Anders Braatelien Pedersen was born October 5, 1838 and died December 27, 1919. Joran (Vatnas) Pedersen was born June 10, 1843 and died June 12, 1926. Both died in Wilkin County and are buried in the Oakland Cemetery, St. Paul, Minnesota.

ANDERS B. PEDERSEN

Anders B. Pedersen, proprietor of one of the finest farms of Wilkin county, resides in Rothsay, his farm lying within the corporate limits of that village. He is a man of wide experience and has prospered financially and has gained a high station as a business man and citizen.

Mr. Pedersen was born in Sigdal, Norway, in 1838, where his father was engaged in farming. The parents spent their lives in Norway. Our subject was reared on a farm and as his parents were not in easy circumstances he was early obliged to earn his own way. He served three years as an apprentice and learned the tailor's trade and then went to Christiania and served in the army artillery and spent two years in the regular army. He then returned to his home and followed tailoring and also engaged in farming, remaining there for about eight years. He came to America in 1870, landing in Quebec, and he came direct to Wisconsin, and later to St. Paul, where he lived ten years. He followed his trade there until the fall of 1879 and then bought a lot in Rothsay and erected a building, bringing the first lumber to the town, when the railroad was but graded. He opened a general merchandise store the same fall and the post office was then established and he was appointed the first postmaster. His family joined him in Rothsay in 1880. He began in a small store with a small stock and continued in this business until 1891, building up a good business. In 1889 he engaged in manufacturing a patent razor sharpener, and was connected with this factory at Fergus Falls for one year, when the business was moved to Duluth, and the firm was incorporated. He later sold his share of stock and withdrew from the company. He now devotes his attention to his farm, and owns two hundred and forty acres of land in Rothsay. He has good buildings and a fine grove on the place and has one of the best farms of the locality.

Mr. Pedersen was married in St. Paul to Miss Jorgen Watnaas, a native of Norway. Five children have been born of this marriage, two of whom are now living, namely; Selina, attending school; and Alice. Mr. Pedersen has held numerous local offices and is president of the village board and county commissioner of Wilkin county. He votes independent of party and lends his influence for good government and the upbuilding of the better interests of the community where he resides.35 page 450.

Anders B. Pedersen Also Termed “Founding Father of Rothsay”

Compiled by Dianne Snell, Sigdalslag historian

The Sigdalslag organization apparently does not have exclusive rights in claiming Anders B. Pedersen as its “Founding Father.” In an article published in the Fergus Falls (Minnesota) Daily Journal on September 27, 1954, A. B. Pedersen was also noted as the Founding Father of Rothsay, Minnesota in 1879, 32 years prior to the organization of Sigdalslag in 1911.
The article was authored by Olaf Braatelien, a nephew of A. B. Pedersen, and resulted from research for a talk he gave on Rothsay Pioneer’s Day in 1954. Olaf Braatelien was a resident of Crosby, North Dakota where he practiced law.

The newspaper article reads, in part:
The Old Settlers organization at Rothsay has awakened interest in early Rothsay and vicinity history. Some of the early pioneers, now long since dead, who did much for Rothsay but who have heretofore gone “unhonored and unsung” may now get some credit. Not that it can make any difference to them now but it is well that somebody should see to it that the grand examples these hardy pioneers set by their unselfish and immeasurable service to their community, now unwritten history, will not be lost in oblivion.
Rothsay came into being in 1879 and is now 75 years old, figuring the age from the time of the first settlement rather than from the incorporation as a village, which came later. Rothsay existed in reality and was much alive as a town for some time before the legal existence of the incorporated village.
Early Pioneer
A. B. Pedersen, or Anders Braatelien Pedersen, may well be credited with being the Founding Father of Rothsay. He bought the first business lot and started a general store there in 1879. The town site was then platted on land that belonged to Kristian Tanberg and upon the plat a spot was indicated for the location of the railway station. Mr. Pedersen was the first to bring lumber and other building materials for a business place, on land that now comprises the village of Rothsay. There may have been, at the time, other persons living on land which is now embraced in the corporate limits of the town, but they had not done anything to make the place a town. Mr. Pedersen provided a place where the people of the community could buy groceries and get their mail, two essentials of a town.
Norway Origin
A. B. Pedersen was born October 8, 1838, on a farm called Braatelien in Sigdal, Norway. According to the custom in Norway this would make his family name Braatelien but in coming to America he took the family name of Pedersen after his father’s given name of Peder, because he believed that the name “Braatelien” would be too difficult for Americans to spell and pronounce.
Pedersen’s parents were people of small means and had nine children and his parents were financially unable to provide him with the schooling that he much wanted. He was a studious boy but he had to content himself with a common school education together with the religious training given all young people in Norway. As a young man he went to Kristiana and enlisted in military service in the hope that he might have a chance to attend an officers’ training school, an ambition he did not realize because there were too many ahead of him on the list for officer training. After his schooling and confirmation he took up the trade of tailor. In his early manhood in Norway he divided his time between farming and going from house to house doing tailoring. This may have given him a better education than he himself realized because as a journeyman tailor he observed farming methods used on various farms to which he visited, and in going from house to house and meeting new people, he learned to get along with people, a practical training that served him well throughout life.
Arrival Here
In 1870 he came to America, first to Pierce County, Wisconsin, and later to St. Paul where he again worked at his trade as a tailor. In 1872 Jorgine O. Watnaas, also of Sigdal, Norway, and to whom he was betrothed in Norway, came to St. Paul where they were married on March 10, 1873. They moved up to Rothsay in 1879 where the advent of the railroad to that point was assured.

