MARINUS NIELSEN.
Marinus Nielsen, farmer and stockman of Douglas township. Audubon county, Iowa, was born in Denmark. December 25, 1881. Mr. Nielsen is one of a family of nine children, the others being Christiana, Marie, Sena, Nickaline, Louis, Edmund, and two who are deceased. Besides Marinus, Louis and Nickaline are the only members of the family who are now living in this country.
Mr. Nielsen's career is not greatly different from that of many Danish lads, who have left home and friends behind to seek their fortunes in a new land He was compelled to quit school at the age of fourteen, and shortly after that he came to this country alone, remaining for two years in Hartford. Connecticut, where he had joined a sister. In 1899, at the age of eighteen vears, he came to Audubon county, and here he worked on a farm for seven years, or until his marriage.
After Mr. Nielsen was married he rented a farm in Sharon township for a year, and then purchased a hundred acres in that township. After owning and cultivating the farm for three years he sold out at considerable profit, and purchased a hundred and twenty acres of land in Douglas township, which he still owns. Altogether Mr. Nielsen has invested about three thousand dollars in various improvements made to this farm. Practically all of the farm is tillable, and practically all of it is in a very high state of cultivation. He feeds a great part of the grain he raises to stock which is kept on the farm, and sells about sixty head of hogs every year, besides a few cattle. In 1906, at the age of twenty-six, Mr. Nielsen was married to Olga Jensen, the daughter of Christian Jensen. Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen are the parents of five children, as follow: Jens, Otto, Avall, Elma and Rudolph, all of whom are living at home. Mr. Nielsen is extremely happy that the children may enjoy in this country educational advantages which are in every way superior to those which were available to him in the old country.
The Nielsen family belong to the Danish Lutheran church, and Mr. Nielsen is a Republican in politics. His value as a citizen is not so much in the part he has taken in the political and civic life of Douglas township, but in what he has done to improve his farm, and thus to increase its productivity. In fact, herein is the debt which the next generation will owe to these sturdy pioneers who have by careful methods of farming brought up the raw prairie to a high state of cultivation.
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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. 612-613.
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