Bold Spirit

by Linda Lawrence Hunt

  Jubilation mixed with anxiety as their deadline loomed. Helga and Clara took a rare opportunity to ride on a trolley after they left Hummelstown at 6 o’clock in the morning. They rode through Annville, Lebanon, and on to Myerstown, “from where they were obliged to walk to Womelsdorf, when they could take the trolley again.” Mrs. Estby said, “Among the stipulations of the contract we made are that we must not beg and [we can] either walk or ride on electric cars.”5

  Possibly the contract allowed the electric car rides because of safety factors within industrial cities. Or perhaps it was a “free ride,” thus not breaking the stipulation against paying for rides. Other than the free wagon ride near Walla Walla, this was the only time they admitted not walking. Clearly, time pressures made them hurry at this point. However, as this ride occurred in a very public environment, and Helga herself reported the ride to a journalist she knew was writing up their story, it was unlikely they risked breaking their contract.

  Rising excitement about the enormity of these women’s achievement led to even socialites welcoming them when they arrived in Reading, Pennsylvania, on December 19. They stayed at the Hotel Penn where they received numerous callers, “including some well-known society people.”6 They recounted their experiences “most entertainingly,” and the women, though bronzed by exposure, were otherwise “looking none the worse for their exploits.” The Reading Times reporter concluded, “The girdlers feel jubilant over the near approach of the completion of their journey.”7

  Now within striking distance of their long-sought goal, when the two reached Phillipsburg, New Jersey, somebody misdirected them through Morristown. They walked forty-five miles off their course, “a grievous mistake that caused them to be caught in last night’s storm,” noted the New York World. So close to fulfilling their dream after seven months of exertion and more than 3500 miles, the weary women returned to the right road and pressed on toward New York City. “When they reached Jersey City this forenoon they were happy. They saw the tall buildings of New York and knew that their journey was nearly at an end.”8

  Numerous callers, including some “well-known society people,” came to the Hotel Penn in Reading, Pennsylvania, to meet the astonishing women.

  Courtesy The Historical Society of Berks County, 5916.

  Shortly after 1 o’clock on December 23, seven months and 18 days after they left Spokane, Helga and Clara set foot on Manhattan Island. To reach their destination, the World newspaper office, required only a few minutes. What triumphant thoughts surged through Helga and Clara as they stepped into this newspaper building—the same publisher that first announced their intentions last April 26? Did they window shop on the city streets as they walked downtown, imagining what glorious Christmas gifts they could bring home to the family? The reporter caught a hint of their impatient delight, “The elevators were slow to carry them upstairs, they thought, so eager were they to end their journey.”9

  Impressed with the mental abilities and physical appearance of the winsome women, the reporter expressed amazement over the wonder of their achievement, stating that Mrs. Estby and her daughter were “the only women who ever walked across the continent.” Helga was described as an “intelligent, very witty, good conversationalist” and a well-educated thirty-eight year old who has traveled considerably. The enamored writer also observed that she is “in excellent physical condition and lost only one pound on the journey.” Clara, now nineteen, was described as a well-educated graduate of a Spokane high school “with a full round face and sparkling blue eyes and … a plump, well-developed figure.” A full description of their walking outfits included: bicycle skirts, reaching a few inches below their knees; stout cycle shoes with boot tops encased their feet; short black coats buttoned closely to the neck; low-crowned alpine hats; and warm woolen gloves.10 Whatever internal triumph Helga felt that day appeared to be shadowed by anxiety, fearful that the woman who made the wager might refuse to pay the $10,000 because they missed the stipulated deadline.

  Helga and Clara arrived at the New York World newspaper building in New York City Hall Park, on December 23, 1896, jubilant at their achievement.

  Courtesy Collection of The New-York Historical Society, photo circa 1892, 43550.

  Detail of this photograph on this page.

