"History of Cottonwood and Watonwan Counties of Minnesota, 1916"



Andrew Gjertson was the son of Jert Royseth, a farmer and fisherman, of Norway, who was lost at sea when his son, Andrew, was thirteen years of age. The latter grew up on a farm and also took to the fishing boats. He married in his native land and in 1866 came to the United States with his wife and three small children to join a brother who had previously come to America and had settled in Madison, Wisconsin. When the tide of emigration began to flow to this section of Minnesota, Andrew Gjertson and his family came out here and located. He homesteaded eighty acres in section 10 of Madelia township and there established his home. He planted trees and otherwise improved his place and became a very substantial farmer, adding gradually to his holdings until he became the owner of a farm of section 3, and there he spent the rest of his life, his death occurring on November 22, 1891, he then being about sixty-seven years of age, He and his wife were members of the Lutheran church and their children were reared in that faith. There are ten of these children, all still living, seven having been born after the Gjertsons came to this country. Of these the subject of this sketch was the sixth in order of birth, the others being Peter, Marie, Belle, Helen, Elisa, Julia and Georgians The widow .Gjertson is still living on the old homestead place. She is a daughter of Etias and Marie (Unstad) England, natives of Norway, whose last days were spent in Minnesota, they having come here in their old age to join their children. Elias England was eighty-six years of age at the time of his death in 1890. John Gjertson was reared on the homestead farm, where he has always lived, and has been a farmer all his life. He received his schooling in the district school in the neighborhood of his home and remained on the farm, a valuable assistant to his father in the development of the same. In 1910 he bought the interests of the other heirs in the place and is now the sole owner of a highly improved and profitably cultivated farm of two hundred acres. The house, which was built in 1904, is lighted with electric lights and is equipped with bath, furnace, telephone and all the conveniences of a modern farm house. The barn, fifty-eight by sixty feet, built in 1893, also is electrically lighted and the other farm buildings, including a silo erected in 1912, bespeak the enterprise and the progressiveness of the owner. Mr. Gjertson, in addition to his general farming, has devoted considerable attention to stock raising and has done well in that line. Mr. Gjertson has given a good citizen's attention to local civic affairs and served as a member of the board of supervisors for six years, 1908-14. He is a member of the Lutheran church and is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern Woodmen of America, in the affairs of which organizations he takes a warm interest.

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