pilot at Mandal, a seaport on the southwest coast of Norway, where he was born in 1758. In the absence of his father, he towed the first American vessel, the Ranger, commanded by Paul Jones, into the harbor of Mandal. After their arrival Jones sent for the young pilot and, presenting him with a piece of gold, expressed his pleasure at his expert seamanship, which he had minutely watched during the towing of the ship into the harbor. Jones had made the port of Mandal for the purpose of recruiting the crew of the Ranger; and, satisfactory arrangements having been made with his father, Johnson was received on board as a seaman. Thomas Johnson died at the age of ninety-three at the United States Naval Asylum in Philadelphia on July 12, 1851; he had been there for many years a pensioner, and was known by the soubriquet “Paul Jones.” The account of Thomas Johnson led me to investigate further into the history of John Paul Jones, and in his biography, written by John Henry Sherburne, register of the navy of the United States, published at Washington in 1825, I found a roll of officers, seamen, marines, and volunteers who served on board the Bonhomme Richard in her cruise made in 1779. In this roll the native country of every man is given and in it I found two seamen born in Norway and seven born in Sweden.
Here I may also mention the brilliant Swede, Colonel Axel Fersen, who, in 1779, went to France where he was appointed colonel of the Royal Regiment of Swedes. He served with distinction at the head of his regiment in the later campaigns of the American War, distinguishing himself on various occasions, particularly in 1781, during the siege of Yorktown, where he was aide-de-camp to General Rochambeau. He also took part in the negotiations between General Washington and General Rochambeau. He afterwards became Marshal of the kingdom of Sweden.
It is fair to presume that a considerable number of enterprising Scandinavians found their way to their old Vinland
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and particularly during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
In the early days of the American republic diplomatic and consular relations were established with the Scandinavian countries, and there was more or less commerce between Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and the United States. This financial and commercial intercourse would naturally induce some Scandinavians to visit the United States and others to settle within our gates. The many Scandinavian names found in the old directories of New York, Philadelphia, and other eastern cities are largely to be accounted for in this manner.
From the year 1820 the United States government supplies us with immigration statistics, but in these Sweden and Norway are grouped together down to the year 1868, and hence it is impossible to determine until then how many immigrants came from each country. From the year 1836 we are helped out by Norway, where the government then began to collect and prepare statistics of emigration.
The father of Norwegian emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century was Kleng Peerson from near Stavanger, Norway. In the year 1821 he with a comrade, Knud Olson Eide, was sent from Norway to New York by the Society of Quakers in and near Stavanger for the purpose of making an investigation of conditions and opportunities in the United States. After a sojourn of three years in America, all that time being spent in and around New York City, they returned to Norway. Here their reports of social, political, and religious conditions in America and their description of opportunities in the new world awakened great interest, inducing a resolution on the part of many to emigrate. Lars Larsen, the man at whose house the first Quaker meeting had been held in Stavanger in 1816, at once undertook to organize a party of emigrants. Being successful in finding the number of people who were ready and willing to join him, the heads of families furnished their scanty possessions
in money and purchased a sloop which had been built in the Hardanger Fjord between Stavanger and Bergen and which they loaded with a cargo of iron. For this sloop and cargo they paid the sum of $1,800.
This little Norwegian Mayflower of the nineteenth century received the name Restaurationen (the “Restoration”) and on the day of American Independence, July 4, 1825, the brave little company of emigrants sailed out of the harbor of the ancient and grotesque city of Stavanger. The company consisted of fifty-two persons, including the two officers, chiefly from Stavanger City and Tysver Parish, north of Stavanger. They were fifty-two when they left Stavanger, but when they reached New York on the second Sunday of October (October 9) they numbered fifty-three, the wife of the leader, Larsen, having given birth to a beautiful girl baby on the second of September.
From 1825 to 1836 there was but little emigration from Norway. Before 1836 there were no vessels carrying emigrants from Norway to America. Those who did emigrate came either by way of Gothenborg, Sweden, or Havre, in which cities passengers to America could be accommodated.