John and Ida Bruckner…Still living on their homestead

By Eva Hallam Solberg

Published in the PCN Mach 22, 1979

John and Ida Bruckner are one of the few remaining couples still living on their homestead, which is thirty miles southeast of Malta in the Harb Community. In the middle of the winter John can sometimes be heard speaking wistfully about spending a winter down south, but when spring comes, he’s just too busy to think about it!

John, or Jack, as he is known, was born in Clayton County in MacGregor, Iowa, on August 13, 1891. He had six brothers and one sister, and was next to the youngest. His father was born in Iowa, and his mother came from Bohemia, now Czechoslovakia, when just a small child. Jack left Iowa when he was 21 years old in the spring of 1913.

Read the rest of the story in "Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana"
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