Lögberg-Heimskringla - 18.11.1994, Blaðsíða 6

Lögberg-Heimskringla - 18.11.1994, Blaðsíða 6
6 * Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 18. nóvember 1994 EINAR’S ANECDOTES While Oak Point rated only as a village it acted sometimes, as if it were a town. The people talked themselves into situa- tions which were too big for their breeches. Baseball became the topic and they decided it was the direction to go. After a winter of talking and putting on concert and dance evenings in the local hall they had accumu- lated enough funds to outfít a team and blew the bank role by ordering bats, balls and other equipment from Eaton’s. They lacked funds for uniforms and identification across the chest reading “Oak Point”. After regular evening prac- tices they decided the time had come to invite a team, to come and play a game. They were careful and contacted the boys. in St. Laurent. Their reasoning was based on a false premise which showed them up as the clunks they were. St Laurent has been the focal point of the descendants from the era of Louis Riel; it has also been the home of the Catholic Mission in that part of the Interlake area. The Oak Point team was predominantly Icelanders and some Anglo-Saxons who were tolerated simply because there were not enough of the former to make up a team. The first shock came whén the guest team arrived in uni- forms with an inscription qcross the chest which read, “St. Laurent”. When one of their boys was reaching second base there was a yell, “Turf it Roger.” Our gang of icebergs were too slow and the result was that our Metis friends from St. Laurent whiplashed our team. Not to be deterred from thinking big they invited the Lundar team and received such a shellacking the game had to be stopped well before the ninth inning. That was the end of Oak Point baseball and the writer’s potential baseball career, so what did he do but buy a plug of chewing tobacco, and bite into it as Babe Ruth the world renowned ball player was known for, only to become vio- lently sick and end his career before it started. Recreation When our people arrived from Iceland, they invariably made Winnipeg the end of their journey and found a haven Where the Heck is Sayreville? by Nelson Gerrard, INL historian Sayreville, New Jersey — not a name most people would associate with Icelandic settlement — but during the late 1880’s the home of numerous Icelandic families. Many of these Icelanders moved on after a few years, west to Duluth, North Dakota, or Manitoba where land was available for homesteading, and today descendants of the Sayreville Icelanders are scattered across North America. It was by coincidence that I found myself staying in the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, this August while on a short trip to New York which is just a few miles away, across the New Jersey-New York bor- der. A quick scan of the local map revealed the name “Sayreville” immediately east of New Brunswick, and recall- ing research I had once done for Julius Stevenson of Toronto, I recognized that this was the same Sayreville which had once been home to a large group of Icelanders. Sayreville, just south across Raritan Bay from New York MESSUBOÐ Fyrsta Lúterska Kirkja Pastor Ingthor I. Isfeld 1030 a.m. The Service followed by Sunday School & Coffee hour. First Lutheran Church 580 Victor St., Winnipeg, MB R3G 1R2 Ph. 772-7444 Docks and Brick Yard at Sayreville, 1890 York and rapid growth in recent years, Sayreville still has a small town look to it. In the old section of town, numerous brick buildings recall the for- mer importance of the brick industry — once the largest source of employment here — and one of these buildings housed the local historical society and museum, small but well worth the visit. The two ladies in attendance were excit- ed to receive visitors from so far away, but neither had ever heard of Icelanders in Sayre- ville, and none of the items displayed in the museum gave any evi- dence of their pres- ence. A local war memorial, however, did include names which would seem to have been Icelandic. After returning to Manitoba, I retrieved copies of the Sayreville letters I had translated for Julius Stevenson (whose father was born in Sayreville) and reviewed them with my impres- sions of the visit still fresh. Copies of these letters, together with a roster of Icelanders known to have lived at Sayreville around 1896, were sent to the Sayreville Historical Society with the request that any information which might come to light about descen- dants of the Sayreville Icelanders be sent in retum. As a result of this visit to Sayreville, a booklet on the Sayreville Icelanders is being compiled — including both the Sayreville letters and a list of all known Icelanders who lived there, along with any photos which can be located. Anyone