In the party of emigrants from Voss in 1839 were also Arne Anderson Vinje (born 1820) and wife Martha (Gulliksdatter Kindem). From Vinje we learn that the ship, on which the twenty emigrants from Voss came that year, left Norway April sixteenth and that they arrived at Chicago in September. Vinje located first in Chicago; soon after arriving he built a log house, in which he and his wife lived during the first winter. Anders Brække, it is said, assisted him in the erection of the log house. During the winter Vinje worked on a road that was being laid out on the west side; for this work he received sixteen dollars a month. The next July however Vinje together with Per Davidson Skjerveim (who had just arrived from Voss, Norway) each with his team of oxen left for Hamilton Diggings in La Fayette. Here each took a claim of government land; of this we shall speak more at length in the chapter on Wiota.
During the year 1840 emigration from Norway was rather limited. There had been a considerable exodus in 1839 from Numedal and Telemarken. The lull in 1840 may be explained by the fact that intending emigrants in those regions were waiting for favorable news from their relatives and friends who had gone the preceding year. The settlers at Muskego, on Jefferson and Rock Prairies and at Rock Run had barely gotten located when the winter set in. Communication was of course very slow, and spring and early summer was the sailing season of Norwegian emigrants in those days. The year 1840, however, brought its quota of arrivals from Voss,[108] namely Kund J. Hylle, Ole S. Gilderhus, Knut Rokne, Mads Sanve, Baard Nyre, Brynjolf Ronve, Torstein Saue, wife, and son Gulleik,[109] Klaus Grimestad and wife, Arne Urland and wife, and Lars T. Röthe; there were twenty in all in the party. All of these it is said settled in Chicago.[110] They all came in Captain Ankerson’s ship Emelia, the same ship which carried Nattestad’s party in 1839. They were five months on this journey, arriving in Chicago in September. We shall later meet with some of these elsewhere.
A few other names from different parts of Norway are recorded among the immigrants of 1839. We have observed above that Johan Nordboe of Ringebo in Gudbrandsdalen had come to America in 1832. Though he wrote letters home it does not seem that he succeeded in promoting emigration from that section of Norway, except individually, and then not until 1839. In that year his friend Lars Johanneson Holo of Ringsaker, Hedemarken, together with three grown up sons came to America.[111] Holo did, however, not go to Dallas County, Texas, where Nordboe had settled the year before, but he first located in Rochester, New York. A man by the name of Lauman from Faaberg in Gudbrandsdalen also came with him and went to Rochester. He, however, went west a few years later, settling in Lee County, Illinois. Holo remained in Rochester two years, he and his sons being employed there on the canal. In 1841 they went to Muskego, where we shall find them in our next chapter.
Among the immigrants of 1839 we find one man from Sogn, the first to emigrate from that region to America. His name is Per I. Unde,[112] and he came from Vik Parish in Outer Sogn. He lived in Chicago it seems, the two first years he was in America. In 1841 his brother Ole Unde arrived and the two went to La Fayette County; we shall speak of both of these men later. Among the immigrants of 1839 who did not go to Muskego I may here mention Knud Hellikson Roe and wife Anna and four children who came from Tin, Telemarken. They went to La Salle County, Illinois, where they lived till 1841; thence they removed to Racine County and in 1843 went to Dane County, Wisconsin (see below).
Ole H. Hanson and wife also from Tin, Telemarken, came in 1839. They settled at Indian Creek, near where now stands the village of Leland, La Salle County, Illinois. The first winter they lived in a dugout on the same spot on the homestead where the residence now stands. Mrs. Hanson died in 1842, Mr. Hanson died three years later. The children were Ole, known as Ole H. Hanson, Alex, Betsey, Helen, and Levina. Ole Hanson assumed charge of the homestead and lived there and near Leland till his death in December, 1904. In 1855 he married Isabella Osmundson, who died in 1873. They had six children, one of whom is C. F. Hanson,[113] State’s Attorney, of Morris, Illinois.
CHAPTER XVII
The Settlement of Norway and Raymond Townships, Racine County. The Founders of the Settlement. Immigration to Racine County in 1841–1842.
We have seen how in the fall of 1839 the Luraas brothers established a colony near Lake Muskego in the present Waukesha (then Milwaukee) County. The locality was illy selected, being low and marshy. It was in the first place unhealthy and the settlers suffered much from malaria. Furthermore it was very heavily covered with timber and the soil which was clay yielded but small returns for their labor. The settlers therefore found it difficult enough to make a living.
As early as the next spring several moved farther south into Racine County, where the conditions were more favorable and where a thriving settlement grew up in a few years. The old settlement ceased to become the objective point of intending emigrants from Telemarken. After the cholera year 1849 most of those who survived moved away.[114] The southern extension of the settlement, which took its root at Wind Lake in Norway Township, later spread out so as to include the townships of Yorkville, Raymond and Waterford all in Racine County. The old name, “Muskego,” was retained as the designation of the new as well as the old settlement, although the settlement in Racine County is now often referred to as “Yorkville Prairie.” It is the beginnings of this settlement to which I shall now turn.