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.
April 13, 2025
Knute and Gunda Byfuglien celebrated their 50 th wedding anniversary in 1977, and this story was published in the Roseau
Times-Region.
Mr. and Mrs. Knute [Dokken] Byfuglien say that a couple must learn to “work together, respect one another and trust one
another,” to make a marriage go. They know what they are talking about for Sunday they observed their 50 th wedding
anniversary at an open house which drew hundreds.
Knute, who came to Roseau County with his folks when he was two. (“We came on a stage coach from Portland, N. D. and
the driver swore all the way,” his parents told him), grew up on a homestead here. Mrs. Byfuglien was born North of
Roseau and was three when the family moved to Ross where they farmed. Both are used to hard work.
“I’ve milked cows since I was six,” Mrs. Byfuglien said. Knute has farmed all his life.
She laughs when she remembers how they met. “We were playing games at the school house and he stood in the door. I
thought I’d walk past him and pretend I was walking home.” When she started out the door, Knute invited her to a dance
North of Roseau Lake. She accepted and remembers that Olaf Arneson was playing the accordian at the dance which was
the beginning of their romance. Julia Arneson was teaching at the school which they had left.
“Then it was hit and miss for two years,” Mrs. Byfuglien laughed. Knute ended the uncertainty when he told her he
thought they should be married. They were wed October 22, 1927 at Moe Lutheran Parsonage by Rev. E. P. Dryer with
Gilmore Dokken, her brother, and Bertha Davidson as witnesses.
Knute was on the home farm and they lived there with his folks for a year before moving to a farm he rented a mile North
of Ross. They started farming there with horses (Knute remembers using oxen as a boy on his folks’ farm) and two years
later getting his first tractor, a 10-20. “I said I couldn’t afford it but they came back the next day and said all I had to pay
down was the freight. That was $25 so I took them up on it,” he said. “The first day I seeded 120 acres of flax … with horses
I would have made about ten and would have been on the drill all day.”
They raised chickens, turkeys, sheep and cattle with Mrs. Byfuglien continuing her milking chores. Knute built the store in
Ross in 1927 and remembers how rain caused a flood at the place that year. He ran the store with his sister (now Mrs. Olaf
Arneson) for a year before renting it to her and later selling it to her.
The Byfugliens recall hard times in those years. “One summer farming was so poor I went on the road with four horses and
a freznel. I hauled cream from Ross to Fox with a team and wagon and made ice in the winter for the creamery at Ross,”
Knute recalled. Mrs. Byfuglien remembered when, “we didn’t even have two cents for a stamp to mail a letter.”
Knute also cut cordwood for $1 a cord in winter and hauled wood to the creamery. “But we were never hungry. We always
had plenty to eat,” he mused. They did their own butchering and, Mrs. Byfuglien said, “I wouldn’t brag about my gardening
but we had food.” Knute emphasized that she has always been a good cook.
Mrs. Byfuglien cooked for 17 days for a threshing crew and had to go home, bake, bring the bread back, cook the meals,
take care of her milking and chores. “The young people today, if they had to do what we did, would never put up with it”
she shook her head.
She remembers looking for the cows for four hours one night, stumbling through the dark but not quitting until she had
them safely home.
Their children were born on the farm they first rented: Vivian, Kenneth, Robert and Bernice who died at two months. They
went to school in Ross (with good lunches packed every morning) and they always found their mother at home when they
came from school. “If I hadn’t been home they would have been hollering ‘mama’ all over the place,” she smiled.
They moved to their present farm in 1938 where Knute bought a half-section and rented more. They began with cattle and
all the other stock farmers raised in those days. “We milked up to 21 cows at one time,” Mrs. Byfuglien said. “Things were
never dull around here.”
She remembered that the “place was ready to fall apart when we moved here.” But they fixed it up and kept improving
the farm. “I graduated from the cows last summer and now I don’t have a chicken on the place any more,” she laughed.
“We buy our eggs, milk and cream now.
Knute remembers that for 12 years they didn’t have a crop on the farm because of wet weather. “But somehow we got
our taxes paid … I guess the milk cows pulled us through.” They still have over 400 head of cattle but they are beef cattle.
He remembers borrowing money each spring to seed the land, hoping for a crop. “We even threshed the first part of
December one year.”
Knute has belonged to the Farmers Union, Farm Bureau and NFO and also served on the town board for 24 years. He has
been a member of Concordia Church in which he was confirmed (also in Norwegian) at Pinecreek and has been a member
of Concordia since their marriage.
They both like to travel and have been to California eight times and to Norway twice. Mrs. Byfuglien likes to bake and cook
and keep her flowers and a garden.
Knute likes to farm and he is still doing so, seeding in spring and harvesting in fall. He also likes to hunt and fish, “And I
hate to clean fish,” Mrs. Byfuglien laughs.
Mrs. Byfuglien has been correspondent for the Times-Region since 1965 when she was asked to take over for a while for a
lady who went to California. “She got married out there and I’ve been correspondent since,” she said.
They have 13 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren whom they are proud of and who make them realize how fast
the 50 years have gone by.
“We were never promised a bed of roses,” she says, but hard work has kept them healthy, happy and looking forward to a
continued happy life together.
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for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.