Elise Wærenskjold was a Norwegian-American writer, temperance leader and early pioneer in Texas.
Background
Elise Amalie Tvede Wærenskjold was born in Dypvåg parish, in Kristiansand in the county of Vest-Agder, Norway. She was the daughter of Lutheran minister Nicolai Seiersløv and Johanne Elisabeth Tvede, both of whose families were Danish-born patriots of the newly formed independent country of Norway.
Career
Educated by private tutors, she became a teacher and later opening a handicraft school for girls. She became involved in the national temperance movement and became editor of a Norwegian temperance magazine. The marriage, which began without the customary reading of banns, ended in an amicable separation in 1842.
When Christian and Johan Reinert Reiersen immigrated to Texas, she assumed the editorship of their popular magazine Norge og Amerika, a position which she held from 1846 until she herself immigrated to Texas in 1847.
In October 1847, she first joined a Norwegian immigrant colony in Brownsboro, Texas. The Waerenskjold family relocated to Four Mile Prairie in Kaufman County and began raising cattle.
Charles H. Russell, Doctor of Philosophy, Undaunted: A Norwegian Woman in Frontier Texas (Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University Press 2005) Clausen C. A., educated, The Lady with the Pen: Elise Waerenskjold in Texas (Norwegian-American Historical Association, Northfield, Minnesota 1961) Charles H. Russell, Doctor of Philosophy, "Light on the Prairie" (Shining Brightly Books 2010).