Olaf Roble was born to Mr. and Mrs. Torstein Roble (Guro Skogstad) at Kenyon, Minn. in 1886. He died at Harvey in 1933. He moved with his parents to homesteads near McHenry and Cooperstown in Eddy County. Then they moved to another homestead between Manfred and Harvey on the James River alongside the Soo Line Railroad.

He went to school in Manfred and skated to school on the ice on the James River during the winters. He attended Fargo College where he took up manual training, steam engineering and music. He mastered the valve trombone, cornet, violin and saxophone. At Manfred he played with the Manfred Cornet Band.

He started in business in Manfred as a coal dealer selling coal out of a box car. He went into business with Fremont Hanson in a general store, was a barber, worked in the Ford and John Deere dealership under Olaf Anderson who sent him to Harvey to run the A.B. Motive Power Co. The "A" stood for Anderson and the "B" was the previous owner and partner, O.E. Blanding. He had a big steam threshing rig, complete with cook car, which he had nine successful seasons.

Olaf Roble went to Swift Current, Sask., Canada with Lars Hanson and stayed a year and acquired a quarter of land by homestead laws of Canada. He returned to Manfred in 1916 denouncing the Queen of England and became an American citizen again.

In 1917, he married the school teacher that came from Velva and the Minot State Normal School, Nina Swedlund. She lived in Manfred, on the Halvorson farm they purchased west of Manfred, and  also in Harvey.

She became a widow in 1933 and had five children, age 15 and below. She continued to run the 640 acre farm, acquired full ownership of the business and property of the A.B. Motive Power Co., about eight or ten rental houses and the home which was built new for her at 221 Brewster Street in 1928-29.