Peter Byg, Prairie Fire Victim
If you were to ever face a raging fire, would you go back in or run away and never look back? One Danish immigrant’s story illustrates the unpredictable nature of homesteading the South Dakota prairie.
Peter Nielsen Byg chose to go back in but never got out. Byg, born in a tiny village in South Jutland, Denmark, on April 17, 1849, emigrated to the United States at eighteen years old with his family in 1876. His family, which consisted of his parents, Niels and Anna Matthia Byg, his three siblings, Mary, Nis, and Martha Byg, and himself, had been part of a larger pattern of Danish movement to the Minnehaha County.
More than 300,000 Danes emigrated to the United States between 1870 and 1930. America was meant to be a better place for Peter and his family, as well as many others. In Denmark, they experienced famine due to the scarcity of farming land, and America was attractive to farmers and laborers who wanted a better life. Additionally, many were seeking to escape the repression and religious restrictions that followed the 1864 loss of territory to Germany. Danish immigrants traveled in the hope of taking advantage of the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862. This act granted 160 acres of public land to immigrants, freed slaves, and even women who lived on the land for five years and cultivated it for a $10 filing fee. The only condition was that they had to be a U.S. citizen or intended to become a naturalized citizen. Lured like bees to honey, some Danes traveled to the prairies of the Dakota Territory. Danish immigrants came to three different settlements in Minnehaha County: the Benton, Grand Meadow, Hartford, and Lyons townships; the Beaver Valley area in Brandon and Split Rock townships; and Sioux Falls.
After Peter’s father died, he and his siblings separated to make their own homesteads. Peter filed for the land on which he, his wife, Anna Raven Byg, and their daughter, Annie Mathilde, settled. He built himself a “sod dugout house” and a straw stable in the prairie where he farmed and cared for his cows. The land he worked on so persistently was allotted to his children after he and his wife’s deaths. His land was obtained through the authority of the Homestead Act. It was ten years after his death in 1880 that his land was issued to his next of kin.
The year the fire occurred was particularly dangerous for prairie fires. It was dry, and according to Cecil Byg, Peter’s great nephew, “the tall grass, covered by snow, would lie dormant during the winter months and the nitrogen content of the grass greatly increased.” A spark from a campfire or lightning strike was enough to ignite the grasses And if there happened to be wind, the fire spread rapidly and quickly became out of control. In the 19th century, fires across the prairies occurred frequently every 1 to 5 years. They were ignited by both lightning and Native Americans.
Peter was caught off guard by the 1880 fire because the inferno first came from the east when most blazes usually did from the northwest. Secondly, his farm was positioned on a hill and his farm sloped somewhat to the west, so he would not have seen it coming anyway, as it was hidden from view on the far side of the hill. When he eventually spotted the fire, Peter went back to save his only animal, a cow. Unfortunately, the straw stable in which his cow was corralled did not make it easy for him, and he was trapped by the prairie fire. He was described as “roasted alive.”
The fire had spared the small home where Peter and his wife lived, and she remained unharmed. Although Peter survived the night with severe burns, he did not make it through the next morning. His brother Nis, after learning the news, rushed to have a carpenter build a coffin for Peter where he remained until his burial at the Benton Lutheran Church cemetery in Crooks.
After his death, his brother Nis named one of his twin sons after Peter as Peter Otto Byg. Later, before his own death, Nis Byg donated land he had acquired to the School District No. 93. The Tyler/Byg district no.93 was formed in July 1883. In 1922, residents voted to name the school “Byg school.” The namesake was a fitting to honor Peter Byg’s death on the unforgiving prairies.
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