The editor of Billed-Magazin gives other interviews with pioneers showing the effect of Svalestuen’s return (page 293).

Some of the Norwegian pioneers wrote books regarding the settlements and American conditions, and these, laudatory as they were, exerted not a little influence. Special mention should be made of Ole Rynning, whose pamphlet, Sandfaerdig Beretning om Amerika til Veiledning og Hjaelp for Bonde og, Menigmand, skrevet of en Norsk som kom der i Juni Maaned, 1837.[59] This little book of thirty-nine pages had not a little to do with the emigration that followed to La Salle County, Illinois, and elsewhere. In it the author gives an intelligent discussion of thirteen questions regarding America which he set himself to answer. Among them were: What is the nature of the country? What is the reason that so many people go there? Is it not to be feared that the land will soon be overpopulated? In what parts are the Norwegian settlements? Which is the most convenient and the cheapest route to them? What is the price of land? What provision is there for the education of children? What language is spoken and is it difficult to learn? Is there danger of disease in America? What kind of people should emigrate?

Another writer of immigration literature whose writings were widely distributed and had considerable influence was Johan Reinert Reierson. He came to America in 1843, but returned to Norway soon after. In America he had written a book, Veiviseren,[60] which he published in Norway and was read far and wide. This book contains a fund of information regarding the different settlements, as Racine County, Wisconsin, La Salle County, Illinois, and Lee County, Iowa, and others, all of which Reierson had himself visited. Reierson became the founder of the first Norwegian settlement in Texas in 1847–48.

Of the events leading up to this, Billed-Magazin for 1870 gives a circumstantial account, pages 58–60, 66–67, and 75–76. Reierson’s book seems to have been a leading factor in promoting emigration from Valders. Among the earliest to leave this region were Nils Hanson Fjeld and family of South Aurdal, Valders, who emigrated in 1847. He says, page 236 of Billed-Magazin for 1870, that before him only two or three single men had gone to America from that region. The “America-fever” had not yet taken hold of the people, “many would not give credence to mere hearsay, but after a while a couple copies of Reierson’s book about Texas came to the district. ‘Now we have the printed word to go by,’ it was said, and many of the doubters soon were converted to the orthodox faith in the land of promise beyond the great ocean.” And as a result, many began to emigrate. As early as 1848, emigration from Valders on a considerable scale was already in progress.

I shall here also mention Ansten Nattestad, who wrote a similar book, which he took with him on his return to Norway in 1838, and had printed there; this became a factor operating toward emigration, especially in Numedal. Reverend J. W. C. Dietrichson’s Reise blandt de norske Emigranter i de forenede nordamerikanske Fristater, Stavanger, 1846 (124 pages), gave much valuable information about the settlements, but was not calculated to exert much influence toward emigration. The first three that I have mentioned, however, had an influence which we today can hardly fully appreciate.

Finally, curiosity and the spirit of adventure have doubtless prompted some to cross the ocean.

To sum up, the chief influences that have promoted Scandinavian emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century have been in the order of their importance: first, the prospect of material betterment and the love of a freer and more independent life; second, letters of relatives and friends who had emigrated to the United States and visits of these again to their native country; third, the advertising of agents of emigration; fourth, religious persecution at home; fifth, church proselytism; sixth, political oppression; seventh, military service; and eighth, the desire for adventure. Fugitives from justice have been few, and paupers and criminals in the Scandinavian countries are not sent out of the country; they are taken care of by the government.

CHAPTER IX
Growth of the Fox River Settlement. The Immigration of 1836. Further Personal Sketches.

On page fifty-five above I spoke of the advance troop of six men who established the Fox River Settlement in 1834. A list of those who followed from New York in 1835 was also given. Other settlers came in subsequent years, more and more now coming directly from Norway to La Salle County. The vicinity of the present towns of Norway and Leland, in eastern and northern La Salle County, became centers of a settlement, which later extended east into Kendall County (Newark and Lisbon) and into Grundy County toward Morris, as also north into DeKalb County (Rollo, Sandwich), and northwest clear into southwestern Lee County (Paw Paw, Sublette, and surrounding region). The slooper, Ole Olson Hetletvedt, had not come west with the first party. He lived first in Kendall and then went to Niagara Falls, being there employed in a paper mill. Here he married a Miss Chamberlain, then moved back to Orleans County. In 1839 he and his wife went west, settling in Kendall County. He bought land on the spot where the town of Newark now stands. He became well known as a lay preacher of the Haugian faith in the Fox River Settlement, also visiting the settlements founded soon after in Wisconsin and in Lee County, Iowa. He died in Kendall County in 1849 or 1850.[61]

Iver Waller, who bought a claim of Miss Pearson in 1835, came directly from Norway to La Salle County that year. Baldwin’s History of La Salle County lists Ove Stenson Rossadal and wife, and John Stenson Rossadal among the arrivals of 1835, and as being brothers of Daniel Rossadal, of whom we have spoken above. Strand’s History of the Norwegians in Illinois correctly names them as sons of Daniel Rossadal. Nils Bilden, who also came during this period (year uncertain), was therefore one of the very first emigrants from Hardanger to the United States. He settled at Rochester, Sangamon County, Illinois.

