A Short History of the Life of N. J. Blagen

Authors

Keywords

Danish immigrants, family history, Danish entrepreneur, Pacific Northwest

Abstract

In 1920 the Danish immigrant Niels Jensen Blagen looked back on his long, vigorous life, fifty years of which had been spent in the United States, and composed the autobiographical sketch which follows . Perhaps it was characteristic of N. J. Blagen that, as a man of action, he did not spend more time than he did recounting his remarkable career as a builder and lumberman in the Pacific Northwest. In an English that sometimes betrays through unusual phrasing the writer's foreign origin, Blagen takes the reader from 1850 and Rabylille on the island of M0n to 1920 and Portland, Oregon. With selective memory he focuses on events in his life and their significance for him at the age of seventy. The very special fascination of this immigrant's memories stems from the fact that his adult career was closely linked with the development of the Pacific Northwest from the late 1870's through the early decades of the 1900's.

Recommended Citation

(1982) "A Short History of the Life of N. J. Blagen," The Bridge: Vol. 5: No. 2, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge/vol5/iss2/8