Who Are We?
Samuel Erick Olson Branch
Sam's Story

Samuel Erick was the 6th child of Blixt and Kristina who were married 11-24-1883 in Stockholm, Sweden. They had 2 sons, Karl and Ernst when Blixt, who was a brick mason, decided in 1888 to immigrate to America because he and Kristina felt their children would have a better life and more opportunities, including free education, in America. Education was very important to them.

Samuel was born on 4-29-1896 in Ironwood, MI, a mining town Blixt had settled in and then sent for Kristina and their two boys. They had a good home, and their family grew. However, Blixt contracted rheumatic fever from the red dust in the mines, and shortly after Christina's birth 5-24-1899, he went West to meet his cousin, Andrew Erickson, in Spokane so they could go together when the Colville Indian Reservation was opened up to homesteaders 7-1-1899. He was reluctant to leave Kristina with 7 children and the newest baby only a few weeks old. But Kristina insisted... free land!... free land! When Samuel was 4 years old, the family traveled by train and wagon to the homestead where Blixt had built a log house and out buildings on his 160 acres. It was a remote location in the hills of Washington State about 200 miles northwest of Spokane near the Canadian border.

Samuel grew up on the homestead where everyone worked hard under the driving force of Kristina to make the farm productive - produce from the garden; eggs, milk and meat from the animals; wheat from the fields, etc. Blixt also worked the land but later worked in the mines in Phoenix, B.C. It was a good, disciplined and healthy life and cash from the mines was very comforting.

When he was 22 years old, Samuel was drafted into the army for World War I. He was stationed at Camp Kearny in California. One Sunday he and a friend took a walk which unexpectedly brought them past the raw sewage of the camp. They left quickly, but 2 weeks later, they both came down with spinal meningitis, which was usually fatal in those days. A nurse, Florence Johnson, was devoted to Samuel and cared for him diligently or he probably wouldn't have survived. But he was left "stone" deaf - the nerves gone in both ears. Florence stayed in contact with Sam until her 70's when she died.

Samuel never considered himself handicapped. He did everything anyone else did, including driving a car. He was mischievous; full of humor, loving, a strong disciplinarian who seldom needed to back up his words with force; very intelligent (as were his siblings)and had an immense sense of honor and duty; all of which was still his code when he died at age 87 in Oct. 1983 from a blood clot 2 days after successful hip replacement surgery.

Samuel married Emma Marie Ambjorg Dahlgren 8-13-1925 in Davenport, WA. The ceremony was performed by a Lutheran minister. She was the 7th and last child of Anne Haslerud and Ahl Dahlgren and was born on the homestead claim of Anne Haslerud above Driftwood Bay on Lake Coeur d' Alene in Idaho on 9-27-1901. Anne, her parents and 3 siblings had emigrated from Norway to Minnesota where their oldest son, Peder Knud, had settled after he emigrated at age 20 in 1879.

After Anne married Ahl, who was much older, they went West, Ahl had emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota where he homesteaded land but lost it. Times were very hard for them on the Idaho homestead.

After her mother died at age 57, Emma, who was about 14 years old, decided to follow in the foot steps of her sister, Esther, who had succeeded in getting an education and becoming a bookkeeper. She, too, would get an education by working as a domestic in the city for her room and board so she could attend high school. The first year she lived in Coeur d' Alene, ID; the 2nd year in Butte, MT, and the 3rd and final year in Republic, WA. Her brother, Henry, had purchased 5 acres from Blixt so on occasion, she and Sam had become acquainted and visited when she would visit Henry, but they first met when she was sitting on a pile of lumber at the Malo Store waiting for the bus to Republic. Sam liked pretty girls and Emma's independent ability.

After graduating from high school, two of Emma's brothers, Henry and Pete, lent her the money to attend "normal school" in Cheney, WA to get her teaching certificate. After she started teaching in 1920 she repaid them and even bought her own car. So she was way ahead of "women's lib"! She had come a long way from the poverty of her childhood.


Emma's Car

In the Fall of 1924, Emma started teaching at St. Peters Creek School, about 2 miles from Sam's home and parents. Sam began courting Emma in earnest and by Spring, they were serious about their relationship. Emma liked to tell Sam she had "oceans of love for him with a kiss on every wave!" When Sam bought his next car in Spokane, accompanied by his brother, Ernest, he chose a blue Nash to match the clear bright blue of Emma's eyes (that certain bright light blue some Norwegians inherit). Sam and Emma were very much in love as evidenced by some love letters Sam gave his son, Don, many, many years later. In those days, however, a woman teacher could not be married so her teaching career ended when Sam and Emma married 8-13-1925.