As to the extent of Norwegian immigration during the years immediately preceding the year, 1836, which inaugurates a new period in the movement, our information is very fragmentary. American statistics give forty-two and thirty-one, respectively, for 1834 and 1835, as the total immigration from Norway and Sweden. In 1833 there were sixteen, while the number for 1832 is three hundred and thirteen.[62] The total number between 1826 and 1831 is given as sixty-eight. It is probable, however, that these figures do not represent the full number of immigrants during these years. Norwegian government statistics on immigration which are available since 1836, give the number of immigrants for that year as two hundred, which is also the figure for the following year. It is to this exodus that we shall now turn.

We have above, under Causes of Emigration, had occasion to speak of Knud Slogvig’s return to Norway in 1835, after a ten years’ residence in America;[63] the results of his return were also there briefly noted. In the two ships, Norden and Den Norske Klippe,[64] which sailed from Stavanger in July of 1836, came two hundred immigrants,[65] who located for the most part in the Fox River Settlement. These stopped en route for a short time in Rochester, no doubt gathering advice and information from Lars Larson, the captain of the sloopers, resident there as we know; thence they continued their journey west to Chicago and to La Salle County. Thus the nucleus which had been formed in 1834–35 in a very short time developed into a considerable settlement at a time when the surrounding country was practically a wilderness. The immigrants of 1836 were, in part, from Stavanger, some, however, were from other districts, east and north, as especially Hardanger and Voss.

Not all who came settled in Mission and the later Miller townships, however. Some went considerably farther north and established, in Adams Township, a northern extension of the original settlement at and around the present village of Leland. The two, however, later grew together into one large settlement, extending also, east into Kendall County. The first white settler in Adams Township was Mordicai Disney, who located there in 1836, slightly prior to the coming of the immigrants from Stavanger.[66]

The first of our immigrants to locate in Adams Township where Halvor Nelson and Ole T. Olson, who in the spring of 1837, settled on sections twenty-one and twenty-two;[67] they had lived in Mission Township since their coming in 1836. Among those who came in 1836 and located in Mission Township were: Amund Anderson Hornefjeld, who in 1840 went to Wisconsin (see below), Erick Johnson Savig[68] and wife, Ingeborg, from Kvinherred Parish, Knud Olson Hetletvedt and wife, Serena (both of whom died of cholera in 1849), Osmund Thomason,[69] wife and daughter, Anne, Henrik Erickson Sebbe and two sons, who went to Salt Lake City in 1848 (see above, p. 78). Samuel Peerson and Helge Vatname also seem to have come in 1836; they are recorded as living at Norway, Illinois, in 1837, and as aiding in bringing some of the immigrants of 1837 from Chicago to La Salle County.

Some of those who came in 1836 did not go directly to La Salle County. Andrew Anderson (Aasen), wife, Olena, three sons and two daughters, from Tysvær Parish, Skjold, remained two years in Orleans County, New York, coming to La Salle County in 1838; he died of the cholera in 1849. John Hidle from Stavanger County, Norway, also emigrated in 1836, coming direct to La Salle County. In 1838 he settled at Lisbon, Kendall County, being thus the first Norwegian to locate there and as far as I have been able to find out, the first Norwegian to settle in that county (for Ole O. Hetletvedt did not come till 1839). Hidle, who wrote his name Hill in this country, married Susanna Anderson, daughter of Andrew Anderson; she was fourteen years old when her parents came to America, and is still living, at Morris, Illinois, with her daughter Mrs. Austin Osmond. Lars Bö and Michael Bö, who lived and died in La Salle County, came when John Hill did. Lars Larson Brimsöe, born in Stavanger, 1812, worked for some time as a carpenter in New York and Chicago before settling in La Salle County. In 1858 he located in Benton County, Iowa, and in 1872 went to Adams County (died 1873). Björn Anderson Kvelve and wife, Catherine,[70] and two sons, Arnold Andrew and Brunn, from Vikedal, Ryfylke, lived for a year in Rochester, New York, came in 1837 to Mission Township, La Salle County. He removed to Dane County, Wisconsin, in 1839. Of Lars Tallakson, who came to America in 1836 (by way of Gothenburg), we shall speak below. Herman Aarag Osmond, born near Stavanger, 1818, also came to America in 1836. He first lived in Ohio, came in 1837 to Chicago, then to Norway, La Salle County. He settled on a farm near Norway in 1848, but bought in 1869 a farm near Newark, Kendall County; Herman Osmond died in Newark in 1888.

