[39] The area and population of the three countries are:—Sweden, area 172,876 sq. m., population in 1901, 5,175,228; Norway, area 124,129, population in 1900, 2,239,880; Denmark, area 15,360, population in 1901, 2,447,441.
[40] First Chapter, etc.
[41] Billed-Magazin, 1869, pp. 82–83.
[42] Billed-Magazin, 1869, pp. 6–7.
[43] In 1868, Mr. Luraas moved to Webster County, Iowa, returning to Dane County, Wisconsin, in 1873. I knew him in the early nineties as a well-to-do retired farmer living in Stoughton, Wisconsin. He died in 1894.
[44] Letter copied from the original by R. B. Anderson in 1896 and printed in First Chapter, pp. 135–136.
[45] As a result of the Dano-Prussian war of 1864 Jutland below Skodborghus became a province of Prussia. The greatly increased taxes that immediately followed and the restrictions imposed by the Prussian government upon the use of the Danish language, as well as other oppressive measures that formed a part of the general plan of the Prussianizing of Sleswick-Holstein, drove large numbers of Danes away from their homes, and most of these came to the United States. In notes and correspondence from Denmark in Scandinavian-American papers during these years complaints regarding such regulations constantly appear, and figures of emigration of Danes “who did not wish to be Prussians” are unusually large for this period; for example in the foreign column of the Billed-Magazin. The United States statistics also show a sudden increase in the Danish immigration during the sixties and the early seventies. From 1850–1861 not more than 3,983 had emigrated from Denmark; while in the thirteen years from 1862 to 1874 the number reached 30,978.
[46] So named from Biskopskulla, Jansen’s native place in Sweden. See article by Major John Swainson on “The Swedish Colony at Bishopshill, Illinois,” in Nelson’s Scandinavians, I, p. 142. This article gives an excellent account of the founding of the Bishopshill settlement and Jansen’s connection with it. See also American Communities by Wm. Alfred Hinds, 1902, pp. 300–320.
[47] Decorah-Posten, September 9, 1904, p. 5. See also above p. 37.
[48] R. B. Anderson is emphatic in this view. Pages 45–131 of his First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration are devoted to a discussion of the sloop “Restaurationen” and the Quaker Colony in Orleans County.