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Origins & Immigration
The Hove & Stavlo Families
Skogn, Nord-Trøndelag → Hennepin County, Minnesota
In the 1860s, two young people from the coastal farming region of Skogn, in Norway's Nord-Trøndelag county, made a decision that would change the course of their family forever. Nels O Hove and Mina G. Stavlo left behind the only world they had ever known—the fjords and forests of central Norway, the farms where their families had lived for generations—and joined one of the largest mass migrations in European history. They were part of 800,000 Norwegians who would leave their homeland between 1830 and 1920, fleeing economic hardship for the promise of American land and opportunity.
Their destination was Minnesota Territory, where rich farmland stretched for miles and Norwegian communities were already taking root. By 1880, Hennepin County—their new home—would become the largest concentration of Norwegian immigrants in America, with over 11,000 Norwegian-born residents. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul would earn the nickname "the unofficial capital of Norwegian America."
This is the story of how Brad McMichael's maternal grandparents left everything behind to build new lives in the American Midwest, and how their Norwegian heritage traveled across four states and four generations—from Skogn to Minnesota to Seattle to California.
Nels O Hove was born in August 1834 in the parish of Skogn, a farming and fishing community along the Trondheimfjord in central Norway, about 260 miles north of Oslo. His father, John Pedersen Haave, had been born in 1800 on a farm called Alstadhaug. His mother, Ingeborg Anna Nilsdtr., came from Lynum nordre, another farm in the same small region.
Mina G. Stavlo was born nine years later, in January 1843, in the same parish. Her father, Jonas Pedersen Stavlo, had been born around 1776—a man who would have remembered the Napoleonic Wars and Norway's union with Sweden. Her mother, Guru Anna Pedersdatter, actually came from a Hove family herself, suggesting that the Hoves and Stavlos had been intermarrying in this region for generations.
Skogn was a world of mountains, forests, and fjords. The land was beautiful but unforgiving. Farming was difficult in the rocky, hilly terrain. Most families worked small plots passed down through generations, supplemented by fishing in the Trondheimfjord. The climate was harsh—long, dark winters and short growing seasons. Norwegian law followed primogeniture, meaning only the eldest son inherited the family farm. Younger siblings had to find their own way, often through tenant farming, fishing, or emigration.
By the time Nels and Mina were coming of age in the 1850s and 1860s, Norway was in crisis. The population had doubled between 1815 and 1865, but the amount of arable land had not. Small farms were being subdivided into even smaller plots, making it harder to support a family. Crop failures and economic downturns led to widespread hardship. For young people with no land to inherit, the future looked bleak.
Then came the letters. Letters from earlier emigrants who had made it to America, describing land so rich you could grow crops in soil three feet deep, farms so large they dwarfed anything in Norway, opportunities for anyone willing to work. The letters painted a picture of a place where a young Norwegian farmer could own land, raise a family, and build something of his own.
"Norway lost a higher proportion of its people to the United States than any country other than Ireland. Nearly one million Norwegians emigrated between 1820 and 1920—and in the 1880s alone, one out of every nine Norwegians left their homeland."
— Library of Congress, "The Norwegians"
Sometime in the 1860s—we don't yet know the exact year or the name of the ship—Nels Hove and Mina Stavlo made the journey from Norway to America. Nels would have been in his late twenties or early thirties; Mina in her late teens or twenties. They may have traveled together as a married couple, or they may have married after arrival. They may have traveled with relatives or neighbors from Skogn, as many emigrants did, forming small groups for safety and companionship on the long voyage.
The journey from Norway to America in the 1860s was an ordeal. Most Norwegian emigrants sailed from Christiania (now Oslo), Bergen, or Trondheim to British ports like Liverpool or Glasgow, then boarded larger vessels for the Atlantic crossing. The voyage could take six to eight weeks in cramped, unsanitary steerage conditions.
Emigrants packed whatever they could carry: clothing, bedding, tools, perhaps a family Bible or treasured keepsake. They left behind parents, siblings, and friends they would likely never see again. There were no return visits in those days—emigration was permanent, a one-way journey into an uncertain future.
After landing in New York or Quebec, Norwegian immigrants typically traveled by train and riverboat westward to the great Scandinavian settlements in the Upper Midwest. Minnesota Territory had become a state in 1858, just a few years before Nels and Mina's arrival, and it was actively recruiting settlers with promises of cheap land and new opportunities.
The second wave of Norwegian immigration was in full swing in the 1860s. Tens of thousands of Norwegians were arriving, driven by the same forces that pushed Nels and Mina to leave: overpopulation, land scarcity, and economic crisis. Many were following the trails blazed by earlier emigrants from their home regions, part of what historians call "chain migration"—networks of family and neighbors helping newcomers settle in specific areas.
Nels and Mina settled in Hennepin County, Minnesota, which included the rapidly growing city of Minneapolis and surrounding farmland. By 1880, Hennepin County had become the single largest concentration of Norwegian immigrants in America, with 11,137 Norwegian-born residents. Only Goodhue County in southern Minnesota came close.
