The First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration (1821-1840), its causes and results

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THE

KIRST CHAPTER OF

NORWEGIAN IMMIGRATION, (l&21-lB-iO)

ITS

CAUSES AND RESULTS. WITH

AN INTRODUCTION ON

THE SERVICF^ llEXDEKED BY THE Sri^DTXAVIAXS TO THE WOKLD A.ND TO AMEKICA.

BY

Rasmus

B.

Anderson,

ll. d.,

EX-UNITED STATES MINISTER TO DENMARK; AUTHOR OF "NORSE MYTHOLOGY," "AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMliUS," AND OTHER WORKS.

Madison, Wisconsin: published by the author. 1895.

Copyright,

RASMUS

B.

1895,

^^

ANDERSON.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

1312037 MY FATHER AND MOTHER WERE AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS WHO LANDED

IN

AMERICA

IN 1S36

AND TO THEIR MEMORYI

DEDICATE THIS VOLUME. Rasmus

L.

Anuersos.

PREFACE. The greater part

of tlie contents of this vol-

ume has never before appeared in any book and much of it appears now for the first time in print.

To gather the

niatorinls for this worl;

I

have

traveled hundreds of miles to interview ohl set-

have written hundreds of letters in der to secure facts, and I have also examined tlers; I

the printed docunu^nts within

More than

fifty

yt^ars

my

orall

reach.

have come and gone

which this book ends, and of tliose who assisted in founding the first half dozen Norwegian settlements there are but few They kept no journals or records living n(»w. of tlie events, and the memories of old men are The author himself, sometimes treacherous. of the early immigrants, though a son of one since the time with

was not born

until after the first chapter of Nor-

wegian imnngration had been completed, and hence the difficulty of presenting absolutely re]ia])le

The

information critical

is

reader

manifest.

may

find

some inaccura-

PREFACE.

VI cies

be

and some

conflicting statements,

him

greatl}' obliged to

if

and

I shall

he will make the

necessar}^ corrections either publiclj^ or in pri-

vate communications to me, in order that

make

I

may

the necessary corrections in future edi-

The reader will also find a The author would have

tions of this book.

number

of repetitions.

been pleased to eliminate many of these, but as the book is written mainly for plain people it

was thought

better to repeat

some

of the

things that had already been told than to be continually referring the reader to some other part of the volume.

The aim has been

to give

as full an account as possible of each of the

and as will be seen the same persons sometimes appear among the It pioneers of more than one settlement. seemed better to restate some of the facts in six separate settlements,

regard to such persons than to refer the reader

back to other pages

of the book.

Doubtless there are

many names

omitted,

that ought to have been mentioned, and some of

may have been given more prominence than they are entitled to; but the

those introduced

the auth(n''s inability to see

reason for this

is

with

clearness through the veil of

sufficient

time that covers the

from Norway.

first

epoch of emigration

PREFACE. Tile sketches of

Some

aiiced.

Vil

])i()iieers

are

lou.u,

are not well

while others are very In some

This could not be avoided.

short.

biil-

in-

stances I have been able to secure tolerably full accounts of persons, while in other cases my

materials have been most meager, and some-

times the facts are exceedingly limited, where iiiuch

information would seem to be desirable.

All such blemishes

I

must beg the reader

In spite of every effort

cuse.

it

has in some

cases been almost impossible to get

the bare

names

of persons.

In

to ex-

more than

many

instances

have been unable to *xe1: into communication with descendants, and then again the descendants have not been in ])ossession of the necessary records. In this connection I would like I

upon my readers the imjxtrtance keei)ing good famil}- records for the benefit their descendants and of future historians.

to imi)ress of of

^VIlih'

I

make

the

tirst (•liai)ter of

Norw«\gian

immigration end with the year 1840, when

we

find the Norwegians located in six settlements

that

became ])ermanent,

to add to this in

the

religious

thought best

Norwegian

set-

work done among the Nor-

wegian immigrants. tlements

haver in 1837 and consequently was a fellow passeuii;er with Knud

He informs me that when they New York, Knud Eide could liet no

Olson Eide. ai'rived in

from lack of funds, llaus Valder did all he could for him and talked to the other pasfiirtlier

sengers iu his behalf.

