Sigurd's Childhood and Youth

Sigurd (shown here as a baby) was born in Chicago on April 4, 1899. His parents were Swedish immigrants and devout Swedish Baptists. His father, L.J. Olson, was pastor of the Humbolt Park Swedish Baptist Church. L.J. and Sigurd's mother, Ida May, actually had intended to give the name Sigurd to their first child, who was born in 1895. At that time, however, they lived in a poor rural parsonage in North Dakota, and the aid they received from an Ohio Church came with a catch: they had to name the baby Kenneth. So it was their second son who got to enjoy the name that family legend said was once borne by an ancestor who hunted wild boars for the King of Sweden.

Sigurd lived in Chicago until 1906, about a year-and-a-half before this picture was taken. (Sigurd is on the left, Kenneth on the right, and Leonard, the last of the family, is in the middle.) In 1906 L.J. Olson was transferred to the Swedish Baptist Church in Sister Bay, Wis., on the Door County Peninsula, and they lived there for the next three years.

The two photos below, taken in 1992, show the house Sigurd lived in at Sister Bay, and the school he attended a mile down the road toward Appleport.