Harold Bachman was born on September 2nd, 1882 in Atlanta, Illinois to Clark B. and Anna Belle Bachman. In 1889 the family moved to Lakota, where Clark tried farming. They stayed there a little over a decade before moving in the early 1900s to Renville County, a rural area 30 miles northwest of Minot. Since his childhood, Harold Bachman was interested in music, but it was in Minot where that interest blossomed into a career.