At this point I may refer the reader to the table in Appendix I of this volume, showing the growth and distribution of the Scandinavian factor, especially in the northwestern states, since 1850. Table I shows Wisconsin as having almost as large a Scandinavian population in 1850 as all the rest of the country. Wisconsin was the destination of the Norwegian immigrant from the time emigration began to assume larger proportions, and it held the lead for twenty-five years. Iowa and Southern Minnesota began entering into competition prominently since 1852 and 1855 respectively. The growth of Swedish immigration in the fifties and sixties gave the lead to Minnesota by 1870, Illinois taking second place in 1890. Returning now to the Norwegian immigration specifically, it may be observed that it was directed to the Northwest down to recent years, almost to the exclusion of the rest of the country. The reader may now be referred to Table II in the Appendix, which shows the growth of the Norwegian population in each state since 1850.
This table tells its own story. In New England the Norwegian factor is unimportant. There has been a high ratio of growth in New York and New Jersey since 1880, but the total number is not large. In the rest of the Atlantic seaboard states, as in the gulf states, the Norwegian population has remained almost stationary at a very low figure. Such is also the case with the inland states of the South, as in the Southwest. The effort to direct Norwegian immigration to Texas, which goes back to the forties, has been productive of only meagre results. Even Kansas is too far south for the Norwegian. In the extreme West, however, considerable numbers of Norwegians have established homes since about 1882, particularly in California, Oregon and Washington, since 1895 also in Montana, and in recent years even in the extreme North, in Alaska.
What were the influences that directed the Norwegian immigrants so largely to the Northwest in the early period and down to 1890?
The great majority came for the sake of bettering their material condition. They came here to found a home and to make a living. Moreover, as I have observed above, immigrants in their new home generally enter the same pursuits and engage in the same occupations in which they were engaged in their native country.
Three-fourths of the population of Norway live in the rural districts and are mostly engaged in some form of farming.[16] Thus seventy-two per cent of the Norwegian immigrants are found in the rural districts and in towns with less than twenty-five thousand population. The fact that the influx of the immigrants from Norway coincided with the opening up of the middle western states resulted in the settlement of those states by Norwegian immigrants. Land could be had for almost nothing in the West. Land-seekers from New England, New York and Pennsylvania were in those days flocking to the West.[17] About ninety per cent of the Norwegian immigrants at that time were land-seekers. As a rule long before he emigrated the Norseman had made up his mind to settle in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, or Minnesota.
CHAPTER III
The Earliest Immigrants from Norway, 1620 to 1825.
Our data regarding Norwegian emigration to America prior to 1825 are very fragmentary, but it is possible to trace that emigration as far back as 1624.[18] In that year a small colony of Norwegians was established in New Jersey on the site of the present city of Bergen.[19] While it is not known that the names of any of these first colonists have come down to us, we do have the name of one Norwegian, who visited the American coast on a voyage of exploration in the year 1619, that is, the year before the landing of the Mayflower. In the early part of 1619 King Christian IV of Denmark fitted out two ships for the purpose of finding a northwest passage to Asia. The names of the ships were Eenhjörningen and Lampreren, and the commander was a Norwegian, Jens Munk, who was born at Barby, Norway, in 1579. With sixty-six men Jens Munk sailed from Copenhagen, May ninth, 1619. During the autumn of that year and the early part of the following year he explored Hudson Bay and took possession of the surrounding country in the name of King Christian, calling it Nova Dania. The expedition was, however, a failure, and all but three of the party perished from disease and exposure to cold in the winter of 1620. The three survivors, among whom was the commander, Jens Munk, returned to Norway in September, 1620.[20]
In the early days of the New Netherlands colony, Norwegians sometimes came across in Dutch ships and settled among the Dutch. The names of at least two such have been preserved in the Dutch colonial records. They are Hans Hansen and Claes Carstensen (possibly originally Klaus Kristenson). The former emigrated in a Dutch ship in 1633 and joined the Dutch colony in New Amsterdam. His name appears in the colonial records variously as Hans Noorman, Hans Hansen de Noorman, Hans Bergen, Hans Hansen von Bergen, and Hans Hansen von Bergen in Norwegen. Hans Bergen became the ancestor of a large American family by that name.[21] Claes Carstensen’s name appears variously as Claes Noorman, Claes Carstensen Noorman and Claes Van Sant, the latter being the Norwegian name Sande in Jarlsberg, where Claes Carstenson was born, 1607. He came to America about 1640 and settled a few years later on fifty-eight acres of land on the site of the present Williamsburg. The ministerial records of the old Dutch Reformed Church in New York state that Claes Carstensen was married April 15, 1646, to Helletje Hen dricks. The latter was, it seems, a sister of Annecken Hendricks, who was there married on February first, 1650, to Jan Arentzen van der Bilt, the colonial ancestor of Commodore Vanderbilt. Annecken Hendricks is further designated as being from Bergen, Norway, the names “Helletje” and “Annecken” being Dutch diminutive forms of the Norwegian Helen and Anne. Claes Carstensen died November sixth, 1679.