Mrs. Helen Pearson Posey tells this story:
"Our home was a real claim shanty. There was one spot where the roof did not leak when it rained, so that was set apart for the organ. When it rained we set pans and kettles around on the floor to catch the water, and held umbrellas over the bed. The men slept in a tent; we ate where the spirit moved, sometimes in the shanty, again in the tent, and when it was very agreeable weather outdoors."
Mrs. Jane Farquer tells this story:
They arrived in Foster County in 1885.
"We built a little shanty for our first home; it was less than 12 feet square and was built from odds and ends.
With six of us living in it, we had to move our beds outside in the daytime and bring our tables and chairs in to make it a living room. Then at night the table and chairs would go back out doors and our beds would be set up again. We lived in our shanty a year, then we built our barn and lived in the loft for several months until our new home was finished."
Will and Adah Kallberg filed on a homestead in 1884. Here's the story of their house.
"Will and Adah built their home together in early March when the snow was still deep on the ground. Adah would scrape the ice from the lumber and Will nailed it in place. They built their one room 12 x 12 shack from shiplap which they purchased in Carrington from Mr. Jordan, who was a contractor and lumberman.
Will also built a bed‑stead, a table and two stools. They bought a sheet iron stove with one lid for two dollars at the hardware store in town, also some pots and pans."
That spring they had added a small room 8 x 12 onto the house and through the summer Adah had used it for a kitchen but in the fall it had to be turned into a granary for the winter. Tarpaper was put on the house that fall, and they banked it, too, which helped to make it warmer in the winter.
In the spring of 1886 they brought the furniture that had belonged to Adah's mother and was being stored in Jamestown to their house in Foster County. She was now able to make her home more pleasant and comfortable than before. She also had her mother's sewing machine with which to make their clothing, she had to do this by hand before.
The Holcomb brothers and a man by the name of Bort came in 1882. They built a sod shanty and a stable on the Lyle Holcomb quarter. The shanty was 12 x 16 feet walls, eight feet high on one side and six feet on the other side. The floor was prairie sod. In the summer the shanties were all green on the outside clear to the top.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 52