Thomas and Frank McKenzie Family Collection

Collection — Folder: SC 539

Identifier: SC 539

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection consists a poem by a McKenzie relative sometime in the early 1950s, two biographies about Frank and Thomas McKenzie, and then newspaper clippings.

Dates

1936-1954.

Creator

MacKenzie, Thomas, 1844-1909. (Person)

Access

The collection is open under the rules and regulations of the NDSU Archives.

Copyrights

Copyrights to this collection is held by the NDSU Archives

Biography

Thomas McKenzie was born in 1841 in Scotland to Thomas and Margaret (Gillespie) McKenzie. His family would immigrate to Canada, first settling in Winnipeg to Portage Manitoba. In June of 1871, Thomas, with a friend Jim Miller came down the Red River and found the area that is today Fargo and McKenzie decided to settle there. Thomas would return to Ontario, Canada to marry Catherine Ross on September 10, 1872. Thomas and Catherine would go on to have four children, Fannie, Thomas E., Margaret, and Donald. Thomas would both homestead and farm his own land as well as land from other owners. He would eventually pass away in Cass County on June 14, 1909.

Francis “Frank” McKenzie was born February 26, 1860 in Brucefield, Ontario, Canada to Thomas and Margaret (Gillespie) McKenzie. Frank would eventually follow his older brother Thomas, to homestead in Cass County, North Dakota. There, at the age of 21, he married Wilhelmina Jane Walker on September 1, 1881. They would go on to have nine children, Margeret, Frank, Mary, Fergus, Jennie, Ethel, Hugh, Edith, and John. Frank and his family would settle in Stanley, North Dakota where he would farm. He would pass away on September 10, 1910 in Wild Rice, North Dakota.