In 1868, Martin and Karl, the youngest bothers at 19 and 22, came to America and proceeded directly to Omaha. Omaha was the farthest point being offered by the railroads and represented the jumping-off point for both railroad workers and homesteaders. We don’t know what Karl did for the next year but we have a history of Martin’s activities. He worked on a ferryboat, then made his way to Medicine Bow on the Union Pacific Railroad where he worked for three months on the section. Later he worked on timber in Colorado where he received no pay. He then secured a job at a small saw mill and returned to Omaha in 1869.

That year Karl, Martin and a friend, Louis Johnson, walked west from Omaha and secured adjoining homesteads of 80 acres each in the Marietta Precinct near Mead, Nebraska. These three then returned to Omaha, bought a team of horses and a small shack and dragged it out from Omaha to their land and placed it on Martin’s homestead. There is still a house at or near that spot today. The house no longer belongs to anyone in our family. The land around it is still owned by Myrtle Thorson. It is known to the Nebraska Thorsons as "the homeplace."

Later that year Martin and Karl were joined by brothers John and Andrew, who obtained one adjacent (John) and one nearby homestead. A sister, whose name I have not discovered, came over also, and settled in Chicago after marrying someone named Eckwall. Only Swen and another brother whose name I don’t know remained in Sweden.

Picture of the homesteaded land. Andrew’s is at the top.

I have found a description of Omaha in 1877, a time when the Thorsons were still newly arrived in the United States. This was originally published in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper as part of a description of a trip throughout the West by train. I have excerpted:

"...the station, we found the platform crowded with the strangest and most motley people it has ever been our fortune to encounter. Men in alligator boots and loose overcoats made of blankets and wagon rugs, with wild, unkempt hair and beards and bright, resolute eyes, almost all well-looking, but strange as denizens of another world.

"the women looked tired and sad and were queerly dressed in gowns that must have been old on their grandmothers, and with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in place of hats; the children were bundled up in garments of nondescript purpose and size, but they were generally chubby, neat, and gay as they frolicked in and out among the boxes, baskets, bundles, bedding, and babies’ chairs piled waist high on the platform.

"We found that these people were emigrants...

"This unpretending though sufficiently commodious "Emigrant House" is provided by the Union Pacific Railroad Company to save strangers, and especially emigrants, who cannot afford the luxury of a first-rate hotel, from extortion and fraud.

"Women, children, aged grandfathers, border ruffians, dogs, gambling sharps, peripatetic vendors, soldiers, thieves, and pickpockets are jumbled together in a heterogeneous mass.

"Nebraska is in that central portion of the United States which has grown most rapidly in population and wealth, Through the entire length of the state, along the wide and fertile valley of the Platte, the Union Pacific Railroad extends ample facilities to the farmers. The eastern part of Nebraska is the most desirable for farmers. Here the railway company has millions of acres of splendid land in the Platte bottoms and on the contiguous uplands, while at a distance from the railroad there are large tracts still open for settlement under the Homestead and Preemption laws. The soil of the Platte bottom is chiefly dark, rich, sandy loam, quick and light and exceedingly productive....No intelligent farmer need fear drought. Plow deep enough and sufficient moisture can always be obtained.

"Many have done the first year with a sod house, which with all its furniture has not cost $50. But with less than $500 it would not be reasonable for a man to undertake a farm of his own...the poor young farmer who will select wisely 80 acres of good prairie will not long have to deny himself and family the solid comforts of life."

One should question the accuracy of Miriam Leslie’s projections. She was not an objective reporter. I quote from an article in Smithsonian.1 "The trip was a brilliant stroke. The railroads picked up the tab for their opulent palace car, with its oversized roaster oven and plush furnishings, in exchange for the publicity..." Nevertheless, this may be a fairly accurate description of Nebraska in 1877.