Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/1096

 918 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY J., married to Gust Anderson, of Featherstone ; William (de- ceased); Ethel,, of Minneapolis; Albert, Jr., living at home; Edward, of Minneapolis; Mabel, at home; Helen, at home; Arthur, at home; and Cyrus and George (deceased)." Mr. Hardy has been in Goodhue county for twenty-five years. Eleven years he spent in Douglass county. He has a farm of forty-seven acres in Featherstone township and rents 200 acres, where he carries on general farming and dairying, keeping from fifteen to twenty cows for the purpose. He is a member of the G. A. R. Post of Red Wing and is a Republican in politics. He and his family are members of the Methodist Episcopal church. J. A. Edstrom, whose father was the second man to take up land in Leon township, has been town clerk twenty-three years, county commissioner six years, assessor four years, and has held school office since nineteen years of age. He carries on general farming as he has for many years past, owning 485 acres, 135 of which is in Leon township. The subject of this sketch was born in the province of Smaland. SAveden, July 12, 1818, son of M. A. and Mary E. (Jackson) Edstrom, who first located in Illi- nois, and one year later came up the Mississippi by boat to Red Wing, May 11, 1855, at that time a pioneer village. There they lived on the levee in tents for some weeks, and then came to Leon township and pre-empted 160 acres on Section 21, where they erected a cabin and started bringing the wilderness under- cultivation. The Edstrom s were true pioneers, and had many thrilling experiences. In the winter of 1856, 200 Sioux camped near the farm, and though carefully watched stole hay and pro- visions, and even helped themselves to seed corn which the fam- ily was carefully hoarding for planting the following spring. During the first years of their residence in Leon the Edstroms hauled grain to Red Wing by ox team, and on one occasion, when the family provisions were running low, the father shouldered fifty pounds of flour and carried it all the way from Red Wing to the homestead, a distance of twenty-two miles. M. A. Ed- strom did some carpenter and blacksmith work, but devoted the greater part of his life to farming. He died January 18, 1890, and his wife preceded him to her grave, September 12, 1887. J. A. was educated in the primitive public schools, was brought up on the farm, and has always made farming his business. He was married in 1872 to Matilda Magnusson, daughter of C. M. and Ellen Magnusson, natives of Sweden, who located in Goodhue county in 1865, and in Leon township in 1867. Her father died in 1908, at the advanced age of ninety years, and the mother passed away in 1904. The three children of Mr. and Mrs. Edstrom are : A. M., who has been a merchant, but now is farming at Randolph; Agnes, who for some time attended the Red Wing