University of Minnesota dental student Robert Ostergren was so miserable he couldn't sleep. So he wrote another of his countless letters to Esther Eldora Anderson, whom he would secretly marry on Sept. 7, 1921, in Albert Lea — 100 years ago on Tuesday.
"Esther I say in all frankness that this University life does not agree with me," he wrote. The university, he continued, "is the center of learning and here we are supposed to find civilization at its best but the more educated folks get these days it seems the more they want to get ahead of their fellow men by fair means or foul."
Ostergren went on to complain: "The days are full of disappointments and this reacts on the mind and keeps a person from getting a good night's rest." Cutthroat academia led to burnout, and he admitted to Esther: "I don't thrive shut in between four walls and sometimes it drives me nearly wild to sit down and try to plug along when I can't get interested in the work."
Esther, the oldest of five siblings, would quit her job at a railroad office to care for her invalid mother on St. Paul's East Side, where her father worked as a stone mason and built many of the fireplaces and chimneys around Lake Phalen.
A century later, granddaughter Lesley Ernst of Apple Valley has preserved Grandpa Rob's courtship letters, Esther's "Bridal Memories" book and an old newspaper clipping — all providing clues to their secret elopement in Albert Lea.
According to the bridal book, Rob and Esther were engaged after church services on Christmas morning 1919. They announced their marriage to surprised family and friends at a dinner party at her parents' East Side home on May 12, 1923 — one year and eight months after they had legally wed.
"I believe they eloped because getting married while in dental school was frowned upon," said Ernst, 62, a recently retired special education teacher. "But Grandpa was ready to give dental school up because he wanted so badly to marry Grandma."
Under a headline proclaiming "St. Paul Couple Jolt Relatives by Baring Wedding Held in 1921," a St. Paul Pioneer Press story said that their brothers and friends gasped when the couple finally broke their silence about getting hitched.