Carl Zaun was born in Germany in 1863. When he reached his 19th birthday, he migrated, with an uncle, to the United States, coming to Minnesota, where he worked for his uncle before coming to North Dakota to work for two cousins, Fred and Arnold Zaun. He often said that he arrived in the United States with but 50(D in his pocket and that borrowed.
In due time he homesteaded the Southwest quarter of Section 8 in Marsh Township and married Emma Fiske, the daughter of his neighbor to the west. This union was blessed with three children, two girls and a boy.
His wife Emma died in 1900 and he had his mother come from Germany to care for the children. She passed away within a year. In the fall of 1901 Carl married Theresa Gassmann and to this union were born two children, a boy and a girl.
As time passed, more land was purchased until the farm totaled 1280 acres, which Carl farmed until 1930 when the farm was assumed by his son Theodore. Call and Theresa then lived in Valley City ur0l Carl died in 1936 and Theresa in 1953.
Theresa Gassmann was born in Michigan and came to North Dakota with her parents when she was two years of age. She came to womanhood on the well-known "Gassmann Farm" owned by her father, Philip Gassmann. The family consisted of two daughters and three sons, as follows: Mary Gassmann Passmel, Theresa Gassmann Zaun, George, Thomas and Frank. George was a plumber in Chicago and never married.
Theresa told her children that she could remember the Indians camping on the hill back of the Valley City College Campus and of herding cattle and picking wild strawberries by the pailful. Her father walked all the way to Fargo to purchase an oxen and a cow, driving them all the way back to the farm, which took a week.
Frank Zaun married Clara Huber in 1930 and had four boys and a girl. Frank farms the original Gassmann farmstead. Marie Zaun married Albert Thilmony in 1930 and they lived on the Thilmony homestead in Cuba Township, where they were blessed with six children, two girls and four boys, Robert, the second son; was killed in a hunting accident at the age of 13. Lloyd, the third son now farms the land homesteaded by his grandfather.
Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 279