  Helga and Clara’s feat attracted the attention of several other New York daily newspapers. Like in earlier news articles, reporters expressed strong interest in the fact that two women earned over $300 for the trip expenses through their own labor, noting that their work stops “aggregated to around two months.” On Christmas Eve, the New York Times reported on this remarkable performance for women, acknowledging that “a pedestrian trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic is a big task for men, but when women perform it, it becomes remarkable.” Then several paragraphs described the wager, the particular difficulties they overcame with highwaymen, storms, and Clara’s ankle accident. But the New York Times’ strongest fascination appeared to be in the impressive stature of signatures the women garnered along the way. Besides President and Mrs. William McKinley, Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, and “General” Coxey, the signatures included many of America’s leading governors and mayors.11

  The New York Herald also covered their feat and added news on their contract and concerns. After referring to the ten-day delay caused by Clara’s sprained ankle, information was included on their extreme efforts to make up this lost time. “By forced marches, the women were able to make up six days of the ten.” The question loomed over whether the wealthy sponsor would quibble over the delay caused by Clara’s ankle sprain and not count these days as sickness. This “will have to be settled before the travelers know whether they win or lose the wager.”12

  Wire services picked up these articles and the Christmas Eve Spokane Chronicle and the Spokesman-Review announced their safe arrival and successful achievement, most likely the first time their family and friends learned of their stunning accomplishment. After covering their accomplishment, the Spokesman-Review admitted that “it was not generally believed the proposed trip would be completed” when they left last spring. The reporter noted that Mrs. Estby left a husband in Mica Creek to take care of the balance of the family while “the two female globe-trotters are out for the alleged wager.” Then the reporter added a commentary on Spokane community attitudes toward Helga’s character and reputation. “Mrs. Estby, though regarded as rather peculiar, was a determined woman, and when she said she was going to walk to New York, those who knew her said she would carry out the determination. Doubt, however, exists about the $10,000 which she said she was to receive.”13

  MRS. ESTBY AND HER DAUGHTER WALK ARMED FROM SPOKANE.

  An artist for the New York World newspaper drew this sketch of Helga’s and Clara’s astounding achievement, which was published on Christmas day, 1896.

  Courtesy General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

  The Estbys always celebrated Christmas Eve with a festive Norwegian dinner, with the special preparation of lefse, sour cream pudding with lingonberry sauce, lutefisk, and almond cookies made by Helga. December of 1896 was a lonely Christmas for Ole and the seven children. Ole knew more than anyone the truth of the observations that Helga was “peculiar, but determined.” He had seen his wife, bedridden with pain just five years earlier, boldly risk innovative surgery to restore her health and then exert the physical strength to walk across America. But now the world knew they were delinquent on taxes and in danger of losing their farm, an embarrassing truth for this hardworking husband and father. The local newspaper article also may have raised Ole’s fears that all his wife’s heroic efforts might have been in vain.

  Late on Christmas Eve afternoon, Helga and Clara returned to the World newspaper with troubling news. Somehow, after being in New York City less than four hours, they had lost all their money. What worried Helga most was not that she lost her money but that “the pocketbook contained most of the diary of her trip.�
� The pocketbook had Mrs. Estby’s Spokane address in it, and that of her present home on No. 6 Rivington Street.14

  Perhaps because health promoters in the 1890s, such as Lydia Pinkham, urged women to drink various herbal and other vegetable compounds to gain strength for their frail bodies, the reporter added, “The daughter never drank anything but milk. The mother allowed herself but one cup of coffee a day. Neither of them took stronger stimulants.”15

  A newspaper artist for the World drew an original rendition of Helga and Clara wearing their reformed costumes and toting knives and guns. The caption read: “Mrs. Estby and Her Daughter Walked Armed from Spokane,” and it was signed J.C. Fineman. Then one brief sentence gave the ominous news that had shattered the trust, dreams, and determination of a mother and daughter to rescue their family, crushing their earlier exhilaration. Evidently, they discovered on Christmas Eve afternoon that the mysterious sponsor refused to honor the contract. The World reported Helga’s news: “The object of the long tramp was to make money, but the woman who engaged them to do it has gone back on her contract.”16

  The sponsor not only refused to honor the contract but also refused to provide train money to return home, a tragic omission that ultimately shaped the destiny of the Estby family. Helga had put such faith in a stranger’s promises. The reporter provided no information on the identity of the sponsor or the women’s profound disappointment. Only Helga’s concern was noted by the reporter: “She is wondering how they are going to get home.”17

  Stunned by this harsh betrayal, Helga and Clara spent Christmas Eve among a crowded city of strangers, so far away from the family they loved. Now destitute and homeless, did they still light a candle on this most silent of nights?

