Andrew H. Overby and Ingeborg Vangen, married in April 1884, had three children while living in their sod house in Bryan Township. Hans was born November 15, 1884
Paul was born March 13, 1886, and Bertha (Mrs. Walter Kile) was born December 23, 1888. They could well have spent more years in that sod house had it not been for an incident that occurred in the fall of 1889 or 1890. That particular fall day, Ingeborg went to the field to dig potatoes and left three small children in the house. Hans decided to entertain his little sister Bertha, so took sticks from the wood-box and held them in the stove. When one stick got too short, he'd throw that piece back in the wood box and take a new one. It wasn't long until the wood box caught fire. The three stood and watched it burn until the smoke got too thick and they opened the door and went outside. The hay in the roof caught fire and made all the smoke. Hans had to pull Bertha up the eight-inch rise to get her out the door. *(The sod house was built by digging a shallow hole about 8 inches deep and then building it up with sod.) When Ingeborg looked toward the house from the field and saw all the smoke she came running.
That winter they lived with Andrew's dad and wife, Hans Neilsen Overby who ' at that time had a small frame house. The next spring Andrew H. built a frame shanty and put it on Section 11 about the same site where the chicken coop now stands on the Paul Overby farm. This was not their land but at that time they just built wherever they wanted. They dug a hole under the shanty for a cellar. It did not have inside walls, so Ingeborg plastered it with several layers of newspaper to help ward off the cold of winter. Paul said that whenever his mother ran out of silverware in that shanty, she'd just lift the trap door to the cellar and there was plenty of it down there. It would fall right through the floor.
Andrew H. bought a barn from Andrew Thorne of Jessie and moved it over to his quarter in about 1895. Then later that year they moved it over west to Section 10 of Bryan Township. Here Andrew H. had a larger frame house that he had moved in a year or so before from the McHenry area. Before they moved up there, John Peterson fixed up the house for them, putting in the window upstairs and a gable on the south side. There was no basement under the house and it was very cold. In 1895 Andrew H. pulled over the shanty they were living in and used it as a kitchen. They dug a small cellar under that part.
From the information that Andrew H. 's son Paul gave, it was the quarter Section where the buildings stood in Section 10 that his father homesteaded. He also obtained a quarter by preemption and another for a tree claim. When Andrew H. built his barn in 1902 or 1903, he built that across the Section line in Section 3, on land that he did not own. When more settlers started coming in from Minnesota, he bought that land so he wouldn't lose his new barn. That barn was a real swell building in its day. It had three double walls with shiplap both outside and inside, except the wall where the lean was.
Andrew H. and Ingeborg had 14 children, two of whom were stillborn. Besides the three born in the sod house, there were:
Nels, Dora, (Mrs. Eric Moe)
Petra (Mrs. Hustav Haugen)
Chris, Olai, Johnny
Marie
and Mattie (Mrs. Gilman Moe).
In 1909 Andrew H. purchased the steam rig. It had a 16-bottom plow that it pulled. The front of the engine had a large iron door. Every morning early it was Paul's job to open that door and clean out the 72 flues that were filled with soot. After that it took quite a while to fire up and get up enough steam to operate. In the field for plowing they fired with coal, but in threshing they often fired with straw to cut the expense. Next to the fire-stack was another piece not quite so tall. That was the steam whistle. It was used as a signal to give different messages. Two long blows might mean "we are low on water, hurry!" Then the water wagon driver would press his horses into a run. These water-monkeys, as they were called, had a real job to keep up. Andrew H. 's daughter Dora was the water monkey. She got the water from a spring down below Gordon Overby's on the way to Binford. Threshing time was the most exciting time for the kids - next to Christmas. Louis Williamson was the separator man on the rig. When he married Clara Overby, Andrew's half sister, and moved to Kidder County to take up a homestead, they lost a lot of grain as it went into the straw-pile due to lack of adjustment. In the depression years of the 1930's when people were so hard up, everyone sold every scrap of iron they weren't using and an offer of $25.00 was made for this machine. It was in perfect running order so they steamed it up and ran it into Binford and sold it for $25.00. It had cost $3,000.00 when they bought it new.
Andrew H. Overby died on April 15, 1932 and was buried at the Binford cemetery. His wife Ingeborg died May 20, 1938 and was buried at the Binford cemetery.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 249