Hilda's Diary

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Hilda's Diary is a day-by-day "real time" recording of the 1897 diary of my maternal grandmother, Hilda Satterlund (later Hilda Satterlund Wenz). She was 18 at the time. The diary commenced on January 1 and ended abruptly on July 15. To begin reading, scroll down to the very bottom for the first entry.

Hilda was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, who came to the US around 1870. Her father, "King" John Satterlund, was a powerful figure in North Dakota, both in the state capital of Bismarck and in Washburn, the small town 40 miles north of Bismarck that he co-founded.

When the diary opens in January, Hilda is living with her two younger sisters, Lulu and Florence, in the family's Bismarck home. Meanwhile, her parents, John and Charlotte Satterlund, and her baby brother Floyd, are living in Washburn. Her father helps her to find a job as clerk in the state capitol; later she becomes a teacher in one-room school some distance from both Bismarck and Washburn.

The diary reveals very little of Hilda's interior life but day by day, her prosaic descriptions take one back in time to a person who begins to seem very real and very present.

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- Betsy

PS I still have a few more pictures and scans to add to Hilda's Diary, but the text is complete.
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