Hanson

"In the year of 1881, Erick M. Lindfors and his wife Anna immigrated to America from Sweden with their baby daughter, Anna. To this union were born eight children, and of these, only two survived: Anna and Howard. The Lindfors's first settled in Massachusetts, near Worcester where Erick easily obtained work because he was a master mechanic and highly knowledgeable in the operation of all types of steam engines, and because he had a good knowledge of English from the Swedish schools.

During the year of 1885, Erick and his family moved to Ohio where he was employed by the Buckeye Pipe-Line Company, a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company, as a traveling engineer. In 1899, a son Howard was born who later became the owner of one of the largest grain elevators in eastern Colorado.

Due to failing health, Erick Lindfors moved to Colorado, settling in Denver. Again, because of his expertise in things mechanical, he easily found work. He was employed as a master mechanic at both the Old Cotton Mill in Overland, Colorado and the Griffin Wheel Works in South Denver.

When Erick Lindfors was in Ohio, he built a steam automobile which he brought to Denver when the family moved west. This automobile was probably one of the first automobiles in Colorado.

The Lindfors family remained in Denver until about 1904 , when Mr. Lindfors and his daughter filed homestead claims on adjacent quarter-sections directly south of Strasburg. After proving up on their claims, they consolidated their properties. Their homestead homes were very lacking in anything but the bare necessities to provide a minimum of comfort.

In 1907, Anna married Gottfried Hanson, a manufacturing jeweler in Worcester, Massachusetts. To this union was born a son, Erick Lennart, in 1909. In 1911, Mr. Hanson died and Anna returned to Denver with her baby. In 1915, Mr. Weaver, the first postmaster at Strasburg, gave up that office and Anna was appointed the second postmaster. The office was a very small fourth class office with two star mail routes; one terminating at Wolf Creek to the south and the other at Comanche to the north. During the first years as a postmaster, she operated a small telephone exchange and a small store where she sold candy, cigars, tobacco and a few items such as newspapers and other sundries.

When Mr. Lewark, a pharmacist, and his wife, who was a medical doctor, established the drug store on Main Street, Mr. Lewark took over all of Mrs. Hanson's stock in the store. From that time on she continued to operate the telephone exchange as well as being Postmaster. In the years that followed, the post office was moved to a building on the east side of Main Street and the telephone exchange was sold. After thirty two years as postmaster, she retired. She remained in Strasburg until 1969 when she moved to Red Bank, NJ to be near her son. She had an apartment, overlooking the Shrewsbury River. This was her home until her death in 1974 at the age of 94.

Mrs. Lindfors, Anna's and Howard's mother, was an example of the hard working, God fearing women who did so much to help their families hew their existence from a very reluctant environment. She provided encouragement and did many of the menial chores, such as taking care of the chickens, the turkey flock, and preparing the meats for canning and smoking after the men did the butchering. Such was the life of Anna Lindfors as a pioneer wife and mother. She died in 1932 at the age of 74.

Howard Lindfors, after his father's death in 1915, operated the farm and also did custom harvesting and threshing for the farmers in the area south of Strasburg. He maintained a rolling kitchen where the meals were prepared and served to the working crew of his threshing outfit. He had a large Aultman-Taylor tractor and a J.I. Case threshing machine. In the early 30's, Howard took over the management of the Ayres Grain elevator at Strasburg, which was then managed by Al Young. Howard married Margaret Lieberman of Denver and, through combined efforts, he bought the elevator and made many additions and improvements which resulted in one of the largest elevators in eastern Colorado. He continued to operate the elevator until his death in 1966. Howard was well known outside of his business activities by his work in promoting the Shrine Burn Hospitals, his membership in the El Jebel Shrine, the Palomino Patrol and many civic activities.

Erick Lennart Hanson, Mrs. Hanson's son and the last of the Lindfors-Hanson line, was educated in the Strasburg Public Schools. His first two years of schooling were in a small one room school located at the eastern edge of town. From that time until the new school building was constructed, he attended school in a building just north of what is now U.S. No. 40 highway, which was called the sheep shed. He graduated from the Strasburg High School and then graduated from the Colorado Agricultural College in Fort Collins, Colorado; now the Colorado State University, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. After experience with several manufacturers of specialized machine tools and mechanical equipment, and after being buffeted by the great depression in the thirties, he moved to Troy, N.Y.. While in Troy he was employed as a designer of specialized machinery for the local industries. In 1940, he was called to Fort Monmouth, N.J. as a mechanical engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps Laboratories, which later became integrated with other phases of the Army's electronics development work and became the U.S. Army Research and Development Command. After thirty years service with the government, Erick retired as Chief of Technical Staff of the Engineering Sciences Department. He is married and lives with his wife, Doris, in Lincroft, New Jersey."