Denmark: Father, Nicolai Hesseldahl, was born in Copenhagen (actually, he was born in Thisted, ed.) Denmark, on November 20, 1847, where he spent his boyhood days. As he grew up to military age, he spent a couple years in the navy. It was, and still is, the custom there to train all young men to be either a soldier or sailor. Father was a powerful man in his young days, but he never was given to bragging or showing off in any way. I guess that is why Mother would sometimes mention some incident she knew about, as on one occasion a couple men were fighting and father interfered. He only wanted to stop them, but they then both turned on him. Father simply grabbed one in each hand by the neck and bumped their heads together, and the fight was over.

Father was a sharpshooter on board the vessel he trained on, and used to have a Meerschaum smoking set as a prize, which he won as the best shot on board a ship with a crew of over 200.

One incident my mother told me about happened in Copenhagen. Father and Mother were walking along the street when they noticed a crowd around a strong man who was showing off by lifting a heavy weight with two fingers, and challenging anyone to lift it with both hands. Father was very strong in his fingers, having worked at the harness making trade so long, pulling the thread through the leather. He simply hooked one finger onto the weight, lifted it easily, and walked off.

Platville, Illinois: He married Miss Magdalene Mikkelsen on July 23, 1869. She was born on October 30, 1845, in Thisted, Denmark. Six years later (1875, ed.) they immigrated to the United States, and settled in the little village of Platville, Illinois, where they lived for some ten years. One laughable incident occured when they arrived at Platville. In ordering dinner at a hotel there, they were served with corn on the cob. Father became very angry, as he thought they were being served with hog feed, because they were green and from the old country.

They joined up with the Methodist Church through the influence of old June Platt, a fine old soul who was the first settler in that locality, and who was honored by having the village named after him. There is a fine marble shaft erected to his memory in the cemetery at Platville.

While living at Platville, Father was busy as a tiler (possibly a mis-type for tiller, or farm worker, ed.) in the summers, and in the winter he worked at his trade as cobbler and harness maker. He was always very friendly with the young folks. I remember many of the village boys, when their hands and thumbs were cracked and bleeding from the cold and snow in corn-picking time, would stop in as they drove past Father's shop, and he would put hot shoe wax on, as that was one of the best known remedies at that time.

The first recollection I have of Father was a scare I got when I was three years old. I was asleep at the time in a small bed alongside Father's and Mother's bed. A cat had in some way crawled on top of the house and got into the chimney, down into the stove pipe. Of all the scratching and yawling you ever heard, that was the worst. In one leap I was out of bed, and I made a nose dive under the covers between Father and Mother, awakening them. Mother was nearly as scared as I was. Father recognized the sound at once, but I don't remember how he got the cat out.

Offspring: Father and Mother were the parents of ten children: John, Lewis, Mary, Frank, Anchor, Nora, Lily, Clarence, Francis, and one child who died in infancy. (Actually, both Francis born about 1883 and Lenore, born about 1885, died in infancy. Ed.)

Elmore, Minnesota: When I was about five years old, or about 1885, my Father and Mother, together with a neighbor of theirs and their families (Mr. and Mrs. R. K. Gaard) moved on farms they bought about eight miles northeast of Elmore, Minnesota, where with only a little money and no experience they faced the heartbreaking job of trying to make a home out of the prairie. I was only five years old at the time, but if I had my life to live over again, and could have the chance to buy raw prairie land at $5 an acre, but would have to go through all the hardships my Father and Mother did, I would say "No". With a good working capital and some experience it would be different. When they came to Minnesota, they arrived in Elmore, which was only a small place, but looked good at the time, as it had a railroad. The towns Lakota, Buffalo Center, and Rake, Iowa, and of Marna, Frost, and Bricelyn did not exist until quite a few years later. There was no school where they settled, and Father helped to organize the first school in Dist. 120. The first school used to stand a couple miles east of its present location. District bought it and had it moved to its new site where a cyclone entirely destroyed it some years ago. A nice new modern school now stands where the old school stood before.

There were no roads in those days, no bridges over creeks. Often, yes, every day for long periods, people would get stuck, and have to unload their grain (those that had some) and pull out their wagon or pry it out, carry their stuff across the creek or mud hole, and load up and try again, often repeating it several times before reaching their destination.

My folks built a house about 16' x 24' by 10' posts, the loft was not even plastered or ceiled (sealed, ed.) up. Often when we youngsters awoke in the morning, we would find a nice little snow bank on the bed covers where the snow had drifted in during the night, through cracks in the shingles.

During those first years they had to burn hay to keep warm. There was no money to buy coal, even if you could buy the best Hocking Valley coal for less than $4 a ton. You could not sell hay even if you had some to spare. Often we would have to go to bed to keep warm. Many times even the bread in the house would be frozen hard in the morning.

