| Summary: | 1284 COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. ~3> ^^59- His father was Einar Acker, a farmer in iSorway, now deceased. The subject of this arti-cle was the fifth in a family of six children, and was reared to the age of fourteen years on a farm in Trondhjem, xSorway and attended the country schools. He began work on a railroad there when he was fifteen years of age, and from that time made his own living. He also worked in a paper fac-tory in that country. He married, in 1879, Miss Ingeborg O. Stilen becoming his wife. Her fa-ther was a farmer, and an old settler in South Da-kota. Air. and -Mrs. Acker have had three children, of whom two are dead, and one child, Elmer, is still living. He was born at Hillsboro, Traill county, Xorth Dakota, in i8gi. In 1885 Mr. Acker and his wife came to America, landing at Philadelphia and coming direct to Traill county, Xorth Dakota. There Mr. Acker rented land and farmed. He was com-pelled to buy machinery and a complete outfit for farm work, having nothing in the world but him-self and wife. He engaged in grain raising ex-clusively, and farmed there for twelve years, meet-ing with good success. In 1898 Air. Acker and his brother, Xels Acker, in company with Jorgen Haar and Air. Taylor, made a trip to the gold field of Alaska on the Yukon river. They traveled six-teen hundred miles on foot. They did some gold mining and found paying claims, but the Canadian government seized them. Alany a night the party slept on the snow and endured hardships and ex-posure. They spent about nineteen months on the trip, returning in October, 1899. In the spring of 1900 Air. Acker came to Pierce county, and settled in section 23, township 156, range 74, and at once began breaking his land. He had visited the county in 1894 and was not unacquainted with its resources. He has a fine piece of land .and will undoubtedly develop it into one of the most valuable farms in the county, as he is endowed with energy, perseverance and endurance, and is a good manager. He is thoroughly acquainted with North Dakota farming and is confident of success. GEORGE H. CAPES, a prominent citizen of Lincoln, Bottineau county, belongs to that great army that the British Isle's have nurtured and edu-cated, only to pour out upon the plains of America, to help in the conquest of the wilderness and the building of a great nation. He was born in Lin-colnshire, England, in 1861, and was brought to Canada by his parents when a child of two vears. Thomas Capes, his father, was a farmer, and was married to Aliss Alary Scrimpshaw, the daughter of a very prominent veterinary surgeon. Several members of the family, brothers of Air. and Airs. Thomas Capes, are eminent in professional circles in Cleveland, Ohio. George Capes is the third in a family of nine chil-dren born to his parents, and was reared upon a farm. There was much work and little play attend-ing the boyhood of a farmer lad in western Ontario at that time, and young George was ready to man-fully meet his duties. He had but a limited country school education, and at the age of twenty left home to make a way for himself. He bought a farm of a hundred acres, and for two or three years lived by himself and carried on farming operations on a considerable scale. In 1885 he sold out .and came to North Dakota to make a home for himself in a new country. In 1886 he settled in Grand Forks county where he found employment on J. AI. Hub-bard's farm and worked there for some two years to learn the manner of farming in Dakota, which seemed to him different from the East. Aleanwhile he had located a farm in Bottineau county, and in the summer of 1886 made his claims. He hired a few improvements put up, such as a claim shanty 12x12 feet. In January, 1888, he was united in mar-riage with Aliss Christina AIcHaney. She is of Irish parentage, and was born in Saginaw, Alichi-gan, where her father, Willjam AIcHaney, was a ship designer. She is the mother of four children : Lloyd W., Helen G., Cecil G. and Stella AI., all na-tives of Dakota. In the spring of 1888 he settled with his wife on the farm, and began its cultiva-tion in earnest. Oxen furnished his first motive power, and all his resources were fifty dollars of borrowed money. In 1888 he had .six acres of wheat, and this was destroyed by late frosts. He worked out at anything he could find to do, and this was as hard a year as he ever knew. For the next two years he had very fair crops, and in 1891 had a yield of twenty-three bushels to the acre, and put eighteen hundred bushels of wheat into his granary. Air. Capes has passed through every variety of experience that belongs to pioneering in the north-west, and is full of interesting narrations. In 1893 he bought his first span of horses. He now owns a farm of three quarter-sections, with about three hundred and thirty acres under improvement. It is well provided with buildings, a barn 40x60, a granary 24x36, a comfortable house and all needed machinery. He has eight head of cattle and eleven horses—and everything has come to him by hard work and economy. He is an independent voter, takes a lively interest in local affairs and school mat-ters, and has held numerous town offices. He be-longs to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Modern Woodmen of America, and is highly re-spected in every relation of life. ALBERT II. CHASE is one of the well-to-do farmers of Alorton county and has gained his pos-sessions by honest industry and judicious manage-ment. He was born in Lewiston, Alaine, April 2, 1858, and makes his home in township 140, range 90, in Alorton county. A portrait of Air. Chase ap-pears in this work. Our subject's father, E. H. Chase, was a carpen- Internet Archive
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