Rollie Westerberg Family Ruth 1902-1993 and Rollie 1900-1978
(Written by Ruth for the 1989 Tweeten Book)
Ruth Elvina Tweeten Westerberg was born May 9, 1902, on a farm in Mt. Valley Township. My parents moved to Forest City and retired in 1916. Mother’s health was poor, she had leakage of the heart and passed away July 2, 1918. I was the eleventh child of thirteen children. I was sixteen when mother passed away, there were still five brothers and sisters at home. I did not finish school as I was needed at home to care for family and home. We had a cow for milk which we kept in a pasture across the street. I had the opportunity to sing in the Waldorf College Choir as I was a member of the church choir and our director was the college choir director, Dr. Oscar Lyders. They needed more singers and we were asked to join, Oliver, Bill, Abb, myself, and Esther.
I met Rollie through Oliver, he went with Rollie’s sister Nettie. The first date we had, we went on a picnic at Clear Lake, that was June 1920, my sister Esther, and his brother and sister, Harry and Violet, were with too. We were married June 22, 1922, at Swen Corners Hotel in Minneapolis and how that happened; we had set a date and the Minister, Rev. Quello, left for Minneapolis to attend a convention. It was a beautiful hotel at the time and the rooms were beautiful. We lived with Rollie’s parents for five months, they decided to build a new house and it was not finished. This is the house where Donald and Edell live. They built the barn in 1921. Rollie worked that place so he had stock there, everything was built new afterwards as we could afford it. Rollie’s Dad owned the place. We bought the farm in 1935. He built the silo in 1923, because it was so dry the corn was not any good for anything else. The second silo was built in 1935, the double corn crib in 1945, the second barn in 1947, the garage and other corn cribs later and machine shed. Donald built the cattle shed when he moved there and bought it in 1970.
Rollie had lost one brother, Adolph, during World War I in France from the flu, December 1918. Then he had a brother, Harry, who passed away from a heart attack on the way to the harvest field. He was 24 years old.
Violet lived with her brother on the home Rollie rented more place so she went to live with her parents. land and he and Harry were farming together so we had to have a hired man. We belong to Immanuel Lutheran Church, our school, Ellington #233, was just a half-mile from home. Ice skating, sledding, roller skating, and horseback riding were the entertainment in our family. Rollie loved horses so field work was done by them in the earlier years of our farming. The greatest changes in our lives were going from horse and buggy days to airplane and jets. In 1970, Rollie and I purchased a home in Forest City where we retired and celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary with all of our family at Immanuel Lutheran Church. We were to California and Arizona eight times to visit our daughters Muriel and Marjorie. My sister, Bee, lives in California so we visited her and family too. Then we were to North Dakota several times to visit brother John and sister Theo and families. Rollie passed away at the Forest City Municipal Hospital on April 7, 1978, after having a stroke the year before. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery, Forest City. We are the parents of six children.