Nineteen years ago, June 10, 1956, I, Marilyn Haugland, became a resident of Griggs County when I married David Jacobson, son of Peter and Anne Jacobson. My mother, who was formerly Margrethe Stenslie, the youngest child of Martin Stenslie, married and moved from Griggs County to Eddy County. I did just the opposite - moving from Eddy to Griggs. However, we live in Willow Township instead of Rosendal where my mother lived.
For one year, we lived in a one room house (with also a room upstairs) on the Peter K. Peterson farm which was located about a mile southwest of where Joe Stahl is living. The following year we just loaded up the house and all and moved it to the John Mustad place just two miles east of Red Willow Lake where David's home place is located. While living in our little house, we were remodeling our present house, which was a little larger. During this time, Marsha Ann was born - September 3, 1959. The following summer, we carried everything over to the Mustad house.
It was just recently that we learned that this house had been built for the bride-to-be of John Mustad. It appears that he had met a girl in Wisconsin, fallen in love with her, and had gone back to North Dakota to build the house and prepare it for his new bride. When their wedding day came near, he took the train to Wisconsin, arriving at her house on the day they were to be married. Walking up to the house, he glimpsed his bride through the window - in the arms of another man. Without so much as going to the door, he turned right around and took the train back home. He received letters from her but sent them back unopened. Two years later, the girl's brother came here to see John. He asked him why he never opened the letters. John explained what had happened and said that he wasn't about to marry a girl who had been untrue to him. "Oh, but that man was me," replied the brother. "I had been away many years and had just returned home on that day and we embraced." Tragically, John was then told that the girl had died of a broken heart. We often wonder what has gone on before on the places we live. It isn't often that we know much about it. Unless someone keeps a record of it, the past is quickly forgotten and lost to knowledge.
On September 7, 1961, Pamela Nanette was born on her Grandmother Anne Jacobson's birthday. It was also the birthday of Pam's great grandfather - Knut Haugland, her mother's grandfather. Pam was baptized in Bethany Church in Binford because Willow Church, where Marsha was baptized, had merged with Bethany almost two years earlier. By the time the girls began going to school, the rural school just about half a mile away closed and so they rode the bus to town school.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 495