Erik J. Melquist was born September 29, 1862, at the Grimsrudeiet tenant farm. As told in his parents' biographies, Erik sailed to America with his family of nine in 1866. After landing at Quebec, the Melquists settled at Bancroft, Minnesota. Erik was an avowed bachelor. According to his grand-niece, Edna Smallwood, Erik sold his farm in Williams County, North Dakota, when he heard the Ellingson family (see below, Otava G. Melquist Ellingson) was moving to Canada. He left North Dakota sometime in 1911, and homesteaded south of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, in what eventually became Powermine School District. To encourage settlement in Canada's western frontier, the Dominion Government offered a homestead of 160 acres for a $10 registration fee. To secure the patent for the land, the settler had to be a male at least 21 years of age or a woman who was the sole support of her family. Before receiving the patent, an applicant had to be a British subject or else a naturalized British subject. The homesteader had to reside on the property for some time – generally six months of the year for three years – make land improvements by cultivating a minimum of 30 acres, and build a dwelling house worth at least $300. Erik accomplished all of that, obtaining Canadian citizenship in 1914, and his homestead property was described as the SW and SE quarters of section 22, township 7, range 18, west of the 3rd meridian. This was only a half-mile west of the homestead of his brother-in-law and sister, Edd and Otava Ellingson. Later, he bought another property in section 5 of the same township. Erik and his nephew, Alfred Ellingson, purchased a threshing outfit in 1913. They threshed for the community until 1917, when they sold the machine to Edwin Ellingson and Alfred Anderson. Erik started to lose his eyesight around this time. He persuaded his niece, Emma Hughes, and her husband, Jack, to take over the farm and made his home with them until his death. In her 2004 account of his life, Edna recalled that Erik was a great babysitter, teaching the Hughes children to count, to tell time, to repeat nursery rhymes, and to tell stories long before they started school. Erik was 93 when he died, on January 9, 1955, in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. He had been totally blind for twenty years.