From the Hornets' Nest to the Custer Fight: The Olaus Hansen Immigrant Saga
Ozzie Sollien
Synopsis "From the Hornets' Nest to the Custer Fight: The Olaus Hansen Immigrant Saga"
This is the second edition of the previously released "From the Hornets' Nest to Custer's Last Stand" (2013). For customer reviews, go to the first edition with the original title on Amazon U.S. and Amazon U.K. From Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, the largest genealogy blog in the U.S.: "Sollien's book reminds me of another exceptionally well written book by a non-American - "Measuring America" by Andro Linklater. These two authors have written noteworthy chronicles of certain times in America with stories that are based in fact, but written with such skill that we connect to the characters and the times. The storytelling is first rate......." During more than twenty years of tracking a group of Norwegian immigrants to Iowa, Dakota and Minnesota in the 1860s, the author uncovered a family saga kept in the dark for more than a century. With roots in semi-feudal Norway and ties to a network of family and friends on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, it was also intertwined with major events shaping the American Nation. The first of three books - "From the Hornets' Nest to the Custer Fight" - is chronicling two brothers, the sharecropper sons Olaus and Hans Hansen and their adventures in the American Civil War. Following the war, Olaus served as a sergeant in George Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry during the Sioux Indian Wars before he committed suicide in Dakota Territory in 1882. In Victorian times, to take your own life was viewed as felonious self-murder, deserving condemnation and punishment. Olaus' suicide was an unspeakable act staining the family's stellar reputation of religious righteousness and social standing, a family who had moved from the bottom rung of the social ladder to the top within one single generation. It left the youngest son in an anonymous, unvisited grave on the Dakota Plains for more than a hundred years. Watch also for "Suicide by Army Life" and "Minnesota Pioneers 1871".
