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In the Spring of 1888, Ole Brunes and his friend Nels Ludwig Eliasen left Duluth in a 26-foot sailboat the two carpenters had built over the winter. They headed up the shore, landing at Chicago Bay where they planned to pursue a commercial fishing business. They became the first white settlers of a village called Hoveland, named by Brunes’s wife. Anne Sorine Skreteberg Brunes named the settlement after the Norwegian estate of her grandfather.
Brunes was born in Modum, Norway on February 23, 1854. As a young man, he learned architecture and cabinetry, the trade he chose to pursue. He was married to Anne in 1876 and the couple lived in Modum until 1883 when they emigrated to the US.
They lived in Minneapolis for four years before moving to Duluth, their home for two years until the family was reunited at Chicago Bay.
Brunes met Eliasen in Duluth and they became friends. Eliasen convinced him to take up the fishing trade and so they came to Hovland.
According to August Brunes, one of Ole’s sons, after landing at Chicago Bay the two men created a small clearing where they built a one-room log house that had two small windows and a door and floor of hand-hewn boards. The roof of the house was logs overlaid with bark. August writes that the windows were all that the pair purchased, and he estimates the structure cost the settlers less than $10.
At that time, the A. Booth & Co. Fisheries had a tramp steamer called “Dixon” that made regular trips up the shore to bring supplies to the settlers and buy the fish they’d caught. After fishing for two months, the two friends decided to bring their families and make Chicago Bay their home. They sailed on the Dixon back to Duluth, each then filing on quarter sections of land on either side of the Flute Reed River. According to August Brunes, the Eliasen family went back to Chicago Bay first, with Brunes’ family coming later. August wrote that both families lived together in the one room cabin for several weeks while Eliasen built a two-room log home on his homestead.
The Brunes family stayed in the one-room house until Ole built his own two room cabin. He also built a small hotel at the Chicago Bay landing to serve as the jumping off point for additional settlers and sportsmen visiting the area. Remnants of that building still sit near the mouth of the Flute Reed River, which was known in the late 1800s as Brunes Creek.
With additional settlers, Hovland needed a post office. Ole Brunes became the first postmaster in Hovland, and served until the family left the area in 1903.
At the age of ten, August Brunes was thrust into the position of being his father’s fishing partner. Hjalmar, Eliasen’s 11-year-old son was taken on as his father’s fishing partner. August, at ten, was the youngest fisherman on the North Shore, earning the attention of the Duluth Evening Herald that did a feature story on him and his family.
After 14 years in Hovland, the Brunes family moved to Pequot Lakes in north-central Minnesota, settling on Gull Lake. Many of his descendants still live in that area.
Ole Brunes died in January of 1927. He was just shy of his 73rd birthday.
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