Post
by George Johnstone » Tue Nov 19, 2013 6:03 am
more on Peter Dahl
Peter Dahl did not reach a position of leadership in the settlement, but he became far more prosperous than the average Red River settler, and he left numerous descendants. He secured land, possibly from Lord Selkirk during his visit to the settlement in 1817. In the land register of the Hudson's Bay Company Dahl is credited with owning lots 186 and 606, but we have no means of ascertaining their acreage. {17} The census reports of the Selkirk settlement disclose much, however, concerning Dahl's material progress. The report of 1831 states his age as forty-two, "born in Norway, Protestant." He then had three sons and two daughters under sixteen years of age, and he possessed "1 house, 1 barn, 1 mare, 5 bulls, 7 cows, 5 calves, 2 pigs, 1 plough, 1 cart, 1 boat, 1 canoe, and 7 acres of cultivated land." The census taken three years later introduces an element of confusion as regards the age of Peter Dahl -- now given as forty-one -- but it is evident that the man mentioned is the same. He was utilizing the opportunities afforded by the new country. He now possessed two houses, two stables, one barn, two mares, five oxen, sixteen cows, seven calves, three pigs, one plough, one harrow, one cart, and twelve acres of cultivated land. {18}
All subsequent reports reveal steady economic progress on his part. In 1838 one son and one daughter were above sixteen; two sons and one daughter were under that age. He owned one house, three stables, one barn, three horses, four mares, eleven oxen, fifteen cows, fourteen calves, three pigs, twenty-four sheep, one plough, one harrow, three carts, one canoe, and twenty acres of cultivated land. The census of 1846 discloses the following facts about Dahl. The family then consisted of two sons above sixteen and one daughter above fifteen. One son, Alexander, was then married and had his own house; no trace has been found of the older daughter. Peter Dahl's property included one house, five stables, one barn, two horses, six mares, ten oxen, one bull, nine cows, two calves, six pigs, sixty sheep, one plough, two harrows, seven carts, two boats, and forty-five acres of cultivated land. {19}
Though these figures seem bare, they tell a story. Throughout this period Peter Dahl had more land under cultivation and owned more livestock than most of the farmers at the Red River. In 1846 the population of the colony was about five thousand souls, of which approximately one-third were whites. The settler was rare who had more than twenty acres of cultivated land. Only one had more land under cultivation than Dahl had, and the average for all the settlers was below ten acres. {20} The reasons for this lack of progress at the settlement are fairly obvious. Apart from the discouragement attendant upon early disasters, and the hardships and expense connected with the bringing in of breeding animals and grain for seed from Missouri, Illinois, or Prairie du Chien, the settler always faced the temptation of giving up his constant and toilsome work on the farm for the thrills of the buffalo hunt. The pemmican produced from the buffalo always had a ready market, {21} while that for beef, wool, and tallow was very limited, even after the settlement began to trade with St. Paul, 530 miles distant. {22} The success, or rather survival, of Selkirk's colony was due, in the main, to the tenacity of the Scots, who comprised a majority among the early settlers. It is clear that Peter Dahl possessed in full measure the qualities of mind and body that made for success on the frontier, and that he more than held his own in competition with the canny Scots.
The name and national origin of Mrs. Peter Dahl are not disclosed by the census reports. She was white and probably Scottish. Practically all of Dahl's Protestant neighbors came from Scotland, and one of his sons received a typically Scottish name, Alexander. Incidentally, Alexander is the only one of the five children whose fortune can be traced in the census reports of the Red River settlement and the province of Manitoba. His brothers and sisters may have died early or may have followed the example of many of the younger generation in the colony and gone to the United States. Alexander may not have been the oldest of Dahl's three sons. {23} In 1846 his age is given as twenty-three; he was then married and had a daughter "under 15." He is listed as owning one house, one barn, two horses, two mares, four oxen, five cows, two calves, six pigs, and twelve sheep, but having no land under cultivation. The Hudson's Bay Company's records show that later he owned lots 186 and 606, which had belonged to his father, and, in addition, lot 591. The first census for the province of Manitoba, that for 1870, discloses much information concerning him. He was then forty-seven years of age. His wife, Elizabeth, was born in the Northwest and was the daughter of John Vincent. Since her age is given as only thirty-four, she must have been his second wife. The family consisted of the following: William, nineteen; Charlotte, seventeen; Thomas, thirteen; Donald M., five; and Alexander J., one. An older son, John, age twenty-three, was married to Elizabeth A., daughter of Robert Cummings. Both Alexander Dahl and his married son lived in the parish of St. Paul. {24}
In the parish of St. Clement is found an Alexander Dahl, age twenty-six; his wife Lotie, age twenty, was the daughter of Magnus Briston; and they had a daughter, Nancy, age two. This Alexander Dahl was born in the settlement and was the son of Alexander Dahl. This raises a problem. Alexander Dahl, senior, had only a daughter in 1846, twenty-four years earlier; and he had also another son named Alexander. The difficulty is not so serious as it may seem. Both in Scotland and in Norway one might have found, a hundred years ago and less, two brothers with the same baptismal name. The problem raised by the age of Alexander Dahl, the second, still remains. Two solutions seem equally probable -- either that he was an illegitimate son, or that a mistake has crept into the census report of 1846. Alexander Dahl, the first, may have been credited with a daughter instead of a son. The land records show that an Alexander Dahl, evidently the second, had been granted lot 185 by the Hudson's Bay Company. {25}
There must be many people living in Manitoba and elsewhere who can trace their ancestry back to Peter Dahl. This venturesome man was the only one of Lord Selkirk's Norwegians to become a land-owning farmer at the forks of the Red River; he was the first one of that nationality to live in the valley where so many sons and daughters of Norway have since built their homes; and let it be said in his memory that, judged by material standards, he was an intrepid pioneer worthy of being remembered in the annals of the Norwegians in America. {26}