Buena Vista County, IA
USGenWeb Project

Dr. S. G. Nordstrom, who for more than a quarter of a century has successfully engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery, being now located at Sioux Rapids, was born in Henry county, Illinois, November 8, 1869. His parents, Samuel and Magdalena Nordstrom, were both natives of Sweden, coming to America in 1840, in which year they settled in Galesburg, Illinois. There they resided until 1866, when they removed to Andover, Henry county, and later to Webster county, Iowa, the father purchasing government land near Dayton, for which he paid a dollar and a quarter per acre. Not a furrow had been turned nor an improvement made upon the place, but with characteristic energy he began breaking the sod and tilling the soil. He was a blacksmith by trade and while developing his farm he also carried on the smithy at Dayton. There he spent his remaining days, reaching the advanced age of ninety-one years, his death occurring in 1906. The mother died in 1897 when seventy-seven years of age, her death resulting from an accident. The Nordstroms come from a long lived race, an aunt of our subject now living in Jasper county, Iowa, at more than one hundred years of age. The brothers and sisters of F. G. Nordstrom are: Nels Peter, now deceased; John, a druggist at Dayton, Iowa; Frank, who is a train conductor in New Mexico; Helen, deceased; Anna Matilda, who resides in California; and Clara, who has also passed away.

After mastering the early branches of learning in the public schools Dr. Nordstrom became a student in Drake University at Des Moines, Iowa, and having thus acquired a good literary education to serve as a foundation for professional knowledge he became a student in Rush Medical College in Chicago, in 1881 and took a course in an Ohio College, the Electic Medical Institute from which he graduated in 1888. He then opened an office in Dayton, Iowa, where he remained until 1889 when he went to Omaha, Nebraska, practicing in that city for one year. In 1890 he arrived in Sioux Rapids, where he established a lucrative practice and became known as one of the most skillful and successful physicians of the northwest. In order to still further perfect himself in his chosen calling he pursued a post-graduate course of study in New York city in 1895. Reading has also kept him in touch with the trend of modern methods in medical and surgical practice and his labors have been attended with gratifying success.

On the 1st of June, 1898, Dr. Nordstrom was married to Miss Nellie E. Burnham, a daughter of Rollin and Laura (Judson) Burnham, the former a native of New York and the latter of Connecticut. They arrived in Iowa in 1870, settling in Hardin county and in 1872 removed to Storm Lake. Dr. and Mrs. Nordstrom have an infant child but lost their daughter Harriet, their first born, at the age of seven years.

The Doctor belongs to Ashland Lodge, No. 111, A. F. & A. M., of Fort Dodge, and also the Elks of that place. He attends the Congregational church and gives his political support to the republican party. His life has been well spent in the faithful performance of the duties which each day brings and in his professional career he manifests not only a laudable ambition to obtain success coupled with an interest in scientific investigation but also that broad humanitarian spirit without which the medical practitioner never gains highest rank.