Excerpts from Marion Munson Pasquet's talk on video at the Munson family reunion 8/13/94 - transcribed by Kitty Munson Cooper

This is about Lauritz Mönsen "Bestafa" who was known in this country as Lewis Munson. He emigrated a year in advance of his family of nine children.

"Oh this is an interesting story that I only heard in 1963 [1953?] the, their father, the father [Lauritz Munson] of this large family wanted to bring them to Europe, I mean from Europe to America and so he had to save up money for the passage of all these children. And he had one disagreeable experience, he answered an ad for a company in Minnesota which said good wages, good living conditions, and so forth. So he thought well that might help him earn the money for his family. So he answered the ad and he went to Minnesota somehow. And he found out it was really just like a slave labor camp. There were dogs to keep them from going out and they had to buy at the company store which kept them always in debt. But he wasn't going to be stuck there, he had too much gumption for that. So he began feeding the dogs a little of his own food and after a while the dogs were so friendly to him that he just got up and walked off one night. [ general discussion of who this was ] But then he had to get to New York so he hopped a freight train. He didn't have any money. When he got to New York, he went to the Norwegian embassy, they gave him a ticket back to Norway.

But somehow or rather he did make the money. He finally got his family to New York in 1884. They all came to New York on a hot summer day. The first Sunday they were there they went to the Norwegian Seaman's church [ in Brooklyn ] and there was a baptism. They figured out later that it was my mother being baptized cause it was the same day, same time, so the association started early [ see Lawrence Josiah's diary for this fact as well ]

And then he [ Lawrence Josiah Munson ] had to go to school. He was six years old and had to go to school. There's another woman he'll never forget. The teacher said to him to write a row of nines. Well he looked at the nines - well that seemed easy - and he wrote a lot of loops and went back and put stems on them. She came and cracked his knuckles with a ruler. That wasn't the way he was supposed to do it. But she hadn't told him that, so he remembered her

And he took piano lessons and was very good at it. His mother's family was very musical. His uncles played in military bands in Norway and the mother wrote the lovely grandmother's lullaby which was sung to several generations of children but I think it's been sort of forgotten. Well, I sent some copies around hoping somebody'd use them. [ general discussion ]

Copyright © 2001 Kitty Cooper