My Genealogy Hound

EDWARD SANDSTED is a native of Sweden and was born in the year 1852. He is a son of Andrew Sandsted, who was also a native of Sweden, born in 1807 and died in 1889, a farmer by occupation, an industrious, useful citizen and a pious christian father. There were ten children in the family to which the subject of this sketch belonged, eight of whom reached maturity and six of whom are now living, the full list being — Mary, who was married to August Anderson and is now dead; Jane, who was also married to August Anderson, she becoming his second wife, and is also deceased; Charles, Magdalene, now wife of John Broman, and Frank; the last three being in Sweden; Alfred in Phelps county, Nebr., and Maurice in Harlan county, Nebr., and two that died in infancy.

The subject of this notice was reared in his native country to the age of sixteen, coming thence to America and settling in Knox county, Ill. After a residence there of four years, three years of which he worked as a farm hand, being engaged the last year as a clerk in a mercantile establishment, he came in 1872 to Nebraska and made his first stop in Adams county. In the fall of 1873 he went to Harlan county and took a homestead in Antelope township, and being then unmarried settled down to the bachelor life of the West, spending most of his time, however, with his brother who had preceded him to that county by one year. Becoming impatient at the slowness with which the country settled up, he decided to return East after a short time spent there, and did go back to the East; but soon struck for the West again, going to the Black Hills country of Dakota. Not liking it there he returned to Nebraska, settling on his claim in Harlan county. At the date he made his second settlement he had just 90 dollars with which to begin the arduous struggle of making a home on the raw prairie. He invested this in a yoke of oxen and a wagon and went to work with a will. He lived in Harlan county till 1883, gradually improving his fortunes, and then moved to Phelps county, where he purchased a farm in section 30, township 5, range 17 west, where he located and has since resided. He owns half of the above section, besides a quarter section in Thomas county, Kans., all of which he has well improved, most of it being under cultivation and well stocked, and all of which he has made within the last sixteen years, He is regarded as one of the most prosperous farmers of the locality where he lives, as well as one of the most intelligent and shrewdest business men. He has spent his entire time since coming West in farming and stock-raising and has been devoted strictly to his own personal affairs. He has had more than the usual hard experiences of the old settlers, having gone through every phase of frontier life, from a Black Hills miner to a prairie homesteader, and knows what it is to subsist on hope and fresh air. He went through the dry years, the grasshopper scourge, and he has had his crops destroyed by hail and his property by prairie fires. He has lived in a dug-out and a sod-house and has had for his only companions coyotes, antelope buffalo and Indians. He has hauled water and wood for miles and has gone to bed many times supperless.

In 1883, Mr. Sandsted, having got sufficiently far along in a worldly way to ask a lady to share his fortunes with him, married Mrs. Hanha Amelia Sophia Anderson, a widow who had one child by her first marriage, and who, like himself, came on to the prairies at a comparatively early day and saw some of the hardships and privations of pioneer life. This union has been blessed with five children — Lillie, born in 1884; Rosie, born in 1885; Earnest, born in 1886; Arthur, born in 1888, and Alfred, born in 1890. Mr. Sandsted wears the dog-collar of no political faction, being independent in politics as in all other things.