Anna Byberg Christopherson Goulson [1847-1918]

Anna Byberg was born in Byneset, Norway on December 3, 1847. She came to the territory of Wisconsin with her brother Ole and perhaps her sister Emma in 1868. She married a 35-year old Norwegian farmer named Lars Christopherson in LaCrosse Wisconsin in 1869 and likely traveled to their new homestead on the Chippewa River in west central Minnesota later that year. Lars probably built the dugout (perhaps with the help of neighbors) in 1869 or 1870, and Lars and Anna moved in and stayed there for nearly a decade, until Lars died in 1878. They had five children, but two died young, like Lars of scarlet fever. The next year, Anna married neighbor Hans Goulson, a second-generation Norwegian farmer; Hans and Anna lived in the dugout for at least another year, while a frame farmhouse was being built. The building was completed and the family moved in by 1881.