Martin Andreas Ueland was born at Ollestad in Heskestad near Stavanger, Norway on September 1, 1858. He was the youngest son of Ole Gabriel Ueland, a member of the Norwegian Storting (parliament) and one time president of that body. Martin went to high school in Flekkefjord and to Trondhjem technical school to become a Civil Engineer.
He came to the United States in 1880, and after a year in Minneapolis, a bout with typhoid fever, came to Dakota Territory in 1881. He homesteaded in what is now Sverdrup Township. He was elected surveyor in 1882 before the county was organized and served as surveyor for the following fifty years.
Between surveying expeditions, Martin Ueland farmed and gradually added to his holdings with land priced at that time at from $2.00 to $4.00 an acre. On returning from a surveying assignment in Montana he found a group of settlers encamped on the Sheyenne River bank at Valley City. They were all Norwegians from the general area where he was born and he knew relatives of some of them. They were Ole Westley, Betuel Herrigstad, Valdemar Klubben, Sven Loge and Christian Aarestad. They were in the process of bargaining for a breaking plow. He decided to go with them to the area they were settling and they became neighbors. This was still in 1881 and he was elected County Surveyor in 1882.
In 1888, Martin was married to Elizabeth Maria Holland who had also come from Norway, but worked in Iowa for some years. She worked for an American family and so became quite fluent in the English language before coming to Griggs County where two brothers, Knud and Hans Holland, were living by that time.
Martin and Elizabeth had eight children. They were Olav and Knute who died in early manhood and two boys who died in infancy
Alf, who lives in Washburn Township
Bjorn, now living in Valley City
Anne, who died in 1973, and Magnus who died in 1968. Olav left ten children:
Mervil, Verna and Duane of Cooperstown, Eunice of Valley City, Clarice Gullickson, St. Paul
Anne Fleeman, Phoenix, Arizona
Garvin, deceased
Arla Nickols, Oak Eun, California
Blanche Rawson, deceased
and Olav G. of Rodondo Beach, California. Children of Knute Ueland were Mrs. Lester (Shirley) Erickson and Kermit Ueland, both of rural Cooperstown. Child of Anne (Ueland) Windingland is Allan Windingland, rural Luverne, North Dakota Child of Alf Ueland, Mrs. R. L. (Winniefred) Laumann, Sherman Oaks, California.
Martin Andreas Ueland died in 1941 and his wife, Elizabeth Maria, died in 1937.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 442