Nels Anderson Biography


	This biography is from "Memorial and biographical record; an illustrated
 	compendium of biography, containing a compendium of local biography,
	including biographical sketches of prominent old settlers and 
	representative citizens of South Dakota..." Published by G. A. Ogle & 
	Co., Chicago, 1899. Pages 404

	Scan, OCR and editing by Maurice Krueger,mkrueger@iw.net, 1998. 

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NELS ANDERSON. This honored pioneer and his excellent wife are numbered 
among the substantial residents of Ola township, Brule county, South 
Dakota. They have a good farm consisting of the northwest quarter of 
section 33 and the southwest quarter of section 28, which is supplied 
with comfortable buildings, a choice assortment of live stock, modern 
machinery, and all the appliances of the desirable country homestead. 
To the people of this section they are widely and favorably known, and 
their friends are many throughout the county. 

Mr. Anderson was born in Sweden, in 1854, and was only four years old 
when he lost his father, who was a farmer by occupation and spent his 
entire life in that country. Our subject was reared on a farm and 
educated in the country schools which he attended until fifteen years 
of age. After his mother sold the home farm, he operated a gristmill of 
his own until twenty-six, when he disposed of his interests in the old 
world, preparatory to coming to America. 

It was in 1880, that Mr. Anderson landed in Boston and proceeded at 
once to St. Paul, Minnesota, where a few days after his arrival he 
secured work on the railroad. In 1881 he came to Brule county, South 
Dakota, and secured one hundred and sixty acres of government land on 
the northwest quarter of section 33, Ola township, on which he erected 
a shanty, 12 x 14 feet. For three years he continued to work for 
others, one fall in Iowa, the remainder of the time near Brule village, 
South Dakota. On his arrival in Kimball he had but five dollars in 
money and one suit of clothes, but here he began life in earnest, and 
being industrious, ambitious and persevering he is now the owner of 
three hundred and twenty acres, of which two hundred are under a high 
state of cultivation and the remainder pasture and meadowland. Both 
farms are fenced and well improved, and are devoted to general farming, 
but since 1893 he has made a specialty of the raising of cattle. He is 
a successful farmer and the prosperity that has come to him is 
certainly justly merited. 

In 1893 was celebrated the marriage of Mr. Anderson and Miss Amelia 
Schumacker, also a native of Sweden, who came to America when young, 
and to them have been born three children, but George, aged five years, 
and an infant girl, Ethel, are the only ones now living. The parents 
are both earnest members of the Lutheran church, and politically, Mr. 
Anderson is identified with the Republican party. He has experienced 
nearly all the hardships incident to life on the frontier, and in 1888 
came nearly losing his life while out in a blizzard.