Knud Eide

cried like

and a C(dlection was taken uj) for him, "and" adds Hans Valder, "he came with us as

a child

far as Kochester, N. Y.

a wife and three or

There he was

fcuir chihlreu.

I

left

with

learned

since that his daughters got married, but I do

not

know where they

reside."

Valle from Aurland iu the sauie ship in 1837.

Mr.

C Danielson

Norway also came in By him I am tok him u]) and so find out what was to hv done with tlie money. also describes the hard times in

Gudmund

Sandsber^'s dan^liter

She

Mr. Mitchell.

her son, M. in cijiars in

!>.

still lives in

Mitchell,

that

city.

is

The

iiiai-ried

Ottawa,

111.,

a

ami

a wholesale dealer letti^rs,

testimonial

which I have referred belonp; to Mrs. Mitchell, and were kindly loaned me by her son, M. B. Mitchell. On examiniiiii these and i»assport

to

documents I could not help thinkinii' what a help it would be to the historian if peo])le would take better care of their old letters and

NORWEGIAN IMMIGRATION.

138

other written and printed documents.

who have no

pkice to take care of

Those

them should

present them to some historical society, where

they might be preserved for reference. According to the best information I have

been able to obtain, Johan Nordboe came to

He was from the eastname from

Kendall, X. Y., in 1832. ern part of

Nordboe

in

was from

Xorwa^', and took his

Ringebo

in

Gudbrandsdal. His wife

Nordboe spent three years in Kendall, but did not seem to get on well with his countrymen there, who were all from the western part of Norv>'ay, and the Stavangerings, including Kleng Peerson, did not seem willing to give the man from Gudbrandsdal a fair chance. To Ole Canuteson, now of Waco, Texas, he made the statement that he could not get in Kendall the nice farm that he wanted, and that Kleng Peerson insisted on his taking an inferior one, which he did not acJohan Nordboe and Kleng Peerson were cept. (Esterdalen.

not therefore the best of friends for a time, but

have become their reand reconciled

in their later years they

nearly,

if

not entirely,

seem

to

In Norv/ay were friendly. Johan Nordboe had been an itinerant physician and he also practiced the healing art after he

lations in Texas

came

to this country.

I

learn of his vaccina t-

FROM

1^25

TO

139

1836.

ing cliildren both in Keiulall aud iu the Fox

River settlement. In 1S3G he to like

so

we

it

Mrs. Xorboe

moved

was a

iJiid\\ ife.

to Illinois, but did not

seem

there any better than in Kendall, and

find

him removing

first to

Missouri in

1S37 (Shelby county), and then to Texas in 1838.

So far as I have been able to learn he was the Xorwegian who ever went to Texas. He had no desire to found a Norwegian settlement. On the contrary, his aim seemed to be to get away from his countrymen. He settled in Dallas county, Texas, where for himself and family first

he got a bonus of 1,020 acres of land. He was living in Dallas county when the lieiersons aud Wi^renshjolds came to Texas in In the early fifties he visited the 1815 In a Wa^reushjolds at Four Mih^ Prairie. letter to

me

the late Mrs. Elise AViereuskjold

describes him as a student of history aud She say he was skillful in drawscience. AYhen ing and had talents for sculjUure. man small, feeble she saw him, he was a

about eighty years old. Althougli he did not like to live iu a Nitrwegian settlement, he felt a deep interest in his countrymen, au, he at once dccidiMl to leave

Norway and

so

began to talk

to

his friends

NORWEGIAN IMMIGRATION.

156

about the land in the far west, and about the advantages offered there to settlers. He was well informed, very persuasive, and the result

was, that he induced

was

many

practically a Quaker,

to join him.

and so

felt

He

more or

less the effect of the persecution of all dissent-

ers from the established church

of

Norway.

