_The Sloopers of 1825. The First Norwegian Settlement
in America. Kleng Peerson._
The story of the Sloopers from Stavanger, Norway, who came to America
in 1825, has often been told; I shall therefore be very brief in my
account of that expedition. Under causes of emigration I shall have
occasion below to note briefly some of the circumstances that seem to
have led to their departure for America in that year. The director
of the expedition and the chief owner of the boat was Lars Larson i
Jeilane; the captain was Lars Olsen. The company consisted of fifty-two
persons, all but one being natives of Stavanger and vicinity; the one
exception was the mate, Nels Erikson, who came from Bergen. Relative
to the leading spirit in this first group of emigrants, Lars Larson, I
shall say here: He was born near Stavanger, September twenty-fourth,
1787. He became a sailor, was captured in the Napoleonic wars and
kept a prisoner in London for seven years. Being released in 1814,
he remained in London, however, till 1815, when he and several other
prisoners returned to Norway. In London they had been converted to the
Quaker faith by Mrs. Margaret Allen, and upon returning to Stavanger,
Lars Larson, Elias Tastad, Thomas Helle and Metta Helle became the
founders of the first Quaker society in that city, a society which is
still in existence.
In 1821 the Stavanger Quakers began to form plans for emigrating to
America. It seems that Kleng Peerson and Knud Eide, whom we have
mentioned above, were deputed to go to America for the purpose of
learning something of the country with a view to planting there a
Quaker colony. Kleng Peerson returned to Stavanger in 1824 with a
favorable report and many of the members of the Quaker colony began to
make preparations for emigrating to the locality selected by Peerson,
namely, Orleans County, New York State. A sloop of only forty-five
tons capacity which they called _Restaurationen_, built in Hardanger,
was purchased and loaded with a cargo of iron and made ready for the
journey. Larson himself had married in December, 1824, Georgiana
Person, who was born October 19, 1803, on Fogn, a small island near
Stavanger. Besides him there were five other heads of families. On
the fourth of July, 1825, they set sail from Stavanger. The following
fifty-two persons made up the party: Lars Larson and wife Martha
Georgiana; Lars Olson, who was captain of the boat, Cornelius Nelson
Hersdal, wife and four children;[27] Daniel Stenson Rossadal, wife and
five children;[28] Thomas Madland, wife and three children,[29] Nels
Nelson Hersdal and wife Bertha, Knud Anderson Slogvig, Jacob Anderson
Slogvig, Gudmund Haugaas, Johannes Stene, wife and two children, Öien
Thorson (Thompson) wife and three children,[30] Simon Lima, wife and
three children, Henrik Christopherson Hervig, and wife, Ole Johnson,
George Johnson, Thorsten Olson Bjaaland, Nels Thorson, Ole Olson
Hetletvedt, Sara Larson (sister of Lars Larson), Halvor Iverson, Andrew
Stangeland, the mate, Nels Erikson, and the cook, Endre Dahl.
[27] Anne (b. 1814), Nels (b. 1816), Inger (b. 1819), and Martha
(b. 1823).
[28] Ellen (b. 1807), Ove (b. 1809), Lars (b. 1812), John (b.
1821), Hulda (b. 1825).
[29] Rachel (b. 1807), Julia (b. 1810), Senena (b. 1814).
[30] Sara (b. 1818), Anna Maria (b. 1819), Caroline (b. 1825).
After a perilous voyage of fourteen weeks they landed in New York,
October ninth. An account of that voyage, which also it seems was a
rather adventurous one, was given by the New York papers at the time;
it was reproduced in Norwegian translation in _Billed-Magazin_ in
1869, whence it has been copied in other works. The arrival of this
first party of Norwegian immigrants, and in so small a boat, created
nothing less than a sensation at the time, as we may infer from the
wide attention the event received in the eastern press. Thus the _New
York Daily Advertiser_ for October twelfth, 1825, under the head lines,
"A Novel Sight," gives an account of the boat, the destination of the
immigrants, the country they came from, their appearance, etc. For
this citation I may refer the reader to page 39 of my article on "The
Coming of the Norwegians to Iowa" in _The Iowa Journal of History and
Politics_, 1905, or to R. B. Anderson's _First Chapter of Norwegian
Immigration_, 1896, 70-71.
