Nehemias Tjernagel 1868 -

TJERNAGEL

Posted By: Linda Meyers (email)
Date: 11/11/2008 at 18:42:41

"Historical gleanings --BY SARAH HOLT

EDITOR'S NOTE--From time to time and when space allows, the [Story City] Herald will be printing various articles taken from early publications. These "gleanings" have been provided by Sarah Holt of Randall as background to Randall's Centenial Celebration planned for June 16, 17, and 18, 1978. The following article appeared in the August 12, 1948 issue of the Randall Review."

Photo of Nehemias Thernagel playing an upright piano.

"WELL KNOWN LOCAL MAN DESIGNATED BY DES MOINES NEWSPAPER AS 'FARMER, COMPOSER, WORLD-TRAVELER'

(This article and photograph appeared in the Des Moines Sunday Register recently. By the kindness of that paper we are permitted to re-print them.)

Nehemias Tjernagel sometimes considers he has been too much of a jack-of-all-trades.
But as a well-to-do farmer, composer, writer and world traveler, Tjernagel (pronounced Chernagel) also admits the long was has been comfortable, pleasant and generally to his liking.

LIVES IN BIRTHPLACE
Mostly farmer now, Tjernagel lives in the house where he was born more than 80 years ago.
Down the road a piece is the onetime Sheldahl school, first public school in southern Hamilton County, where Tjernagel had his earliest learning.
Up the road a piece is Bethany Lutheran Church, where he has been an elder for 20 years or more. Across the smooth fields are the dim skyline and water tower of Story City.
Unlike the case with the majority of Iowa farmers, however, home, church and school have been only a part of Tjernagel's life.
As a younger man, he spent months abroad studying music, composing, visiting many countries. He wrote books about walking tours in Norway and Palestine, published in English and Norwegian. Health prevented Tjernagel from continuing his studies there, and that is the great regret of his life.

PLAYS OCCASIONALLY
Even now Tjernagel occasionally plays the piano--one of his own melodies that a ship's captain enjoyed in the long ago of Beethoven's "Moonlinght Sonata."
In 1859, Tjernagel's father, Ole Andreas Tjernagel, who came from Norway in a sailing vessel, walked 150 miles from Iowa City to locate a farm. He paid $160 for 40 acres in Scott township, predominately Norwegian and reportedly the center of some of the best growing land in this country.

MODEST HOME
The elder Tjernagel returned here in 1864. Lars Henryson, a neighbor, built the 14-by-20-ft. house, where Nehemias Tjernagel was born, March 28, 1868. That first little dwelling, now the heart of Tjernagel's modern home, expresses the modesty and reticence of its owner.
Tjernagel, who never has married, operates the 260 acre farm in partnership with his brother, Martin, and another brother's widow, Mrs. Peter Tjernagel. Now known as Follinglo farm, named for Tjernagel's mother, the holdings are among the most up-to-date.

COMPLETES MANUSCRIPT
Within the last year, Tjernagel finished a 270-page manuscript, "The Passing of the Prairie," which he sent to the Iowa State Historical society. He did his own typing.
Wearing blue jeans, high-topped boots and a hickory shirt, Tjernagel attended Sheldahl school, built in 1860 from native lumber. There, with other sons and daughters of Norwegian pioneers, he learned the three R's and played Norwegian and sock ball, and blind-man-buff.
That school is now a memorial hall and a neighborhood museum. After it was closed 60 years ago, the Riverside Band practised there. First moved to a grove on the Skunk River, the school later was taken to Randall as a residence.
After years of wandering, the "boys" brought back the bilding returned it to the original site and painted it a dazzling white. Those who are left keep it in trim.
The music-loving Norwegians always were singing and playing in a band or orchestra, Tjernagel said.
The Follinglo orchestra was a Tjernagel family string ensemble, which played custom-made instruments of woods imported from Norway and Africa.

LYRE-BACK CHAIRS
Tjernagel still has the handsome lyre-back chairs and music stands, and the massive music cabinet,each drawer inlaid with a composer's name, which Peter Tjernagel made for the group. In the same room are an organ Ole Tjernagel bought 75 years ago; and Nehemias Tjernagel''s upright piano. Ole Tjernagel played the accordion.
Of the several musical groups with which he was associated Tjernagel recalls the Riverside band most happily. Four Henderson boys and three Tjernagels started the project in about 1885. One, A. M. Henderson, of Northfield, Minn., is a former president of the Iowa Bankers association and lived in this vicinity 76 years.
All the farm boys did odd jobs to get money for instruments. Nehemias and Peter Tjernagel earned their clarinets and baritone horn by hauling fertilizer for 25 cents a day.
The band later appeared at the Iowa State fair, and also played in front of the concessions at the rate of a dollar a number.
The band also played at country picnics, political rallies--earning 135 cents on one occasions---and Fourth ofJuly celebrations.

STUDIED PIANO
Tjernagel for a time studied piano at Iowa State college at Ames. Unable to return because of lack of funds Tjernagel was offered by his teacher free tuition and other inducements if he would come back.
Tjernagel said he likes classical music, fine hymns, good popular numbers, "but is no lover of jazz."
Going abroad for the first time in 1892, Tjernagel stuied in Norway, Sweden and Germany. Before he returned three years later, he had traveled through Palestine and many other countries. He went again in 1910 for an 18-month trip.

COMPOSITIONS
Tjernagel has composed a large number of band selections, songs and anthems, and hymns which have been performed widely in this country and abroad. He also has a pile of manuscripts, which, he said, never will be published now.
To earn money for his musical studies, Tjernagel worked as cashier in the Story City Citizens bank; with a music publishing firm in Minneapolis, Minn.; and as a bookkeeper at the Union Stockyards in Chicago, Ill. He studied in each of these centers.
A partner in the farm here for 50 years and an elderly man now, Tjernagel said he loved Iowa, and that nowhere is there a more beautiful sight than ripening grain.
"I have not been able to do all that I wanted," he added. "But perhaps I have been able to do some good, and there may be some purpose in it.""