# Ransom, North Dakota Ransom County lies in the southeastern part of North Dakota, a stretch of prairie that drew settlers looking for farmland in the early decades of the twentieth century. For the Bartosh, Cooper, Reha, and Zerr families, this was home across several generations, spanning nearly seventy years from 1915 to 1982. Several members of the Bartosh family made their lives here. **Frank Albert Bartosh**, **Joseph R Bartosh**, and **John Frank Bartosh** all made their homes in Ransom, and **James T Bartosh** was living here in 1917 and 1918 — years that placed the family in the community during the anxious period of the First World War. **Frank Nimrod Cooper** likewise settled in the area. The family's ties to this place were marked by both endings and long lives. **Edna L. Cooper** died here on 8 May 1915, one of the earliest events binding these families to the county. Nearly three decades later, on 4 December 1943, **James Reha** died in Ransom during the years of the Second World War. The last of these connections came on 4 August 1982, when **Frank Zerr** died here, closing out a span of family presence that reached back to the earliest settlement years. The long stretch between Edna Cooper's death in 1915 and Frank Zerr's in 1982 speaks to families who stayed — who put down roots in the North Dakota prairie and remained through the hardships of two world wars and the years between. Ransom was not a place these families passed through, but one where they lived, farmed, and were laid to rest across the better part of a century.