Some of the immigrants of 1836 located in Chicago, which then consisted of only a few houses. Among these was first, Halstein Torison (or Törison), to whom Knud Langeland accords the distinction of being the first Norwegian resident of Chicago. He was from Fjeldberg in Söndhordland, and he came to Chicago with wife and children in October, 1836. The site of his home was that now occupied by the Chicago and Northwestern Depot on Wells Street. He worked first as a gardener for a Mr. Newberry. Reverend Dietrichson speaks of him, in 1844, as prosperous and as occupying a leading position among Chicago Norwegians at that time. In 1848 he moved to Calumet, twenty miles south of Chicago, where he lived until his death in 1882.

Svein Lothe, from Hardanger, also came in 1836, as did Nils Röthe and wife, Torbjör, who were from Voss. The latter remained, however, in Rochester, New York, one year before coming to Chicago. Nils Röthe and wife were the first to emigrate from Voss, Norway. Johan Larson, from Kopervik, an island not far north of Stavanger city, also located in Chicago in 1836. He was a sailor and had, it seems, visited Chicago before; what year he came to America, I do not know. I may also mention Baard Johnson, who, with his wife and five children, settled in Chicago in 1837. Those we have mentioned form the nucleus out of which has grown today the largest Norwegian city colony in this country.

Svein Knutson Lothe, who emigrated with wife and two children from Hardanger in 1836, was from the Parish of Ullensvang. There were eleven persons in all who came from Ullensvang that year, the other seven being: Jon Jonson Aga, wife and two children, Torbjörn Djönne, Olav Öystenson Lofthus and Omund Helgeson Maakestad. Maakestad became the founder of the Hardanger settlement in Lee County, Illinois (see below). I am not able to say where Aga, Djönne or Lofthus located. There were also seven immigrants from Ulvik Parish, Hardanger, that year; they were: Sjur Haaheim and wife, Paul Dale and wife, Sjur Dale and wife and Aslak Holven. These eighteen persons form the advance guard of the immigration from Hardanger.

We have spoken of the two ships that came from Stavanger in 1836. These were followed in the next year by Enigheden (Harmony), Captain Jensen, carrying ninety-three passengers. These were for the most part from Tysvær and from Hjelmeland, and Aardal in Ryfylke, from the city of Stavanger, and from Egersund. They came to New York, thence went to Albany and Rochester, and by way of the lakes to Chicago. Most of them went to La Salle County, although not all settled there permanently. Among the passengers were Hans Valder and wife from Ryfylke, Knud Olson Eide, Ole Thompson Eide, from Fogn, near Stavanger, Thomas A. Thompson, Christopher Danielson and family, Östen Espeland and family, and Knud Danielson and family.

The sailing of Enigheden may be regarded as a continuation of the movement in Stavanger county, which was given such an impetus by Knud Slogvig’s return in 1835. Other immigrants continued to come from this region in subsequent years, but the autumn of 1837 inaugurates a change in the course of the movement to a more northerly region, Hardanger, Voss, and Bergen, for a period, contributing a large share to the now rapidly increasing numbers of emigrants.

CHAPTER X
The Year 1837. The Sailing of Aegir.

The influence of Gjert Hovland in this new trend in the immigration should be noted. South Bergenhus now became the scene of immigration activity. At the same time it is to be observed that Hardanger had contributed its quota of immigrants in the exodus of 1836. The return of Knud Slogvig was noised far beyond the County of Stavanger. Among those who travelled long distances to see and talk with Slogvig and get personal affirmation of what reports had told of America, was Nils P. Langeland, a school teacher from Samnanger, one of the emigrants of 1837. Similarly Knud Langeland relates in Nordmaendene i Amerika, page twenty-three, how he paid a visit to Slogvig in the winter of 1836, and received from him assurance of what he had read[71] about the New World. Knud Langeland gives a most interesting account of how his interest in America became aroused; though a personal experience, it is undoubtedly typical of that of many a young man in Bergen and surrounding region at this time. As a document in immigration history, it is sufficiently significant to warrant quoting in considerable part. He says:

So far Langeland’s account. While the evidence points to many causes as operating conjointly toward bringing about the departure, in the spring of 1837, of so many from Samnanger and from Voss, the influence of Nils P. Langeland, already mentioned above, seems to have been a special factor at this particular time. Nils Langeland was already then an elderly man. He had devoted his life to the cause of popular education, but the intolerant clergy of the time found him too liberal minded and continually put obstacles in his way. Although he was supported by a group of faithful friends, his usefulness was hampered; discouraged at last, he decided to leave his native country and go to America.

