Early Life and Education
Knute Nelson was born out of wedlock in Voss, Norway to Ingebjørg Haldorsdatter Kvilekval, who named him Knud Evanger. He was baptized by his uncle on their farm of Kvilekval, who recorded his father as Helge Knudsen Styve. This is unconfirmed. Various theories persist about Knud's paternity, including one involving Gjest Baardsen, a famous outlaw.
In 1843, Ingebjørg's brother Jon Haldorsson sold the farm where she and Knud lived, as he could not make a living, and emigrated to Chicago. Ingebjørg took her boy with her to Bergen, where she took work as a domestic servant. Having borrowed money for the passage, she and Knud emigrated to the United States, arriving in Castle Garden in New York City on July 4, 1849. The holiday fireworks made a lasting impression on the seven-year-old Knud, who was listed in immigration records as Knud Helgeson Kvilekval. Ingebjørg Haldorsdatter claimed to be a widow (a story she held until 1923). She and Knud traveled by river to Albany, New York, and then via the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and the Great Lakes to Chicago. There her brother Jon, now working as a carpenter, took them in. While with him, Haldorsdatter worked as a domestic servant and paid off her debt for passage in less than a year.
Knud also worked, first as a house servant, then as a paper boy for the Chicago Free Press, which gave him an early education, both because he read the paper and because he learned street profanity.
In the fall of 1850, Ingebjørg married Nils Olson Grotland, also from Voss. The family of three moved to Skoponong, a Norwegian settlement in Palmyra, Wisconsin. Knud was given the surname Nelson after his stepfather, which eliminated the stigma of being fatherless.
By then 17 years old, Nelson was street-smart and rebellious, with a proclivity toward profanity. He was accepted to the school held by Mary Blackwell Dillon, an Irish immigrant with linguistic talents. Nelson proved himself an apt student although undisciplined; he later recalled being whipped as many as three times a day.
Still in his teens, Nelson joined the Democratic Party out of admiration for Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The family moved to the Koshkonong settlement, which by 1850 had more than half of the Norwegian population of 5,000 in the state. Nils Olson had bad luck with land purchases and became sickly. Nelson picked up most of the work of the farm, but maintained his commitment to education. His stepfather was not supportive and Nelson often had to scrounge to find money for schoolbooks.
Nelson's academic interests led him to enroll in Albion Academy in Albion in Dane County, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1858. The school was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to provide for education to children who could not afford private school, and Nelson was deemed "very deserving." To earn his keep he did various odd, but hard, jobs around the school.
After two years, Nelson took a job as a country teacher in Pleasant Springs near Stoughton. Teaching mostly other Norwegian immigrants, he was an agent of Americanization.
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