Before reciting further the fortunes of this group of immigrants, the first to enter the State of Wisconsin, let us turn for a moment to a consideration of the larger movement. With the year 1839, emigration from Norway begins to assume larger proportions, and certain districts, which hitherto had sent very few, now begin to contribute the larger share of the number of emigrants to America. This year may very properly be said to have inaugurated the second period in Norwegian immigration history. Down to 1839 the immigration movement in Norway had not really gone beyond the provinces of Stavanger and South Bergenhus in southwestern and western Norway. Indeed, nearly all of the emigrants had come from these sections. In fact, before 1836 the movement was almost confined to Stavanger and Ryfylke. In that year it reaches Hardanger, and in 1837, Bergen. It does not reach Voss properly before 1838, although Nils Röthe and wife had emigrated from there in 1836. In 1837, as we have seen, the first emigrant ship, the Aegir, left Bergen with eighty-four passengers. Before 1839 we meet with occasional individual emigration from provinces to the east and northeast. Thus Ole Rynning and Snaasen in Trondhjem Diocese emigrated in the Aegir in 1837. The first emigrants from Telemarken also came in 1837. As we have seen above, 1837 is also the year which records the first immigration from Numedal. Among the emigrants from other parts of Norway prior to 1837 must be mentioned also Johan Nordboe, from Ringebo in Guldbrandsdalen, who came in 1832 and resided for some time in Kendall, New York, later going to Texas, and Hans Barlien from Trondhjem County, who came to La Salle County in 1837. Neither of these two men, however, were instrumental in bringing about any emigration movement in Gudbrandsdalen and Trondhjem. It is not until a much later period that these two districts are represented in considerable numbers among emigrants.
It is the year 1839 in which emigration on a larger scale takes its beginnings. Similarly, the year 1839 marks a change also in the movement of the course of settlement. Down to this time all emigration from Norway stands in direct relation to the movement which began in Stavanger in 1825, and which in the years 1834–36 resulted in the formation of the Fox River Settlement in La Salle County, Illinois. This settlement then became the center of dispersion for what may be called the southern line of settlements. All through the forties and the fifties the southern course of migration westward, which includes southern and central Iowa, stands in direct relation to early Norwegian colonization in New York and Illinois,—that is the first period of Norwegian emigration from the provinces of Stavanger and South Bergenhus (and this province only as far north as Bergen, Voss being excluded) in Southwestern Norway. In 1839 the first settlements are formed in Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Muskego in Waukesha County, and in Rock County; and in 1839–40 that of Koshkonong in Dane and Jefferson Counties. These settlements then became a northern point of dispersion. From here we have a second northern line of settlement westward and northwestward into Northern Iowa, Minnesota, and the more northerly localities of Wisconsin.
CHAPTER XIV
Shelby County, Missouri. Ansten Nattestad’s Return from Norway in 1839. The Founding of the Jefferson Prairie Settlement in Rock County, Wisconsin.
Before returning now to the thread of our narrative, I wish to speak briefly of an early effort, and the only one, before the fifties, to found a settlement from the southern point of dispersion.
In 1837 Kleng Peerson, Jacob and Knud Slogvig, Andrew Askeland, Andrew Simonson, Thorstein Thorson Rue, several of whom had families, and about eight others, left La Salle County, went to Missouri and made a settlement in Shelby County; this, however, proved unsuccessful, principally on account of the lack of a market.
Peerson does not seem to have selected a very desirable locality, and he did not possess the steadfastness of purpose that would seem to be a prime requisite in the pioneer. He was too much of a lover of adventure, and hardly was a plan brought to completion before his head was again full of new dreams and fancies.
He was something of a Peer Gynt but without Peer Gynt’s selfishness or his eye for the main chance; the roving spirit dominated Peerson wholly; not until old age had laid its hand on him did he yield to the monotony of a settled life; but even then in the wilderness of Texas in the fifties. I have personal information of his life there; he took no part in the upbuilding of the community, no active interest in its progress. In a settled community he alone was unsettled; he was never able to gather himself together into concentrated action and prolonged effort in a definite cause or undertaking. A vagabond citizen, he died in poverty. The only activity we associate with his name is the adventurous wanderings of his youth.
After having spent a year in Missouri Peerson returned to Norway, evidently for the purpose of recruiting his colony, but I have no evidence that he succeeded in this. Independent of Peerson’s efforts, the little colony did receive an accession of three in 1838, namely, Knud and Ole Lydvo and Lars Gjerstad, and of one person in the fall of 1839, namely, Nils Lydvo, who had just come from Voss, Norway, with a group of immigrants from that region, most of whom remained in Chicago. The Shelby County settlement did not thrive. It was too far removed from other settlers, too far from a market; the settlers suffered want and became discouraged. The colony was practically broken up in 1840, when most of the settlers removed north into Iowa Territory into what is now Lee County. Here they established the first Norwegian settlement in Iowa. Of this we shall have occasion to speak under the year 1840. Let us now return to Ansten Nattestad and his party of emigrants, whom we left above, page [119], as about to depart for America.