Kendric Babcock - The Scandinavian Element in the United States

Brohough, Elling Eielsens Liv og Virksomhed , 10-11, 20-21, 30-36.

Anderson, Norwegian Immigration , 50.

Billed Magazin , I, 94.

Translated from Billed Magazin , I, 18 ff.

Ibid. , 6-7.

A shipping notice in the Boston Daily Advertiser , Aug. 1, 1839 reads: “Passengers, – in the “Venice” from Gothenburg, 67 Norwegians on their way to Illinois.”

An oft-repeated story tells how the company was persuaded to remain in Wisconsin by some enterprising Milwaukee men who pointed out to the immigrants a fat, healthy-looking man as a specimen of what Wisconsin would do for a man, and a lean, sickly-looking man as a warning of what the scorching heats and fever of Illinois would quickly do to a man who settled there. See Billed Magazin , I, 7.

Billed Magazin , I, 10.

Ibid. , I, 12.

Ibid. , I, 18.

Ibid. , I, 12.

Ibid. ; Anderson, Norwegian Immigration , 280 ff.

Langeland, Nordmændene i Amerika , 44; Billed Magazin , I, 13.

Anderson, Norwegian Immigration , 326 ff. Anderson quotes in full a letter from the United States Commissioner of Land Office giving date and extent of each entry by Norwegians.

M. W. Odland, Amerika , Jan. 15, 1904.

Langeland, Nordmændene i Amerika , 44-45; Billed Magazin , I, 13.

It may be well to note that the name of Dane county has no relation to Scandinavian settlement, but was given in honor of Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, author of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Anderson, Norwegian Immigration , 276.

A letter of John E. Molee, February, 1895, quoted by Anderson, Norwegian Immigration , 320. (See also, ibid. , 396-399.)

Anderson, Norwegian Immigration , 255.

Nelson, Scandinavians in the United States , (2d ed.) 387 ff.

Bothne, Kort Udsigt , 835 ff.

Jacobs, Evangelical Lutheran Church , 411.

Bothne, Kort Udsigt , 835; Jensson, American Lutheran Biographies , “Clausen.”

Brohough, Elling Eielsens Liv og Virksomhed , ch. II, and App.

Nelson, in his Scandinavians in the United States , 388, is probably mistaken in stating that Eielsen built the first Norwegian church and organized the first congregation in 1842 at Fox River, confusing the fact that Eielsen had built a log house on his own land, and held religious services in the loft, with the possibility of the formation of a congregation. Eielsen’s biographer makes no mention of his organization of a regular congregation. Brohough, Elling Eielsens Liv og Virksomhed , 61.

Minde fra Jubelfesterne paa Koshkonong (1894), 54 ff; Bothne, Kort Udsigt , 839-842.

Dietrichson, Reise blandt de norske Emigranter , 45 ff; Minde fra Jubelfesterne paa Koshkonong .

Nordlyset , Sept. 9, 1847.

Dietrichson, Reise blandt de norske Emigranter , 57-67. Some of the church records are printed in The Milwaukee Sentinel , July 21, 1895.

The following year he published a second book, Nogle Ord fra Prædikestolen i Amerika .

Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America , IV, 488.

Interview with Capt. O. C. Lange in Chicago, March, 1890. He stated that he was the only Swede in Chicago in 1838, but that there were thirty or forty Norwegians “who were doing anything for a living, even begging,” – but Capt. Lange was an ardent Swede and despised Norwegians!

Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 23-26.

Mikkelsen, The Bishop Hill Colony , 26.

Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 2 ff. The early history of the Swedish immigration is treated in a much more complete and scholarly fashion than is the Norwegian, in the works of Unonius, Norelius, and Peterson and Johnson. For this reason, and because of the similarity of the early Swedish and Norwegian movements, the Swedish settlements are not followed up in this study with the same detail as the Norwegian.

Unonius, Minnen , I, 5 ff; History of Waukesha County, Wis. , 748.

“and a large proportion of criminals,” Nelson, Scandinavians in the United States , II, 117.

History of Waukesha County, Wisconsin , 749.

Bremer, Homes of the New World , II, 214-217. Miss Bremer relates how Mrs. von Schneidau “had seen her first-born little one frozen to death in its bed,” and how Mrs. Unonius “that gay, high-spirited girl, of whom I heard when she was married at Upsala to accompany her husband to the New World … had laid four children to rest in foreign soil.”

Ibid. , 225-235.

Ibid. , 225; Unonius, Minnen , II, 6 ff.

Bremer, Homes of the New World , II, 214.

Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 27.

G. T. Flom, “Early Swedish Immigration to Iowa,” Iowa Journal of History and Politics , III, 601 ff. (Oct., 1905); Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 27.

Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 21.

Ibid. , 24-26; Johnson and Peterson, Svenskarne i Illinois , 286.

Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 21, 23-26.

The history of this Swedish settlement, with its numerous peculiarities, its prosperity and its misfortunes, has been so often written up with considerable detail, that only the outlines of it are given here. See Bibliography.

Mikkelsen, The Bishop Hill Colony , 19 ff.

Ibid. , 25. “The glory of the work which is to be accomplished by Eric Janson, standing in Christ’s stead, shall far exceed that of the work accomplished by Jesus and his Apostles,” – quoted in translation by Mikkelsen from Cateches, of Eric Janson (Söderhamn, 1846), 80.

Mikkelsen, The Bishop Hill Colony , 22; Norelius, Svenskarnes Historia , 63.