KRISTEN LARSEN.
It is a pleasure to record in this history the admiration in which are held the law-abiding citizens who come to our shores from sturdy little Denmark. These people belong to one of the most industrious nations in the world; they are neither afraid nor ashamed to take up that which is first offered as a means of honest livelihood. They are not slaves to the social conditions, thus maintaining that independence of thought and action which give them distinctive individuality.
Kristen Larsen, farmer and stockman, of Douglas township, Audubon county, Iowa, was born on August 15, 1863, in Denmark. He is a son of Lars Larsen and Anna (Christiansen) Larsen. His early education was secured in the country schools of his native land. He left school at the age of fourteen and worked on a farm in that country, until he was twenty-nine vears of age. Being ambitious, he made up his mind to see something of the world, as well as to seek a field offering more advantages than he could find in the land of his birth. On coming to America, he landed at New York, thence direct to Audubon county in 1891. He worked on a farm for one year, at the end of which time he bought a farm of one hundred acres, for which he paid twenty-seven dollars an acre, in section 19, Douglas township. He sold this property in 1899, and moved to section 29, where he bought one hundred and twenty acres, and in 1907, he bought one hundred acres about one mile west of his place, and in 1911 bought eighty acres one mile north of his home, for which he paid one hundred and fifty dollars an acre. The improvements on the place have cost Mr. Larsen about ten thousand dollars. His principal crops are corn and small grain, the corn averaging about sixty bushels to the acre, and the small grain about thirty-five bushels to the acre, the most of which is fed to the stock raised on the place. Mr. Larsen offers for sale each year about one hundred head of hogs and one carload of cattle, all of which are of an extra good grade of stock. He is a member of the Danish Lutheran church, and holds the offices of school director and trustee at the present time. In politics, he is a Republican.
Lars and Anna (Christiansen) Larsen, parents of our subject, were born in Denmark, where they were also married, and were the parents of three children: Hannah, Gertrude and Kristen. The father was the owner of a small farm in Denmark, where he lived and died. He was in the German Danish War of 1848.
In 1890, Mr. Larsen was united in marriage to Christina, daughter of Lars Jensen, of Denmark. They are the parents of eight children, namely: Lawrence, Louis, Anna, Katie, Mary, Arthur, Lilia and Otto, all of whom are still at home, with the exception of Anna, who became the wife of Martin Larsen. Thev reside about a mile from her father's home.
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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. 506-507.
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