Alfred Andresen: Immigrant Entrepreneur
Laurann Gilbertson, Vesterheim Chief Curator
After arriving in the Upper Midwest from Norway in 1892, Alfred Andresen started several businesses. With each venture, he took advantage of new ideas, markets, marketing strategies, and technology. His main businesses were importing, flax straw, and motion pictures.
Alfred Andresen was born in Oslo in 1874, the oldest child of Peter (a master shoemaker) and Hanna Lund Andresen. Alfred left Norway in March of 1892 and arrived in New York in April. He was 17 years old and listed his occupation as “clerk.” Soon he was working as a clerk in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at a cabinetmaking firm.
In 1894, he started Alfred Andresen & Co. in Minneapolis. The firm imported familiar products, such as cooking equipment, saws, and dairying supplies to the many Midwesterners who had come from Scandinavia. They also had articles for the home and farm specially manufactured. All of this was sold directly by mail order and through small, independent merchants throughout the Upper Midwest.1
Andresen promoted four main lines of goods. From Sweden, there were quality steel blades, such as straight razors, hunting knives, saws, and scythes. Articles for Home Industry were tools for spinning and weaving. Three styles of spinning wheels were manufactured in Minneapolis based on ethnic styles, and one wheel was imported from Norway. Articles for Home Baking included dairy supplies (rennet, butter, and cheese color from Denmark), sugar clippers, rolling pins, and a line of cast iron cookware. The cookware was manufactured in the U.S. from casts of tools, mostly from Norway. Andresen patented his designs for a heart waffle iron, rosette iron, patty iron (deep rosette), and krumkake iron.
Andresen’s fourth line consisted of his exclusive imported products: Tobias U. Borthen’s cod liver oil from Norway; Whale Amber, a leather dressing from Norway; Smokine, a European extract of smoke for preserving meat; Heymann Bloch’s Health Salt from Denmark; and Phoenixbrand powdered dyes from Germany.
Andresen marketed his imported products to immigrants and their children, “to satisfy the great demand” for familiar items from Scandinavia and Germany. His mail-
order catalog was printed in several different languages. Instructions on product packaging also appeared in multiple languages. In his catalog, he recognized preferences between countries, such as styles of spinning wheels that had been commonly used in Germany, France, England, or Iceland. He even recognized regional preferences, such as a style of rolling pin used on the west coast of Norway.2
He advertised extensively in foreign-language American newspapers and magazines. In addition to these print ads, Andresen offered his products as premiums, incentives, and prizes for subscriptions. For example, if you brought in four new subscriptions to Qvinnan och Hemmet, a Swedishlanguage women’s magazine, you could receive a spritz cookie press or grooved rolling pin.3
He also advertised to a broader audience in Good Housekeeping and Delineator magazines for women, showing how well Scandinavian cookware could be used to prepare dishes for an American-style table, such as deep fried pastries (rosettes) topped with parsley and a poached egg or asparagus in cream sauce.
Andresen had started small in 1894, with wool carders (used for preparing fibers for spinning) as his only product, and these he imported from Norway. He incorporated Alfred Andresen & Co. in 1900 and ran it until 1913, when he was forced to close his business due to difficulties getting shipments.4
When war in Europe began in 1914, Andresen saw another opportunity. He realized that the supply of flax fiber for linen from Russia would be cut off from manufacturers in Ireland and Scotland. He said he had discovered a process that could produce high enough quality fibers in America to be accepted by Irish cloth weavers, who guaranteed a good price for it for at least five years.5
Flax for fiber was grown in only a few places at this time. In 1915, the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that of the 3,000,000 acres in flax, less than one percent was planted for fiber flax. Flax was considered a “pioneer” or “new land” crop. The plant tended to deplete nitrogen from the soil, so while the first several years saw good yields, the success would not continue. By the
Alfred Andresen was once described as an “interesting talker” and “brimming with enthusiasm for his…ventures.”
early 1900s, the new land available for flax was located in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.6
Most farmers were growing flax for the seed, which was processed into linseed oil, which in turn was used as a wood finish, in paint, varnish, printer ink, glazing putty, and linoleum. After harvesting the seed, the stalk or straw was typically burned. But there was a use – and market – for the straw from seed-flax. Even the short and low-quality fibers, called tow, could be used for insulating and packing, upholstery and mattress stuffing, paper, and cardboard. It could also be mixed with alfalfa or molasses for animal feed.
Andresen had originally envisioned fiber-flax mills. For the optimal long fibers in the stalk for use in linen fabric, different varieties of plants should be grown and harvested well before the seeds matured. You can have fine fibers for linen or oil-rich seeds. Likely he realized that it would take too much time to convince growers to switch over to fiber varieties while also securing funds for a new fiber mill. He could build capital and interest by utilizing straw from farmers’ current crops in tow mills. Of course, farmers would be interested. Andresen was offering them cash for trash. Even if their crops failed due to hail, frost, or thistle contamination, he would pay them for the straw.
