profanity. In the fall of 1850, Ingebjørg married Nils Olson Grotland, also from Voss. The family of three moved to Skoponong, a Norwegian settlement in Palmyra, Wisconsin. Knud was given the surname Nelson after his stepfather, which eliminated the stigma of being fatherless. By then 17 years old, Nelson was street-smart and rebellious, with a proclivity for profanity. He was accepted to the school held by Mary Blackwell Dillon, an Irish immigrant with linguistic talents. Nelson proved himself an apt though undisciplined student; he later recalled being whipped up to three times a day. Still in his teens, Nelson joined the Democratic Party out of admiration for Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The family moved to the Koshkonong settlement, which by 1850 had more than half of Wisconsin's Norwegian population of 5,000. Nils Olson had bad luck with land purchases and became sickly. Nelson picked up most of the work of the farm, but maintained his commitment to education. Olson was not supportive and Nelson often had to scrounge to find money for schoolbooks. Nelson's academic interests led him to enroll in Albion Academy in Albion, Dane County, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1858. The school was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to provide education to children who could not afford private school; Nelson was deemed "very deserving." To earn his keep he did various jobs around the school. After two years, Nelson took a job as a country teacher in Pleasant Springs, near Stoughton. Teaching mostly other Norwegian immigrants, he was an agent of Americanization. Military service Nelson returned to Albion in the spring of 1861, when the American Civil War had started. By then, he had developed his position as a "low-tariff, anti-slavery, pro-Union Democrat," but was in the minority in a pro-Abraham Lincoln region. In May 1861, he and 18 other Albion students enlisted in a state militia company known as the Black Hawk Rifles of Racine, to fight with the Union Army in the war. Appalled by its debauchery, the young men refused to be sworn into the army under this militia, and eventually succeeded in being transferred to the 4th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. This was an "all-American" regiment, made up generally of native-born men. Nelson's parents opposed his volunteering, but he saw it as his duty. He sent half his soldier's pay to his parents to help retire the debt on the farm. He