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.
June 1, 2025
In 1972, Emmett and Agnes Dahlquist celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. The Roseau Times-Region interviewed them and printed this story about their 50 years together.
Roseau was a pioneer village when they lived here. They went to school when the buildings were near the west end of town; grew up and just naturally started courting… and then married. Sunday, Mr. and Mrs. Emmett Dahlquist observed the 50th anniversary of that marriage and looked back on years when life was simpler and slower paced.
He had come here from Warren as a youngster with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. P. E. Dahlquist. She was born here to Mr. and Mrs. O. P. Gaukerud and can remember very well when Emmett rode by on a saddle horse when he was working with some broncos one day. At that time she thought of him as a “town person” … not realizing their paths were to converge for a half-century of marriage.
Emmett recalls that there were hardly any houses when they came here. A few livery barns …. a hotel, some stores and other structures. “There were no sidewalks,” he recalled with a chuckle.
Before they married he used to drive the doctors on their rounds in the county. He served Doctors Norin, Muir, Leech, Delmore. “I met Dr. Delmore at the depot,” he remembered. In summer he would drive their automobiles and in winter, horses with a cutter.
He recalls the flu epidemic very well as he used to get the doctor about 9:30 a.m. and they would go “full tilt” until 2:00 a.m. the next morning.
Once he even helped with surgery. “The doctor told me we had to do an operation that day. We went to the Elliot Hotel where a man who had shot himself in the arm while deer hunting was staying. I helped chloroform him and then helped the doctor when he took his arm off,” he grimaced.
Emmett recalls being caught in blizzards and rain storms. “We used to have the chains on the car all the time because there were no roads to speak of in those days,” he said. He also remembers when he made a trip to the Ingebrightsons at Wannaska when it was 60-below zero! “All we had was the cutter and only a little warmer in the jumper … but we made it alright” he said.
The Dahlquists, after their marriage, took residence in the home in which they still live. “It has been our home for 50 years,” Mrs. Dahlquist said. She revealed that their grocery bill that first year of their marriage was $12. “Things went a lot farther in those days … and we had our own meat and vegetables,” she emphasized. They used to get their flour at the flour mill in Roseau and like all young couples in those days, had to make things stretch.
Mrs. Dahlquist went to work for the independent telephone company in Roseau in 1917 and took over as chief operator when Mrs. Alley retired. She continued in that post until her retirement in 1957. “You know, I wish I was still at it … I miss it,” she confessed.
When she began work the equipment consisted of hand crank telephones and batteries. “We had to do it all … we had to change batteries, keep records and everything,” she remembered. Many times she traced down doctors in emergencies and performed the services old-time operators were just naturally expected to do. Now she is a member of the Telephone Pioneers of America composed of retired operators.
Emmett worked as a lineman for the telephone company for a time, but then went to work with Archie Lee full-time as a machinery salesman, a job he enjoyed immensely. “I can remember trading in a lot of horses for farm machinery,” the old horse-trader remembered with a twinkle. He worked for Archie Lee for seven years before they bought her parents’ home farm and began farming.
They raised grain and potatoes and kept the farm until selling it only recently to Curtis Skrutvold. They have both retired now but continue to enjoy life in Roseau.
Emmett has always had a love of hunting and fishing and is well known for his prowess as a fisherman. Not long ago he caught an 80-pound sturgeon on Lake of the Woods, and he recalls the battle with the big fish with relish.
He also loved to hunt deer and ducks, and one time, had a bear hunt turn out not quite as he expected!
Some ladies came to town saying they had been chased from a highbush cranberry site by a bear. Emmett and some friends went to get the bear and Emmett saw him sitting nearby in a field. He shot at the animal with a shotgun with buckshot and the bear did a flip … and came down on all fours running for Emmett. “I dropped everything, including the gun, and ran!” Emmett laughed. He said the bear “could really run,” but that he outdistanced the animal and ran all the way to the depot from near the Michal place where he had shot at the animal. “A tinsmith named Julius Tostenson shot the bear with a rifle as it ran past him, Emmett said. “Well … at least he couldn’t catch me!” he laughed.
He had a nostalgic gleam in his eye as he recalled when ducks were so thick “you could shoot all you wanted.” His wife, he said had “cooked a good many of them.” She had also invited his bachelor friends to come and eat with them many, many times, she added.
Emmett recalls many of the early Indian people here … like Chief Mickinock and Tom Lightning. “I even danced in the pow wows with them,” he chuckled. Once, when they had a pageant in Roseau, he dressed as an Indian and danced with them in the celebration. He and a friend used to hop a freight and go to Warroad where the Indians frequently gathered for dancing.
Mrs. Dahlquist has been active in the Ladies Aid and says, “I keep busy all the time.” She knits, keeps house and finds herself well occupied. Emmett likes to go fishing at any opportunity and also does a lot of reading. They enjoy visiting but think people were closer in the old days and did a lot more visiting than they do now.
He has been active in the Modern Woodmen of America Lodge in the past but belongs to no organizations now.
They are both in good health and are enjoying their life of retirement in Roseau. Their plans for the future consist of just enjoying their home of 50 years and the community and friends which have become so much a part of their lives.
That article appeared in November 1972 along with a photo of them after the open house in their honor at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Roseau the previous Sunday.
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