  16 HEARTBREAK AT THE MICA CREEK HOMESTEAD

  I have heard news that diphtheria is in my house.

  —NEW YORK DAILY TRIBUNE MAY 2, 1897

  During the following spring, Helga and Clara faced the reality of being penniless women eking out a living in New York City. They needed to fend for themselves in a city teeming with other immigrants, trying to earn enough money to live while also saving for two return tickets home. Women generally earned only half the wages for similar work as men did at the turn of the century; their prospects for saving looked bleak.1

  They moved to Brooklyn to look for work because it was a less expensive place to live than Manhattan. Helga, an excellent seamstress and housekeeper, might have found employment this way. The large immigrant population of Brooklyn, however, filled the newspapers with similar “work wanted” advertisements. Tens of thousands of immigrants came to New York, first from northern and western Europe and then, after 1890, also from southern and eastern European countries. Although women now entered the labor force in factories, most worked in “women’s jobs,” primarily in the garment shops, textile mills, hosiery plants, or food production area. Workers faced long hours, dismal working conditions, occupational hazards, and low pay. A sixty-hour, five-and-a-half-day week was commonplace. Highly skilled labor that required training, and provided higher wages, was reserved for men. For example, in breweries, men were brewers and young women were bottle washers; in bakeries, men were bakers and women were boxers or “cracker-packers”; even in the garment industry, men performed the most highly skilled work of cutting the fabric in waistmaking.2 The low pay for women in temporary menial labor provided only for bare survival needs; saving enough for two cross-continental train tickets verged on the impossible.

  Two topics that appeared continually in the Brooklyn newspapers in the winter of 1897 likely perked Helga’s interest after her experiences in Wyoming and Colorado. The “woman question,” particularly the issue of suffrage, often made front-page news in the Brooklyn Standard Union. Similar to her experiences in Manistee, Michigan, when she was sixteen, both sides argued vociferously. Helga now knew firsthand that some western women enjoyed this privilege, and her travels kindled her growing belief that women did not deserve to be treated as inferior.3 As a reporter noted, “Both are satisfied in their own minds, at least, that man is not much the superior of women after all.”4

  Headlines in the Brooklyn Standard Union showed that citizens here faced the same threat that Helga did—losing their home to foreclosure. Even when the amount of taxes owed was small, she saw that the government and banks acted with impunity toward delinquent taxpayers. A front-page article on January 14 told of 101 parcels of lands and homes being auctioned off in six wards because the owners could not pay their 1894 taxes. Citizens owing the city $164 on a property valued at $5000 lost it all to someone bidding $3200. A lot valued at $300 was sold off for $250 although the woman owed only $14.58. City claims of delinquency as low as $12 were enough to justify the sales.5 Learning of these heartless stories while living in limbo in New York, Helga knew that the next letter from Ole could announce that their foreclosure date was imminent. Helga and Clara earned their own living during the winter and spring of 1897. But no matter how hard they worked, they were unable to earn enough money to return. They felt trapped by economics, thousands of miles away from their family.