This was in the summer of 1836. In the fall of that year, Captain Behrens returned with the bark, Aegir, from America, whither he had carried a cargo of freight in the summer. Langeland’s friends had already sold their homes and were preparing to emigrate. Hearing of this, Behrens decided to convert his bark into a passenger boat, and he offered to take them to America the next spring; the offer was accepted. While preparations were going on, the announcements of the projected sailing, which had been printed in the newspapers, led intending immigrants from other sections, also, to join the party. Among these was Ole Rynning, from Snaasen, in Trondhjem Province, of whom we shall speak more at length below.

On the 4th of July, 1837, Aegir sailed from Bergen with eighty-two passengers. Among these were Mons Aadland, Nils Fröland, Anders Nordvig, Ingebrigt Brudvig, Thomas Bauge and Thorbjörn Veste, all of whom had large families, and the following from Hardanger: Nils L. Jördre, wife and six children, and Peder J. Maurset, wife and child, from Ulvik Parish, and Amund Rosseland, wife and three children, Lars G. Skeie, wife and two children, Sjur E. Rosseland and Svein L. Midthus from Vikör. The last-named were the first to emigrate from Vikör. The party further included Halle Væte, wife and grown daughter, and the following persons: Odd J. Himle, Kolbein O. Saue, Styrk O. Saue, Nils L. Bolstad, Baard Haugen, John H. Björgo, Ole Dyvik, all of whom were married, besides several single men, mostly relatives of the above, namely: Dövig, Bauge, Fröland, Nordvig, Hisdal, Tösseland, et al. Each adult paid sixty dollars (Norwegian specie) for passage, children under twelve paying half price. They arrived in New York eight weeks later. The journey inland was attended by numerous expenses for which the immigrants were not prepared. When they had gotten as far as Detroit, the above-mentioned Nils P. Langeland found himself without the necessary means to continue the journey. His friends who had offered to pay his expenses as far as Chicago, at last became discouraged over the constant demands upon their funds and Langeland was obliged to remain in Detroit. Here, being a capable carpenter, he soon found work; later he removed to Lapeer County, Michigan, bought there 120 acres of land, plying at the same time the trade of a carpenter. Thus it came about that Nils Langeland became the first Norwegian to settle in the State of Michigan, though we have seen that Kleng Peerson had visited the state four years earlier. At least three others of the immigrants of 1837 located temporarily in the State of Michigan that year, namely, Ingebright Nordvig, Östen Espeland, who had come in Enigheden, and Thorsten Bjaaland. These went to Adrian, Lenawee County, but left again soon after. We shall meet Bjaaland again in La Salle County, Illinois, and on Koshkonong Prairie.

CHAPTER XI
Beaver Creek. Ole Rynning.

The immigrants who came in the Aegir seem to have intended to settle in La Salle County, but in Chicago were advised by two Americans not to go there. They were also partly influenced by Norwegian immigrants[72] who were dissatisfied with that locality, and who recommended Iroquois County as a more desirable location to settle. They were told that the Fox River Valley was a very unhealthy place, the settlers were dying of ague and fever, and it was a misfortune that they had ever been induced to locate there. (Knut Langeland also records the fact that the fever raged in the whole of the Fox River Valley from Muskego, in Wisconsin, to the Mississippi River in Illinois, that summer, but that the condition in La Salle was no worse than elsewhere). So the intending settlers deputed three men to explore the country for a site for a new colony.

These, Ole Rynning, Ingebrigt Brudvig and Ole Nattestad,[73] walked south along the line of the present Illinois Central Railroad, selecting the location at Beaver Creek in Iroquois County. Of the further history of this unfortunate and short lived colony, the reader may find an account in Dietrichson’s brief discussion of the settlement, or in Langeland’s or R. B. Anderson’s book. The majority of the settlers died during the spring in the low and unhealthy climate. Ole Rynning himself died and lies buried there. The few survivors left for La Salle County the following spring. Mons Aadland refused, however, to go. He remained in Beaver Creek three years longer; selling his land in 1840 for a herd of cattle and, moving north, he located in Racine County, being therefore one of the earliest pioneers in this part of Wisconsin.

