CHAPTER XX
New Accessions to the Koshkonong Settlement in 1840–1841. The Growth of the Settlement in 1842.
As the first explorers of Koshkonong from La Salle County, Illinois, in 1839, attracted others in their train from the same region the following year, so Jefferson Prairie and Chicago sent new recruits following Gunnul Vindeig in the summer of 1840. The first of these were the two we have mentioned at the end of the preceding chapter, namely, Lars Kvendalen and Knud Vindeig, a brother of Gunnul; both were single men. They came there early in the summer of 1840, and met in Albion Township Björn Kvelve and Lars Dugstad before these had left for Milwaukee and Illinois in June, 1840. Knud Vindeig and Lars Kvendalen (the latter also from Numedal) came to America in the fall of 1839. Another brother of Gunnul, namely Hellik Vindeig, and two sisters, Berit and Anna, came to America in the fall of 1840. As said, Kvelve met Knud Vindeig and Kvendalen in Albion Township in the summer of 1840, and he engaged them to split rails during the winter of 1840–41, so as to have them ready at hand when he should come there to locate with his family in 1841.[144] These two men did not take land, but worked for a time for others in the settlement.
In the autumn of the same year came Hellik Vindeig and Nils Kvendalen (generally called Nils Halling), but the latter did not remain there long. The sister, Anna, married Nils Bolstad in 1841 (see above, page [171]). About a year later Berit married John G. Smith, a man who played a role as both doctor and preacher among the pioneers in the forties. There were no further additions to the southern part of the settlement in the fall of 1840, so far as I know.
Late in the fall of that year Lars Davidson Rekve[145] came to Koshkonong and selected land in the Town of Deerfield. Entry of this was made at Milwaukee on December eighth, 1840; the land was the south half of the southwest quarter of section twenty-eight, about a mile south of Deerfield, and two miles northwest of the eighty acres selected by Gilderhus in the spring. Together with Rekve came also Ole K. Gilderhus, who had immigrated from Voss, Norway, in 1839. When they reached Albion they stopped over night at the house of Thorsten Bjaaland, who had not yet returned to Illinois for the winter. Then they travelled north until they came to the place where the four settlers from Voss had erected a log cabin the spring before. Not having the means wherewith to make improvements on his land, Rekve soon after (summer 1841) went to Muskegon, Michigan, where he secured employment in a sawmill. He did not settle in Dane County before 1842.
If now we pass on to the year 1841, we shall find that there were several accessions to the Koshkonong settlement in that year. It is to be observed, first, that a small group of immigrants came from Voss in 1841. They were: Anders Nilson Lie, with wife, Gunvor Sjursdatter (Gilderhus), and two children, Rasmus Grane, Ole Grane, Kolbein Vestreim, Nils Vikje, Lars J. Mön, Knut Larson Böe, and Anna Solheim. These had emigrated with a small brig that carried iron to Boston; thence they went to Racine County, Wisconsin, and Koshkonong, by the usual route. John Haldorson Björgo, who had emigrated from Voss in 1838, as we have seen, also came to Koshkonong in the spring of 1841, and Ole Severson Gilderhus[146] came a short time after. The latter had emigrated in 1840, having remained in Chicago during the winter. Björgo settled in the Town of Christiana in section nine, Ole Gilderhus a little farther north in Deerfield Township. “None but Norwegians were then living in these regions,” writes Björgo twenty-seven years later.[147] Björgo and Ole Gilderhus had, of course, arrived before Anders Nilson Lie.
During the first winter John Björgo lived in a small log-house; his nearest white neighbor lived about three miles away. As he was unmarried he was obliged to cook and do all his own housework. Near by an Indian tribe had erected a camp, where they remained from that fall until the next spring. Björgo says of them that they were friendly and neighborly, and he never suffered inconvenience because of them; “they were often my guests, as I also visited them, and it never occurred to me to have any fear of the son of the desert. Nor did they ever give me cause for that; for they were peaceful and gladly shared their meagre supplies with those who needed their help.”[148]
Let us now return to the party of eleven persons who came with Anders Lie. The son, Nils A. Lie, Deerfield, Wisconsin, writes that after a long and trying voyage they arrived in Boston whence they went to Racine, arriving there in December. There they hired two Swedes to take them to Muskego, where the Lie family and one other family stopped with Even Heg. Lie’s destination was the home of his brother-in-law, Nils Gilderhus, in Dane County. Leaving his family, he soon after set out on foot for Koshkonong, not meeting anyone he could speak with before he reached Fort Atkinson. Here an American took him across the Rock River in a canoe, and by waiting there a day he was joined by two immigrants from Numedal,[149] who walked with him as far as Koshkonong. Thence he continued north to his brother-in-law’s place in Deerfield Township. We have seen that Nils Gilderhus made a dugout early in the winter of 1840–41, having found the cabin they had built in the spring too cold. In this dugout Anders Lie and family[150] also lived during the winters of 1841–42 and 1842–43. In the meantime Anders Lie worked for others, saving up all he could with a view to buying a home for himself.
In 1843 he bought forty acres farther west in the northeast corner of the town of Pleasant Spring, becoming the first Norwegian to settle in that township; selling this out in the fall of 1844 to Peder Gjerde, he located on section thirty-two in Deerfield Township, where he lived most of the time till his death in 1907.[151]
Just how long the rest of Anders Lee’s party remained in Muskego I am not able to say at this moment. Nils Lie writes in 1902 that they all came to Koshkonong, and I accept that as authoritative; but I may add that the names of Grane, Vikje, Vestreim, Mön, or Böe, do not appear in the roll of members of Reverend J. W. C. Dietrichson’s church in Koshkonong for the years 1844 to 1850, which is elsewhere published in this volume. Nor have I been able to trace them in the towns of Christiana or Deerfield in the years 1842 to 1844. They do not appear as purchasers of land, and probably left for other regions soon after coming to Koshkonong. One member of the group who came from Voss in 1839, with Ole K. Gilderhus and others, did soon after come to Koshkonong, however, namely, Knut Brække. He and his wife located in Deerfield Township in 1843; it was he who, in 1844, bought the large log-cabin built by Nils Gilderhus in 1840. He then removed it farther southeast (in the same town), where later it became the property of Erik Lee, the father of Andrew E. Lee, of South Dakota.[152]