Bio of Charles DAHN (b.1844), Yellow Medicine Co., MN

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CHARLES DAHN (1879)

Charles Dahn, Oshkosh township farmer, is one of the pioneers of the county
and a homesteader.  He is a native of the province of Pommern, Germany,
where he was born June 6, 1844.  His father, Joachim Dahn, died in Illinois
in 1903, at the age of eighty-one years, and his mother, Lena (Dragar) Dahn,
died in Illinois in 1904, aged seventy-eight years.

The subject of this review was brought up on a farm and resided in Germany
until 1876.  That year he crossed the water, followed a little later in the
same year by his parents.  The first home of Mr. Dahn in the New World was
Elgin, Illinois.  He worked there as a day laborer one year and for the next
two years farmed rented land near the city.

In October, 1879, Mr. Dahn left Illinois, determined to seek a new home in
the West.  That was the date of his arrival to Yellow Medicine county.  He
took as a homestead claim the north half of the northeast quarter of section
18, Oshkosh township, upon which he erected a 14 x 16 foot frame shanty, in
which the family lived many years.  Hardships were encountered by the family
during pioneer days.  During the memorable winter of 1880-81 they ran short
of provisions and fuel, and, like many other early day settlers, they
manufactured their own flour in a coffeemill and burned straw.  The Dahn
family lived on the homestead twenty-three years and them improved and moved
to the present home on section 17.  Mr. Dahn prospered, added to his
holdings, and became the owner of several farms, most of which he has given
to his children.

Mr. Dahn was one of those citizens of Oshkosh who brought about the
organization of the precinct, and for seventeen years he was township
treasurer.  He also served as constable one year and was a director of the
school board three years.  He and his family are members of the German
Lutheran church of Canby.

The marriage of Mr. Dahn to Fredericka Wolff occurred in Dundee, Illinois,
in 1876.  His wife was born in Hinter Pommern, Prussia, near the city of
Berlin, on May 5, 1851; she came to America the year before her marriage.
To Mr. and Mrs. Dahn have been born five children as follows: Minna, who was
born in the fall of 1876 and who died at the age of seventeen years; Anna
(Mrs. William Hulke), of Oshkosh township, born March 5, 1878; Lena, who
resides at home, born September 27, 1879; Otto, a farmer of Oshkosh
township, born April 2, 1881; and Emma (Mrs. E. Miller), of Lac Qui Parle
county, born in 1883.

Otto Dahn, the youngest son, is the owner of an improved farm in Oshkosh.
He was married in 1902 to Martha Hacker, who died in 1904.  He has one
child, named Gladys.

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