The Lund family history has been traced back as far as Peter Lund who was born circa 1740. He moved from Norway to Denmark where he worked as a customs officer and married Johanne Christine Schwartzkopf (various spellings of her name are used in the papers). One of their sons, Olaus Lund, was born in 1780 in Nykobing, Falster, Denmark. Olaus, a clergyman, and his wife, Sophie Elizabeth Peets, were the parents of Harold Emil Theodore Lund, an artist, who is the central figure of this collection.
Harold Emil Theodore Lund (usually referred to as Theodore) was born July 26, 1810 in Nykobing, Falster, Denmark. At age sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary but, according to a family story, he ran away to Copenhagen to study art. From 1832 to 1834, Theodore was a student at the Kunstakademiet, Copenhagen, and completed an apprenticeship as a painter. Because he was an itinerate artist, documentation for various phases of Theodore's life and work is sparse. The date of Theodore's arrival in the United States is not known but the New York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564-1860 lists him as a miniaturist painter who worked in New York City between 1836 and 1843.
Theodore married Caroline Matilda Handson (whose parents, according to records not included in this collection, were probably Hans Gerhard Abel and Suzanne Margrethe Zarendt) in New York City, July 27, 1839. They had six children, Julius George, Charles Adolphus, William (who died in childhood), Theodore Jr., William George, and Josephine Augusta. In 1846, Theodore and Caroline bought a farm in the township of Raymond, Racine County, Wisconsin. While his family operated the farm, Theodore worked as an artist in various cities in the United States and Europe. During the Civil War, Theodore's son Charles served in the Union Army and died of smallpox while his oldest son, Julius, who had been working in New Orleans, served in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
The Lund Family Papers were generated primarily by descendants of Theodore Lund, Maude Leone Fish and Judith Lund Chisholm, as they worked together from 1966 to around 1972 to research and write the Lund family history. Judith Lund Chisholm, the daughter of Philo and Agnes Lund, was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1925. She graduated from the University of Washington with a B.S. degree in nursing in 1948. In 1949 she married William Duncan Chisholm of Seattle, Washington. Maude Fish, the daughter of Thomas J. and Josephine A. Lund Fish, was born October 26, 1893 on a farm in the township of Yorkville, Racine County, Wisconsin. She earned a B.A. degree from Western Michigan University and an M.A. degree in administration and supervision from the University of Michigan. She was an elementary school teacher and principal in Grand Rapids, Michigan until her retirement in 1955. Maude Fish died September 11, 1975.
