Lillian Peterson Granquist

I come next to my aunt Lillian. Again I don’t know of her early life. Her college training qualified her as a teacher in the elementary grades. It was in this capacity that she spent some time in China as the teacher for the children of Augustana Synod missionaries. I think she returned to the U.S. because of unsettled conditions in China and she became a teacher in the nearby town of Dayton.

She used to come back to Gowrie on weekends and I remember riding along with my father after he had left work at the bank to give her a ride back. This may have lasted a year or two when she spent a year teaching sixth grade in Gowrie. My friend Howard Nelson was in that grade the year she taught. Following that she was married to Verner Granquist. I cannot remember seeing the wedding ceremony but I can recall the wedding supper afterward. The children were relegated to eating on the front porch and we could see the adults seated around the dining room table, through the wide open parlor window.

The first pastorate that uncle Verner had was a home mission congregation in southern Florida. The family used to make a trip to Iowa every two years. Later he was in charge of a congregation in Isanti, Minnesota, with the added responsibility of a small rural church. By then their three children had been born — Phoebe, the eldest and only daughter, David, and Luther, the youngest.



Lillian, Verner, and Phoebe

Phoebe, a delightful, gracious person married Arne Peterson who was in the Lutheran ministry. After raising her family Phoebe made a late career as a public school teacher.

David became a Lutheran minister and Jean and I visited his family several times. This was when he was the pastor at the historic initial first church of the Augustana synod. The church was in a semi-rural area and was having a difficult time of it with declining membership.

Luther became a lawyer and spent his career working to help welfare individuals with their legal problems. There was some sort of disagreement between him and his parents over the split between him and his wife (I believe there was some possibility of divorce) and the split may have extended to Luther’s attitude to the Christian faith. The only time I saw Luther as an adult was at the time of my mother’s funeral. He seemed to find the contact with the relatives congenial and his wife was with him so apparently any rift had been resolved.

I have mentioned that I visited my uncle Lawrence once when he was in Minneapolis. On that trip I continued on the spend a few days in Isanti with the Granquist family. Luther as I recall was quite young. Uncle Carl also came up for a visit at the same time and I remember riding on the M and St. L passenger car with him back to Gowrie. Aunt Lillian had made a lunch for us and it included a roast beef sandwich. I was not used to sandwiches of that type and was hesitant about trying them. Uncle Carl urged me to eat them and I found them quite tasty.

Aunt Lillian developed some sort of cancerous condition, maybe a deficiency of the red blood cells and died a relatively early death. She was perhaps 50years old at the time. She was born in the year 1900 and by 1948 I was in California so I have no recollection of the funeral. She is I think buried in the Gowrie cemetery.

Uncle Verner was thus left as a pastor without a wife. A wife is a needed asset for a pastor and he presently married for the second time. I believe she was some sort of worker in the Lutheran organization. I think he died before his second wife did.

Uncle Verner was a man with an engaging personality and as children he was a favorite with us. However he was a minister of rather conventional beliefs and I would say that when I grew to be an adult I would not have found him as interesting as I had as a child. The two time I heard him deliver a sermon (during my visit to Isanti) left no imprint of my mind and I suspect that the sermons were pedestrian in nature and content.

I have one recollection of uncle Verner which I shall mention. On one of the trips to Iowa while he was a home mission pastor in Florida he was delegated to give accounts of the work there to a number of congregations along the way. One of these was at the town of Boxholm not far from Gowrie. The talks were accomplished with a slide presentation and he asked me to go along with him and run the projector. What was said I have no recollection but I was there that night. We got home at about 11 o’clock which was a pretty late hour for me at the time.