olseno
Transcribed from "An Illustrated History of The Big Bend Country, embracing
Lincoln, Douglas, Adams and Franklin counties, State of Washington",
published by Western Historical Publishing Co., 1904.
OLE OLSEN, a prominent Davenport
farmer, was born in Norway, near Bargen, April 23, 1852, the son of Ole
and Bertha Olsen, and the second of a family of eight children.
In the spring of 1867 he came with his parents
to Quebec, Canada, and from that country to St. Paul, Minnesota.
His father removed soon afterward to Douglas county, Minnesota, where he
was one of the first to locate a homestead, and where he lived until his
death. Ole Olsen, our subject, followed rafting on the Mississippi
river for a year, when he engaged in construction work for the Southern
Pacific railroad between Shrevesport, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas, and
was also for a time in Kansas and Nebraska. He came to San Francisco
in the spring of 1875, and spent a year in California then came to Puget
Sound, and from that section to Walla Walla, where he worked on the construction
of the old Baker and Boyer railroad. He later went to Lewiston, Idaho,
where he worked for wages, and to near Genesee, Idaho, where he took a
preemption. In the spring of 1880 he came to where Davenport now
stands, and filed a homestead ten miles north of that point. He was
one of the first settlers in this county, thus had one of the first chances
at the open land and selected an exceptionally desirable tract. He
came here with three yokes of oxen, and for two years followed breaking
prairie land and logging. He was the first farmer to thresh a crop
of grain in this vicinity, and built the first barn in this neighborhood,
the lumber for which he hauled from the vicinity of Medical Lake.
He makes a specialty of raising grain.
December 30, 1885, at Sprague, Washington,
Ole Olsen was married to Matilda M. Kartak, a native of Bohemia, daughter
of Thomas and Antonia (Porak) Kartak, who are now living in Sprague.
This union has been blessed by three children: Oscar Edgar, aged sixteen
years; Arthur Thomas, fourteen; and Nellie M., eleven.
Mr. Olsen has a comfortable home in Davenport
where he resides during the school year in order to give his family the
advantage of the Davenport schools, but in summer the family resides on
the farm.
He is a member of the Loyal Americans franternity,
and a well-to-do and highly respected citizen.
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