When Sterling North was 11 (in 1917, which would have been the year of his maternal grandfather's 100th birthday), several of his uncles wrote extended biographies about their parents and their pioneer farm life. North had three siblings: two sisters, Jessica Nelson North who was an author, poet, and editor Theo (Theodora), who was the martinet in the family and a brother, Herschel, who survived World War I. Surviving a near-paralyzing struggle with polio in his teens, he grew to young adulthood in the quiet southern Wisconsin village of Edgerton, which North transformed into the "Brailsford Junction" setting of several of his books. North was born on the second floor of a farmhouse on the shores of Lake Koshkonong, a few miles from Edgerton, Wisconsin, in 1906. Sarah died when Sterling was seven years old. She married David Willard North, also the product of a pioneering local family, whose brother ran the family farm. His daughter, Sarah Elizabeth "Elizabeth" Nelson, was Sterling North's mother. Born in Putnam County, New York, James moved first to near Rochester, New York, then to Menomonee Falls, in Waukesha County, Wisconsin (near Milwaukee), then pioneered a farm near present-day South Wayne, in southwestern Wisconsin. North's maternal grandparents, James Hervey Nelson and Sarah Orelup Nelson, were Wisconsin pioneers.
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