Selvig, Conrad George, 1877-1953.

Conrad George Selvig was born in Rushford, Minnesota on October 11, 1877. He was the third of four children born to Gunhild Marie Hognestad and Gunnar Kristofferson Selvig (Gunder C. Selvig) who had emigrated from Stavanger, Norway to Chicago, Illinois in 1871. The Selvig family moved to Rushford when Gunnar Selvig accepted a position as a foreman with the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad. Gunhild died in 1881 and Conrad's father married Rachel Byberg, also a Norwegian immigrant, in 1883.

Selvig graduated from Rushford High School in 1895 and was back in school the following year as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse just across the county line from Rushford in Money Creek Township, Houston County. In the summer of 1896 Selvig was nominated to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point but failed to pass the entrance examinations. He also subsequently failed to gain entrance to the Naval Academy and found himself back in Minnesota's Root River valley as a country schoolteacher, first at the Vinegar Hill School in Money Creek Township and later at Bratsberg in Fillmore County.

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