Ole Rynning’s name is most closely associated with the brief history of the Beaver Creek Settlement. We have already seen above how his book, Sandfaerdig Beretning om Amerika, came to have a very far-reaching influence upon Norwegian emigration. This book Rynning wrote that winter in the Beaver Creek Settlement. It was printed in Norway the next year. It soon became widely distributed and continued for over a decade to exert a powerful influence upon Norwegian emigration from Voss, east to Hedemarken, and north to Gudbrandsdalen, in these latter provinces, at the close of the decade, especially.

We have, on page 86 above, observed that Rynning formulated certain questions which he set about answering for the information of intending immigrants. It will be of interest to note here the nature of some of his answers. The first question as to the nature of the country, he answers by giving a very intelligent account of the topography and climate of the country, the soil in the different parts, and of what the produce of the different sections consists. In answer to the third question, he says that the United States is more than twenty times as large as Norway, that the greater part of the country is not yet even under cultivation, and that there is room for a population more than a hundred times as great as that of Norway. There need be no fear, he says, that the country will be full in fifty years.

The fourth question as to where the Norwegian immigrants have located especially, he answers by saying, that in New York, Rochester, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans, there are said to be individual settlers; but he mentions four places where several have settled, namely: (1) Orleans County, New York, but where, he says, there are now only two or three families left; (2) La Salle County, Illinois, where, he says, there are about twenty families; (3) White County, Indiana, on the Tippecanoe River. “Here,” he says, live “only two Norwegians from Drammen, who, together, own about eleven hundred acres of land”; (4) Shelby County, Missouri, where a few Norwegians from Stavanger settled in the spring of 1837; (5) Iroquois County, Illinois. “Here,” he says, “there are eleven or twelve families of those who came last summer.”

The sixth question as to the land in these localities, he answers by praising the beauty and the fertility of the prairie. And as to the price of land, he says, that it has hitherto been $1.25 per acre, but that he has heard that hereafter land is to be divided into three classes and the price of land of the third class is to be half a dollar an acre. He then offers explicit directions as to how to go about securing land. He thereupon gives the prices of livestock at the time, and of produce, etc. A horse, we learn, costs from fifty to a hundred dollars, a yoke of oxen, sixty to eighty. A milk cow with calf, sixteen to twenty, a sheep, two to three, hogs are six to ten dollars a head, pork costs three to five shillings a “mark,” butter six to twelve, a barrel of (wheat) flour, eight to ten dollars; a barrel of cornmeal, two and a half to three dollars; a barrel of potatoes, one dollar; a pound of coffee, twenty shillings; a barrel of salt is five dollars (Norwegian). But in Wisconsin Territory, the prices are two to three times higher, while farther south, everything is cheaper.

Then he speaks of wages, of religious conditions, law and order, how instruction for the young is provided, linguistic conditions, health conditions. He discusses life in the new settlements, its trials and attendant evils. As to the Indians, he says: “They have gone farther west; one need never fear attack by Indians in Illinois.” In answer to the question as to who should emigrate, he warns against unreasonable expectations; advises farmers, mechanics and tradesmen to come, he who neither can nor will work must never expect, he says, that wealth or luxury will stand ready to receive him. No, in America one gets nothing without work, but by work, one can expect to attain to comfortable circumstances. He thereupon discusses the question of the dangers in crossing the oceans, which, he says, are less than usually imagined, and the rumor of enslavement of the immigrant. The latter he brands as false, adding, “yet it is true that many who have not been able to pay their passage, have come upon such terms that they have sold themselves, or their service, for a certain number of years to some man here in the country. Many are thereby said to have come into bad hands, and have not had it better than slaves. No Norwegian, as far as I know, has fared in this way, nor is it to be feared, if one crosses by a Norwegian ship, and with one’s own countrymen.” In conclusion, I shall cite his opinion on the slave trade which is interesting in the insight and judgment it gives evidence of, on the part of an immigrant over twenty years before the war:

Ole Rynning was born in Ringsaker, as the son of Reverend Jens Rynning and wife, Severine Catherine Steen, in 1809. In 1825, the father moved to Snaasen. Having finished his education in 1829, he taught school for a time. Then he bought a small farm[74] which he had to give up again, not being able to pay for it. His ultra democratic sympathies were displeasing to his conservative father, and an unhappy love affair, which his father disapproved of as being a mesalliance, seems, at least, to have been, in part the cause of his leaving Norway. We have recited, briefly, his short career in America.[75] Of his nobility of character and the self-sacrificing spirit he showed in helping the grief-stricken and suffering colonists in the unfortunate Beaver Creek Settlement, in the spring and summer of 1838, his surviving associates give ample testimony. His book, Sandfaerdig Beretning, was written on the sick-bed.[76] When he died, there was only one man in the settlement who was well enough to make a casket for him from an old oak which he hewed down. Rynning was buried out on the prairie, but no one knows now where the spot is.

