JENS LARSEN.
Among the highly-respected citizens and retired farmers of this county, is Jens Larsen, who formerly owned a splendid farm of a hundred and twenty-one acres in Sharon township, which he sold in 1912 for one hundred and fifty-five dollars an acre. After selling this farm he retired and is now living in Kimballton, this county, in a splendid modern home which he has lately built.
Jens Larsen was born in Denmark on June 9, 1849, the son of Lars and Kirsten Jensen, both natives of Denmark, who came to America in 1882, and spent their last days in the home of one of their sons in Sharon township, this county. They were members of the Danish Lutheran church and reared a family of nine children, whose names follow in the order of their birth: Hans, a retired farmer of Kimballton; Jens and Maria (twins), the next born, of whom the former is the subject of this sketch, and the latter is the wife of Peter Rassmussen, of Elk Horn; Kirsten, who died in Chicago; Chris, who lives in Sharon township; Stena, deceased; Louisa, who married Hans Larsen. of Sharon township; Anders, a farmer in Sharon township, and Anemaria, who married Anton Peterson, of Elk Horn.
After attending the common schools of his native land, Jens Larsen began to make his own living at the age of eleven by herding cattle. Later he worked as a farm hand and in 1872, at the age of twenty-three, he came to America. For several years he worked at various places. In Wisconsin, Canada, Mississippi and Louisiana he was employed in railroad work, and for five years was located in Chicago, Illinois, where he had charge of the horses for the street car company at the Cottage Grove avenue barns. In 1880 he came to Audubon county and located in Sharon township, where he purchased eighty acres of land to which he later added an adjoining tract of forty acres. It was this farm that Mr. Larsen sold in 1912 for one hundred and fifty-five dollars an acre.
In 1876, in Chicago, Jens Larsen was married to Hannah Rassmussen, a native of Denmark. Eleven years after their marriage she died, and Mr. Larsen married, secondly, Carenstena Hansen, also a native of Denmark. To this union no children have been born.
Mr. Larsen is a Democrat, but has never aspired to office. He and Mrs. Larsen are members of the Danish Lutheran church at Kimballton, and both take a lively interest in the church work, being held in high esteem by their neighbors. Having started in life as a poor boy, with no financial assistance and without help of any kind, Mr. Larsen has worked hard to achieve a competence and has supplemented personal labor by careful and wise management of his business. He is a fine man to meet; is well known and enjoys the confidence of a host of friends in Audubon county.
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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. 572-573.
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