Betty Belanger Remembers Elk River

Nationally, there have been recent discussions about immigration and citizenship.  On a local level, here at the Sherburne History Center, in recent weeks, we have been called upon several times to discuss immigration and ethnicity in the county.  With so much information about immigrants in my brain, I wanted to visit one of the truly unique and valuable oral histories we have collected about immigrants and Elk River. 

Betty Belanger lived her entire life in Elk River.  She was born to Hungarian immigrants north of Elk River.  In the household, Hungarian was the language of choice until Betty started school at age six.  Although a brief excerpt of her longer oral history, Betty provides interesting insight into growing up in Elk River:

I was born on the farm with a midwife who was a Hungarian immigrant.  She delivered a number of babies for the Hungarian moms in the neighborhood.  Her name was Theresa Toth.

 

I grew up on the farm and started school at age six.  I fought with my parents to not make me go to the little country school.  I wanted to go to the big city school and ride the bus.  So I did go to school in town, in Elk River at the wood frame schoolhouse.  The Handke building was already built by the time I started school.  The senior high was over there in the new brick building and we were still in the wood frame building.  We rode the school bus for a long time because there were only a few buses, so we had a good one hour ride (each day).  

View of Jackson Street in downtown Elk River.  Some
of the businesses visible include: Kemper Drug,  the Bank
 of Elk River, the Variety Store, and Dare's. 

Downtown Elk River was awesome back then.  We knew all the businessmen and all the businessmen knew all the citizens around here.  It was really neat.  The best part of downtown Elk River was the park. With this wonderful gazebo, we had band concerts every Thursday night.  So everybody went into town for the free band concerts, and farmers did their shopping and listened to the music.  It was an awesome gathering of a community.  

My mother never went to town.  She never learned English well enough to be able to communicate with the store keepers.  But my dad and brother would go into town with the milk check and if I hollered loud enough they’d take me along and maybe I’d get an ice cream cone. 

Once a month the milk check would come in the mail from the Princeton Milk Producers Association then the next day he would go to the bank, he would cash the check, make his mortgage payment, and buy groceries.  And they could go in the bar and have a beer and buy me an ice cream cone. 

My father did dairy farming, but he also dabbled.  We always had a lot of chickens.  We took the eggs into the grocery store to sell.  I can remember going in the back room where the grocer would “candle” the eggs to make sure they weren’t fertilized.  And then the ones that were okay he would accept and he would pay my dad for the eggs and then Dad would use that to buy groceries with. 

Betty Belanger’s memories are rich in detail.  In discussing the business district of Elk River, she remembered a multitude of stores and businesses.  She explained the telephone company had offices and the switchboards upstairs above the Bank of Elk River.  She remembered the Fairway Grocery, the Federated Store, Dare’s Furniture and Funeral Home, Andy’s Electric, The Golden Pheasant, the bowling alley and the movie theater.  Like so many of the oral histories collected at the Sherburne History Center, Betty’s memories are truly rich and valuable. This brief excerpt provides a sense of growing up in Elk River during the late 1940s.

Betty Belanger: A Great Historian

Betty Belanger’s was a historian.  She retired as a nurse from Cambridge Hospital.  Yet, her avocation involved documenting the lives and histories of Sherburne County and the Hungarian immigrant families around Elk River.  Her research culminated with From Dairy Farms to Gravel Pits: A History of Sherburne County’s Hungarian Community.  She documented the lives of the many Hungarian immigrants coming to Sherburne County. 

The introduction noted without her work “the stories and struggles” of these early settlers “would have faded into the past, leaving behind few traces.”  Although the statement may seem overly dramatic, it is accurate.  Without Betty Belanger, much about the Hungarian settlement in Elk River would have died.

 

Betty Belanger avoided branding the first arrival, or the latest, most vital of events.  Instead her history carefully cataloged the challenges facing early Hungarian immigrants.  She explored the role of the Church in the community.  She noted celebrations and families.   Then, beginning with the family of Rose Fazekas, Betty Belanger devoted individual chapters to many of the families settling in Elk River and Sherburne County. 

Betty Belanger was definitely a historian.  In honor of Women’s History month, I wanted to offer belated, and overdue, recognition of her work.  Betty Belanger was a gifted historian and an intrepid researcher.