CHAPTER XII
Some of the Immigrants of 1837. The First Pathfinders from Numedal and Telemarken.

Besides the 177 immigrants, who came to America from Stavanger and Bergen in 1837, there was a considerable number who embarked from Gothenburg, Sweden. These came mostly from Numedal and Telemarken in the south central part of Norway.

Among the immigrants of 1837 were, also, the brothers, Ole and Ansten Nattestad, from Vægli, Numedal, both of whom came via Gothenburg, and Hans Barlien, who emigrated with Enigheden. These men played such a part in the immigration history of the period as to deserve something more than a mere mention.

Ansten Nattestad may be regarded as the father of the emigration movement from Numedal, Norway, from which some of the most successful Norwegian settlements in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, were later recruited. His brother, Ole Nattestad, became the founder of one of these settlements, that of Jefferson Prairie, in Rock County, Wisconsin (also extending into Illinois); while Hans Barlien founded the first Norwegian settlement in Iowa, at Sugar Creek, Lee County. Of the circumstances which led to the emigration of the Nattestad brothers, an interesting account appears in Billed-Magazin, 1869, pages 82–83. This, which is an interview with Ole Nattestad, has been reprinted in other works and I shall not take the space for it here. We may note, however, that they had received their first news of America upon a journey to the neighborhood of Stavanger in the close of 1836. During Christmas of that year, they were the guests of Even Nubbru in Sigdal, a member of the Storthing, and it was his praise of American laws which first aroused Ole Nattestad’s desire to emigrate, as he had already had some unpleasant experiences in that respect.

In April, 1837, they stood ready to leave for America, having converted their possessions into cash, a sum of eight hundred dollars. They went on skis from Rollaug to Tin, over the mountains and through the forests to Stavanger. Halsten Halvorson Brække-Eiet, also from Rollaug, became a third member of the party. In Stavanger, local official hostility to emigration led them into difficulties, and they were forced to seek safety in flight by night. They went to Tananger, where they were more successful, a skipper contracting to take them in his yacht to Gothenburg. In Gothenburg, they secured passage with a ship which carried iron from Sweden to Fall River, Massachusetts. The journey lasted thirty-two days. Thence, they went to New York, where they met a few Norwegians, and thence again to Rochester. Here they spoke with several members of the sloop party of 1825, now living in Rochester, and they were, for a short time, the guests of Lars Olson, as so many others of the immigrants of those years. Hearing that those who had come to America in 1836 had gone west to La Salle County, they decided to go there. In Detroit, Ole Nattestad was one day walking about to view the city, and he says:

This man was one of the passengers on the Aegir, who had just then arrived in Detroit. The Nattestad party now joined these, all (except N. P. Langeland and family, as we have seen, page 102 above), going west to Chicago. Here they met Björn Anderson Kvelve, whose unfavorable account of the Fox River locality first gave them some doubt as to the wisdom of going there. Of the subsequent events, the reader has already been told. We shall meet again with both Ole and Ansten Nattestad below. Halsten Brække-Eiet later settled in Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

Hans Barlien was from Overgaarden, Trondhjem; he seems to have been the second emigrant to America from that region. Of him there will be occasion to speak more in detail in connection with the first Norwegian settlement in Iowa. I desire, here, however, to mention five others, who came via Gothenburg to America in the same year, namely, Erick Gauteson Midböen, Thore Kittilson Svimbil, and John Nelson Rue, who had large families, and two single men, Gunder Gauteson Midböen and Torsten Ingebrigtson Gulliksrud. These form the advance troupe of emigrants from the Parish of Tin in Upper Telemarken, a region which furnished a large share of recruits for the pioneer colonies of Wisconsin and Iowa in the forties and the fifties. Thore Svimbil became a pioneer in Blue Mounds, Dane County, where we shall find him later. Erik Gauteson Midböen, who had a large family, settled in La Salle County, but, says our authority, “fortune was not kind to him.” He later joined the Latter Day Saints and undertook a journey to Norway as a representative of that church, returned to America and died soon after, about 1850, as near as I can ascertain. Torsten Gulliksrud also settled in Illinois, but died early. John Nelson Rue will appear later in our account as one of the founders of the earliest Norwegian settlement in Winneshiek County, Iowa.

