm moves and then the move to their home in Alta where they retired.  After Grandma died this Hoosier Cabinet has resided with my Mom (Clara Gregersen Samuelson) in Storm Lake.  Mom has now shared that it should move to our home.

In 1980 Ken (my mother's brother) talked to Carl-ole (first cousin of Clara) in Denmark and learned that Ingemon indeed returned to Denmark and settled close to Carl-ole.  He married later in life and completed his life in a nursing home.

 *Ingemon or Ingamond alternate spellings

**Brodersen or Brodesen alternate spellings

Family Summary

Adolph Marinus Gregersen and (Maren) Marie Nielsen Gregersen

         Daughter Clara Elizabeth Gregersen Samuelson

                 Granddaughter Colleen Ann Samuelson Last

Our Hoosier