Unaware that fifteen years later he would claim a homestead where he walked, the Sheyenne Valley and adjacent area was observed as "uninhabited" by our father, John, in 1883. At seventeen he had first cast his lot with his brother, Andrew, age thirty-three, who was planning a claim directly two miles east. We don't know Andrew's first arrival in the area, but one version has it he trundled his first load of supplies from Valley City in a wheelbarrow. When county lines were established in years that followed, he lived in Steele County, and in Griggs.
In the following months the Northern Pacific was completed and John went to Oregon where the forests were. Almost a decade passed when in the depression of 1893, his savings were lost in a bank failure and being out of work he returned to Andrew's place. Then a building boom developed in Fargo after a disastrous fire and he went there to find work.
While there he met a young lady, Adeline, who spoke of his own cradle-land. Both had come from Osterbotten, a Swedish language area of Finland. Ancestral records, originating in 1546, show a name Jakob Hendrickson, 1775. Our father's name was John Hendrickson.
In 1896, as happy parents, Mother and Father moved to Uncle Andrew's place and rented his farm. Earlier the first child, Stella, had been born at a friend's home beside the lower reaches of the Sheyenne River. Our brother, Emil, was born in Andrew's homestead shanty in 1897. That year Father set out to stake a claim of his own. Good places were now scarce, but on the eastern rim of the Sheyenne Valley where he had gazed at the landscape fifteen years earlier, he found a strip of land a quarter mile wide and a mile long. There he built a shanty with a small kitchenette attached and lastly a covered pole barn. Abbreviated, its description is:
W ½ of the NW quarter and the W ½ of the SW quarter of Section 12 Township 144 Range 58. (It is now a part of the next farm West.)
After the first snow fell, the new family moved onto their claim to America. The next summer a buggy was acquired so Mother could go to Hope to shop, twelve miles east. In the valley was a large range herd and cowboy camp that bought bread at our place. Late in the fall the herd and camp left never to return. As time continued treacherous prairie fires and winter storms that buried small buildings became the family's lot at times. Our sister, Esther, was born here, 1899.
In 1903 Stella walked a grass trail to school, two miles south, where Minnie Hillerson taught. Later when Uncle Andrew died and our family moved to his place so Father could farm the daughter's estate till settled, the school was within forty rods with Will Northrop as teacher. In 1905 our brother, Arthur, was born in Andrew's homestead shanty.
In 1910, while Father was having a new house built, the Great Northern railway spanned the valley within view of our doorway. Sometimes Father took one of us in the buggy and drove down to see the action. The whirring cranes, din of stone crushers and pile drivers required to make the immense footings for the giant bridge, all made an awesome sound for young ears. In time we got new towns out our way:
Luverne, and Karnak, a small station stop.
Our youngest brother, Chester, was born in 1913. He did not return after the war's end, 1945. As a boy, his favorite climbing tree was an ash Father had planted to shade the shanty years earlier. We had a grand view of the valley from our place. If at times a heavy mist fell into its cool and verdant vessel at night, at sunrise it would appear a cloud lay there. When the morning breeze came the tree lined river winding through fields framed by hills would make its own pastoral grandeur.
From our parents time a fifth generation, presently numbering nineteen, lives in varied places of California, Oregon, Ohio, New Jersey, and New York. Of our original family, three are still living with fond memories of the people and country where the wild roses grew.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 238