Pioneering in Dakota brought drought, grasshoppers, blizzards, and prairie fires, and in sparse timbered areas settlers lived in dugouts and sod houses while enduring the hardships of frontier life. Betsy Dalager, a widow with five children, accompanied by her mother, Guri (Mrs. Peder Anderson Schobakken), migrated from Glenwood, Minnesota, to Raritan Township, Day County, in May 1884 by oxdrawn wagon. By 1886, they had established a house, a barn, a well, several cows, and plowed fireguards. On April 17, John Dodd, who lived three miles south, set a fire to burn out his slough, but a strong wind carried it beyond his control and it ignited haystacks near the barn. As Betsy and Guri tried to save the livestock, they were trapped by the fire in the burning barn. Betsy ran out with her clothes aflame and jumped into the well, while the barn became Guri’s funeral pyre. The children, who had taken refuge in the plowed firebreak, helped their mother out of the well after the earth cooled. Betsy survived a long struggle with burns, but rheumatism left her crippled, and for 36 years this slight figure in a wheelchair symbolized the indomitable spirit that had brought her to Day County. Kinsmen believed Guri Schobakken’s death was the first recorded death by prairie fire in what is now South Dakota.