From Hallingdal to Kenyon
Brusletten was born September 2 (or 9), 1853, in Nes in Hallingdal, Norway, and came to America with his parents Lars and Ingri Brusletten in 1858, the family settling among the Norwegian farms of Kenyon Township. He attended Northwestern Business College in Madison, Wisconsin, graduating in 1879, and came home to a career that touched every institution the village had.
Every office in town
He was Kenyon's postmaster from 1881 to 1884 and again from 1889 to 1893, in the years the mail still came by stage and then by the new railroad. He served as town clerk, village treasurer and village trustee. He farmed, was treasurer of the Kenyon Farmers' Mercantile and Elevator Company, and was vice president and later president of the Citizens' State Bank of Kenyon, one of the two banks the 1909 county history counts in the village.
The legislature
He represented Goodhue County in the Minnesota House of Representatives as a Republican for two sessions, 1897–98 in District 21 and 1899–1900 in District 29, a total of 1,463 days of service by the Legislative Reference Library's count. He died in Kenyon on July 29, 1925, and is buried at Gol Lutheran Church, the stone church on section 5 that the county history records being built in 1870.