  Back on the farm in Mica Creek, Ole faced a far greater heartbreak than the threat of losing their land.6 In early April, their fifteen-year-old daughter, Bertha, came down with a sore throat. This news made parents nervous, especially after the epidemic of diphtheria in Spokane the summer before. Most victims lived in Spokane where Bertha had worked for a few months as a domestic to help earn money for the family.7 The previous fall, their eldest son, seventeen-year-old Olaf, contracted diphtheria when he worked in Spokane. He spent time in a sanatorium outside the city to heal, and like many older children and adults, he recovered. Then he returned to their Mica Creek home.8

  At moments like this, Ole wanted Helga home more than ever. The worrisome seven months had now stretched into a year. Helga’s letters gave no indication of when she could afford two train tickets. Nor did he have any extra funds to send them. He barely earned enough for basic expenses to feed and clothe a growing family of seven children. Even now, he needed help from the older children who worked in the city of Spokane. When he rode the horse into Rockford or saw his neighbors, they no longer asked much about Helga because it was such an embarrassment. He had no answers to explain her Pollyanna belief in a mysterious, but obviously unworthy, sponsor. If the sponsor refused to give her the $10,000, would not a decent human being at least loan her the money to come back home to her family? Earning her way across America had proved that she could work. If she did not have the expenses of rent and food in New York, she would be able to pay back a loan.

  Ole knew the fear Helga harbored for diphtheria after the scare in Minnesota where they saw so many children die. After the Minnesota County Health Department held meetings and sent pamphlets home on how to best keep the contagion from spreading in a family, parents usually decided on a plan of action. If a child came down with diphtheria, the mother generally would be the nurse caretaker, which meant a father’s task involved taking care of the other children in an outbuilding, keeping them warm and fed. This way the primary caretaker would not inadvertently pass the disease to the other children.

  When the doctor confirmed Bertha’s diphtheria diagnosis, Ole ordered the other children to stay in an outside shed. “We were so cold,” recalled Ida.9 He and their oldest son, Olaf, tried to take care of Bertha and the other children as best they could. Each day Bertha grew worse and as her throat was swelling, she lay prostrate on her bed, hardly responding to her father’s frantic attempts to get her to eat or drink something. He sat by her bedside late into the night. Ole likely remembered another time while Helga was away from home. Ida insisted on planning a party for her sister Bertha’s tenth birthday, so he rode the horse six miles into the general store in Rockford to get the soda Ida needed to bake a cake.10 He enjoyed seeing Bertha’s surprise and excitement when her friends all showed up to celebrate.

  Ole felt his stark helplessness in preventing his daughter from choking to d
eath. Nor could he be Helga to give her a mother’s comfort. Always before when their children were ill, she had nursed them back to health.

  In the 1890s, medical doctors observed that the mild or strong onset of the disease did not always indicate the future prognosis. An apparently mild case could lead to death in three to four days. Mortality rates during the 1890s from this disease ranged from forty to seventy-five percent, highest if it was a young child who contracted the most virulent form known as “black diphtheria.”11 If children were attacked with this virulent form, doctors advised parents that the best they could do was to provide some relief to ease the pain and make every effort to avoid contaminating the other children. Small doses of whiskey mixed with milk were recommended to relax the victim, but Ole probably could not afford that luxury in his home.

  No neighbor dared to come to help the family because they risked bringing the dreaded diphtheria back into their own home. So, Ole tried in vain to comfort his daughter, and Olaf watched his little sister’s dying hours in horror. When Bertha died the next day, on April 6, Ole walked out to within a few feet of the shed and had to yell the terrible news to her brothers and sisters. They broke into crying and wailing. Ole, known by all for his loving nature as a father, did not dare comfort them for he likely carried the contagious bacteria himself. Instead, he walked over to his workshop and began to make his beloved daughter a simple pine coffin.12 Something in the familiarity of having a tool in his hand, and the unimaginable reality of using it to build his own child’s casket, may have broken through his days of silent stoic duty.

  The next day, Ole drove the horse wagon to the Mica cemetery alone and buried his daughter next to her younger brother, twelve-year-old Henry. Neighbors watched in sadness. The minister refused to come to the cemetery until after Ole had dug a deep grave, buried Bertha, and covered the coffin with dirt.13 The dread of diphtheria robbed a family of receiving even the most elementary acts of decency and comfort, normally common in this close community. No nourishing food to help restore a shattered soul, no offer of childcare to ease a parent’s grief, no housecleaning aid to free Ole to care for the children, nor any visit from the clergy to offer spiritual sustenance during grief could be provided. A quarantined home meant a home bereft of human connection.