CARL M JENSEN.
In recalling the old saying that “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” we can certainly bear witness to the fact that it does not apply to the subject of this sketch, for he has been amply rewarded for the risk, if we may call it such, in leaving his mother country and casting his lot into the “melting-pot” of the world – America. In the community in which he lives, Mr. Jensen is more than comfortably provided for in this world's goods, and he is considered a man of wealth.
Carl M. Jensen, farmer, Douglas township, Audubon county, Iowa, is a son of Jens Jensen and Mary Kjin. He was born in Denmark, where he attended school until fourteen years of age, when he went to work on a farm in Denmark until he was nineteen years old. He served for a time in the army in his native country, after which he again went to work on a farm. At the age of twenty-two he came to this country, landing in New York, and came directly west, stopping in Chicago a short time, and then went to Clifton, Illinois, where he worked for an Irishman for the purpose of learning the English language. He worked for this man one year, then worked one year for the man's brother in the same town, going from that place to Harlan, Iowa, where he worked one summer in a brick-yard, after which he rented a farm in Shelby county, near Harlan, and lived there nine years. He then went to Erwin and rented a farm, on which he lived three years. Becoming dissatisfied with this location, he went to Audubon county in 1900, bought eighty acres of the place he now lives on, for which he paid twenty-nine dollars and fifty cents an acre, and the next fall bought another farm of eighty acres, paying thirty-five dollars an acre, and six years later, bought the balance of his farm for sixty-five dollars an acre, one hundred and ninety-nine acres in all. He has put about seven thousand five hundred dollars' worth of improvements on the place. In 1910 he built a new and modern dwelling, at a cost of four thousand dollars and has erected a waterworks on the farm. The principal crops are corn and oats. The corn averages about fifty bushels to the acre, and the oats about thirty-five bushels to the acre. He feeds about one car of cattle and one car of hogs each year. In addition to his farm work Mr. Jensen has served as school director. He belongs to the Baptist church of Shelby county, and is Sunday school teacher, collector and treasurer. He has always voted the Republican ticket. His parents were born in Denmark, where they both died and where his father was a farmer on a small scale. They had a family of nine children, namely: Stina, Christiana, Anna, Jens, Christ, Andrew, Selius, John and Carl N.
In 1882 Mr. Jensen was married in Denmark to Sena Rockdal, daughter of Andrew Rockdal, and they are the parents of eleven children, as follow: Carrie, Thorwald, Ella, Stella, Mattie, Anna, Evaline, Roy, Holgar, Levy and Arnold. Carrie became the wife of a Mr. Montgomery, and lives in California. Thorwald is in Oakfield township, Audubon county; Ella became the wife of a Mr. Peterson and lives in Shelby county; Stella was married to Dwight Teague and lives near Audubon; Mattie visited the Panama Exposition, 1915; Anna is married to a Mr. Jensen, and lives in Shelby county; Evaline is at home, where she attends the country school; Arnold and Levy work on their father's farm.
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Transcribed by Gunter Schanzenbacher, Waynesboro, PA, March 20, 2013 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. 509-510.
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