Nelson, Jacob, retired farmer – Portland – born on Gotland, February 16, 1852. He traveled to the American West Coast in the fall of 1871, where he started working on the construction of the Northern Pacific railroad, followed by three years in the Puyallup-Valley in Washington State where he participated in establishing a 19 acre hopps farm. After spending the winter of 1875-76 in Silver Lake, he leased a farm in Freeport and earned a couple of thousand dollars in six years. He had lent the $800 he had earned on the work on the hopps farm in Puyallup, plus another $500, to the hopps farm’s owner. When the hopps farmer went bankrupt, he paid off his debt to Mr. Nelson with 40 acres of land in Tacoma. In 1882, he bought 320 acres along the Cowlitz River, four miles south of Castle Rock, to settle down as a farmer. To pay off the debt resulting from this purchase, he sold the 40 acres in Tacoma, in 1887, for $4,000. If he had sold these 40 acres two or three years later, he could have received ten times as much due to land appreciation! In 1889, he built a large house on the farm property, steadily improving it and getting it in good working order. In the years 1888 – 90 Mr. Nelson was County Commissioner. In the spring of 1904 he leased the farm and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he owns his own home at 819 Gantenbien Ave. Mr. Nelson has been married twice, first in 1875 to 1887, when his wife died, leaving one son and four daughters. Mr. Nelson remarried in September 1889, to Carolina Enquist from Gotland.
