[255] Called also Halvor i Vinje. [256] Page 15 of _Kort Uddrag of den norske Synodes Historie_, by Rev. Jacob Aal Ottesen, Decorah, 1893. Asmund Aslakson Næstestu, with wife and family, came to Muskego in the fall of 1843, where he worked as a blacksmith for six months. He removed to Koshkonong early the next spring, going direct to Halvor Kostvedt, with whom he lived in the dugout the first summer. In 1847 he bought land in the same locality. Næstestu[257] is said to have been famed in Norway as a mechanical genius of rare talent. On one occasion King Carl Johan was shown a gun made by the farmer's son in Vinje; the King afterwards sent Asmund Næstestu a silver cup as a token of his pleasure over the excellent workmanship of the gun. Asmund Næstestu bought a farm a mile and a half northwest of Nora Post Office in 1854, where he, in the course of time, became the owner of two hundred acres. Among others who came to America with Asmund Næstestu in 1843 and later settled in Cottage Grove, were Næstestu's nephews, Aslak and Halvor Olson Bækhus (or Gjergjord as they called themselves in this country), Björn O. Hustvedt, Halvor Donstad and Knut Teisberg.[258] [257] Asmund Næstestu was the son of Aslak Næstestu, a man of much native ability and influence in Vinje. Anna Næstestu, a daughter of Aslak, married Ole Bækhus; they were the parents of the Bækhus (Gjergjord) brothers of whom we shall speak in the next chapter. Finally I shall add the names of Björn A. Stondall and Björn Stevens Hustvedt, two of Cottage Grove's well known early pioneers, who emigrated in 1843 and stopped through the winter in Muskego; thence they came to Koshkonong, locating in Cottage Grove in the spring of 1844.[259] Björn Stondal was from Vinje, in Telemarken, being born on the farm Næstestu in Bögrænd in 1823. He sailed on the ship _Vinterflid_ from Porsgrund in the spring of 1843, as he relates.[260] They were eleven weeks on the ocean before reaching New York. The objective point was Milwaukee and the Muskego settlement; here they stopped during the winter with an American by the name of Putnam,--seven persons in a hut that was fourteen feet long and ten feet wide. In the spring of 1844 he walked west to Koshkonong, where he decided to buy eighty acres of land in section thirty-two in southern Cottage Grove, and begin the occupation of a farmer. Four years later he married Gunhild Bergland. Björn Stondal died in April, 1906, at the age of eighty-three, survived by his wife and nine children. [258] They came in the same ship as Knut Jöitil and Anund Drotning, who, as we have seen, located in Pleasant Spring. Knut Teisberg moved from Cottage Grove to Pleasant Spring in 1846. [259] Hustvedt wrote his name Ben Stevens. [260] According to interview printed in _Amerika_. CHAPTER XXX