The favorable report of these explorers relative to the fertility of the soil and the general character of the country on Koshkonong created considerable restlessness among the pioneers at Wind Lake, in Racine County, and many decided to remove to Dane County. Among these were Knut Roe and John Luraas. We shall first follow the fortunes of the former. As soon as the snow was gone with the end of the winter of 1842–43, Roe walked on foot to Koshkonong, where he visited the different parts of the prairie, and selected a spot on which to settle. Then he walked back to Racine County. John Luraas and family also having decided to remove to Dane County, the two families secured a team for the overland journey; they reached their destination on one of the last days in May. “Two weeks before St. John’s eve,” writes Roe, “my first home, a hut of brushwood and leaves, supported at the four corners by an oak, was ready sufficiently so that my wife and child and myself could find protection therein against rain and wind.” This he built in the southeast corner of section twenty-two in the Town of Pleasant Spring, at a point about two miles and a half west of Utica. Knut Roe, his wife, Anne, and family were the first white settlers in the township. An interview with Roe which the editor of Billed-Magazin prints will therefore be of interest. He says: “I often received visits by the Indians, and the many deep paths in the ground showed that the son of the wilderness often held forth in the region about me. In their marches between the Lake Koshkonong and the four lakes which have made Madison famed far and wide for its beauty, the Redskins often pitched camp close to my brushwood hut. Sometimes I accompanied them on their hunts. They never caused me any trouble, but on the contrary were always ready to be helpful. There was game in plenty. Almost daily I saw herds of deer, flocks of prairie chickens, and I was often awakened at night by the howling of the wolf."
In the autumn Roe built a log cabin; in this cabin he and family continued to live till 1870. During the earliest years, he writes, he was obliged to drive as far as Whitewater, thirty miles east, or Madison, a distance of eighteen miles, for flour. At Lake Mills, twenty-two miles, there was a saw-mill. After a time the settlers began to sell some wheat; this had to be hauled to Milwaukee, seventy-five miles away. Their only means of transportation at that time was the Kubberulle, or block-wheeled wagon, drawn by oxen, much of the way through forest, where a way had to be cut by the axe. Two weeks after Roe’s settling, Ole K. Trovatten came from Muskego and located on the farm later owned by Gunder J. Felland. Trovatten, who had been a school teacher in Norway, had emigrated from Laurdal, Telemarken, to Muskego in 1840. He was, therefore, the second Norwegian to locate in Pleasant Spring. He, however, left for Cottage Grove that same fall. See below, page [252].
The next arrivals were Osmund Lunde and his brother-in-law, Aslak Kostvedt, both from Vinje in Telemarken. The latter bought land three miles southeast of West Koshkonong Church, near Trovatten’s place. Lunde lived at first with Kostvedt; thereupon he bought land in section three. Some years later Lunde sold his farm to Kittil Rinden, oldest son of Kittil Rinden, Sr., and moved to Minnesota, whither Kostvedt also moved.
On the third of August a small group of immigrants arrived and selected a home and settled directly west of West Koshkonong Church, on section fourteen. These were Knut A. Juve,[243] his brother, Knut Gjötil (or Jöitil), and his sister, Tone Lien, then a widow. Juve owned an estate in Telemarken, which he sold upon deciding to emigrate, in May, 1843. They sailed on the brig Washington, which carried eighty-six passengers, mostly from the parishes of Hvideseid and Laurdal.[244] They landed in New York on July fourth. It was the intention of the members of this party to settle in Illinois, but in Milwaukee they were advised against doing so; they were told that many who had settled in Illinois had later moved to Wisconsin and bought homes there. Many remained in Milwaukee, some went direct to Koshkonong, while others, including the Juve party, went to Wind Lake, in Racine County. Knut Juve was not pleased with Wind Lake. One day he met a pioneer settler from the Town of Christiana, Dane County, who, when he noticed Juve’s downcast condition, said to him: “Go farther west; not until you get to Koshkonong are you in America.” Juve acted upon the advice; he and his brother and sister started west soon after, arriving in the Town of Pleasant Spring, as we have said, on the third day of August. Half a mile west of where the church was built two years later, they built their hut of brushwood, thatched with straw.
