Otto Andersen
By Ctto Anderson in 1911.
By oxteam 29 years ago. May 27 we was prepared to leave our Old Home in Township 115 Range 37, then the township of Hawk Creek, Renville County, Minnesota, where we first settled in 1869.
We arrived at the Village of Mardell, Griggs County, Territory of Dakota on or about June 5th 1882, about one mile further to the southeast on Section 18 Township 146 Range 57, now Greenview Township, Steele County, where a brother, Carl, had already taken up a claim, and then we were at the end of our Journey.
My oldest brother Gustav had already taken up a claim on Section 32 of this same township in the fall before.
By Ox team! Yes, by four young unbroken oxen hitched to a canvas covered wagon in which was loaded a breaking plow, a set of mason tools, a stove and some stovepipes, some kitchen utensils, some wearing apparel and bed clothing, not over 1500 pounds in weight, including the driver and his wife and three children. They called us Home-seekers, but it seemed to me then that we were walking away from a home instead.
I being at this time 21 and a half years old, mother says to me, Otto you is now old enough to take up a claim on Government land. You can now go along if you like. Well! well, should I go along? My conclusion was to go along. If I did not like I had the promise to come back. But I did not come back to mother, she had to come to me first. My duty on the trip was to chase cattle belonging to the parties in the company. And as I was walking all the way my boots by the end had begun to eat grass, but as boots has no digestion organs it did not do them any good.
After we got started we did not stop more then one night in any one place. At night I was sleeping on the ground under the wagon. Getting oure meals three times a day, which was prepared by the women of the company. And as people are the only animal that takes its food cooked, the stove was to be lifted from the wagon, and sat on the ground three times a day, and heated with fuel we picked along the road as we went on. Moving on about 20 or25 miles a day, following the Fort Totten trail which then was a fairly good road.