In New York the immigrants met Mr. Joseph Fellows, a Quaker, from whom
they purchased land in Orleans County, New York. It seems to have been
upon the suggestion of Mr. Fellows that they were induced to settle
here, although it is possible that the land had already been selected
for them by Kleng Peerson, who was in New York at the time. The price
to be paid for the land was five dollars an acre, each head of a family
and adult person purchasing forty acres. The immigrants not being able
to pay for the land, Mr. Fellows agreed to let them redeem it in ten
annual installments. For the further history of the colony, with which
we are here not so much concerned, the reader is referred to Knud
Langeland's _Nordmaendene i Amerika_, Chicago, 1889, pp. 10-19, or to
Anderson's _First Chapter_, pp. 77-90.
We have already mentioned Kleng Peerson, a name familiar to every
student of Norwegian pioneer history. Much has been written about
this pathfinder in the West, and romance and legend already adorn his
memory. It would be interesting to recount what we know of his life in
America, but as this has been dealt with at length by Professor R. B.
Anderson in his monograph on Norwegian Immigration, which is in large
part devoted to the slooper's history, I may refer the interested
reader to this work. _Symra_ (Decorah, Iowa) for 1906 also contains a
brief, somewhat eulogistic account in Norwegian of Peerson's stay in
New York and his journey of exploration to Illinois, Missouri, and
Texas. The briefest facts I may, however, relate here.
Kleng Peerson was born on the seventeenth of May, 1782, on the estate
Hesthammer in Tysvær Parish, Province of Ryfylke. In 1820 we find
him in Stavanger, where William Allen, an English Quaker, was then
organizing a Quaker society. In 1821 Kleng Peerson and a certain Knud
Olson Eide were, as we have seen, commissioned, it appears, by the
Quakers to go to America and examine the possibility of organizing a
Norwegian colony there. The two explorers secured work in New York
City, but Knud Eide fell ill and died not long after, and Peerson went
west alone in quest of a suitable location for a colony. Just how far
west he may have come on this first journey is not known. After some
time he decided upon Orleans County on the shores of the Ontario as the
best place to plant his colony, and in 1824 he returned to Norway. We
have noted already the results of Peerson's mission. When Lars Larson's
party prepared to go to America Kleng Peerson also left, but he did
not take passage in _Restaurationen_. It seems that he embarked by way
of Gothenburg and was in New York to receive the sloopers upon their
arrival.
It would be natural to suppose that Peerson did not go alone from
Stavanger when he returned to America via Gothenburg in 1825. After
much inquiry I have also succeeded in discovering the name of one man,
who, with his family, accompanied Peerson that year. This man was
Björn Björnson from Stavanger, a cousin of Kleng Peerson; he brought
his wife and several children with him, but left two girl twins, born
in May of that year, with a relative who then lived in Tjensvold, near
Stavanger. Further facts about this family will be given in the chapter
on Chicago.
As Peerson seems to play no role in the founding of the Orleans County
settlement, I shall leave him here. There will be occasion to speak
briefly of him again later in connection with the second Norwegian
settlement. I wish to add a few words here about Lars Larson, however.
He and his family located in Rochester, where he became a builder
of canal boats, prospered; and kept in close touch with immigrant
Norwegians during the two decades of his life there. His home became a
kind of Mecca for hosts of intending settlers in the New World. Larson
died by accident on a canal boat in November, 1845, but his widow lived
till October, 1887. They had eight children, of whom the first one,
Margaret Allen, was born on the Atlantic Ocean, September second, 1825.
Of her and others of Lars Larson's descendants I shall speak briefly
below. We shall now return to the settlers in Orleans County, New York.