“Our furniture,” says Juve,[245] “consisted of a few chests, that were used both as table and chairs, while the bed was arranged on the ground on some twigs and grass.” Here they lived till October, when they made a dugout, in which they lived till the following summer. Both Juve and Jöitil were soon, however, taken ill with the climate fever. In the interview from which we have already cited, he speaks of how many a time during his illness he longed back to the old home, kindred and friends in his native land. In the summer of 1844 a log cabin was built, and not long after Jöitil and the widowed sister also had erected log cabins of their own in his immediate neighborhood. In the spring of 1844 Juve broke two acres of ground and raised a little corn and potatoes; the next summer he raised enough of grain and potatoes for family use; the third year he was able to sell a little. Such were the beginnings of agriculture in the wilderness.
About the middle of August a large number came and located in the settlement. Among these were Gunleik T. Sundbö (b.1785), with wife and three sons, two of whom were married and had families.[246] Others who came were: Tostein G. Bringa (b. 1817), with wife and son, Halvor Laurantson Fosseim (b. 1810), and family, his brother, Ole L. Fosseim, and Ole K. Dyrland (b. 1819).[247] Sundbö, Bringa, Fosseim and Dyrland all bought land not far from Knut Juve and Knut Jöitil. During the next two months the following arrived: Torbjörn G. Vik, with wife and son Guttorm, and daughter Anna from Siljord, Aslak E. Groven (b. 1812), and family, from Laurdal, Ole E. Næset (b. 1796), and family, and his brother Aadne, from Vinje, and Gunnar T. Mandt, from Moe, Telemarken.[248] Groven settled about a mile east of the West Koshkonong Church near the Christiana Township line; the two Næset brothers also located near there. This group of immigrants came via Racine County, where they had remained a few weeks resting after the journey, as the guests of Even Heg. They arrived on Koshkonong Prairie in the latter part of September, having walked from Muskego. Gunnar Mandt first came to Pleasant Spring, but as he did not have anything[249] with which to buy land, as he says, he worked for others there and elsewhere for five years. From his autobiographical sketch[250] I cite the following account of the method of threshing in those days:
“There were no mowers, no reapers, binders or threshing machines, everything had to be done by hand. When we were to thrash, the sheaves of wheat or oats were placed on the ground in a large circle. Then three or four yoke of oxen were tied together with an iron chain; one man stood in the center of the circle on the sheaves of grain and drove the oxen around over the grain. These would then stamp the kernels out of the straw little by little, and so we kept on, until we had the sheaves replaced by new ones and got the straw away. For cleansing the grain thus secured, we used short basins or bowls such as were made in Norway formerly. After a while we got a kind of fanning-mill, mower, reaper, etc. But they were imperfect and cannot be compared with the machines and implements used nowadays.”
Gunnar Mandt worked in Chicago during the years 1844–45, where he got seventy-five cents a day, but had to furnish his own keep. In 1846 he returned to Pleasant Spring; in April, 1848, he married Synneva Olsdatter Husebö, from Systrond, Sogn, who had come to America with her parents in 1844. Having secured his own farm (on section nine) he farmed there until 1875, when he moved to the village of Stoughton. Gunnar Mandt died in December, 1907, his wife having died a month earlier.
The greater part of nine sections (13–15 and 22–27) in this part of the Township of Pleasant Spring, was settled before the winter of 1843–44. Knut Roe says that, while he was alone there when he came in June, he had neighbors on all sides before winter came, although the distance between the pioneer cabins was, of course, considerable. The year 1844 brought a large influx of settlers, chiefly from Telemarken, but in part also from Voss. Among them I shall here speak only of Hendrik Hæve and family, from Voss, who located somewhat farther north, on section one, on the property later owned and occupied by his oldest son, Ole Hæve (Havey); Anfin O. Holtan and family from Sogn, who settled in the southeastern part of the town on section thirty-six, where the son, Ole Holtan, later lived; and Ole Iverson and his wife Angeline and son Lewis.
There were a few others, as Aanund O. Drotning, from Vinje, and Knut H. Teisberg, from Laurdal, Telemarken, who came to America in 1843, but they, too, settled elsewhere first; we shall have occasion to speak of them again. Finally, relative to Knut Roe, I may add that he and his wife continued to live on the old homestead till their death; he died as early as 1874, but she lived till 1908, being then a little over ninety years of age. The homestead was owned by the oldest son, Helleik. On the occasion of Mrs. K. Roe’s ninetieth birthday, all her children, eight grandchildren and twenty-five great-grandchildren, gathered at the old home to commemorate the event.[251]