The Story of ​​​Helga Estby - The Journey

​After 7 months, 18 days, and 3,500 miles, the Estbys arrived at the New York World newspaper in New York City Hall Park, on December 23, 1896. On that Christmas eve afternoon they discovered that there distant sponsor refused to pay the reward and the promised train fare home. The Estbys were stranded in New York City wondering how they would get home.

The sad conclusion did not end there. The mother and daughter spent over a year living in Brooklyn trying to save enough money to get back to Spokane. So far from home letters were their only communication and most of the correspondence was bad news. That spring Helga's fifteen-year-old daughter, Bertha, passed away from diphtheria. Four days later on April 10th the same illness claimed the life of her son Johnny.

When they finally reached home Helga's journey was considered an embarrassment to the family and not spoken of. Helga did not share this view. Though she did not discuss her journey, she did write a memoir after Ole's death in 1913. She asked one of her granddaughters to hold on to it. After Helga's death in 1942 two of her daughters, Ida and Lillian, burnt her papers. Luckily a daughter-in-law, Margaret, found a scrapbook containing two Minnesota newspaper clippings of Helga and Clara's journey. Knowing her husband, William, also still held resentment towards his mother, she kept the findings from him.