Sometime within the next three to five years they traveled north to Logan County where Sarah pioneered a new homestead near friends and relatives.

NORTH DAKOTA

In 1884, Joseph P. Coulter and Thomas Doremus had brought in 80 yearling cows to Township 136 of Logan County in what would later become North Dakota. They intended to squat on the land and fatten the stock on free and abundant prairie grass. Coulter wrote about the spring of 1885, "� homesteaders (mostly Russian-Germans) flocked in and began to take up homesteads all around us and then I could see our finish ranching."

Sarah and her six children were among them. She homesteaded three parcels totaling a little over 145 acres of section 18 in Township 136, close to her relatives. She also had the comfort a new Adventist congregation. In 1890 the first German-speaking Adventist church in North Dakota was organized near her in Richville, Logan County.

Johann Dürksen (Sarah's oldest brother-in-law) and his wife Agatha (Ida) Teichrieb arrived in New York on the SS Elbe on June 29, 1885. He filed an application for a quarter of section 12 near Richville and Napoleon.

Johann's oldest child Henry J. Dürksen filed on his own quarter section where he started his own family with wife Maria Dirks. Their oldest daughter Katharina J. Dirksen filed on three parcels totaling one hundred forty five acres. Between the three, they pioneered five hundred acres. Daughter Justina would later marry Sarah's oldest son Henry Dirksen. Daughter Eva would marry John Rexin and Agnes would marry Alan Rembolt. Their son John would marry Maggie Fast.