Some time ago my niece suggested that I write a short summary of our family so that her children, and their children to follow, might gain some insight into the familys’ life and times. The writing of it, for me, served as a reminder of how utterly staggering has been the change we have experienced in only a short time. I remember, when I was very young, my dad pointing out to me the passing of the last soldier that fought in the American Civil War. Had I the inspiration at my then age of 8 years, I could have talked to that veteran, who in fact lived only 150 miles away, and heard, first hand, his recollections of the sites and smells of The American Civil War! My dad grew up in a world where there were only horses to convey one about and no electricity to push back the darkness. Now here we find ourselves today, surrounded by wondrous technology, having traversed all of that breathtaking distance in one brief generation of our family. So for those that follow, hang on to your seats!
My dad, Bayard Knight, was born in 1903 in Wisconsin, to Silas and Bessie Knight. As it came to pass he began to court Hazel Amanda Plomedahl, the daughter of a local farmer. This old Norwegian family of Plomedahls had a farm in Pleasant Valley, very close to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Those were the days before televisions or indoor plumbing so it was quite usual for the family to gather in the parlor room of the house, in the evening, and sign songs together. At the Plomedahl farm one such evening, as people took turns suggesting what to sing next, my dad asked of those assembled folks, “does anyone know “my gal Sal?”” My granddad Ole Plomedahl, not realizing that “My Gal Sal” was a popular new song, told my dad, “I thought you were interested in my daughter, maybe you better get the hell out of here!” After some explanation peace was restored and Hazel Plomedahl came to be my mother, as well as the mother to Barbara, Donald, and Maureen, my brother and sisters.
The Knight family has a somewhat interesting past, with some members of the family initially settling in Moose Factory, Canada as employees and physicians for the Hudsons Bay Company in only the second settlement established by the Company in North America. Other members of the family settled in the early colonies. This was confirmed through DNA research, a remarkable technology in that connections are provided that could perhaps not have been discovered in any other way. From this early time in Canada, the family expanded south into northern New York and the State of Massachusetts. Unfortunately this new life was not to last because at the time of the American Revolution, and shortly thereafter, much of the family being loyalists to the British Crown, along with perhaps 60,000 other loyalists, were forced to join the caravan of refuges driven from the United States. This forced migration resulted in the resettling of the family in a loyalist enclave in Southern Ontario, Canada, at Longs Point. This area of Ontario was reserved and surveyed by the British Crown for the settlement only by Loyalists that were forced to flee the United States during and after the revolutionary war. The history of the family in Canada has many interesting twists and turns and continued to shape the family as independent people with a pioneering spirit. Later, several members of the family, including my great great great grandfather, John Knight, served in the Canadian militias in the war of 1812, where-in he and others in the family were taken prisoner by the Americans while other family members lost their lives in defense of Canada.
Shortly before the civil war in the United States my great great grandfather, Silas Knight Sr., decided to resettle his family from the forests of Ontario to the native American “Sioux Indian” frontier of early Iowa. The story of this journey is detailed in the writings of Rebecca Knight, his daughter, in wonderful detail, available on the family website at www.SilasKnight.com. In the early days, after their resettlement, the family lived close to Burr Oak, Iowa, and in close proximity to the Ingalls family, made famous by the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, most notably “Little House On The Prairie”. In fact, her teacher that Laura Ingalls Wilder so admired, William Reed, or as she referred to him as “Mr. Reed”, was a member of our family, and a son of one of Silas Knight Srs’ daughters. William Reed received his first teaching contract at the age of 16 years old to teach at the Burr Oak School.
My grandfathers, Silas Albert Knight and Ole Plomedahl, were both hard working farmers, ending up in close proximity to one another around Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin. Ole Plomedahl, born in Norway, was able to farm with a good outcome in this new land of Wisconsin. He had a large family, and in subsequent years several of his sons farmed most of their lives along the same road, on adjoining farms, with Les Plomedahl, the youngest, occupying the original family farm at the north end of the road.
These were dairy farms with some having black and white cows, “Holsteins”, and some having brown and white cows, “Guernseys”, and there was no shortage of arguments at all of the family gatherings, of which there were many, as to the vast superiority of one color over the other in the minds of each brother regarding his herd! These were nice people, gentle, and very hard working, all 100% Norwegian with solid Viking heritage to that day. My only recollection of any unseemly behavior was that one brother had a very large red collie cow dog, and on family occasions when the beer was flowing freely, the brothers enjoyed giving the dog too much beer so they could watch it chase the chickens! Good people. A nice family to be from.
My grandfather Silas Albert Knight, that lived close by to the north, had a less successful outcome in the farm business. The Knight family were timber people and lumber jacks in their history, less adept at farming. Silas Albert Knight, in the end, lost his farm to the bank and was forever plagued by that loss. Our family was unaccustomed to failure and this failure bit hard.
Silas Albert Knights sons generally moved away from farming with Herbert owning a trucking company and my father, along with his brother Glenn, becoming machinists. Walter was the only brother to remain in farming with a farm in Decorah, Iowa.
