Malina Nelson née Jakobsdatter, 1853-1894

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: 3 July 1853, Norway

Death: 12 April 1894, Crosby, Kitsap County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Andrew Nelson, Infant Girl Nelson, Bertha Nelson

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: None

Malina Jakobsdatter Nelson was born July 3, 1853, in Norway. On October 26, 1873, she married Anders (Andrew) Nelson in Selje, Sogn og Fjordane. In the years that followed, Malina devoted herself to building a home and raising a growing family. Between 1874 and 1888, she gave birth to eight children: Anna, Lena, Ingeborg, Jakob, Jennie, Diana, Nels, and Hans.

In June 1888, Malina immigrated to America with her husband, children, and extended family. They settled in Crosby, Kitsap County, Washington, where she continued her life as a wife, mother, and pioneer homemaker. On the family’s developing farm near Dyes Inlet in Silverdale, she bore two more children, Bertha (1890) and Albert Clarence (1892). Her days would have been filled with the unrelenting work of frontier life—maintaining the household, caring for livestock, tending a large family, and supporting her husband’s efforts to establish their homestead.

On April 12, 1894, tragedy struck. Malina died in Crosby at the age of forty while giving birth to her eleventh child. The infant did not survive. She was buried in Seabeck Cemetery.

Her headstone bears the simple inscription:

“Malina Nelson: Beloved wife of Andrew Nelson, born in Norway July 3, 1853. Died April 12, 1894. At Rest.”

In recent years, while clearing brush around her grave, a small broken headstone base was discovered nearby. Based on its size and pre-1900 style, it could have been for her infant who died during the birth or her daughter Bertha who died in 1897.