In 1872 the family moved from the dark woods of North Manitou Island in Lake Michigan. They were probably headed for western Illinois in the vicinity of Burlington, Iowa where others from their part of Småland had gone. Somehow, they heard of the new community of Swedes in western Iowa where land was available and they kept going westward. They were joined by other relatives from western Illinois. A land agent named Corporal William Familton was active in trying to raise money for the prospective railroads by selling their railroad land grants. The new arrivals nearly bought the entire section 31. The southeast 160 acres was purchased by Axel as he had saved his money earned by chopping wood for four years. Imagine that the stubble in the picture below was 8 foot tall wild prairie grass and you will get some idea as to what Axel saw when he looked at his farm for the first time. All the historical documentation written about this area seems consistent in describing it as being void of trees. The typical reason cited for this condition is that wildfires were frequent and trees never had enough years to get started.

There is no mention that Axel's family first lived in a dugout. Its possible but not documented. We know that Axel built a farm house on the crest of the hill at the south edge of his land next to the road dividing Crawford and Sac county. The farm place that he built for his farm is roughly indicated on the photo above as the buildings were removed many, many years ago. Axel and Mathilda raised their family here and also provided a home for Mathilda's father, Nikolas Lindblad, after Mrs. Lindblad died in 1898. Axel's children married and left the farm one by one. By 1903, only the youngest daughter, Mamie, was left to share the house with her parents and grandfather. A couple of years after Mamie married in 1916, Axel and Mathilda retired and moved to their new house in Kiron where they lived until passing away in the early 1920's.