We do not know what the circumstances were that led to the emigration of this little group from Upper Telemarken in 1837. It seems not unlikely that the news of America had come to them through copies of letters from Hovland or others, though they may also have had information more directly through Knud Slogvig’s return. The latter does not to me seem so likely, however, for they appear to have made no attempt to secure passage from Stavanger. The departure of this group from Tin does not seem to have had any immediate influence upon emigration from that region. The real exodus from Tin does not begin till 1839, and then as a part of the general movement, but this may have been aided by letters from those who went thence in 1837. The number that in this way took passage via Gothenburg that year may have been larger than we have knowledge of. While the number, two hundred, which our statistics, cited above, gives as that of the emigration from Norway in 1837 is certainly rather low, it is highly improbable that it was as high as three hundred, as elsewhere given. A conservative and reasonable estimate would seem to place it at about two hundred and forty or fifty.

Among the passengers on the Aegir, we mentioned Nils Fröland. He was one of two, the other being Mons Aadland, to first join Nils P. Langeland in his preparations for emigrating to America. With his wife and children, he located at Beaver Creek, and they were among the fortunate survivors of that colony. In 1839, he moved to Mission Township in La Salle County, and to the present Miller Township the next year. He died there in 1873. His widow (born 1798) was still living in 1895. A grandson, Lars Fruland, resides at Newark, Illinois.

Anders Nordvig, who also came on the Aegir, died in the Beaver Creek Settlement. His widow, a sister of Knud Langeland, moved to La Salle County; she died there at the age of ninety in 1892. A daughter, Malinda, married Iver Lawson (Iver Larson Bö), who came to Chicago from Voss, Norway, in 1844. Victor F. Lawson, owner of The Chicago News, is her son. Another daughter, Sarah (born 1824), married a Mr. Darnell, a pioneer of Benton County, Iowa, in 1854. Mrs. Darnell was the first Norwegian in that county. After Darnell’s death, she returned to Illinois, locating at Sandwich, De Kalb County.

Among the passengers on Aegir, Odd Himle, Baard Haugen, Ole Dyvik and John Björgo went direct to La Salle County. The first of these returned to Norway in 1844, and, while there, married Marie L. Jermo; he returned to America in 1845, and settled on Spring Prairie in Columbia County, Wisconsin, where we shall meet with him again. He died in De Forest, Dane County, Wisconsin, in May, 1893. We shall also meet John Björgo below as one of the pioneers of Koshkonong, Wisconsin. Halle Væte died in Beaver Creek, as did his wife and grown-up daughter. Kolbein Saue and Styrk Saue both went to Beaver Creek and were among the survivors; they came to Koshkonong in 1843 and are to be remembered among the early pioneers there. Styrk Saue was born in Voss, September twenty-fifth, 1814; his wife, Ellen Olson (born Rekve), was born in 1816. They were married in America. Nils Bolstad settled in Koshkonong in 1840. He was one of a group of three to visit Dane County, Wisconsin, on a trip of exploration in the fall of 1839, being, therefore, the first Norwegians in that county.

Among the passengers on Enigheden was Hans Valder and wife. He was born on the farm, Vælde, in Vats Parish in Ryfylke in 1813. Having received an education he taught school in Tysvæer some years before emigrating. Here he heard much about the earliest emigration to America from Stavanger. In Detroit, Valder and Östen Espeland separated from the rest of the party and went to Adrian, Michigan. Thence they went a few miles into the country in Lenawee County to visit a small Norwegian settlement, whither Ingebrigt Larson Narvig had recently moved from Monroe County, where he had settled in 1833.[77] In the spring of 1838 Valder left for La Salle County, Illinois. Here he lived until 1853, when he moved to what is at present Newburg, Fillmore County, Minnesota, and became one of the earliest Norwegian pioneers in Minnesota. Östen Espeland and family remained at the home of Narvig a little longer than Valder, but then they also went to La Salle County.