For Nels and Mina, life in Minnesota must have been simultaneously familiar and strange. The cold winters and pine forests reminded them of home, but the vast prairies and enormous farms were unlike anything in Norway. They had to learn new farming techniques, new crops, and a new language while preserving the Norwegian culture they brought with them.
The Norwegian community in Hennepin County helped smooth the transition. Norwegian-language newspapers, churches, and mutual aid societies provided support. Neighbors from Skogn or neighboring parishes may have settled nearby. The immigrants were eager, as one historian put it, to "recreate the villages they had left behind almost four thousand miles away."
On May 29, 1885, in Hennepin County, Minnesota, Nels and Mina welcomed their daughter Dora Josephine Wilhelmina Hove—the first generation born on American soil. Dora would grow up speaking Norwegian at home and English at school, straddling two worlds: the Norwegian culture of her parents and the American identity of her birth.
Nels O Hove died on September 22, 1902, at the age of 68. He had spent perhaps 30-40 years in America, long enough to see his daughter grow to adulthood and to know that his family had successfully made the transition to the New World.
Mina G. Stavlo Hove lived much longer. She remained in the Minneapolis area and died on March 22, 1925, at the remarkable age of 82. She had been born in Norway in 1843, when it was still ruled by Sweden, and she died in urban Minneapolis in 1925, in the age of automobiles and radio. She witnessed the complete transformation of Norwegian immigrant life—from isolated farms to thriving cities, from Norwegian-speaking enclaves to integrated American communities. She lived long enough to see her grandson Brad born in Seattle in 1915. She had traveled, in one lifetime, from rural Skogn to the heart of Norwegian America.
Dora Josephine Wilhelmina Hove grew up in the Norwegian-American community of Hennepin County. She was fully American, but her Norwegian heritage was strong—Norwegian was likely spoken at home, Norwegian foods were prepared for holidays, and the Lutheran church conducted services in Norwegian. She represented the bridge generation: American by birth and citizenship, but raised in a thoroughly Norwegian cultural environment.
Sometime in the early 1900s, Dora made her own westward journey. She moved to Seattle, Washington, where she married into the McMichael family. On January 20, 1915, in Seattle, King County, she gave birth to Lawrence Bradley McMichael—known as Brad.
Brad McMichael inherited 50% Norwegian heritage through his mother Dora. He was the second-generation American, two steps removed from the immigrant experience. The family had completed a remarkable geographic journey: from coastal Norway to the farmlands of Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest and finally to California—four states, four generations, stretching from 1834 to 2007, a span of 173 years.
Dora Hove McMichael died on April 25, 1950, in San Francisco, California. Like her mother Mina, she lived long enough to see immense change—born into a Norwegian-speaking immigrant community in Minnesota, she died in cosmopolitan San Francisco, having witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and the dawn of the atomic age.
The story of the Hove and Stavlo families is, in many ways, the quintessential Norwegian-American story. Economic hardship driving emigration. The Atlantic crossing. Settlement in the rich farmlands of the Upper Midwest. The building of Norwegian America in places like Hennepin County. The gradual assimilation and westward movement of successive generations.
But it's also a deeply specific story. We know the exact farms where Brad's great-great-grandparents were born: Alstadhaug, Lynum nordre, Skogn. We know that all four of these ancestors came from the same small region in Nord-Trøndelag, that the families likely knew each other, perhaps intermarried for generations. We know they settled in Hennepin County at the precise moment when it was becoming the largest Norwegian settlement in America. We know that Mina lived 82 years and witnessed her family's complete integration into American life.
There are still mysteries in this story. We don't yet know the exact year Nels and Mina emigrated, or the name of the ship that carried them across the Atlantic. We don't know exactly where in Hennepin County they settled, or what Nels did for a living. We don't know when or where Nels and Mina married—in Skogn before they left, or in Minnesota after arrival?
We don't fully know why Dora moved to Seattle, or the full story of her married life there. These are questions for future research, threads waiting to be followed in church records, census documents, and ship manifests. But even without every detail, the broad outlines are clear and compelling.
Through Brad McMichael, Norwegian heritage entered the McMichael family line. His mother Dora brought the memory of Skogn, of the long Atlantic crossing, of the pioneer days in Minnesota. That heritage—the resilience, the willingness to leave everything behind for a better future, the determination to build something new—became part of the family story.
From the farms of Skogn to the unofficial capital of Norwegian America to the Pacific coast, this is how Norwegian blood came into this American family—not through conquest or chance, but through the choices of two young people in the 1860s who believed in a future across the ocean.
Lawrence Bradley "Brad" McMichael (1915-2007) was Noel McMichael's paternal grandfather. Through Brad's mother Dora, Noel carries Norwegian heritage from the Hove and Stavlo families of Skogn, Nord-Trøndelag.
View Brad McMichael's Family TreeAll genealogical information in this narrative is drawn from the family genealogical database, compiled from Ancestry.com records. Key individuals documented:
Note on Documentation: This origin story represents the current state of research as of December 2025. Ship manifests, exact immigration dates, marriage records, and specific settlement locations in Hennepin County are subjects for future research. The Norwegian church records for Skogn parish (1747-1929) are digitized and available through FamilySearch, offering potential for deeper genealogical work.