After 124 Years, Wallet Returned To Fridley Man
Published: June 17, 2006
The old wallet was empty, and it could have been left in Italy or Ireland or China, any jumping-off point for 19th century immigrants to America. As it happened, the finely hand-tooled calfskin wallet stayed in Norway — sold, lost or given away — when Torbjorn Maage collected his family and boarded an oceangoing steamer in 1882.
For more than a century, it has been another Norwegian family’s heirloom, passed through generations of men named Oevsthus. But the name stamped into the leather is Maage, and two years ago Tor Oevsthus set out to see if he could put the wallet back into rightful hands.
He did that this week in a Fridley garage.
Nobody had ever explained why the wallet bore the name Torbjorn J. Maage, or why Oevsthus’ grandfather had it.
“I have taken for granted that it came into my family in an honorable way,” Oevsthus said. “But you never know. Maybe it was won in a poker game? My thought is that this family needed some money to make the journey to America, and they sold this wallet with other possessions.
“It is a very nice piece of work, but it had nothing to do with my family. I thought it was very important to find the right address for it.”
He searched genealogical records in his home area, the fjord country north of Bergen. There he found a thin trace of a Torbjorn Johannes Maage, a farmer who had hired out to work land near Oevsthus’ hometown of Norheimsund.
On May 25, 1882, the 38-year-old Maage left for America with his wife, his elderly parents and three children — Ingebjorg, 10, Johannes, 7, and Odd, 5. A fourth son, Lars, had died at age 1 the year before.
Might the death of the child have sparked the odyssey?
“It was poor times then,” Oevsthus said.
The Maage family settled in a small Iowa town named Thor, and Oevsthus — working with U.S. Census records, the Internet and an Iowa historian — learned that Ingebjorg had changed her name to Bell, married and moved to Oregon, but she apparently had no children. Johannes became John, married and — after serving in the Spanish-American War — moved to the Seattle area. His wife and a baby died in 1906.
Odd took the name Edward, and the Iowa historian thought he was Oevsthus’ best bet. Edward had two children and moved to southeastern Minnesota in the 1920s. His son, Theodore, died in 1995, and the historian found an obituary notice that listed two sons: Richard, in Montana, and Donald, in Fridley. She e-mailed her findings to Norway.
“I came home one day and there’s a letter from Norway,” said Donald Maage, 61, a retired Army officer, still seeming a little dazed. “I didn’t know anybody in Norway.”
In his letter, Oevsthus told about the wallet, the search and his desire to pass the heirloom on to a member of the family. “For free,” he added, not wanting Maage to think this was some international scam.
Oevsthus’ wife has relatives in Bloomington, and they were planning a visit. “I hope we can meet then,” he wrote.
“I sent an e-mail back that night saying we would very much like to meet him,” Maage said.
“The wallet is a real nice tie to the past. I vaguely remember my grandfather. I remember sitting on his knee at the farm near Rochester.
“I knew a little about my family, but Tor sure has solidified the story.”
Maage and his wife traveled to Norway in 1985 to visit relatives on her side. “We’ve learned now that we were within just a few miles of the farm that my great-grandfather left,” he said.
Now they’re planning another trip. His newfound calfskin wallet will hold his passport nicely, Maage said.
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