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Biographical notes (written in 1982).
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THOMAS OWEN (T.O.) BURGUM and FAMILY. Thomas Owen (T.O.) Burgum, the youngest son of Mr & Mrs Anthony T. (A.T.) Burgum, was born in Yorkshire County, England. (Please note - this is not true; T.O. was born in Woolhope, Herefordshire, England). At the age of ten he came with his parents and family to Villisca, Iowa. The family made their home in Iowa for ten years. The mother died while they were living there. The Burgum family arrived in Arthur, North Dakota in March 1882. Mr A.T. Burgum purchased land, southeast of Arthur, for $2.00 an acre. In the summer of 1884 Thomas Burgum and his brother, Joseph Burgum, went to Washburn, North Dakota where they filed on homesteads. Joseph Burgum made his home there for a few years, but Thomas returned to Arthur. While in Washburn, Thomas Burgum married Margaret Ranard, daughter of Mr and Mrs A.C Ranard, of Washburn.
The Ranard family came to North Dakota with the Burgum family, travelling in three covered wagons. Mr Thomas Burgum and his wife had two sons, Gordon Bradley and Leslie Ranard. Their mother died when Leslie Ranard was one and one-half years old so he was raised by his grandparents, Mr and Mrs A. C Ranard, at Washburn. Gordon and his father returned to Arthur and made their home with the A. T. Burgum family until Thomas Burgum was married to Marie Josephine Gillis at Fargo in November 1896. They moved to a farm west of Arthur where they lived until 1902 when they moved into Arthur.
Marie Josephine Gillis was born in Liverpool, England, and when eighteen years old, she came to New Richland, Minnesota with two families of friends. She worked one year for one of the families to pay her passage to the United States. In the spring of 1894 she came to Arthur and for two summers she worked for the A. T. Burgums on the farm. In the winters she would go to Fargo and attend the Sacred Heart Academy, located then in north Fargo. Here she took up the art of painting and sewing. Mrs Burgum continued the art of painting while raising her family. She would travel nine miles east of Arthur about once a week to take a painting lesson from Mrs W. A. Fridley. Some years later she took up china painting and she painted a complete set of Haviland china that her husband bought for her one Christmas from the T.J. Ross store in Arthur.
Mr Burgum was elected chairman of the Arthur Township Board when the township was first organized in the early days. Years later he served as assessor of the Arthur Township. In 1905 and 1907 he served two terms as representative to the State Legislature at Bismarck. Mr Burgum was always interested in seeing that young people would receive a good education, and he was instrumental in Arthur getting a high school. The burgums were the parents of five children, three sons and two daughters. Charles Freeman and William P. both died in infancy, and Foster Owen died at the age of twenty-seven. He graduated from the Law School at the University of North dakota, Grand Forks. Ollie Mae and Lillie Marie were the two daughters.
Gordon Burgum attended th Arthur School and later St Thomas College in St Paul, Minnesota. He returned to Arthur from St Paul and became manager of an elevator at Arthur. In 1910 Gordon married Olga Schur, the daughter of Mr and Mrs A. J. Schur of Arthur. In 1917 Mr and Mrs Burgum and their daughter, Margaret, went to Washburn to make their home and care for Gordon's grandmother, Mrs A.C. Ranard as his brother, Leslie entered the service. Gordon was employed in a bank in Washburn for several years and then became the rural mail carrier there until he retired at the age of seventy. Gordon Burgum and his wife had three daughters and two sons, Margaret, (Mrs Chet Plasterer) Washburn, Marian (Mrs Kenyon Stevens) Underwood, North Dakota, Edith (Mrs Ray Sheldon) Washburn, John, Bismarck and James, Larimore, North Dakota. Mrs Gordon Burgum died in the fall of 1965 and Mr Burgum in 1977 at the age of eighty-nine.
