We shall now turn to Dunkirk Township, the earliest settling of which also dates from 1843.
CHAPTER XXIX
The First Norwegian Settlers in the Townships of Dunkirk, Dunn, and Cottage Grove, in Dane County, Wisconsin.
The first Norwegian settler in the Town of Dunkirk was John Nelson Luraas. Together with Helge Grimsrud he had explored Dunkirk and surrounding country in the fall of 1842 and selected a site on which to settle. His father, Nils Johnson Luraas (b. 1789), arrived from Norway in June, 1843, and came with his son direct from Muskego to Koshkonong, where the party arrived on June sixteenth. An American by the name of John Wheeler had settled in the town two weeks earlier, being the only white man there.[252] Luraas settled on section three, about two miles east of the present city of Stoughton, and three miles south of where his companion, Knut Roe, located in the Town of Pleasant Spring. Only about a week after Luraas’s arrival, two more families, who also came from Muskego, arrived and settled there, namely, Helge Sivertson Grimsrud, wife Birgitte, son Sigurd, and Hans P. Tverberg and wife Ingeborg, and John P. Tverberg. The former had emigrated from Norway (via Drammen and Gothenburg) the year before, while Tverberg had come in 1841. They were all from Tin, in Telemarken. Helge Grimsrud possessed considerable means in Norway and owned a fine estate, which he sold upon emigrating. Grimsrud bought land in section two, directly east of Luraas, while Tverberg settled a mile south of Luraas in section ten.[253] The next settler was Gaute Ingbrigtson Gulliksrud (b. 1815), from Tin, Telemarken, who arrived there five weeks later, that is, in August.[254] He came in a party of about one hundred and twenty persons, mostly from Telemarken, embarking at Skien, and sailed via Havre de Grace to New York. Most of the party went temporarily to Muskego. Gulliksrud did not like Muskego, and soon after set out for Koshkonong. Having selected a location for his home, he bought, for $200, a hundred and sixty acres of land, near his countrymen, chiefly in section ten, and erected his log cabin a short distance north of Hans Tverberg’s home.
There were then in the fall of 1843 four Norwegian families settled in the Town of Dunkirk. In the following year a considerable number of immigrants came from Norway (Telemarken, Voss, and Sogn) but Dunkirk did not receive many of those who came that year; they settled mostly in Christiana or Pleasant Spring, while some now began to find homes in Cottage Grove and Dunn, immediately north and west of Pleasant Spring.
The first Norwegian settlers in the Town of Dunn were Nils Ellefson Mastre and Lars Mastre, who had come to America in 1845; they located in Dunn, just across the Pleasant Spring line soon after arriving; American families had settled in the township before them. Ingebrigt Johnson Helle, from Kragerö, was the next settler there, but he didn’t enter Dunn until 1849; he emigrated in 1845 but had worked in Buffalo four years.
John O. Hougen, from Solör, Norway, was the first Norwegian to settle in Cottage Grove, where he came in the summer of 1842, consequently a year before Roe and others came to Pleasant Spring. Hougen had been a baker in Christiana and usually went by the name of John Baker (or Bager). Some years later he removed to Coon Prairie, in Vernon County, Wisconsin. Björn Tovsen Vasberg, from Laurdal, Telemarken, also located in Cottage Grove in the summer of 1842. Nothing seems to be known of his antecedents, and little that is favorable seems to be known of him during his brief career in the township. He later moved to Minnesota, where he lived, it seems, a roving life, being at last found dead on the public highway. He was a notorious, and as far as I know, the only instance of the vagabond and ne’er-do-well among the Norwegian pioneers of those days. The next Norwegian settler in the Town of Cottage Grove was Halvor Kostvedt,[255] from Vinje Parish, who emigrated in the spring of 1842; he lived for a year in Christiana Township, and came to Cottage Grove in the summer of 1843 and made a dugout on section twenty-four, in which he lived the first year. Others who came on the same ship were Alexander O. Bækhus (or Norman), Ole A. Haatvedt and Osmund Lunde. The first of these located in Christiana, but later moved to Minnesota; Ole Haatvedt settled on Jefferson Prairie, whence some years later he went to Iowa, while Asmund Lunde, after remaining a year in Muskego, came to Pleasant Spring, as we have seen, in the summer of 1843. Ole Trovatten, whom we have already met, both in Muskego and in Pleasant Spring, came to Cottage Grove in the fall of 1843. Trovatten is reputed to have been a man of unusual natural gifts and considerable eloquence. He served as deacon in West Koshkonong and Liberty Prairie churches for many years, a capacity in which he had officiated also in Norway. He later affiliated with the East Koshkonong Church, which congregation he, with O. P. Selseng, represented on the occasion of the founding of the Norwegian Synod in East Koshkonong Church, on February 5th, 1853.[256]
Asmund Aslakson Næstestu, with wife and family, came to Muskego in the fall of 1843, where he worked as a blacksmith for six months. He removed to Koshkonong early the next spring, going direct to Halvor Kostvedt, with whom he lived in the dugout the first summer. In 1847 he bought land in the same locality. Næstestu[257] is said to have been famed in Norway as a mechanical genius of rare talent. On one occasion King Carl Johan was shown a gun made by the farmer’s son in Vinje; the King afterwards sent Asmund Næstestu a silver cup as a token of his pleasure over the excellent workmanship of the gun. Asmund Næstestu bought a farm a mile and a half northwest of Nora Post Office in 1854, where he, in the course of time, became the owner of two hundred acres. Among others who came to America with Asmund Næstestu in 1843 and later settled in Cottage Grove, were Næstestu’s nephews, Aslak and Halvor Olson Bækhus (or Gjergjord as they called themselves in this country), Björn O. Hustvedt, Halvor Donstad and Knut Teisberg.[258]
Finally I shall add the names of Björn A. Stondall and Björn Stevens Hustvedt, two of Cottage Grove’s well known early pioneers, who emigrated in 1843 and stopped through the winter in Muskego; thence they came to Koshkonong, locating in Cottage Grove in the spring of 1844.[259] Björn Stondal was from Vinje, in Telemarken, being born on the farm Næstestu in Bögrænd in 1823. He sailed on the ship Vinterflid from Porsgrund in the spring of 1843, as he relates.[260] They were eleven weeks on the ocean before reaching New York. The objective point was Milwaukee and the Muskego settlement; here they stopped during the winter with an American by the name of Putnam,—seven persons in a hut that was fourteen feet long and ten feet wide. In the spring of 1844 he walked west to Koshkonong, where he decided to buy eighty acres of land in section thirty-two in southern Cottage Grove, and begin the occupation of a farmer. Four years later he married Gunhild Bergland. Björn Stondal died in April, 1906, at the age of eighty-three, survived by his wife and nine children.