Karen Horsley

11/11/2013: Good Samaritan homes exemplify "North Dakota Nice." In 1922, the Reverend August Hoeger saw the need for such a facility and opened the first in Arthur, North Dakota. His daughter Agnes was impressed by her father's example, and when she graduated from high school at fifteen, she entered college to prepare for work as a medical missionary. After ten years of study, she was ready. Dr. Agnes Hoeger traveled by land and sea for fifty-one days, then stepped off a ship in Madang, New Guinea on this date in 1935, beginning thirty years of medical work in that country.

6/9/2013: June 9 just might have been the day a bandit named George Trikk made his mark on North Dakota history.

2/6/2013: There had never been such joy at St. John’s Hospital in Fargo as there was on February 6, 1941. That’s the day Ella Brown gave birth to North Dakota’s first surviving quadruplets, a girl and three boys.

1/1/2013: On January 1, 1937, a man lay dying in St. Alexius Hospital in Bismarck. John Gresham Machen had never been to North Dakota until he stepped off a train into 20-below-zero temperatures a few days earlier. On Christmas break from teaching seminary courses, he was there to speak on his favorite topic, reforming the Presbyterian Church.

12/24/2012: Christmas was simple but memorable at Calvin, North Dakota in the era of World War One. In his book, I Remember, Russell Duncan relates how he and his father, on their way home from hauling grain to town shortly before Christmas, stopped near a clump of trees.

12/3/2012: On this date in 1909, Charles and Catherine Vanourny had been married only a day, but it’s unlikely they were honeymooning. They were, after all, frugal, hard-working Germans from Russia. A 31-year-old widower, Charles had homesteaded his 160-acre farm southeast of Ashley. His new 25-year-old bride, Catherine Geiszler, had the distinction of being the first girl born in McIntosh County.

11/29/2012: From 1887 to 1891, Bean Siding was an obscure little town three miles south of Gilby, North Dakota. It was named after S.S. Bean, who built an elevator on the Northern Pacific Railroad there. In 1892 the new postmaster, William Honeyford, renamed the town after himself. It reached a peak population of 75 in 1920, and only two people live there today.

11/6/2012: When Agassiz Elementary School opened a hundred years ago in Fargo, it was not without controversy. Located on Eighth Avenue South across the street from a corn field, some felt it was too far out in the country. Others were outraged that the $110,000 cost was three times the original estimate.

10/31/2012: If children were "trick or treating" in Minot in 1935, it’s doubtful Agnes Brown was paying much attention. Abandoned by her husband two days earlier, she gave birth on this date to their son, Dale Duward Brown. But Agnes did not feel sorry for herself. After Dale became a famous basketball coach, he recalled that she was never bitter toward the man who abandoned her. With only an eighth-grade education, she relied on welfare, babysitting and cleaning houses to make ends meet.

10/20/2012: It was about this date in 1916 near Calvin, North Dakota when six-year-old Russell Duncan noticed a snake skin in the grass as he herded cows to the barn for milking.