My dad, Bayard Chester Knight, worked his younger years as a lumberjack and truck driver. As the depression intensified he found factory work and that was the start of his career as a machinist. He worked the remainder of his life perfecting that skill, ending his career working for Dow Chemical at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility, machining uranium and plutonium components for nuclear weapons. He made the actual nuclear fission cores and triggers, at various times being contaminated with radiation in truly harrowing events. To this end he held one of the highest security clearances in the United States government, and was considered one of the most highly skilled machinists in his profession anywhere in the world. My dad was both well read and rich in wisdom. He read endlessly, every evening, and read on any topic that he encountered. He simply wanted to know everything. If he needed anything he wanted to build it himself. In addition to those things, he was kind. He would respond to confrontation with patience and calm. Later, after his wife, my mother Hazel, passed away he married a woman that was 100% Mohican, and he really enjoyed this in that he knew, and had told me, that we had some portion of Cree heritage in our family, and it had been difficult for him to explore that for the majority of his life. Through the course of his life native Americans were viewed with disdain so that he had to always conceal that aspect of the family history. One of the most lucky aspects in my life has been that I was born late in my parents child rearing days, and as a result, my dad and I would go fishing or hunting together, what seemed to be, almost every available moment. On those journeys he really enjoyed talking about his family history and what his thoughts were about “just about everything”. My job was to listen. I was truly blessed, it was irreplaceable and liberating, although it perhaps liberated me a little more than the rest of my family appreciated. Even now I use the information I learned from him seemingly every day. I will always just strive to be, in part, what he was.
My mother was strident and hard working, with high expectations for her children. She was very devoted to her many sisters and brothers and enjoyed the large family gatherings of the Plomedahl family immensely. As was the case in those times, she baked weekly to keep the family stocked in bread, pies, and all manner of delicious fare, and her fare was made with skill and precision, and was, indeed, delicious. Her expertise with a “ringer washing machine” was remarkable, (I only saw her get her hand stuck in the roller mechanism once in my childhood) and her canning and preserving skills were on display much of the year to make sure we had a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, jams, and jellys to help us pass through the bitter winters we experienced there in northern Wisconsin. And, I remember how very pleased she was that in the very early 1950s we at last were able to amend a small addition to our equally small house, and in that addition was housed an indoor toilet! I can sincerely say that the necessity to utilize an “outhouse”, during the winter, in northern Wisconsin, at often -20-40 below zero, does leave one with memories that are both inspiring and indelible in equal measure. I only had to endure this until I was about 4-5 years old. I would not venture to guess what effect this had on my siblings, and in particular to my sisters. I remember vividly the enthusiasm enjoyed by my dad and I when we, in the aftermath of this new addition, had the pleasure of tipping over the outhouse, burning it, and filling in the “glory hole”. So, I have fond memories of my mother, even though through my childhood she was in very poor health and, for the most part, did not feel well at all. She suffered from, what at that time was called, malignant hypertension, or uncontrollable blood pressure. Her medication for this condition was strong with many unwelcomed side effects, and she died in almost the same year of age as her mother, from the same malady that her mother had shared.
My immediate family has its own unusual components, and, from my point of view, the most significant of which is that I came along, as I have mentioned, much later in my parents life, perhaps a little unexpected. As a result I didn’t know my brother and sisters very well at all in that they were, for the most part, grown, married, and living hundreds or thousands of miles away from the family home. There was simply a lack of context and that is always an impediment to understanding. So I caution the reader to take somewhat less regard relative to my comments regarding my siblings because I simply did not know them well. Perhaps the modest exception would be with regard to my sister Barbara. I did get to know her, somewhat well in fact, at the end of her life, although not as well as I would have preferred. Barbara was much like her father, independent, smart, imaginative, undaunted, opinionated, self confident, and unshakable. If John Wayne were to reincarnate as a woman, it would be as my sister Barbara. I admire her immensely, and she seemed to very much enjoy my company. I spoke with her by phone shortly before she died and she related to me in regard to her dire circumstance, her knowing her demise was only a few short hours away, “this is very inconvenient, I am not done yet. I have many things yet to do and I find this very inconvenient.” She would not accept an inadequate result. I suppose this came from her life experience. First as a mother, then as a very gifted surgical nurse participating in some of the first open heart surgeries ever performed, the founder of a computer company, and then as a nurse practitioner. To her credit, and in some part to her detriment, she was the consummate professional, dedicated to, and with compete devotion to her endeavors.
My brother, Donald Orland Knight, was much older than I, and I did not know him well at all. He was, at various times, a veteran of the Naval Submarine Service, an electronics technician during the Korean War, an electrical engineer for General Electric Corporation in Schenectady, NY, a member of management in the Honeywell Computer Division, General Manager of the Motorola Microprocessor Systems Division near Phoenix, Arizona, and a university professor. He was a talented barbershop quartet singer, banjo player, and with his wife, Mary Ann, raised a wonderful family in Arizona. He passed away from a difficult medical condition, showing great presence of mind and bravery as the disease took its course.
My second sister still lives and I will leave it in her capable hands to relate any and all things pertinent to her life and times.
So, our family has traveled on a long and interesting journey, beginning in Scotland and Norway, and ending in the wheat fields of Alberta, the high tech plants of silicon valley, and the vast fishing grounds of the north Pacific. Let us hope we are just getting started.
All kind regards
David Bayard Knight
3/16/2019