But this was not all. Besides being a dissenter from the established church, he had married outside of his class or station, his wife being the

daughter of an officer in the Norwegian army, and this was an additional reason for his wishing to get away from his native country. He

wanted

man

where he and

for his wife's sake to get to a laud

man

is a and so and two boys, Andrew and Bruun, born in 1832 and 1834, became passengers in the Kohler brig "Norden" which left Stavanger the first Sunday after Pentecost and arrived in New York, July 12, 1836. Eiuar Anderson Aasen, who came in the same ship, and still

"a

for a' that,"

bis wife

near Danville, La Salle county, Illinois, has informed me that all the passengers looked up to Bjorn Anderson as their leader, and came lives

to

him

for advice in all their troubles.

In regard to his

life in

America,

I

take the

liberty of reproducing here a sketch of him and

of

my

mother, written for a Madison, Wis., pa-

Abel Cathrine Amundson.

THE EXODUS OF

157

1836.

immediately iipuu the death of my mother, which occurred October 31, 1S85. I have taken the liberty of making- a few necessary additions and changes and inserting some dates, and

per,

naming a few places in order to make form as nearly as possible to the facts as

con-

it

I

know

them.

"On Thursday last (Nov. erine AmundsoD, was laid

5,

1885) Abel Cath-

in her final resting-

place in the family burying ground on the old homestead, in the town of Albion, Dane county.

She died Saturday evening, October

home

of

one

31, at

the

of her daughters, Dina, the wife

of Rev. T. A. Torgerson, near Bristol, ^Yorth

county, Iowa, where she had lived during the last eighteen years.

The funeral

services

were

conducted at the East church on Koshkonong prairie by the former pastor of the family, Rev. J.

A. Ottesen, in the presence of a large num-

ber of friends and relatives. "The deceased was a woman of remarkably beautiful character, equi]>iie'd Anderson and his wife Ingeborg Anderson,

THE EXODUS OP

167

1836.

were all intimate friends of The country was, of course, thinly settled, but father was a worker and during the three 3'ears spent in Illinois, he was making Lars

Scheie

father's.

j)reparations for a

In the

summer

home

of his

own somewhere.

of 1838 a drove of cattle

came

and father bought a large cow with her calf and paid S40 for them. The cow was a wonderful milker. The next purchase was a pair of black steers, large size. These steers were yoked for the first time by an American neighbor, and when they were let out of the yard to be driven around, the Amerinto the neighborhood,

ican took hold of the borns, but the steers got

away from him and ran against a the yoke.

and broke During 1840 preparations were made

to locate in Wisconsin.

consisting of father,

A party

Amund

tree

was made

up,

Anderson, Lars

Dugstad, Thorstein Olson Bjaadland, Amund Rossaland and his son-in-law, Tonnes ToUefson. It was understood that the territory of Wisconsin had been surveyed and that land was for

by the United States government. They to Koshkoncuig (Albion, Dane county, Wis.), and father, Amund Anderson, Lars Dugstad and Thorstein Olson Bjaadland bought sale

went

land, while lefson

Amund

were not

Eossaland and Tnn('s Tcks in the "winter,

and he would cut a hole bath. ing,

He

trained

liis

swimming and other

•'I

do not knoAv

tlie

in the ice

and take a

scholars in racing, bathexercises.

date of his death and do

know how to get it." Mr. Mnus rejects the idea

not

emigrated (m

that Ole Tvynning

account of any

dissatisfaction

Norway, and

with the conditi(m of things

in

opinion must be accepted.

We may

his

therefore

say that he came to America to ameliorate his position. He left a marsh farm, Avhich he

own

found himself unable to pay for, and being a well informed man it is easy to see that he looked for better prospects in the western hemisphere. All agree in desci-ibing Ole TJynning pliilanthropic man, ami as a noble-minded,

Mods Aadland the Beaver

said that

it

Avas a great loss to

Creek colony when Ole

Kynning

died. It is entirely certain that

Rynning

share in promoting the exodus of 1837.

must be credited to the

no That

lia