Born: 26 Apr 1848, Trysil, Hedmark, Norway
Died: 9 Mar 1920, Fargo, Cass Co, ND
Buried: Osterdalen cemetery, Harwood twp, Cass Co, ND
Parents: Morten Paulson Grønnesset & Kari Larsdatter Mellemsgaard
Lars never married. He farmed in Section 28, Harwood twp, next to his brother Morten.
Excerpts from “Harwood Centennial, 1882-1982” p 99, 101, interview with Veeder Hoag
“Lars Mortenson used to ski to Fargo and carry back a hundred pounds of flour on his back….It was cross country..about eight miles.”
He lived in a log cabin which was removed when Interstate 29 was built.
“When I was a boy (Veeder Hoag) about 12 years I went over there. I was curious about that house… had never seen a log house before. So I knocked on the door and he told me to come in. He was real nice….We went in there and he took me all over but the whole walls were smoked black. He had pieces of bacon hanging there on the wall. He had a big coffee grinder, he was grinding coffee….He took me around and showed me all his gadgets. He was kind of an inventor. That location is right where the rest area is now…on 29. One of the last log cabins in the country. Where the rest area is now is right where the old grainery used to be.
On that was painted “Fargo-Dakota Territory 1873.””
“He took me down and he had a gadget there…he had a long timber about 60 feet long and then he had a pole set in the ground and he had a big bolt pounded through… at the end of that timber. He used it like a crane. He got on one end of it and he reached it up over to the hay rack and then he’d get a bunch of hay on it and then he’d get on the other end and he’d swing it around and put it on the hay stack. I never saw anything like it. He took me to a place where we were walking around and all of a sudden we dropped right down into the ground. We went down about 8 or 10 feet. I was scared to death. I was a kid, you know. And down in there he had a root cellar. I don’t know why but he had it fixed so that he’d go right down there on a kind of slide.
I remember when I was younger yet, we went down there looking for turkeys one day and my uncle and my dad and some of the women. We were walking along and I fell right down in the ground. At the river he made steps so he could go down to the river. He also had a post in the ground and he’d swing it down in the river and dip the water and bring it up. He was pretty smart and he had a building there and he opened the door and he had kept all the bones from all of his animals that died and he had a name on each bunch of bones. So this was from the white horse and this was from the bay horse. …And when he used to go on the road he didn’t have a buggy so he used a hay rake so he hooked the team on the hay rake and he’d drive to church. Way down to Osterdalen.”