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from "A Farnham Family History" by Alice Farnham Lillie).
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Edith (Bower) Niemi has died October 28th 2003 in Wisconsin. She was a great granddaughter of A. T. Burgum and a first cousin to Edith Bartley (FF038). The line goes: A.T., Edith Elizabeth (Burgum) Farnham, Mabel (Farnham) Bower, and then Edith Bower.
Edith Bower was the third of eight children of Mabel Farnham and Len Bower. She was born in Arthur on May 16th, 1912 and raised in Wisconsin. She married Bill Niemi (William Eli Niemi) in Chicago in November of 1930. Bill and Edith had three children,
Bill Jr, Dick and Shirley, who survive her. Bill Sr. died in 1998.
Bill and Edith Niemi began doing "couple work". Edith served all the functions of a maid and Bill had the duties of a butler, chauffeur and gardener in the home of Frank Whitings, vice-president of the American Furniture Mart of Chicago. They got $35.00 a month plus board and room. Reflecting on those sixteen months, Edith said, "It was perhaps one of the nicest experiences we have ever had. It gave us both an insight into a way of living that neither of us knew about and the friendship and love that was given to us both will always be cherished."
In 1933, the Niemis returned to Wisconsin and moved onto a farm south of Owen, in Clark County. Bill borrowed a team of horses from his father and worked for the State Highway Department, on road building. After five years of farming, Bill and Edith went into the store-tavern business at Walter's Corner, but they returned to farming in 1941. In 1956 Edith began working part-time as a switch-board operator for the Greenwood (Wis) Telephone Company, and gradually worked into the position of manager, at a time when only a few women held such positions. (She retired from the telephone company in 1974).
The Niemis had always been very involved in the activities of the Lutheran church, and in community projects. Ties in the Bower family were very strong and the Niemis' home was the site of many family gatherings. Later generations continued to operate the farm. Edith Bartley remembers visiting the Niemis on their farm in Wisconsin. "I was trying to sleep overnight in the hay mow with their daughter Shirley, who was (almost) my age, and my sisters. It smelled wonderful, but it prickled, and we couldn't get to sleep." The Niemis, true to Bill's Finnish heritage, had a sauna in an outbuilding on their farm. Edith Bartley recalls -"It was my first introduction to a sauna. Edith and Bill came to Ames for my mother's 90th birthday party in 1996, and I was struck by how much she resembled her grandmother, Edith Elizabeth (Burgum) Farnham."
Edith (Bower) Niemi belonged to that select subset of A.T.'s descendants who were named for A.T.'s mother, Edith Bowery. A.T. Burgum, of course, started the custom. He named his first daughter Edith Elizabeth Charlotte; when she died, the next daughter to arrive got a shortened version of that name: Edith Elizabeth. Later, several of A.T.'s children passed the name along to one of their own children. A.T.'s oldest son, William Henry, who married Lizzie Pitkin, named his only daughter Edith; she died at the age of 25, unmarried. Of A.T.'s daughters, Annie, who married Charles Bayard, named a daughter Edith, as did A.T.'s daughter Edith Elizabeth, who married George Farnham.
In the next generation, Gordon Burgum, son of Tom Owen, named a daughter Edith (she married Ray Sheldon), as did Alice (Farnham) Lillie, whose daughter Edith married Bob Bartley. Others received Edith as a middle name. Grandson Arthur Castleman Burgum, oldest son of Joseph Arthur Burgum, chose as his wife the former Edith Harrington. When Edith Bartley passed the name along to her own daughter (she got the whole "Edith Elizabeth") she got a congratulatory note from her Uncle Don, the youngest son of Edith (Burgum) Farnham. He wrote that "the world needs more Ediths." The final word belongs to Edith Bartley who kindly supplied me with this information. (Additional information was from A Farnham Family History by Alice Farnham Lillie). "I think Uncle Don was right and the world is a poorer place for the passing of Edith (Bower) Niemi."
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