The name of Nels O. Cassem occupies a prominent place in the history of the settlement as of that of Kendall County in general. Born in 1829 about seven miles east of the city of Stavanger, Norway, he emigrated in 1849. Coming to Illinois he settled in Fox Township, Kendall County, in July of that year. Here he purchased land and began farming, an occupation which he prospered in to an unusual degree, his estate being estimated at a little over one million dollars upon his death in 1904.[401] "When he came to Illinois," writes his son, "he found work on the tow-path of the old Illinois and Michigan Canal, at fifty cents per day. During this time he formed the habit of saving, that was the unerring guide of all his future life." Randall Cassem defines the principal causes of his father's success as: "Health; industrious habits formed in youth; the fact that money came hard earned at first, thus teaching him the value of the dollar; courage and self-reliance; knowing the value of little things; the practice of self-denial and rigid economy; never striving after extravagant profits in any of his undertakings. To all of this we may add, his high sense of honor, his unimpeachable integrity that, as those who knew him testify, never permitted him to be other than absolutely fair and just in all his dealings and financial transactions with others."[402] Among those who immigrated in 1844 and located in Chicago was also Anders K. Vetti from Vettigjæld, Norway. He lived in Chicago until about 1849,[403] when he bought a farm at Yorkville Prairie in Kendall County. He married Anna Martha Ortzland in 1850 and lived there till his death in 1875. Mr. Vetti was a man of strong character and unusual intellectual endowments. He wielded much influence politically in his community, and enjoyed in a high degree the confidence of those who knew him. An obituary notice says of him: his truest and most enduring monument will be the good resulting from his labor in the cause of universal education, in untiring opposition to the superstitious observance of ceremonies incompatible with the spirit and the progress of the age, and in his hatred of all forms of political oppression.[404] [401] Cassem married Margaret Fritz in 1851; she died in 1872. There are five children: Randall Cassem, attorney at Aurora, Ill.; Mrs. Olive J. Osmondson of Seward Township, Kendall County; Oscar E. Cassem, Mitchell, South Dakota; Mrs. Margaret Olson, Aurora, Illinois; and Mrs. Anna O. Rood, Chicago, Illinois. [402] Kari Melhus of Newark, Illinois, who came to America about 1852, is said to be the oldest Norwegian woman in America. She was born in Hjelmeland Parish, Ryfylke, in 1804. [403] A. K. Vetti's oldest daughter, Mrs. Samuel Mather (b. 1853) of Springdale, Linn County, Iowa, says that it was in 1849, or 1850 perhaps, but she is not certain which.