Storms would rage for weeks at a time, and people could not even drive to town. They would walk in, carrying only the barest necessities, often freezing their feet or faces before getting home again. I remember one neighbor lived for a week on corn they shelled by hand and ground in the coffee grinder.

The only wells the people had in those days were dug wells. Luckily they were very shallow. I remember one storm when we could not get to the well, and for a week we had to melt snow in the stove for both the house and the stock. The stable was completely covered by snow, as were the hay stacks and corn crib.

Going back to the bad snowstorms we had to contend with, I still remember one bad one we had about many years ago. It was in April. We had a perfect day, sunshine and warm until about mid-afternoon. Then the wind shifted to the northwest, and it started to snow and turn cold. Most of the farmers' cattle were grazing out on the meadows when the storm struck, and turned and drifted with the wind. As it had been so mild for several days, the sloughs and ponds were full of water, and hundreds of cattle got mired and drifted over with snow and froze to death. As the storm lasted for three days and was so bad, no one dared leave their homes to look for them. A neighbor of Father's, a Mr. Warner, had three cows that drifted by my Father's place. At the beginning of the storm they were completely blinded by a layer of snow covering their eyes and freezing. Father had only a small stable, but he managed to head them off as they drifted by, and by crowding got them inside. Mr. Warner came by looking for them when the storm was over, and was a happy man when he found his cows all right.

The development of the country was very slow for a number of years. The Farmers did not have the horse power or the machinery to get ahead. It was a heart-breaking job to get their lands in production. If you did have a little grain to sell, you just about had to give it away. My Father would haul grain to sell 17 miles on the worst kind of roads, and sell it for 44 cents a bushel, eggs 6 to 7 cents a dozen, butter 8 to 12 cents a pound, dandy chickens 15 to 24 cents each. There was very little work to be got even in the summer time. I remember when my brother Lew worked hard two days hoeing corn to earn two old hens, worth about 25 cents apiece. Still he felt mighty proud when he came home with them.

There were no trees at all for miles and miles. One nice thing, wild game was plentiful. Ducks and geese nested here in the spring and were almost tame, and could be had most of the time. Cranes could be seen in flocks numbering thousands. I loved to hear the booming of the prairie chickens in the early mornings. There were wolves, too, in the vicinity. I remember seeing two big ones about 30 rods (a rod is a unit of distance measurement equaling 5 1/2 yards or 16 1/2 feet - it was a common form of measurement at this time and I remember Anchor and Frank using it commonly, even when most people, probably due to the influence of football, stated their distance in yards. At 30 rods, a wolf would be over 150 yards away - a long shot for the rifles of the day and hopelessly beyond shotgun range. ed.) from our house, and later followed one several miles hoping to get in shotgun range of it.

One danger in the fall of the year the farmers had to look out for was prairie fires. I can remember some that traveled for miles, faster than a horse could run. The dead grass was often five to six feet high, and if a fire got a start you could hear its roar for miles. The farmers usually would plow a few furrows about four rods or more apart, then burn the dead grass between the furrows as a protection. Even then they often lost some hay stacks or buildings that caught fire from falling sparks.

I would like to mention the labor they had to put in, getting crops in. They sowed their grain by hand and plowed their fields with a walking 14 inch plow. Think of the miles and miles you would have to walk to put in only a few acres. I have done that many times.

In planting corn you would first have to prepare the ground, then they had a sled-like marker with four or six runners. They would mark the fields both lengthways and crossways. Then they would plant it by hand in each cross mark, one with a hoe and another dropping in the kernels, or if they had a hand planter, they would use that.

It might interest you to know that in the early days Father had no binder to cut his grain with. Several neighbors usually owned what they called a reaper. This was a machine with three long rake-like arms that were spaced equal distances apart, and kept going around all the time. As the grain fell when cut on a quarter circle platform the arms with the rake teeth attached would sweep it off the platform to one side. A little later the reaper was improved---the platform was enlarged and two men would stand on it, take turns in grabbing and tying the bundles as they were swept between them. That was one job where Father could more than hold his own, having learned to bind grain in the old country, and his services were in demand when harvest time came.

A few years after settling here, Father and Lew and a neighbor bought a horsepower threshing outfit. It was one of the real old-timers with a straight stiff straw stacker, hand fed, of course. It was a long tedious job, as there were very few machines in the country at that time. This machine was pulled by six teams (a team was two horses, so this means it took 12 horses to pull this machine, ed.) when in operation and it took a crew of 18 to 20 men to really get results. The crew consisted of one man to drive the horses, two men to hand feed the machine. They usually took turns of short shifts, as they could not stand the dust very long at a time. Then there were two hand cutters, five pitchers, two to sack the grain. Three or four grain haulers, and about three or more in the straw pile and the grain was stacked at that time. In those days the farmers would gather at the farm where they expected to thresh before daylight. How would you like to get up in the morning and get breakfast for 18 hungry men besides your own family? I can remember when we had the threshers for a week when the weather was rainy. Often we could not finish the run until snow and ice covered the stacks.