Another passenger on Enigheden was Christopher Danielson from Aardal, in Lower Ryfylke. He was fifty-seven years old at the time of emigrating, settled in Mission Township, La Salle County, where his wife died a few years later. Danielson died of the cholera in 1849. His son, Christopher Danielson (born in Norway), resides at Sheridan, Illinois. Thomas A. Thompson, born 1812 in Skjold Parish, Ryfylke, settled in Norway, La Salle County, Illinois. In 1867 he removed to Adams County, Iowa, where he died in 1870. Lars Richolson and wife also came in 1837, and settled near Ottawa in La Salle County. Lars Richolson, as, indeed, several of the pioneers of these years, soon became one of the substantial men of the community.[78] Ole Heier, who also came in 1837, from Tin, Telemarken, located in La Salle County. He had been an ardent Haugian, but became a Mormon in Illinois, and later a Baptist. In 1868 he moved to Iowa, where he died in 1873. A son, A. Hayer, lives in Leland, Illinois. Finally there came that year Even Askvig with wife and children from Hjelmeland Parish in Ryfylke. Settling first in Indiana (Beaver Creek) they removed the next year to La Salle County, Illinois. Late in the forties they settled in Texas and at last in 1852 the parents and a part of the family located in southwestern Iowa, where Even Askvig died in 1875 and his wife in 1881.

CHAPTER XIII
Ansten Nattestad’s Return to Norway in 1838. The Year 1839. Immigration Assumes Larger Proportions. The Course of Settlement Changes.

The principal event in Norwegian immigration history for the year, 1838, is Ansten Nattestad’s return to Norway. We have seen, above, page 103, that Ole and Ansten Nattestad left the Beaver Creek settlement in the spring of 1838. Ansten went to Norway, as it seems, for the express purpose of promoting emigration from Rollaug, Numedal, while Ole went out to explore new fields. Going north as far as the Wisconsin line he stopped in what is now Clinton Township in Rock County. This place suited his fancy and he decided to settle here.

This was July first.[79] He entered a claim of eighty acres and immediately set to work erecting temporary quarters. For a year he lived alone, rarely coming in contact with a white man, and not seeing anything of his own countrymen during all that time. “Eight Americans,” he says, “had settled in the town before me, but these also lived in about as lonely and desolate a condition as I. I found the soil especially fruitful and the melancholy uniformity of the prairie was relieved here by intervening bits of woods. Flocks of deer and other game were to be seen daily, and the uncanny howling of the prairie wolf constantly disturbed my night rest, until the habit fortified my ears against disturbances of this kind.” The following summer, Ole built a cabin in which he received, as we shall see below, the first group of immigrants into that country in the early fall of that year.

The year 1838 brought a small contingent of emigrants from Voss. They were Steffen K. Gilderhus, Knud Lydvo, Ole Lydvo and Lars Gjerstad.[80] Gilderhus went to Cleveland, Ohio, being, I believe, the first Norwegian to locate there; he remained there only one year, however, going to Chicago in 1839. We shall later find him among the pioneers of Koshkonong, Dane County, Wisconsin. Knud and Ole Lydvo and Lars Gjerstad went to La Salle County, Illinois, and thence to Shelby County, Missouri, where the restless Kleng Peerson had the year before gone in search of a new locality for a settlement in the southwest (see below).

Before passing on to the emigration of 1839, it will be in order to speak briefly of a small group of emigrants from Numedal in the year 1838. The name of the leader was Ole Aasland, a wealthy farmer of Flesberg Parish. He sold out his farm and, taking with him his family and about twenty other persons, whose passage he paid for, he sailed from Tönsberg, via Gothenburg, and thence to New York. He then went to Orleans County, New York.[81] Here it seems he fell into the hands of speculators, who sold him six hundred acres of marsh land in Noble County, Indiana, for a very high price. He removed to that place soon after, it seems, with most of those whom he had brought from Norway. Sickness set in, brought on by the swampiness of the region, and many of his party died. He thereupon (next year) abandoned the land, taking with him the survivors. In the Kendall Settlement, Andrew J. Stangeland bought the land of him for a nominal price.[82] Aasland, who changed his name in this country to Orsland, lived on the so-called Norwegian Road in Kendall, till his death, about 1864. In Kendall, he accumulated considerable property. He left a wife and four children, Canute Orsland, and Harry B. Orsland (born 1828 in Kendall), the former occupying the old homestead as late as 1895, and Hallock Orsland living in Detroit, where a daughter is also living. Let us now turn to Ansten Nattestad’s journey.

According to Nattestad’s own account he went back to Norway in the spring of 1838 via New Orleans and Liverpool. In Drammen he had printed his brother’s journal, En Dagbog, and Rynning’s book was printed in Christiania. He speaks of the great interest that these pamphlets aroused as well as that of his own return. He says: