Helga Avilda Ida Marie Johanssen was born in
Oslo (then called Christiania),
Norway. Helga traveled from Norway with her mother, arriving in
Manistee, Michigan, during 1871. In 1876, she married Ole Estby, an immigrant from
Grue Municipality in
Hedmark,
Norway. They started their new life together initially homesteading a land patent in
Yellow Medicine County near
Canby, Minnesota. The family subsequently relocated and settled on a farm in Mica Creek,
Spokane County, Washington. Due to the financial
Panic of 1893 and her husband's accidents, the family could not pay the mortgage or taxes on their home and farmland. Together with Clara, her 17-year-old daughter, Helga tried to save her family farm by walking 3,500 miles across country to
New York City. Helga had made a bet with an unknown sponsor that would give them $10,000 if they did the walk in seven months. Clara and Helga started the walk from Spokane on May 5. The women walked 25–35 miles a day and were offered shelter along the way, spending only 9 nights without a roof over their head. On Christmas Eve, 1896, the
New York World reported their arrival in
New York City. On arrival in New York, the sponsor of the contest refused to pay or help them back home, saying the women had missed their deadline. Helga managed to return to her farm only to find that two of her children had died of
diphtheria in her absence. After the Estby family lost their home in Mica Creek, Ole Estby began a construction business in
Spokane, Washington. Helga was considered a deserter of her family and was shunned by much of the local
Norwegian-American community. Helga went on to become a
suffragist and wrote down her story later in her life. Her notes were destroyed, but her story was carried on through oral tradition, by her family and through newspaper clippings saved by her daughter-in-law. Estby died on April 20, 1942, and was laid to rest in the Mica Creek cemetery near Spokane. ==Legacy==