It is coming up on three years now since my beloved Mom died. Long before then, she and I were collaborating on an essay about the family piano — and because I think it is a darned good story, I am finally getting around to writing it.

The Gulbranson piano was purchased by my great-aunt, Dora, who was a registered nurse. She bought it for the “Nelson boys,” the sons of one of her younger sisters, Anna Hovick Nelson, who back in the day was a cowgirl with her sister, Lillian Hovick, my Grandma. Anna raised four boys in Miles City, Mont. In Slope County, North Dakota, my Grandpa Andy and Grandma Lillian were raising three girls, the youngest of which was my mother. At the Slope County place, there were chickens, pigs, horses, registered Angus, sheep … you get the idea. Someone decided that the piano would be better used at the Slope County, farm so there was a trade. And this is an absolutely true story: The piano was brought from Miles City to Slope County to trade for a pony. My mother said she would have preferred that the pony had been kept.

The Hovicks. Marie, front right in the black-and-white picture above, with her eyes closed, was a teacher. She married a man and they had a claim in Montana, but he died young, and they had no children. She lived to be almost 100. She came to live with my family in El Paso, so that my mother could work as a nurse now that her children were in school.

Kjelv and Maren Hovick were both born in Norway, and immigrated to the U.S, where they settled in Iowa, Dakota Territory, and Montana. They took a ship from Norway to England and then across England on a train, and then across the Atlantic to the United States. 2025 marks 200 years since the first Norwegian immigrant ship arrived in the U.S. I knew all of these people except for Kjelv and Maren, who were dead by the time I was born. They are buried in Miles City, along with a whole bunch of their descendants. (And I went to a whole bunch of their funerals.) I feel like I knew Kjlev and Maren because I listened to everyone tell their stories all of my life. When Kjelv and Maren arrived in England, to take the train across to the Atlantic, Kjelv had an expensive hat on his head. So excited about riding the train, and then getting on a ship with his bride, Kjlev stuck his head out of the train and his hat blew off, never to be seen again. In Iowa, all of the children pictured above were born. Then, they began to immigrate west. Many of these women in the picture lived on homestead claims by themselves!

My late mother, who was a LPN in El Paso where she worked for a urologist and learned Spanish (later in life), when she was in her 50s, earned her RN degree (as pictured above at her graduation, when her Aunt Dora, who had also been a nurse, attended her graduation at Dickinson State University, putting the then traditional nurse’s cap on my mother’s head — I was there for the ceremony at Stickney Auditorium).

My mother and her aunt, Anna Hovick Nelson.

The Hovick sisters.

Andy Silbernagel and his new bride, Lillian Hovick Silbernagel. Lillian’s sister, Anna, was her bridesmaid. Andy proposed to Lillian in the Slope County chicken coop, for “some privacy” we were always told, and then they traveled to nearby Bowman, N.D., to be married. At the time, Andy lived with his immigrant parents, who had come from Germany and then to Slope County on a Milwaukee Railway car, via Minnesota. His best man in the picture is his younger brother, Henry Silbernagel, who later married a woman named Marian. I knew all of these people: Lillian, Anna, Andy, Henry and more.

Back to the piano. Gulbranson, which if you are so inclined, you can read more about on the link. The magic of the internet allows one to conduct a serial number check here. The family piano, #256756, also carries a mark 738298, which is from the National Piano Manufacturers Association. Thus, I know that our family piano, the one that Dora purchased, was manufactured in 1920, probably in Chicago. This particular piano must have been shipped on the train to Miles City, and then transported back to Rhame, N.D. The trade with the pony.

Lauretta, Andy Silbernagel (their father), Marian (in her father’s arms), and Junette.

So it was that the Gulbranson piano was in the Slope County farmhouse. Then, when my mother sold the farm, the piano was moved to Grand Forks, where she worked at United Hospital and owned a home. Later, the piano was moved. Again! To Mandan, Where my brother-in-law, Jason, restored it. It is still in his house.

“Gulbransen is a frail yet remarkable survivor. They were arguably the most influential piano brand before the Great Depression. And yet, because they are no longer popular and no longer produced, it can be challenging to evaluate the worth of the remaining Gulbransen pianos scattered across the globe.” I most recently told my sister that this piano holds its tune, which to me is somewhat remarkable, as pianos can be fussy that way).

Here are some of the many photos I have, taken over the years of the piano when it was in the Slope County farmhouse. My mother used to tell me that if I practiced the piano, she would wash the dishes. Good trick, Mom.