Acquaintance of Hill
One of the men Mr. Pedersen came to know while working as a tailor in St. Paul was James J. Hill, or Jim Hill, the Empire Builder. Mr. Hill was also born in 1838 and they were of the same age. It was in 1878, the year before Rothsay was started, that Jim Hill with three other men, formed a syndicate which purchased the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, a bankrupt line into which investors had poured millions of dollars. The road had never made any profit, and though it had a valuable right-of-way leading to the Northwest, comparatively little construction work had been done up to 1878. Jim Hill’s syndicate used some of this right-of-way in building a railway through Rothsay.
After he came to Rothsay in 1879 and until his death, Mr. Pedersen lived most of his life at Rothsay. For a time, about 1890-1892, he was interested, with some bankers and other business men from over the state, in a manufacturing venture, and in the pursuit of which Mr. Pedersen lived for a time in Fergus Falls and later in Duluth. However, a business recession preceding the panic of 1893 caused the manufacturing enterprise to fail. The financial crisis of 1893 caused the failure of several banks and many mercantile and manufacturing establishments in the state. Poorer but wiser Mr. Pedersen went back to his farm and mercantile business at Rothsay.
A B Pedersen was an able and versatile man. He could do many things well. He was the Postmaster of Rothsay under three presidents. For fourteen years he served Wilkin County as County Commissioner from his district. He served as census enumerator and in other public positions of trust and honor, always for the best interests of the community. He was a man of strong convictions and would not sacrifice principle for popularity.

Writes Extensively
He wrote both poetry and prose but most of it was written in the Norwegian language and his writings, like everything published in America in the Norwegian language, went out to ever-diminishing circles of readers. As was to be expected, the second generation of Norwegians in America turned to English for their reading material. The biggest Norwegian newspaper in the United States went out of business for this same reason. Mr. Pedersen wrote one book in the Norwegian language which, regardless of its merits, had no chance to become a good seller because it was confronted with the same situation of America’s ever-decreasing number of readers of Norwegian literature. Often, when he had a message he believed of public importance, he wrote for publication and he could best write in the language in which he had been schooled. In the meantime he applied himself to the study of English and became quite proficient in English.
One has only to go to the A. B. Pedersen farm at Rothsay and note how the yard was landscaped and planted to realize that here was a man who had a sense of beauty and who lived and planned for the future.
A. B. Pedersen died December 27, 1919. Mrs. Pedersen died June 12, 1926. They had five children, three of whom died in infancy or early childhood. The other two, Seline, Mrs. J. C. Serkland, and Alice, Mrs. C. W. Rand, both now also deceased, were known to many readers of the Journal. Mrs. Rand was a teacher in the public schools of Rothsay for over a decade. The Pedersen’s left six grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. Mr. and Mrs. Pedersen are both buried at Oakland Cemetery at St. Paul.

(Note: In the interest or space, some wording in the article was changed or omitted. DS)
Sources: Fergus Falls Daily Journal; Ancestry.com