One of the very natural consequences of the tendency of the Norse immigrants to seek agricultural locations, and to seek them along the advancing frontier, is the township and even the county, particularly in Minnesota and the Dakotas,[232] peopled almost solidly with the men and women of one nationality. The names of post-offices and townships, and the assessment rolls of the counties, bear witness to the density of these settlements which were made up of immigrants in both the first and second stages, composed in part of people coming from the older colonies like those in Dane County, Wisconsin, or Henry County, Illinois, or Goodhue County, Minnesota, and in part of newcomers direct from their Old World homes. About 1880, the names of those whose land abutted upon the two railroads traversing Houston County, Minnesota showed plainly this process of massing. Taken in order, the first twenty-two names were those of American, Irish, and German settlers; then followed nineteen, all Scandinavian save two.[233] Fillmore County, Minnesota, one of the older counties, largely Norwegian from its beginning, and Chisago County, on the eastern border of the same State, a stronghold of the Swedes from its first settlement, are excellent examples of the economic contributions made to the State by the Scandinavian element through its development of the wilderness into cultivated fields and prosperous villages. Of the transformation of Dakota before 1890, and the part of the sons of the North in it, a writer says: "Most of them came with just enough to get on Government land and build a shack.... Now they are loaning money to their less fortunate neighbors.... Every county has Norwegians who are worth from $25,000 to $50,000, all made since settling in Dakota."[234] [232] _History of the Upper Mississippi Valley_, 281, 312, 416, 440, 511; _History of Fillmore County, Minnesota_, 344, 346; _Northwest Magazine_, Oct., 1899. [233] _History of Houston County, Minnesota_, 286. [234] _The Northwest Magazine_, Oct., 1889, p. 32. In comparing statistics of such counties as Fillmore and Chisago, showing their growth in wealth and productivity, as reported in the decennial census, two facts regarding the nativity and parentage of the population must be kept clearly in mind if the full significance of the work of the men of alien stock is to be appreciated: first, that the increase of the foreign born is largely made up of adults; second, that the increase of the native-born is in reality an increase of the purely Norwegian or Swedish element, the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of foreign-born parents, for the census-taker, even in 1900, did not penetrate beyond the first degree of ancestry.