CHRIS H. CHRISTIANSEN
Chris H. Christiansen, who came to this country when a youth of nineteen, has enjoyed a successful and honorable career in his adopted country. There are few citizens living in Sharon township more widely known than Mr, Christiansen, and few who have a larger circle of friends.
An enterprising farmer, the owner of two hundred acres of land in Sharon and Douglas townships, Audubon county, Iowa, Chris H. Christiansen was born on December 27, 1861, in Denmark. His parents were Chris and Anna Marie Christiansen, both natives of Denmark, the former of whom was a laborer in his native land all of his life. Mr. and Mrs. Christansen had five children, three of whom are now living: Mrs. Mary Smith, Albert and Chris H., Jr.
Chris H. Christiansen, Jr., received his education principally in the schools of Denmark, and after completing his education, worked in the neighborhood of his home as a farm hand until he was nineteen years old. In 1880 he came to America and after an uneventful voyage across the Atlantic, he came direct to Audubon county and worked here as a farm hand for a few years. Out of his savings, he was subsequently able to buy eighty acres of land in Sharon township, the place upon which he now lives and for which he paid thirteen dollars an acre. Mr. Christiansen, however, has invested seven thousand dollars in improvements upon the farm. Ordinarily he raises, annually, seventy acres of corn, which in 1914 yielded sixty-five bushels to the acre. When he came to America, he had only about twenty-five dollars in money, and with this small nucleus as a starter, he has been able to acquire a substantial fortune.
In 1889 Chris H. Christiansen was married to Mary Petersen, the daughter of Hans and Anna Marie Petersen. The marriage took place about nine years after Mr. Christiansen had come to America, when he was twenty-eight years old. He and his wife are the parents of three children: Chris, Hans is deceased, and Anna. Chris married Christena Larsen and has one child, Maren Hilda.
For a young man, unacquainted with our language and our customs, who began working in this country for seven dollars a month, breaking sod and doing other hard and laborious work, the career of Chris H. Christiansen is a conspicuous success and a splendid example of what other young men may accomplish. When he first came to this country, his house, which was only fourteen by twenty-two feet, consisted of only two rooms and his barn was fourteen by twenty-four feet. Mr. Christiansen now feeds about seventy head of hogs each year, and the raising of hogs he has found to be very profitable.
Mr. and Mrs. Chris H. Christiansen are member of the Danish Lutheran church, of which Mr. Christiansen is a trustee. Politically, he is a Republican and has served as school director in his locality.
Chris H. Christiansen is wholly worthy of the confidence and esteem of the neighborhood where he lives. Mr. Christiansen enjoys this esteem and today he is honored and respected in the community where he has lived so long and where the people have had an opportunity to know what manner of man he is.
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Transcribed from History of Audubon County, Iowa Its People, Industries and Institutions With Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records of Many of the Old Families, by H. F. Andrews, editor, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Company, 1915, pp. 812-813.
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