Jonas Brolin, a chemist and engineer from Sweden, had extensive experience in the flax industry. He had been superintendent of a flax mill in Duluth, Minnesota, where he had experimented with a process to utilize fibers from seedflax into yarn and twine, and patented an improved machine to remove the waste from flax fibers. When Andresen said he had discovered a process to produce high quality fibers from American flax, he had really discovered Jonas Brolin and Brolin’s processes.7
Andresen and Brolin worked to start mills in Baker, Havre, and Sheridan County, Montana; Lemmon, South Dakota; and Dickinson, North Dakota.8
In April 1916, Andresen was in Bismarck, North Dakota, promoting a new mill. It was likely on this visit that he met Frithjof Holmboe, who had also emigrated from Oslo, Norway. Holmboe first worked as a photographer for the Northern Pacific Railway. He opened his own photography studio in New Salem, North Dakota, in 1907. A few years later, he opened a studio in Bismarck and then expanded into motion pictures.9
Andresen’s next venture was the Publicity Film Company, which he formed with Frithjof Holmboe in 1916. Andresen served as the field and business agent. Holmboe did camera work and supervised the manufacturing of the finished motion pictures in the company’s Bismarck studio. The North Dakota Department on Immigration and individual counties contracted Holmboe to produce films promoting the state for immigration and settlement, and industrial and commercial development.
Publicity Films also contracted with businesses to produce commercial footage. One of the company’s marketing strategies was to take footage during a movie or market day in a community for a fee and then return later to show the film at the local theater.10
After a few years, Andresen stepped out of the business with Holmboe and moved further west, probably attracted by new opportunities. In Seattle, Andresen worked as a broker of mining stocks and wife Benny Prestun, a Norwegian-born actress and singer, was an instructor of vocalization. After Benny’s death in 1923, Andresen moved to Los Angeles. He died in 1957 in Camarillo, California, and is buried in Minneapolis where he had launched his first business.11
Alfred Andresen was once described as an “interesting talker” and “brimming with enthusiasm for his … ventures.” He was a good salesman for his businesses and products. He knew how to establish and incorporate businesses. He understood the value of patents for marketing his cast iron
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Alfred Andresen patented the design for his heart waffle iron in 1904. The design was Norwegian, but the cookware was manufactured in the U.S. for both cast-iron and gas stoves.
Vesterheim 2014.038.001 – Gift of
cookware and utilized other marketing strategies, such as magazine premiums and advertisements in both the English- and foreign-language press. His greatest talents, perhaps, were recognizing opportunities and aligning with knowledgeable individuals, such as Jonas Brolin and Frithjof Holmboe.12
Endnotes
1Alfred Andresen & Co. Catalogue and Price List (Minneapolis MN: nd), p. 2. Vesterheim Archive. Victor and Patricia Hilts, “Spinning Wheels in the Alfred Andresen Catalog,” The Spinning Wheel Sleuth 53 (July 2006), p. 6.
2Catalogue, pp. 14, 51.
3Qvinnan och Hemmet, September 1911, p. 367. Qvinnan och Hemmet was published in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
4Under different ownership, Alfred Andresen & Co. continued operation into 1914, when the name was legally changed to Western Importing Co. Western Importing Co. imported Scandinavian cooking utensils and tools until 1929.
5The Flathead Courier, 10 January 1918, p. 9.
6W. A. Graham Clark, Development of an American Linen Industry, Department of Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 122 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1916), 10. H. L. Bolley, Flax Wilt and Flax Sick Soil, North Dakota Agricultural College Bulletin No. 50, December 1901, p. 28.
7Paint, Oil & Drug Review, 29 March 1911, p. 14; Fibre and Fabric, 15 February 1913, p. 57; Jonas Brolin, Decorticating Machine, US Patent 987,342, patented 21 March 1911.
8The Fallonite, 24 February 1916, p. 3; The Columbian, 18 January 1917, p. 3; Bismarck Tribune, 9 August 1917, p. 3. 9http://historyofbismarck.com/shdndvideo.html, accessed 6 August 2016.
10The Bismarck Tribune, 7 June 1974, p. 15.
11Fallon County Times, 3 January 1918, p. 1; The Flathead Courier, 10 January 1918, p. 9.
12The Fallonite, 24 February 1916, p. 4. Andresen also used his business skills to help family members. Alfred and brother Jacob Andresen incorporated the Andresen Brothers Manufacturing Company in 1904. The next year Jacob opened his own metal spinning firm.
13The Bismarck Daily Tribune, 10 August 1916, p. 2.
Frithjof Holmboe’s films for promoting North Dakota for settlement, industry, and tourism were innovative and effective.
The Publicity Film company is a new corporation which may do a great deal to put North Dakota on the map…The moving picture has been found to be one of the very best mediums for impressing up on the mind of the prospective settler the conditions with which he may expect to meet.13
The State Historical Society of North Dakota holds a large number of Holmboe’s films, including scenes of farming and city life. A finding aid is available at: https://www.history.nd.gov/ archives/manuscripts/inventory/10269. html. Some Holmboe films have been digitized and are available on the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s Youtube channel.