Harold Swanson
Frank – Hanna Swanson Family – 1900 Loveland 
Anna and Carl Swanson – 1912 Wedding
Anna, Harold, Clarence (Swede) and Carl Swanson – 1917
Harold and Clarence Swanson and with cousins Leonard, Leroy and Russ Johnson
at Frank Swanson’s home in Greeley
Harold and Clarence playing with cousins Russ, Lenoard, and Leroy Johnson- 1922
1938 – Swanson Farm –
Built by Frank 1901, then inherited by Ben and finally bought by Harold Swanson
Harold and Frances Swanson – 3/7/1935
Swanson Farm in 1985
Aunt Shirley Gibson Wayman (before she was married) Harold Swanson with Nancy and Alan. Shirley liked to go to the mountains for a ride with the rest of the family
Harold and Frances Swanson – 50th Anniversary 1985
John Kropewnicki and his Grandpa Harold Swanson
Today is my Dad, Harold Swanson’s, death day. I want to remember him.
He led an interesting life. He was the first son of a Swedish family that had settled in Colorado. His mom, Anna Swanson emigrated here at age 16 from Sweden. His father, Carl Swanson’s father Frank O Swanson has also immigrated from Sweden to America as a young boy. It was interesting to check the Ellis Island web site and find their names on the manifests. It must have taken a lot of courage to leave their home land and venture to a new world to make a life.
Frank and his family settled in a farm between Greeley and Loveland before they bought almost a couple hundred acres a farm northeast of Greeley. Anna and Carl settled a mile from Frank to raise their family. It was a tight Swedish community that worked, socialized and went to church together. Harold spoke Swedish as a young child, but as soon as he entered school he was told by his parents that he would learn and use English. When I grew up we used very little Swedish; only for prayers before meals and a few words I heard from time to time from my Grandma Anna.
Harold went to College High in Greeley and was really good at basketball. He was a handsome man and was lucky to meet my Mom, Frances. Harold’s brother Swede was dating Ruth Johnson who had a locker next to my Mom at Greeley high school. Ruth invited Frances to a church get-together and there she met my dad. It must have been challenging for Frances to integrate into this tight Swedish community as she was Irish/English and had a much different background.
They married in 1935 and lived happily ever after with the normal bumps in the roads couples encounter from time to time. My mom looked gorgeous in her gown on her wedding day with a great cascade of flowers flowing from her arms. She had borrowed a veil from a friend and during the reception the gossamer fabric caught fire from one of the candles on the table. It was quickly extinguished, but certainly started off the marriage with passion.
My mom showed perseverance and was happy to follow the rules set by Frank, Carl, Anna and Harold. Harold and Frances started out in a small house in the yard where Anna and Carl lived and then moved to rent the farm we called Tipton’s, after the owner’s name.
When Harold first started farming he and Carl used horses. It must have been a hard job to harness up the horses, work the fields all day and then care for the horses at the end of the day before he could come to the house for supper. I don’t remember horses being used in the fields, but do remember the harnesses and other gear that hung in the old barns on the walls. Tractors were used as there were always a lot of machinery lined up in the yard and the sheds. In those days the farmers weren’t so specialized and Harold grew all kinds of crops such as corn, beans, potatoes, barley, alfalfa and sugar beets. Each crop required different machinery. Harold also managed a herd of Holstein dairy cows he milked twice a day at 4 am and 4 pm. The cows eagerly lined up at the milk barn door to be milked first by hand and later years with high tech milking machines.
I grew up at Tipton’s until I was about 11. There was a pit toilet in the yard, but we had an inside bathroom that must have been added before I was born. My mom took care of the house, raised chickens and fed the baby calves. There was always something going on. There was a big tree trunk about three feet tall by three feet wide in the yard by the chicken coop. This was used to cut off the chicken’s heads when it was time to butcher. There was a great vat of hot water that they used to pick off all the feathers. I’m sure my sister Nancy remembers more of that work than I do.
All farm crops and milk were sold to local co-ops or produce companies. The family lived on the eggs, meat from chickens and an occasional steer. Dad was always very generous and took care to tithe his pay and his crops. He would often drop off sacks of potatoes to his brother’s family, the preacher and other friends/relatives.
He had a great work shop stacked with cubby holes filled with all kinds of parts to fix tractors and machinery. He was a Case man and always bought that brand of tractor. In the winter months he would go to town and stop by the Case implement shop. I would tag along and knew he enjoyed visiting with other farmers and the shop’s owner, Tom Faye.
In about 1957 when I was 11 we moved around the corner to the farm that Frank had owned and subsequently parceled out and passed on to his children. Dad and Mom bought 80 acres from our Uncle Ben Swanson. It had a great barn and a big old two story house. Dad wanted to make it great for Mom, so this was one of the few times I saw him take an interest in the inside of a house. His domain was the farm, yard, machinery and cows. This time he hired out a remodel to put up new wall paper in all the bedrooms, open up the parlor and the dinning room into one great room and buy some new living room furniture from Rucker’s. There was always a piano in the house and this time it was in by the front door. He loved music and my sister became an accomplished pianist. He would often ask her to play when we had guests. She had already married her husband Bob by the time we moved to this home.
If you looked back on crop prices, this must have been a good year. We had things, but lived very modest conservative life. This was about the same year we got a new car. Dad drove the same car for over ten years until there was nothing left. He bought a brand new 1955 royal blue Chrysler. He was a great planner and strategically thought through all purchases. During this car buy Desoto had a tri-color car he was evaluating at the same time. You could choose white, black and turquoise and order the color in a variety of placements on the car. He fretted so much over this color scheme deal that finally he picked this pretty blue Chrysler. Best he made the selection he did as the Desoto color scheme cars got dated real quickly. He could have waited until 1958 and bought an Edsel as the Goldsmith’s (who lived up the road from us) did, which also would have gone out of favor quickly.
He liked to tinker with things. I could tell if he was content and happy as he would whistle a little tune as he worked. His hobby was movie pictures and he was known as the guy who always took pictures during family parties, church picnics and trips to the mountains. He would splice the reels together and show then when family visited. He would run them forward and got a kick out of reversing the projector or speeding up the action. It was always a great laugh.
We had most everything we needed and some of what we wanted when we grew up. He made a nice life for us filled with family values, strong religious connection and a passion to give to others. He was a 4-H leader for over 25 years and coached the kids about crops, showing animals and their baseball team. He gave me my heart’s desire at ten in a black horse named Queenie and all the outdoor tom boy time a girl could ask for. He made sure we all went to college and took an active interest in each of his kid’s families as we moved away to start our own lives.
It’s nice to think about him today.