John Stevens, together with his eldest son, Haaken, arrived in the Sheyenne Valley in 1882. John, who was a carpenter by trade, soon found work building homes for the many settlers that were daily coming into the valley and the prairies on either side.
Haaken, having no particular trade, hired out as a farm laborer. His job was to break sod with a plow and a yoke of oxen. This surely tested his fortitude and temperament. The following year, in 1883, Mary Stevens, the wife of John and the two children, Ole and Maren, arrived to join John and Haaken. The addition to the family required that a home be built and as was the custom then, a sod house with a lean-to was built. The lean-to served as a summer kitchen and for storage in the winter.
By 1884 a pair of oxen had been acquired and fifteen acres of sod were broken. This was sown to wheat, hand seeded and dragged by a homemade harrow pulled by the oxen.
In a year or two the sod house was left for a log cabin made from logs cut and harvested in Minnesota and shipped by rail to Valley City. By the time the house was completed, the health of John Stevens had begun to fail and he soon passed away. The operation of the homestead then fell on Haaken and Ole and they continued in this manner until the marriage of Ole to Mina Anderson on January 26, 1897. Within two years Haaken married Olava Anderson on October 23, 1899 and moved to the Kathryn area. Ole continued to live on the homestead in Section 10, Nelson township, until Ole's death in 1937.
Seven sons and one daughter were born to Ole and Mina. Altogether, thirteen children were born but only eight survived to maturity. Their names were:
Joseph,
Peter,
Melvin,
Edwin,
Alfred,
Martha,
Leonard and
Elmer.
Two sons, Melvin and Joseph, bought the farm after the death of Ole and Joseph still is farming the land.
Alfred, born in 1906, after working in Canada for a period, married Myrtle Thompson and is now retired and lives in Kathryn.
Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 237