Martin Lunde and Clara Herigstad were married in Byrne, near Stavanger, Norway in 1880, just before setting out to join other members of both families who were already in America. They filed on a homestead in Sverdrup Township, Griggs County, which had recently been organized.
Their first home was a sod house with a frame of logs to make it more substantial. Built in 1886 or 1887, this house had other improvements not found in the earlier sod houses, which had been hastily thrown up for temporary shelter. This house had a floor with a trap door in it to provide access to the cyclone cellar that had been dug out below as a shelter from the tornadoes that were known to sweep the plains sometimes during the summer.
This refuge provided shelter from the more violent disturbances of the season, but the prairie fires that swept through the region during dry spells were even more terrifying. Sometimes the entire family would have to rush out and flail with wet rags at flames that swept up to a few feet from the walls of the house. The log frame could easily have been ignited along with anything else that was made of wood.
As time went on and more land was broken up for fields, the danger of prairie fires grew less, though early spring and late fall remained anxious seasons for quite some time, each fall - at least until the snow came.
The family of the Lundes eventually numbered nine, five boys, Nels, Betuel, Clarence and Martin and Carl, who died in infancy and four girls, Karen (Mrs. Westley), Ann (Mrs. Colvin), Cora (Mrs. Brown) and Violet (Mrs. Wuflestad).
Nels remained on the farm until he purchased a share in the Greenland Lunde Implement Company in Cooperstown. Betuel (better known as "Bill") was a partner in the General Merchandise Store at Hannaford, and Martin was a farmer until he moved to Cooperstown. Clarence remained on the farm and lived in the commodious farm home that had been built by the parents as the years passed, but he moved to the West Coast, leaving the old home uninhabited.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 436