Days of Yore

A collection of photos from rural North Dakota taken in the early 1900's

Shoe and leather repair shop A. A. Stockstad, Milnor, N.D. 1934 The shoe shop was operated by the lovely wife's great grandfather, grandfather and father. She has warm memories of playing in the shop while her father worked.
Sign from wall of shop
Durkopp sewing machine in shop (donated to the county museum in Foreman, N.D. some years ago) This was most likely a machine for stitching leather, not your average dress-making equipment.
Albert & Louisa Adermann and family, great uncle to the lovely wife. Young man is probably Ardele Skari Ray, North Dakota Two of these girls later died of TB within a couple years of each other. The third girl was an old maid, marrying when she was in her forties, possibly to the young man in the photo, since she is said to have married a Skari. The family also had a son who became a Methodist minister. These folks lived in a sod hut.
Stockstad Farm Southeast of Milnor, North Dakota Original photo was too long to display. This is the left side of the photo.. Her paternal grandfather is the man holding the horse on the far left. He also operated the shoe shop seen in previous photos.
Stockstad Farm Southeast of Milnor, North Dakota Original photo was too long to display. This is the right side of the photo.. The lovely wife's father is one of the boys in this photo. We suspect it is the young man holding the horse on the far right.
Building the road over South Hill This postcard shows work being done in the Milnor, North Dakota area just before World War I. The lovely wife's father is the small boy on the left of the photos, and he was born in 1904. Note that the road is being cut through a small hill, using horse-pulled scrapers.
This is the lovely wife's father, Rudolp, Rudy. This was a tiny photograph that I enlarged and enhanced. On the back is written "Rudy and his dog go for a ride". Note that the dog appears to be harnessed into a wire-wheeled cart of some sort. This has to be around 1907 or 1908, since my late father-in-law appears to be about three or four. Check out the fur coat on him. The lovely wife thinks it might be horsehair, but I think it's fur of some sort. Rabbit? Knit cap. The shoes look odd. The straw around the foundation means that it's winter.
This photo shows men attempting to clear Highway 13 in the winter of 1947-48, during which a certain wife of mine was born. Highway 13 was the major east / west route running parallel to North Dakota's sourthern border and about 20 miles north of it. To get to a hospital, this is the route folks from Milnor had to take. Note the chains on the truck. And... that it appears to be solid snow ahead of it.

These photos are from my lovely wife's family, German and Norwegian. They settled in Minnesota and North Dakota in the late 1800's,

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