Bio of Asgrimur G. WESTDAL (b.1845), Yellow Medicine Co., MN

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ASGRIMUR G. WESTDAL (1878)

Asgrimur G. Westdal is a homesteader and one of the pioneer residents of
Swede Prairie township, his farm consisting of the south half of the
southwest quarter of section 28 and the north half of the northwest 
quarter of section 33.  He has lived on the farm nearly thirty-five 
years and has a nice home.

The subject of this biography is a native of Iceland and was born April 
16, 1845.  Both his parents are buried in the Northland, his mother, 
Gudrun (Gudmundson) Westdal, having died in 1867, and his father, 
Gudmundru Westdal, having died in 1883.  Until he was twenty-two years 
of age Asgrimur worked for his father, herding sheep, putting up hay, 
etc., and for eight years thereafter he worked out.  When he was thirty 
years of age, in 1875, there was a volcanic eruption in that part of 
Iceland where the Westdals lived.  A big stretch of country was 
temporarily ruined by reason of its being covered with ashes, and 
everybody had to move.

This disaster was the occasion for Mr. Westdal seeking a home in the New
World.  He left his native land and located at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where
for eighteen months he worked in the woods, clearing land.  He then came to
the States and for the next eighteen months engaged in cutting cordwood in
Door county, Wisconsin.  In 1878 Mr. Westdal joined the Icelandic colony at
Minneota and spent the year working on the section and at the plasterer's
trade, part of the year working in the Icelandic settlement of Yellow
Medicine county.

In the spring of 1879 the father-in-law of Mr. Westdal took as a pre-
emption claim the south half of the southwest quarter of section 28, 
Swede Prairie township and died three months after making the filing.  
Thereupon Mr. Westdal took over the claim, changed the filing to a 
homestead, and in time proved up on the land.  He moved to the land in 
the summer of 1879, build a frame house 12 x 16 feet, and made his 
permanent residence there.  With the exception of short periods when 
he resided at Minneota to secure better school advantages for his 
children, Mr. Westdal has ever since lived on the farm.  Some years 
after taking the homestead he purchased from the railroad company eighty 
acres of land adjoining.

Mr. Westdal was married in Westerheim township, Lyon county, February 8,
1879, to Winnie Johnson, who was born in Iceland May 14, 1854, and who 
came to the United States and Minnesota in 1877.  Her parents were Rudolph
Johnson, who died  in Yellow Medicine county, and Margaret Johnson, who 
now lives with here daughter.

To Mr. and Mrs. Westdal have been born eleven children.  Three died in
infancy; the others are: Margaret, born July 7, 1880; Ludvig, born October
20, 1881; John, born February 3, 1883; Frank, born July 16 ,1884; Rudolph,
born March 10, 1886; Sophie, born July 10, 1891; Christine, born August 14,
1893; Bjorgvin, born August 25, 1895.  The family are Icelandic Lutherans.

Source: "A History of Yellow Medicine County" by Arthur P. Rose
Published 1914