WAUPACA COUNTY POST

 

25 February 1925

 

 

NORWEGIANS IN AMERICAN TO CELEBRATE

 

Centennial Observance To Be Held At Minneapolis June 7-8-9, 1925

 

SOME HISTORY

 

(By the Publicity Bureau of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America.)

 

The year 1825 was significant for America as it marked the beginning of Norwegian immigration to this country.  This is therefore the centennial year and will be observed by a national celebration in Minneapolis, June 7, 8, and 9, when Norwegian-Americans will gather from all parts of the country to celebrate the event.  Local celebrations will also be conducted throughout the country.

     In connection with this event the following clipping from the New York Daily Advertiser for October 12, 1825, may be of interest.  It was headed:

                                “A NOVEL SIGHT”

“A vessel has arrived at this port with emigrants from Norway.  The vessel is very small, measuring, as we understand only about 360 Norwegian lasts, or 45 American tons, and brought 53 passengers, male and female, all bound for Orleans county, where an agent who came over some time since, purchased a tract of land.

     “The appearance of such a party of strangers, coming from so distant a country and in a vessel of a size apparently ill calculated for a voyage across the Atlantic, could not but excite an unusual degree of interest.

     “An enterprise like this argues a good deal of boldness in the master of the vessel, as well as an adventurous spirit in the passengers, most of whom belong to families from the vicinity of a little town at the south-western extremity of Norway, near the city of Stavanger.  Those who came from the farms are dressed in coarse cloth of domestic manufacture of a fashion different from the Americans, but those who inhabited the town wear calicos, ginghams, and gay shawls, imported, we presume, from England.

     “The vessel is built on the model common to fishing boats on that coast, with a single top-sail, sloop-rigged.  She arrived with the addition of one passenger born on the way.”

     The name of the vessel was “Restaurationen.”  It left Stavanger, Norway, July 4, 1825, and arrived at New York, October 9, the same year.  Every one of the passengers landed in good health and spirits.  A child was born to Mr. and Mrs. Lars Larson on the voyage.  She was given the name Margaret Allen in honor of Mrs. Allen in London who had befriended Mr. Larson.

     These Norse “pilgrim fathers and mothers” who came over in this “Mayflower of the North” settled in Orleans county, New York, and the hundreds and thousands of their countrymen who followed them during this century have settled and developed large parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and beyond to the Pacific Ocean and way up in Canada.  They were hard working, frugal, and industrious, and blazed the way in developing the American wilderness into the most prosperous and progressive regions of the world.  They came well prepared to do their part for America.  They came from a free country to a free country, from an educated country to an educated country.  They represented a civilization and culture of a thousand years development.  They were better Americans before they left Norway than some of those who have been trying to Americanize them after they came here.

     As a rule the Norse immigrants came here empty handed, but they were not empty-headed or empty hearted.  Preeminently, they were a religious people and wherever they settled they built churches, educational and charity institutions.  They have over 3,500 churches, 1,500 clergymen, and contribute annually about $4,000,000 to church, charity, mission and religious education.  They have 30 colleges, academies, normal schools and theological seminaries, 38 children’s homes, old people’s homes, rescue homes for girls, kindergartens and day nurseries.

     Their first pastor, Elling Eielsen, was ordained in 1843.  They built their first church in 1844 in Racine County, Wisconsin, and organized their first synod in 1851.  The first American newspaper in the Norwegian language appeared July 29, 1847.  It was called “Nordlyset” (The Northern Light), and was published in the town of Norway, Racine County, Wisconsin.

     The first Norwegian academy of higher learning was founded in 1852.

     In 1920 there were 2,233,503 Norwegians in America, and when we bear in mind that the good ship “Restaurationen” brought the original 53 Norwegians to this county in 1825, we realize that there has been some development both here and in Norway.  And when their descendants gather to celebrate the event, they can do so with the satisfaction of having contributed some of the finest and most desirable elements into America.