who has family connections with Sayreville, knows more about this chapter of our histo- ry, or has photos relating to the Sayreville Icelanders, is asked to contact the INL historian, Nelson Gerrard, at Box 925, Arborg, Manitoba ROC 0A0 or phone 1-204-378-2758. City, first became home to Icelandic imTnigrants in August of 1887, when shortly after disembark- ing at Castle Gardens on the tip of Manhattan, they were sent here to work in Sayreville’s bustling brick industry. Without means to travel further or to purchase land, virtually all the men worked in the clay pits and at the Sayre & Fisher Brickworks, while the women and youngsters found employ- ment in the garment industry, box factories, and laundiy work at nearby Washington (now South River, New Jersey). Pay ranged from $1 to $1.25 per day, a decent wage, but working conditions were difficult and unhealthy and.far different from any work these Icelanders had been accustomed to in their homeland. A series of letters written from Sayreville by Halldór Bjömsson (Skagfjörd) between 1888 and 1895 reveal a surpris- ing range of facts about these early Icelandic industrial work- ers and their stay at Sayreville. At first, most planned to remain at Sayreville only a short time, until they accumulated enough money to move west and claim homesteads, and it seems that eventually most did follow this- course, though not until after several years in some cases. A few returned to Iceland or moved to New York, and a con- siderable number moved north across the Raritan River to near- Workers at clay pits, 1890 by Perth Amboy, where they worked at boat building. The Sayreville Icelanders formed a temperance society, “Island”, shortly after their arrival, and they participated fully in local school and church organiza- tions. In 1889, six Icelandic couples were married at Sayreville, and despite steady departures, there were new arrivals as well. By 1895 it was reported that some Icelanders had bought homes, while three had bought land and became farmers. Halldór Bjömsson Skagfjörd, author of the Sayreville letters, apparently moved to Winnipeg in 1893, but he and his wife returned to Sayreville in the spring of 1895 with little positive to say about their sojourn in Manitoba. At last report, in 1902, “All those few Icelanders who live here at Sayreville are doing rather well and have ade- quate employment here in the town.” A short trip to Sayreville on Sunday before catching the plane home revealed that despite its proximity to New with, rela- tives, friends or simply with other I celanders they had never met before. The hosts gave them shelter and food out of compassion and helped them to find jobs whenever possible. This friendship became lifelong and traces of these bonds can be found to this day by the present desc- endants of these people a whole century later. As with humans down through the cen- turies, ties cemented themselves into lifelong bonds and recre- ational gatherings became events that brought them together to reinforce contacts and strengthen goodwill by showing concern for each other. These gatherings could be church services held in school houses or even homes. The Icelandic clergymen held the services in the language of our people. Concerts were quite popu- lar, very often held in a local school house and then later in local halls in the outlying dis- tricts as well as town halls in villages and towns. The con- certs were sometimes built around an invited guest orator or soloist, or violinist and pianist and rounded out by local talents such as poets, and guest speakers. The first part of the evening would be rounded out by local poets reciting an original poem in a humorous vein frequently directed at indi- viduals in the area. Field days or picnics during the summer months were pop- ular and well attended with a bang-up dance during the evening hour lasting in some instances until daylight. These were wonderful days of meeting and spending a day, evening or the night at a dance eyeing the fair sex with matri- monial intent. Once the fair sex individual had been found, the guarded action by the future spouse made it next to impossi- ble to dance with a committed fem. When the Model-T Ford Touring Car appeared on the scene, things took on a differ- ent hue. A team of drivers and buggy became a useless means of transportation in the marital sphere, and automobiles became the in-thing, especially if it was a new model, with a foot pedal accelerator opposed to a steering wheel gás lever. Gas was expensive at 20 cents per Imperial gallon, with only twenty miles per gallon travelling distance. It was fun, it was pleasant, it was economical and it brought you a wife providing you behaved. It was happy matri- monial hunting. By Elnar Arnason

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