Dakota Datebook: Stork Derby

Jan. 1, 2019 — In the start of a new year, it is nice to step back and think about what has happened and what is to come. Many cities publish information summing up events and statistics of the old year. On the first day of 1948, the Fargo Forum published a forty-page newspaper, filled with description of the previous year’s progress and with predictions for the coming year in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

The baby boom was definitely well under way; among the top articles in the many, many pages, the Forum listed reports of increased population. The Cass county birth rate was up, and the divorce rate was down, one article stated. Judging by gas and water connections, telephones and electric meters, though, not all of which had been installed, the city had grown by hundreds, even thousands.

Of course, with increased people, more places of business and residence needed to be established. The Forum claimed that residential construction hit five million dollars in 1947, and it showed no signs of stopping.

Therefore, it should serve as no surprise that the North Dakota baby derby, celebrating the first new baby born in the New Year, benefitted a West Fargo child, a girl born to the Mannes family at 12:25 a.m. on January 1.

But a baby boy was born at the exact same time in Minot, to the Wilson family.

“The 1948 stork derby in North Dakota will go down in the books as a two-way tie between the sexes,” the Bismarck Tribune stated.

It was an auspicious start to a new generation.

The Homesteader’s Son

by Ann Erling

Jan. 2, 2019 — In May of 1900, John Link bid farewell to his native home in Bohemia and set sail for America. Like many immigrants before him, John settled temporarily in the east where he was able to find work in a textile factory in Massachusetts. After many years of working, John had saved enough money to send for his childhood sweetheart, Anna.

In 1906, John and Anna Link traveled west where they homesteaded in McKenzie County, North Dakota near the town of Alexander. Who would have known that this hardworking Bohemian homesteader would raise a son who would go on to become a North Dakota governor?

And so on this date in 1973, John Link congratulated his only son on becoming North Dakota’s newest governor.

Although unable to attend the inaugural ball, John Link was present at a dinner held by Governor Arthur A. Link at his new home. Upon seeing the Governor’s executive residence, the 94-year-old North Dakota homesteader exclaimed, “Some homestead shack you’ve got here.”

Pierre Bottineau

by Merry Helm

Jan. 4, 2019 — Bottineau County was created on this date in 1873 and was named for a mixed-blood guide, Pierre Bottineau, sometimes referred to as the “Kit Carson” of Dakota.

One of Bottineau’s notable expeditions was in 1862, when he guided a wagon train of 117 men, 13 women and 50 soldiers from Fort Abercrombie to the Montana gold fields. They averaged 16 miles a day and had to build a log bridge to cross the Sheyenne River. A young couple fell in love and got married, a mule drowned crossing the Wintering River, one woman had a baby, a wagon tipped over, women washed clothes and baked bread, and on Sundays, one of the men read the Episcopal service. At one point, a number of Assiniboines threatened them, but Bottineau and his son shot some buffalo cows for them, and they were allowed to move on.

After many years of service, a group of important Minnesota leaders petitioned Congress in 1879 to give Bottineau a pension for all he had done for them.

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org, or subscribe to the “Dakota Datebook” podcast.