- HENRY SYLVANUS ANDERSON, merchant and postmaster at Bergen,
Rock County, was
- appointed by President McKINLEY, his appointment bearing
date of March 29, 1898, and the name of Postmaster-General James
H. GRAY.
- Mr. ANDERSON was born in Racine County, Wis., in 1864, and
is still a young man, with his
- life before him. He received his education in the old stone
school house still standing in Le Roy, Ill., leaving school,
however, at an early age, and he worked on his father's farm.
His first business venture was made at Ash-catering especially
to the needs of the lumber camps. He was engaged there for two
years, on the Great Northern railroad, and had a run out of St.
Paul, which he held for five years. In 1897 Mr. ANDERSON came
to Bergen, and bought a property consisting of a general store
and three acres of land in the corner of the State Line and Clinton
streets. He has carried on this business with marked success,
and built up a trade that promises still larger results in the
near future.
- On Oct. 7, 1892, Mr. ANDERSON married Miss Ann Emilia SKOFSTAD,
a daughter of Ole
- and Annie Melinda (ANDERSON) SKOFSTAD, farming people in
Boone County, Ill. Mr. and Mrs. ANDERSON are the parents of
two children, Peter Sylvanus and Ann Melinda. He belongs to
Lodge No. 92, I.O.O.F., at St. Cloud, Minn., where he joined
the order in 1894; and to the camp of the Modern Woodmen of America
at Clinton, Wis. He is a Republican, and in religious connection
is a consistent member of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, having
been christened and confirmed by Rev. Ole ANDREWSON, whose biography
appears elsewhere.
- Peter ANDERSON, the father of Henry Sylvanus, was born in
Norway Dec. 4, 1817 and died
- at his home in Boone County, Ill., April 20, 1898. He was
a farmer, and a man of more than usual force of character. His
wife, Sonva, born in 1822, in Norway, died in Englewood, Chicago,
in 1900, and her remains are interred in Bergen, Wis. Mr. and
Mrs. ANDERSON came to this country in 1849, after a voyage of
sixteen weeks on the ocean in a sailing vessel. They landed
at New York, and went from there to Albany, making the journey
from that point to Buffalo by the canal, and from Buffalo to
Milwaukee by the Great Lakes. They settled in Yorkville, Racine
Co., Wis., living there until 1868, when they moved to the Boone
County homestead.
- Mr. and Mrs. ANDERSON were the parents of nine children.
Their eldest son, Peter, enlisted
- in the Union army as a member of Company C, 15th Wis. V.I.,
and re-enlisted as a veteran in 1864. He served throughout the
war, was discharged, and died in 1879. Ole, their second son,
died the same year. Mary Ann married C. E. POWERS. Martin,
the third son lives on the family homestead. Henry S., the gentleman
whose name begins this article, is the youngest child of the
family. Four of the children died at an early age, three being
carried off by a cholera visitation that swept through this country.
-
- Taken from "Commemorative Biographical Record of
the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette Wisconsin"
(c)1901, p. 753.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
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