When Sunday School was organized after a few years in a school house a little over two miles west of their home, Mother would walk the distance back and forth. She taught a class, and for several years was the Superintendent. They had no buggies or cars in those days, and as a rule the horses were tired after a week's work, and the old lumber wagon with a board across the wagon box was not a very comfortable seat, especially when you consider the rough roads they had at that time. I can remember the minister saying at my Mother's funeral that someone told him my Mother made this two mile trip to teach Sunday School until she was past 70 years. Walking both ways made it 4 miles on a Sunday, after a hard week's work.

I remember the first buggy a neighbor bought. He was an old man by the name of Lund. He bought a top buggy without the top and in using it he stood up on it when he drove until he fell out one day. He then discovered what the seat was for. He had been in the habit of standing up in his lumber wagon, but it did not work too good in a buggy. This same man would drive out in his cornfield in the fall, unhitch his team, and tie them to his wagon then pick his corn in a bushel basket, and carry it over and dump it in his wagon. Some head work, wasn't it?

There were no creameries in those days, and no separators. If you had a large number of cows, you had to have a lot of cans or pans to hold the milk, and churn nearly every day, and what a job, no coolers or ice houses.

The young folks would gather at different homes and play games and found real enjoyment in each other's company. The country schools would hold debates and spelling matches and put on some very good amateur programs that both old and young enjoyed and appreciated as much as the young people of today enjoy the latest movie. Newspapers were very scarce in the early days, especially around the farmers. Neighbors would exchange papers and all benefited by it.

Father was always honest in his dealing with his neighbors. In fact, I never knew him to take an unfair advantage of anyone in his long life. I remember once Father and a neighbor had put up a stack of hay in partnership. As Father was very strong he did most of the hard work, and when it came to divide the stack later, the wind had blown the top off one end, and quite a bit of that end was spoiled. His neighbor said to Father "You can have any end of the stack you want, but I want this end (the best end of course)." Father just grinned and let him have it. Speaking of roads, I remember once when Father was road boss a neighbor was hauling sod on a short grade with a yoke of oxen. They would plow a few furrows of sod, cut it in short pieces with a spade, then pitch it on some planks on a wagon. One day about 11 a.m. the oxen decided it was time to quit, and started slowly for home and no amount of hollering or persuasion could turn them. Father just laughed, and said, "Let them go. You have finished paying your tax."

Mother seemed to be the community dressmaker. She made the most of the clothes for her large family, and it seems there was always a piece of goods some neighbor left for her to fashion into a dress or shirt when she had a little time to spare. Besides all this, she acted as midwife and aided in bringing into the world more babies than the local doctor did in her community in the early days, and what is better, I never heard of her losing a case.

The first hayracks, a few poles across a wagon box, had no sides or ends. I remember some years later a man built the first hayrack with sides and ends to keep the hay from falling off. Some of this man's neighbors asked him why he did not put doors and windows too, but I noticed it was not long before they built the improved kind themselves. The early settlers surely had a lot of hardships to contend with in the early days besides cold winters and hot summers. Sometimes a late frost would ruin their crops, sometimes an early one. Then the chinch bugs would get in their crops, or the grasshoppers, or the army worms, or the cutworms would ruin a nice stand of corn. Several times they had a fine crop completely ruined by hailstorms, not to mention years that were so wet the crops could not be harvested. But they stuck it out until things, eventually, got a lot better....roads were improved, mail routes established, telephone lines erected and more railroads and towns followed and better homes were built.

Mother and Father lived on their farm for about 33 years, then on account of old age, the children all leaving for homes of their own, they bought a home in Elmore, moving there November 11, 1918. There they lived until Mother died in 1930, and Father on May 11, 1937. They are both buried in the beautiful Elmore cemetery west of that town.

Father and Mother were always willing to aid their neighbors in illness or trouble of any kind, no matter how poor they were. They did all they could to aid those who were even poorer than they were. I can remember when one poor family with a lot of hungry children moved into the neighborhood, Father and Mother gave them a hog to butcher besides milk and eggs from their own meager store. I guess that is why the neighbors were all their friends. They never did accumulate very much of this world's goods, but they surely lived up to the motto of "Love thy Neighbor" as close as any folks I ever knew.

The above is a short account of the lives of the Father and Mother...N.G. Hesseldahl, as remembered by their son Frank Hesseldahl.

(This information was gathered by Agnes Hesseldahl, daughter of Frank's brother, Anchor. Shortly before his death, Agnes asked Uncle Frank to write down his recollections about the old days. She was kind enough to transcribe this letter and share it with her family, including the editor. A copy of the transcript is in the editor's possession.)