The colony was in many respects unfortunate; it cannot be said to
have prospered and has never played any important part as a colony in
Norwegian-American history. But it is important as being the first,
and also as being the parent of a very large and progressive Norwegian
settlement founded in 1834-35 in La Salle County, Illinois, of which
more below. And yet the economic conditions of the Quaker immigrants
gradually became better and the future looked more promising. They felt
now that America offered many advantages to the able and the capable,
and they began writing encouraging letters to relatives and friends in
the old country, urging them to seek their fortune here. As a result
there was, if not a large, at any rate a fairly constant emigration
of individuals and families from Stavanger and adjacent region during
the following eight or nine years, although few seem to have come
before 1829. In this year, e. g., came Gudmund Sandsberg (b. 1787) from
Hjelmeland, in Ryfylke, Norway, and his wife Marie and three children,
Bertha, Anna, and Torbjör.
Passage was secured in the beginning for the most part with American
sailships carrying Swedish iron from Gothenburg. But as this was
attended by much uncertainty, often necessitating several weeks of
waiting, the intending emigrants began to go to Hamburg, where German
emigration by means of regular going American packet ships had already
begun. Here, however, another difficulty met them. The already somewhat
heavy emigration at this port made it necessary to order passage
several weeks ahead in order to insure accommodations, and failing in
this, the emigrant was forced to wait there until the next packet boat
should sail. And so it came about that many of the early Norwegian
immigrants to America came by way of Havre, France, where passage was
always certain, emigration from this point being as yet very limited.
Among those who came via Gothenburg was Gjert Hovland, a farmer from
Hardanger, who left Norway with his family on the twenty-fourth of
June, 1831, sailed from Gothenburg June thirtieth and arrived in New
York September eighteenth. He does not seem to have gone directly to
Kendall, for we find him soon after the owner of fifty acres of forest
land in Morris County, New Jersey.
Gjert Hovland seems to be the first one from the province of Hardanger
to emigrate to America. Other emigrants during these years are:
Christian Olson, who came in 1829, settling in Kendall; Knut Evenson,
wife and daughter Katherine, who emigrated in 1831 in the same ship
by which Hovland came; and Ingebret Larson Narvig from Tysvær Parish,
Ryfylke, who came in 1831 and two years later located in Michigan.
It seems probable that also Johan Nordboe and wife from Ringebo, in
Gudbrandsdalen, Norway, came to Orleans County in 1832. Nordboe was the
first to emigrate from Gudbrandsdalen, a province from which actual
immigration did not begin until sixteen years later.
Norwegian immigrants who came during these years generally located
in Orleans County, but rarely remained there permanently. The
northwestern states were just then beginning to be opened up to
settlers. At this time migration from the eastern states was directed
particularly to Illinois. Good government land could be had here
for $1.25 an acre. The very heavily wooded land that the Norwegian
immigrants in Orleans County had purchased proved very difficult of
improvement, and many began to think of moving to a more favorable
locality.
In 1833 Kleng Peerson, who seems to have lived in Kendall at this
time, made a journey to the West, evidently for the purpose of finding
a suitable site for a new settlement. He was accompanied by Ingebret
Larson Narvig as far as Erie, Monroe County, Michigan, where the latter
remained, Peerson continuing the journey farther west. After several
months of wandering across Michigan, and down into Ohio and Indiana, he
at last arrived at Chicago, then a village of about twenty huts. The
marshes of Chicago did not appeal to Peerson and he went to Milwaukee,
but the reports he received of the endless forests of Wisconsin soon
drove him back again into Illinois. After several days' journey on foot
again west of Chicago he at last found a spot which seemed to him as
if providentially designated as the proper locality for his western
colony. The place was immediately south of the present village of
Norway in La Salle County. His choice made, Peerson returned to Orleans
County, having covered over 2,000 miles on foot since he left.
Peerson's selection was universally approved and a considerable
number of the Kendall settlers decided to move west. Among those of
the sloopers who remained in New York I shall here name: Ole Johnson,
Henrik C. Hervig and Andrew Stangeland, who, however, some years later
bought a tract of land in Noble County, Indiana; Lars Olson located in
New York City, and, as we have seen, Lars Larson settled in Rochester;
Nels Erikson went back to Norway, while Öien Thompson and Thomas
Madland died in Kendall in 1826, and Cornelius Hersdal died there in
1833.