Gilbert Gilbertson

Gilbert Gilbertson was born in 1850 in Stavanger, Norway, migrated to the U.S., and located in Chicago, Illinois, where he was a baker for several years.

Carrie Ryerson, a native of Stavanger, Norway, was born in 1855. She came to the U.S. and was married to Gilbert Gilbertson in 1871 in Cook County, Illinois.

This family decided to come to Dakota Territory in 1879 and in 1894 settled on a homestead in what is now Grand Prairie Township near the now Sollie Burchill farm: West ½ of the Southwest  ¼ and West ½ of the Northwest  ¼ of Section 28 in Township 142, N of Range 57 W of the Fifth Principal Meridian in North Dakota, containing 160 acres.

They brought six of their eight children with them:

  1. Gilbert Jr., who later married Severing Grodem and operated a pool hall in Valley City;

  2. Annie married a railroad man, Ole Abrahamson;

  3. Mary who married Fred Bell and farmed;

  4. Carrie married Frank McClaflin and they farmed;

  5. Amelia married Allen Ryerson who worked for the city;

  6. Charlie married Sarah Ryerson and they farmed in North Dakota but later moved with his wife and 10 children to Canada.

  7. Emma and

  8. Julia were to stay with a rich family in Illinois until their father got settled. However, their father, being poor, didn't return for seven years and when he did, the family caring for the girls had moved away. Being financially unable to hire a detective, he never found the girls.

  9. A daughter Rosy was born in the homestead sod house but died at the age of four and was buried in the garden.

The Gilbertson family lived on the homestead until a prairie fire burned them out. Carrie tried to put out the fire with a big jar of sour milk which she used to feed the chickens. It was fall, the grass was dry, the sod house was papered between the 2 x 4€™s with newspaper and cardboard boxes, and Gilbert had not plowed a fire break soon enough so everything burned quickly. Carrie took the children and puppies and ran to a plowed field but the puppies' mother, thinking her pups were still in the shanty, perished in the fire. The land was sold to George Andrus who apparently was unable 'to pay for it so it reverted back to Gilbertsons. It changed hands a number of times before Sollie Burchill became the present day owner. After the land was sold, two or three small houses were purchased in Valley City from whose rent the Gilbertsons earned their livelihood until their deaths.

Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 79