I have his shaving mug and his last name. And I have a rough wooden chest in my office, knocked together in Denmark more than a century ago and addressed with brush and black paint: "F.H. Skow, Ellsworth, Antrim County, Mich., U.S.A." There is only one way to carry such a chest by yourself: pick it up and put it on your shoulder. When I do that, the hair rises on the back of my neck. I feel my Danish grandfather, old Falle Hansen Skow, picking up the chest one morning in 1872, when he was 16, easing it onto the...
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