Blixt and Kristina invited Sam and Emma to live with them at their homestead on the South fork of St. Peters Creek. Kristina named Sam and Emma's first born Miriam, but Emma "put her foot down" when Kristina tried to tell Emma how to care for her baby girl, which resulted in Sam buying a farm on the North fork of St. Peters Creek about 4 miles into the hills from the Malo store. It required a great deal of hard work to make it into a home. The Anderson brothers, who were horse traders, only cared that it had 4 walls and a roof. This log home still stands today, more than 70 years later, as sturdy as ever, and we visited it during the 1983 reunion, where we had a picnic we brought on the Greyhound bus. The McClellans, who owned the farm, then welcomed us by prior arrangements.

Here were born Joseph, Donald and Samuel Dean (Kristina named Joseph also). Anita was born in Grand Forks, B.C. in a home for expectant mothers about 30 miles from the Malo farm.

Sam was very ingenious. There was no well or electricity on the land. In the Republic News Miner Sam read about a piece of land up for tax sale, which he knew had a strong spring of water, so he bought it. With the help of his nephew (David) Lee, neighbors, Bob and Tom Sparks who had the next farm below Sam, a trench 1žth miles long was dug. Sam had contracted to with Alaska Junk Company in Seattle to haul 6,562 feet of pipe for a total of $871.00. This was the Spring of 1933. Miriam was 7 years old and vividly recalls the truck driver being "raving mad" - stating he had not contracted to haul this pipe up a "goat trail", but Sam held him to the contract price (which included the pipe). Lee was more like a son than a nephew to Sam and he spent many days helping his Uncle Sam. There was such force from this spring water, Sam was able to power a generator for electricity, irrigate all of his fields and put running water in the house for the kitchen and bathroom. This was 40 years before public utilities were available and the same system is working today.

Sam raised purebred Shorthorn cattle for breeding purposes only and he won many ribbons at Shorthorn cattle shows around the State with his entries. He even bought a prize bull from Scotland. The only time the family had any of these cattle for meat was if a heifer got mixed up with the neighbor's bull .

Many years later, Sam and Emma moved to Deer Park, WA onto a farm Sam had purchased to which he moved his prized cattle which was a herd of about 50 by then. At age 14, Joe was put on the freight train with the cattle to make sure they made it safely to Deer Park via Spokane.

When his "children" finally convinced Sam to retire, he sold his prized Shorthorns one by one, to people he researched and interviewed to make sure they would give the animal the same TLC he did. When done, he sold the farm and he and Emma moved to Spokane into a house he bought near Joe, Joann and family.

Everyone wondered what Sam would do with his retirement years. To everyone's surprise, this very frugal Swede took up gambling at the horse races. However, he spent many enjoyable hours studying all of the statistics on the horses and jockeys before he decided which ones he would bet on when he got to the race track. We think he broke even each season - we heard about all the wins, but none about losses.

In 1973, Sam and Emma moved to Phoenix, AZ to be near their daughter, Miriam, and her husband, Charlie. Being in the Valley of the Sun, away from the snowy Spokane winters, they enjoyed driving many places and Turf Paradise Race Track became Sam’s play ground. During the hot summers, they spent their time between Spokane and Seattle (where their daughter, Anita and husband, Frank and family lived). So they were always near their children, as they also made trips to Houston to visit Don, Hanne and family; Williamsburg, VA to visit Dean, Annelise and Poul Erik. A1so, there were horse race tracks near Spokane and Seattle! Had he been alive when the race track opened in Houston, TX, on his birthday, you can be sure he would have been there.

Emma died in June 1981 after a series of strokes and heart attacks. At the beginning, Sam's death in Oct. 1983 is described. Miriam was forever grateful she had been spiritually motivated in late 1981 to plan another family reunion, which took place Labor Day Week End 1983 at Twin Lakes, ID. with about 120 family members from all over the U.S. and Canada. Sam had a wonderful time - he loved people, was interested in everything and little kids Adored him; related or - otherwise, they instinctively made a "bee-line" for him.

All of Emma's children wondered if she had been satisfied with losing her teaching career, and they were gratified to hear from Don that she told him, while taking a walk in Phoenix about a year before she died that she had made the right choice because what she wanted to do was have a home and family with Daddy and that was the way it turned out.

All of us were in a state of shock when Sam died Oct. 1983, but he had insisted he have the hip replacement surgery by the same doctor who had successfully replaced Emma's hip. Miriam believes it was God's way of letting him "pass over" easy. A physical exam prior to surgery showed he had the vitals of a 60 year old man. The doctor told her he didn't know how Sam had walked with that hip - it was bone grinding on bone. But Sam never complained - complaining was not his style. He just used his cane, bore the pain and enjoyed life each day.

At death, Emma had Miriam, Joe and Sam by her bed. Sam had Anita, Miriam and Christine at his bed. We still feel them both near us and know they are with their loved ones gone before them, and since.

THE END

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