Jensens, Part 6: First year in America

Jacob and Ingeborg likely landed in New York and then immediately took the train west. On their emigration documents in Norway, they listed their destination as Sioux City, as that's as far as the train could take you in 1869.

There's no doubt that Jacob's main goal was to homestead and farm the land. The Homestead Act of 1862, allowed someone to stake a claim on 160 acres of free federal land. Any adult citizen, or someone intending to be a citizen (see Jacob's intent to become a citizen and denouncing the King of Norway) only had to pay a small registration fee then live on the land for five years, and it was theirs.

Jacob chose his 160 acres near the town of Hudson, South Dakota, which is south of Sioux Falls and near Canton. Hudson was first settled in 1868, so it was a brand new area with few supplies. There are many recollections by pioneers that talk of the eerie silence on the prairie. They say that before settlements really grew, it was so quiet that there weren't birds or insects beyond mosquitoes.

By the time they moved from Sioux City to South Dakota in 1870, they had their first child - a girl named Johanna.

Photo: Pearl Street in Sioux City, 1866

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