My Gudbrandsdal Roots

Many of the early settlers at Milan and Watson came through the Highland Prairie Settlement on their way west in the state of Minnesota. The church was very important in these early settlements with some of the pastors and members helping locate land for coming emigrants, even exploring and publishing information about travel routes to follow and where people might find land to settle or available work. In addition to expressing their love of God, the church service was a social function where these early settlers could visit, share ideas and become better acquainted.
 

Ole Tiegen was 21 years old and single when he became the first of my mothers' family to leave his home in Kvam, Norway to find land for many in his own family, besides other relatives and friends. He set off in 1866 on his long trip across the ocean to New York, (app. 7 weeks) by rail north, through the Erie Canal going west, through Wisconsin, into the corner of Iowa, through Highland Prairie and North to Olmstead County. He probably spent the first winter in the Highland Prairie settlement in Fillmore County as some of the members of that church became his neighbors in 1870 and many settlers in the later years came through Highland Prairie and spent a year or two there on their westerly travels.
 

Ole's brother, Fredrick Teigen, wife Ronnaug (Klefstad) and young family, Hans age 9, Austin age 7, Amund age 5, and Fredrick age 3, Ole and Fredrick's sister Randi Teigen age 20 and the Hagenstad's emigrated the next year (1867). The Hagenstad family consisted of Hans age 57, his wife Barbro 54, daughter Ane age 23, Iver age 19, Tollev 15, and Ingeborg ll. (Not listed on the departure list from Kvam was Hans Jr. born in 1834 or 33 years of age.) They all either joined Ole Teigen in Highland Prairie or near Byron in Olmstead County. There was work available in this area near Rochester breaking land and also on the rail line, but most of this land was also taken.
 

In the Spring of 1869, Ole Teigen, Fredrick and Ronnog (Klefstad) Teigen and 4 children Hans, Austin, Amund and Fredrick (their youngest, one year old Marit died on the ocean trip to America), Randi Teigen, Hans Hagenstad Sr., Hans Hagenstad Jr., (later - married Randi Teigen) and Iver Hagenstad left Olmstead County heading west to take the lower Minnesota Valley Trail northwest along the Minnesota River with 4 covered wagons pulled by oxen. The men walked most of the way and the women and the young children rode in the wagons. These wagons were common lumber wagons covered with a hood of canvas rigged as emigrant wagons loaded with most essential foodstuffs, cooking utensils, clothes, tools, and implements. They stocked up on supplies at New Ulm - the last place to purchase them on their way west. There were no bridges across the rivers and creeks, only natural fjording places. Often they traveled in the spring when the water was high so they would have to camp and wait until the flood receded. When the 4 Teigen-Hagenstad emigrant wagons came to Chippewa County, they wanted to cross the Minnesota River. They found a place to cross a short distance west of the Camp Release monument site. They cut down elm trees, split them and made a raft. They ferried their wagons over the river while they made their oxen swim across. They had no more than accomplished this risky feat successfully when their already too water-logged raft sank to the bottom of the river.
 

Locating one's homestead and getting it filed was not an easy feat. The earliest homesteaders often picked out their land nearest the rivers, creeks and timber. The Teigens and Hagenstads chose land northwest of the present Watson, Minnesota although that railroad town was not established until many years later.
 

Most of the pioneers never seemed to forget their first nights and days spent on their homesteads. Many spent their first nights in their wagons or would put two wagons together. Some even wintered in their wagons. Time between meals was then often very long. For fuel for cooking they had to gather dry slough grass and dry prairie stuff or whatever they could find that would burn. They had no oil or gasoline burners, no coal or electricity, not even wood for a stove. They twisted the slough grass into hard ropes or knots and when dry enough and there was enough of it kept a fire going fairly well under a kettle but too often it furnished more smoke than heat. The want of fuel was soon overcome by the pioneers in the Watson communities who lived close to the timber and had oxen and wagons. A small number of people had both homesteads and timber lots.
 

These early settlers had to live simple, primitive and strenuous lives. Because of the scarcity of trees, there were few log cabins. Some had hewn logs for a floor; others no floor at all. The farther the families lived from the groves the less they could depend on wood for shelter. They had to use what nature provided, dirt or the sod. First a search was made of the steepest hill site, preferably one facing south. They would make dugouts in the side of a hill or the side of a ridge of land. They were merely dirt cellars, 10 or 15 feet square with a pole, brush, hay or sod roof. A ridge pole was placed at the proper height over the excavation according to the direction the ridge was intended to point. Wooden poles, mostly ash and elm, were then notched deeply to fit and bite over the ridge pole, and these were laid as closely together as possible. Fine brush, course slough grass and fine prairie hay was spread to form a covering over the entire roof, and on top of that a coat of sod cut with a spade or breaking plow was laid. Two dugouts of exactly the same design could not be found. They were all built according to the environments, inventive ability, and means of their owners. The dugouts were warm habitations where the roofs were airtight and waterproof. They were sort of difficult to locate even on moonlit nights when visiting after the days work. They kind of had to be stumbled over in order to be found. All of a sudden a tiny beam of candle or lamp light would twinkle out of the ground and the visitor would know he had arrived at his destination. There was hardly ever anything but dirt or clay floors in the dugouts. Many of the houses on the level prairie were built of the sod itself, laid piece on piece after the manner of laying bricks. These proved durable and were in use by some for several decades later. There wasn't much room inside the cabin. What little furniture there was usually home made. Stoves were a luxury, the cooking being done for the most part over an open fire, in iron kettles. Bread, so-called, a mixture of flour and water, was cooked in a frying pan.