Christian “Chris” Amoth

Chris was born on May 8, 1903, on his parents’ homestead in Moscow Township, Cavalier County, North Dakota, one of the six children of Carl and Mina Amoth. He went through the eighth grade at Moscow School No. 1 and later went to the Agricultural College in Fargo. He was confirmed at Our Savior’s on May 4, 1919, and met Clara Kjemhus that same weekend, when she came with his cousin Mabel to the confirmation. She was twelve, he was almost sixteen, and both of them, she said, were very bashful.

They were married at her parents’ home in Fremont Township on June 17, 1929, and made their home in the house on the homestead his parents had built in 1916. They bought the homestead, and his uncle Martin’s, and by 1964 they were farming 960 acres in Moscow and Waterloo townships. He raised Herefords, and for about twenty years, until 1971, he ran a livestock trucking line. He served on the Moscow school board, which his son Pete remembered him heading, and the township board, and on the church board at Our Savior’s. He was a Mason and a member of the Scottish Rite.

On April 20, 1953, a rubbish fire spread to the straw banked around the house and burned it to the ground. A new house went up on the farm that year. Chris retired from farming in 1962 or 1963, and they moved to Langdon, where he was a charter member of United Lutheran and on its building committee. He died at the hospital in Langdon on July 27, 1975, and is buried at Our Savior’s cemetery in Moscow Township.

Chris and Clara’s story

The fire, the bashful boy at the confirmation, the sleigh ride to Tom’s, the two homesteads on a map, and what the records don’t say yet.