Leslie Ranard Burgum, who made his home in Washburn with his grandparents, the Ranards, was graduated from Washburn High School and the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. He married Blanche Gustafson of Washburn, and they had two children. Mary Lois worked for the Basic Electric Co. in Bismarck until her death in 1977 at the age of forty-nine. Their son, Tom Leslie, a graduate of the Law School in Grand Forks, is employed in Washington D.C. Leslie Burgum went into the ministry when a young man. He was the Methodist pastor in several towns, some of which were Arthur, Larimore, MaMoure, and Jamestown. While preaching in the Methodist Church in Larimore, Leslie also attended the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks and was graduated from the Law School. He was States Attorney for Stutsman County in Jamestown for a few years and then was elected to the office of Attorney General of North Dakota at Bismarck. He served a term of seven years as Attorney General, which was a record for the State of North Dakota. Mr and Mrs Burgum continue to make their home in Bismarck in the same apartment they had when moving to Bismarck as Attorney General. At the age of ninety-one, Leslie takes his daily walks summer and winter, when weather permits.
Ollie Mae Burgum, the oldest daughter of Mr and Mrs T. O. Burgum, was born on a farm west of Arthur, now known as the home of Mr and Mrs James Gebeke. She was graduated from the Hunter High School and the Valley City State College. For five years she taught primary grades in the Arthur School. Of all the pupils she taught during that time, only two are Arthur residents at this time: Mrs Alton Burgum (Dorothy Williams) and Eunice Iwen. Ollie taught one year at the State School for the Deaf at Devils Lake, North Dakota. For a time she was employed during the winter months at the ASC office in Fargo. In 1941 she returned to Arthur as the bookkeeper at the Arthur Creamery. She worked there until 1950 when she went to the Arthur Mercantile Company in Arthur as the bookkeeper and is still employed there. In the fall of 1965 she was married to Ray D. Waxler of Seattle, Washington, who, when a young man, lived in the Arthur area. They continued to make their home in Arthur. Mr Waxler died in 1972.
Lillie Marie Burgum was born in Arthur in 1902. She was graduated from the Arthur High School and Valley City State College, Valley City, North Dakota. Her first year of teaching was in a one-room country school in Rush River Township, southeast of Arthur. Later she taught in schools at Max, Fessenden and Alice, North Dakota. She was married at Arthur 19 1932 to Frank J. Hager of Alice. They had three children, Foster Raymond, Finley North Dakota, Marie Josephine (Mrs Llyod Cook), Burbank, California, and Robert Francis, Fargo, North Dakota. Mr and Mrs Hager lived in Alice, North Dakota, where he was manager of the Farmers Elevator Company and later bus driver for the Buffalo, North Dakota School. He died in 1970, and Mrs Hager continued to make her home in Alice until she moved to Fargo in 1979. While living in Alice, she was active in the community and served several terms as clerk of the Alice Town Board. Mrs Hager died in Fargo in 1980.
I would like to add a story or two about my family - Ollie Waxler. In the summer of about 1899, or there about, my father, T. O. Burgum, and his brother, Joseph Burgum, then living at Washburn, North Dakota had the contract to break land for the W. D. Washburn Land Company, near Washburn. My father was accompanied to Washburn by Fred Standfield who worked for my father on the farm for about fifteen years. These two men drove horses to Washburn to break this land, which was a distance of some 240 miles. The trip took them several days. Mr Standfield was the father of Mrs Sam Lako (Florence) and Mrs Art Hill (Dorothy) who both live in Arthur at the present time. In January 1923 we lost our home by fire on a very stormy night. We were awakened about 6 A.M. by the smell of smoke. Our good neighbour, Louie Schur, went up town and rang the fire bell located just behind what was the Arthur Garage at that time. The Arthur and Mapleton Basketball teams had a game at Arthur that night and, due to the intense storm, the Mapleton boys did not go home. They stayed at what was known as the Arthur Hotel and spent the time playing cards with some of the Arthur men. When the fire bell rang, all of these men came to our home and helped save most of the furnishings on the first floor. One article was a large grandfather clock, and after 80 years, this clock is now running in my home in Arthur. The men also saved all of my mother's Haviland china dishes. My mother, down on her knees, handed these dishes from the china closet to the men who carried them out and set them against a woven wire fence that was around our yard. As I recall only twelve cups were broken, and my mother replaced them soon after the fire.
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