These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
May 11, 2025
One of the first residents of Pinecreek, Minnesota, was a little girl named Aase Besserud. She would’ve
been about 5 or 6 years old when she came with her parents, Thor and Kari Besserud, and her older sister
Mari. The Besseruds had immigrated from Norway and lived in North Dakota for several years before
coming with others to homestead in Pinecreek.
In 1971, when Aase was 87 years old, she was interviewed by Maggi Adams of the Roseau Times-Region.
Here’s that story.
The sun flickered on the snow, casting winter shadows by the house at Pinecreek. Bill and I entered to
greet Aase Madson. (Aase is a name which goes back to the days of the Vikings. Peer Gynt’s mother’s
name was Aase.) An enormous black fluffy cat named Suzy looked at us from her comfortable curled up
position on a chair. Her yellow-green eyes indicated we could sit down.
Mrs. Madson was seated next to a table filled with beautiful plants which obviously enjoyed growing
there. Enormous purple violets and red geraniums were reaching for the ceiling. I admired the pink plant.
Mrs. Madson said, “My Adeline Begonia is not in the catalogs anymore. But that is my work. I sure love
flowers.” It was obvious the flowers returned that love.
She pointed to two quilts she had made. I unrolled them and admired her work. “I make a lot of quilts. I
make one for the Pinecreek Ladies Aid every year. Piecing is what I like best. I had a Norwegian pattern
which I used to call the Beggars Quilt. It must have had 10,000 pieces in it, she said. “I make my own
clothes, too, and used to make mittens and stockings for Penneys for sale. I would make 30 pair every
Fall. I haven’t any good spinning wheel now, but I used to card my own wool.”
She showed us a see-through plastic sewing kit she had received for her birthday. “I could even use it for
carrying a lunch,” she smiled. “I used to do a lot of crocheting, but I don’t get rags now. They used to
have wide skirts which I would find at rummage sales, but now the skirts are so short, there’s no
material.” She mused, “I wonder what I would look like in one of those short skirts.”
Aase Madson is 87 years young. She does her own baking and cooking, her own cleaning house with help
once a week, her own sewing, and takes care of flowers inside and outside. “I have all the flowers I have
room for,” she said.
Her stepdaughter Edna Nordengen said of her, “She is my mother, friend, pal, and companion. She is
always the same, always cheerful. Her father was a carpenter, and helped to build the Pinecreek church.
She loves to tell stories about the pioneer days and she has a lot of interesting things to tell.”
We asked Mrs. Madson about the early days.
“It was nice. Sometimes I think about how much fun I had. There weren’t very many families here, but
they kept on coming. When there was the Indian scare, I was five or six years old, maybe 7. That old log
house built of logs they cut to build a fort then. Father slept with a big rifle by his side. One old log house
was our schoolhouse. The Indian Chief Mickinock was a nice old man. He often came with a toboggan and
took us for a ride. In the summertime he had a sulky made out of wood, but we never rode on that. We
had one teacher from Warren. Sometimes the Indians would peek in the windows and the teacher was so
scared. She had never seen an Indian before. When we crossed the river in Ross, we went across on some
kind of a ferry, though I don’t remember just how that was, but the horses swam over. As to the Indians,
we never knew one to be mean. They came from the north after hunting and would want something to
eat, especially milk.”
Suzy, the cat, jumped on the table by the plants. Mrs. Madson said, “I’ve had Suzy five years. She’s lots of
company. I grow wheat in dirt for her, so she has something green. I also have a catnip plant. She’s
chewed it all up.”
I looked around the neat little room. She has a collection of china cats, photographs of her children and
grandchildren, a watercolor of a cabin painted by Edna, and a very modern painting in blue squares done
by “Clayton’s boy.” [her grandson]
Mrs. Madson enjoys television, especially Lawrence Welk, Perry Mason, and Dick Van Dyke. She enjoys
the Pig N’Whistle, and the Canadian Amateur shows. She also likes violin music. “Dad was a violinist,” she
said, “He made a violin himself, carved it and varnished it.”
She remembered a quilting bee when the ladies embroidered names on a quilt for 10 cents apiece, then
sold it for $20.00 when it was finished. She likes milk and dairy foods, and doesn’t think sweets are “too
good for you.” She feels the best thing about marriage is “when you can get along good.” Her only
problem is “getting stuff burned up in the wintertime,” for she doesn’t dare to go outside alone when it is
slippery.
She has been alone for “over twenty years now.” But Edna Nordengen, postmistress of Pinecreek “stops
by every day.” Another daughter, Mrs. Matt Burkel lives in Badger. Melvin and Clayton Madson, her sons,
were the first twins born in the old Roseau hospital. Her daughter Adeline Gunnarson is in St. Thomas,
North Dakota. Carl Madson is in California.
The shadows outside were growing longer as we said goodbye to Aase Madson. A part of a poem came to
me: “We who were born In country places Far from cities And shifting faces We have a birthright No man
can sell And a secret joy No man can tell.”
That was the end of Maggi’s story. I looked up her biography in the Pinecreek Ladies Aid history, which
told a little more about her.
Aase had married Christ Madson, a widower with two children, in 1917 in Velva, North Dakota. In 1919,
they came to Pinecreek and bought what was the Besserud home. Mr. Madson passed away in 1946 after
a long illness followed by a stroke. Mrs. Madson tenderly cared for him during that time. Some time after
Maggi’s interview, Aase moved to St. Thomas, North Dakota to live with her daughter Adeline and her
husband. She died on September 26, 1974, at the hospital in Grafton following a stroke. Just two and a
half months later, Adeline’s husband also died. Aase is buried at the Pinecreek Cemetery.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.