After our father died in 2000, we went through the old farm house, sorting and cleaning, getting ready for an auction. It's a sad time to sort through all your parent's possessions that had been accumulated over a lifetime.
One item that was half-buried under boxes of junk and falling plaster from the ceiling in the back room, my bedroom at one time, was an old spinning wheel. It had always been in Grandma Inga's room. I wondered about its history. I couldn't remember anyone ever talking about it. If only we had asked questions when people were around who could tell us the story about the spinning wheel. Now those people were all gone.
I removed the junk covering the spinning wheel and gently lifted it from the tangled mess that had been its home for the last thirty years or more. I carried it into the main upstairs bedroom where I could examine it more closely. I call it the main bedroom because that room had a small register in the floor that let heat rise to the upstairs. It was the only bedroom that was relatively warm and the one I shared with my two brothers in the winter.
I examined the spinning wheel, trying to find some date or initials that would indicate its source. There was nothing. It was definitely old. It was put together with wooden pegs, not nails. It was not a good-looking spinning wheel. It was downright ugly because half the dark stain or paint had been stripped off, leaving a two-toned appearance. It's no wonder none of the family had expressed any interest in it.
I couldn't remember my grandmother ever using it, even though she always lived with us. But then, I hadn't paid much attention to those things in my younger days. If she didn't use it, then why had she kept it in her room all those years? The upstairs middle bedroom had been Grandma's room. It must have been in her family, but now there was no way to find out or to prove it was a family heirloom.
That evening my cousin, Sandra, called from Colorado to see how things were going with cleaning out the old house. I mentioned the spinning wheel to her and said it was too bad we didn't know the history of it.
"Oh, but we do," she said. "Grandma Inga's mother, Ane Ostrem, brought it from Norway."
Sandra then proceeded to tell me the story, which I didn't remember. "When we were young, on the Hauge farm, Auntie (my mother Anna) would rock me in her lap and read to me. One of the stories was about Rumpelstiltskin and spinning wheels. Grandma then said that her spinning wheel had belonged to her mother and she brought it with from Norway. Grandma never used it but always kept it in her room. It must have been very important to her."
I told Sandra I couldn't remember the story, but then I was three years younger than her. Thank goodness she remembered. Now we knew the history of the old spinning wheel. It was a family heirloom, and as ugly as it was, it was a real beauty and treasure. It may not have been the most beautiful spinning wheel I'd ever seen, but it had personality. I knew we couldn't sell it in the auction. It had to stay in the family.
It had belonged to my Great Grandmother, Ane Bertine Jensdatter Mageland, born in 1857, who married Jonas Tønnesen Østrem when she was twenty years old.
In 1888, the Østrem family arrived in America. The spinning wheel also made the voyage and traveled with them to Wisconsin where they made their home in the hills of Jefferson Township in Vernon County. It was a long way from the small farm they had left behind in the mountains north of Moi, Norway.
I thought all four of us kids should have a chance to be the next keeper of the spinning wheel, so I said we should draw straws. Actually we drew knives! My sister, Janet, picked out four kitchen knives. Three had decorative handles and one was plain. I told them before we drew knives, that whoever got the spinning wheel must make sure it stayed in the family and their children must also understand the importance of it. I said we should start with the youngest, just to be different, because the oldest usually gets to go first. Since I'm the oldest, I was the last to draw and the only knife left when it got to me was the plain-handled one.
The old, ugly spinning wheel that once stood in the Mageland and Østrem homes in Norway; that had sailed the Atlantic Ocean with the family on its trip to America; that once sat in the old log house on the pioneer Ostrem homestead in Wisconsin; that went from farmhouse to farmhouse in those tough times when my parents and grandmother moved from farm to farm; that stood in my grandmother's bedroom all those years; and spent the last few years relegated to obscurity under piles of junk, would now find a new home in our house. We have restored it. It's now beautiful, and we've given it a good home as the keepers of a family treasure until it passes to the next generation.
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