Young me, next to the piano. With my youngest sibling.

Youngest sibling, Beckie, next to the piano. Beckie is holding her grand-daughter, baby Lily. In the picture is also my brother, Thomas, who this particular night confessed that he had never learned how to play the piano. Who knew? I guess there were too many squigly lines on the music.

The Hovicks. A later colorized photo.

My late mother and her aunt, Marie Hovick Wandberg.

Anna and Lillian Hovick, cowgirls in the Powder River country in the time before they were married.

Me, playing the Gulbranson piano in the Slope County farmhouse, with my late aunt, Junette on the bench beside me and my mother standing. Sister Beckie in the red outfit. (She now says “who dressed me in that hideous outfit?!”) My mother sewed that green vest for me and I still have it!

That’s me, playing a piano in one of my Dickinson homes. My twin daughters are in the photo (ponytails) as is my niece, Christina. My brother, Thomas, is in the red shirt, holding his daughter.

My daughter, Chelsea, playing the piano at a recital at St. John Lutheran Church in Dickinson, where she was taught by the inimitable (see me, again with the big word I learned at Vanderbilt) Margaret Marcusen.

Maria Hovick Wandberg, El Paso, pictured with my younger brother, Thomas.

Dorothy Pearson, at my grandparents 50th anniversary celebration held in Slope County. See the piano in the background.

Two of my cousins at the piano in Slope County.

That’s me, before I learned to play piano.

See the piano in the background at my grandparent’s 50th anniversary celebration?

That’s me. Playing the piano in the Slope County farmhouse. I still have those piano books and that chair! “Aunt Marie’s chair” it was dubbed, because my parents bought it at a second-hand store in El Paso and my mother reupholstered it, and Aunt Marie sat in it in our El Paso homes.

My siblings and I at our mother’s funeral.

Lillian Crook and her Aunt Junette. In the Slope County farmhouse. I am studying and she is probably typing the Slope County Saga.

My Grandma Lily with a cake someone made for her 50th anniversary. Chicken coop in the background. Don’t you just love that someone made the cake in the shape of a piano?

Lillian Crook was raised on a North Dakota Badlands ranch, south of Bullion Butte, on the banks of the West Fork of Deep Creek, which flows into the Little Missouri River at the Logging Camp Ranch, and has nurtured her love for the Badlands all her life. Her grandparents and parents farmed and ranched at the Slope County place since the beginning of the 20th century. After Rhame High School, Lillian graduated with honors from North Dakota’s Dickinson State University, earned her Master’s of Library Science degree from Vanderbilt University, was a librarian at Dickinson State, and at Vanderbilt’s Peabody Education Library, and was later a volunteer as well as the Museum Technician for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. She was the president of the North Dakota Library Association, is a member of Beta Phi Mu, and a Fellow of Humanities North Dakota. She has read countless books in her lifetime and served on many boards, including Theodore Roosevelt Nature and History Association, St. John Lutheran Church Council, North Dakota Library Vision 2000 and Humanities North Dakota. While living in Slope County, she was the piano accompanist for the band and choir at Rhame High and sang in the choir and played the piano and organ at the Lutheran church in Rhame, one of her first paying jobs, as well as an occasional recital at Bethany Lutheran and Mound Church. Growing up, she helped with chickens, cattle and horses, gardening, other assorted farm chores, was in school clubs and 4-H and worked as a dental assistant in Bowman, where her mother was a nurse at the hospital. Her college jobs included Hardees, a record store, a bookstore, Badlands Bible Camp and work-study at Stoxen Library. Over the years, she assisted countless students, staff, and faculty with their research.

She is a founder and lifetime board member of Badlands Conservation Alliance, “A Voice For Wild North Dakota Places,” a grass-roots nonprofit organization whose members cherish western North Dakota landscapes and seek to protect these for future generations. Lillian has a collection of maps of North Dakota, including the topographic maps for Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and her traveling friends and family admire that she really does know the backroads of western North Dakota and its flora and fauna “like the back of her hand.” Her North Dakota ancestors, including her maternal great-grandparents, grandparents and her mother, are all buried at Tuttle Cemetery, near Marmarth, N.D. Her daughters are lovers of wild landscapes and critters, including birds.

These days she is a volunteer at the North Dakota Heritage Center, travels, hikes, birds, cooks, gardens, writes, reads more books and occasionally cares for her great-niece, baby Lily. While she can no longer play the flute, she can still play the family piano.