BEN SATHER, BACHELOR - Mr Blank
September 1940 - Another citizen profile in the Stanley Sun
BEN SATHER, BACHELOR, FED GOVERNOR PANCAKES
Ben Sathers real name is Bernhart1, is a native son of North Dakota and mighty proud of it. He was born at Galesburg, this state. Trail county, to be exact, November 2, 1882 to Ole and Bertina Sather. He comes from a family of 8 children, four boys and four girls. The parents are both dead, but all of Ben's brothers and sisters are living. Ben says that he was third on the list.
Ben lived at home and helped on the farm until he was 20 years old and then went to Bottineau county where he worked on a farm for a year before coming here in 1904.
He filed on the NE of 13.154.91. and lived on the homestead for 3 years. "There were eight business places here when I first came here, and the first night in Stanley I slept in the building now occupied by the Rasmussen barber shop. A Mr. Tibbedeaux ran the place.
Out on the homestead Ben had four neighbors, C. J. Henning, M. Mikelson. Pete Olson and Henry Collum. Ben declares that the homesteading days were some of the happiest of his life, mainly because he had such fine neighbors.
Ben isn't much for women and is a confirmed bachelor. "They like me on sight", says Ben. "but when they learn to know me, they shun me." Ben was only kidding and this is not to be considered as a matrimonial advertisement for Ben Sather.
Ben says that I brought nothing into North Dakos and he says that great deal into the world, and says he will probably leave with nothing, evidently intending to stay here all his life.
Ben says that during his time here he has dug rocks, wells and coal, operated a threshing machine for many seasons but the worst job of the lot was cooking. One man ate Ben's bachelor pancakes and lived to become governor of North Dakota. That man was Walter Maddock. Ben recalls that Walter stayed with him overnight, ate his pancakes in the morning and went his way, later to become governor. Maybe the pancakes had something to do with it.
He has no idea of how many miles of wells he has dug in Mountrail2, Ward, Dunn, Williams, McKenzie, Burke and McKenzie counties, but ventures the guess that if they were all dug up and sawed up into fence posts, they would build a fence from Stanley to St. Paul, maybe Chicago. He's still in the business of digging wells. He also wishes the steam engines were back for threshing рurposes.
In his lifetime he has done enough hard work to kill a couple of other men and is still going strong. "I always have a little money, but am never flush," is the way he puts it.
He has worked 11 winters in the lumber woods, 9 of them in Minnesota, 1 in Montana and 1 in Idaho.
He made a trip to Duluth once, and visited Spokane another time. He spent a short time this year in the Twin Cities. But he always comes back to North Dakota and Stanley because he cannot make another place seem like home. The biggest crop he ever raised was in 1909 when his wheat averaged 30 bushels to the acre.
He's quite a guy, this Ben Sather. Minds Ben Sather's business and when somebody's well goes haywire or their tractors buck or the combine refuses to function, he's the guy sent for immediately and forthwell produces, the tractor hums like a new one and the combine gets over what ailed it in the first place, Why he has never been picked off by some female is one of the reasons why we picked him for Mr. Blank.
He'a sober, industrious and honest to nearly a fault, stays home nights and would make a fine husband. We don't know what this community would do without him. Now don't you gals go to crowding. because he's just a little bashful and could easily be scared away.
As stated before Ben Sather is quite a guy. His friends in a community in which he has lived for 36 years are numbered by the score while his enemies are nil. And after all, what profits the man who steps out and gobbles up the whole world and loses the respect and the confidence of his fellowmen in the deal? We ask you?
It appears he was one of the many who put in a few years of homesteading to claim the 160 acres and then went on to something else.
I thought it would be fun to see what the internet yields in photos of old water well drilling equipment. Here are a couple examples (which are not from Ben Sather.)
Ole Bernhof Sather 1882 –1945 Died a bachelor in Seattle WN at age 63.
Well digger. When you think about it, you can appreciated that every farm needed at least on well, maybe more for livestock.