After surviving Civil War, fire, grasshoppers and blizzard, Ancestor Caspar Bloom moved to White Bear Lake

As most of you know, my Mom Barb Chapman Nelson is a huge genealogy buff. She and my Dad have moved to St. Andrew’s Village, a senior center near White Bear Lake, Minn. So my sister Nancy and I have inherited crates of ancestral info she has accumulated during her 90+-year life.

In the last 40 years, we have heard many tales of our ancestors who braved much to make their home in the United States, especially Ole Knudson, who left Norway as a very young man, never to return. He met and married my Swiss Great Grandma Emma Bloom, starting a family in White Bear whose descendants live here or near here to this day.

Caspar Blum

While Ole’s immigration story is fascinating, no one can beat the story of his father-in-law Caspar Bloom (born 1838) who came with his parents at age 10 and 16 other Swiss families. Their ship was stopped by lack of wind for 30 days, causing them to run short of food and water – in all it took 96 days to travel from Bilten, Switzerland to New Glarus, Wisc.

About 20 years later, Caspar married the daughter of one of the other families; her name was Margaretha Elmer. The family farmed near New Glarus, and in 1861 Caspar joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. After enduring grueling conditions, he was discharged a year later with Bronchitis. A year later, he rejoined the army, only to be discharged again during the spring of 1865.

In 1869, he married 17-year-old “Maggie” Elmer and they had three sons. His brothers’ store in New Glarus burned in the fall of 1872, and the entire family headed by covered wagons for Nobles County in Minnesota – Civil War vets were promised 160 acres, if they homesteaded there.

Margaret Elmer Bloom

They lived in sod houses and in the spring of 1876 my great grandmother Emma was born, followed a year later by my great uncle Fred, who was very dear to my grandmother Ruth’s family and was the mayor of White Bear Lake in the 1940s.

Sadly, in the summer of 1874 grasshoppers (known as the scourge of the prairie) devoured all their crops except potatoes. They had been there for more than two years and not a crop had been raised. Some of the family left for Oregon in 1877, and some of the younger Blooms left for White Bear Lake, followed by many others in the early 1880s.

Although my Mom’s notes don’t mention the blizzard of 1873, according to the Nobles County website, “from 1873 to 1879 the settlers suffered through plagues of grasshoppers and terrible winters. The January 7-9 blizzard of 1873 was one of the worst storms that covered the Northwest area. Seventy lives were lost—four in Minnesota.”

In 1882, Caspar lost his farm in Nobles County, due to the inability to pay the mortgage and taxes. And his wife Maggie became severely depressed – possibly after losing one of their children - and ended up at the state hospital for mental illness in St. Peter.

Caspar brought his five surviving children to White Bear Lake, where they were boarded with different families, and Caspar worked as a carpenter. 

The lesson of this story is that when you think you have it rough, consider what Caspar endured.

His story didn’t end there, but I will save the rest for another time. He died in White Bear Lake at age 86. And his name is inscribed on the statue welcoming walkers to Clark Avenue at Second Street near Domino’s Pizza.

Sources

Ancestry notes gathered by Barbara Chapman Nelson

Nobles County website