In the spring of 1834 Jacob Anderson Slogvig, Knud Anderson Slogvig, Gudmund Haugaas, Thorsten Olson Bjaaland, Nels Thompson,[31] Andrew (Endre) Dahl, and Kleng Peerson left for La Salle County; they became, therefore, as far as we know, the first Norwegian settlers in Illinois, and indeed in the Northwest, barring Ingebret Narvig, who had located in Michigan the year before. These men selected their land and perfected their purchase as soon as it came into market the following spring. The first two to buy land were Jacob Slogvig and Gudmund Haugaas, whose purchase is recorded under June fifteenth, 1835, the former of eighty acres, the latter one hundred and sixty acres, both in that part of what was then called Mission Township, but later came to be Rutland. On June seventeenth, Kleng Peerson's purchase of eighty acres is recorded, as also that of his sister, Carrie Nelson, widow of Cornelius Nelson Hersdal, namely, eighty acres of land bought for her by Peerson. For this date are also recorded the purchases of Thorsten Olson Bjaaland, eighty acres, Nels Thompson, one hundred and sixty acres, in what later became Miller Township. [31] Nels Thompson had married Bertha Caroline, the widow of Olen Thompson in 1827. She had three daughters by her first husband: Sara, born 1818; Anna, born 1819; and Caroline, born 1825 (died in Rochester, N. Y., 1826). Nels Thompson and wife had two children: Serena, born 1828; Abraham, born 1830; and Caroline, born in 1833. In 1835 Daniel Rossadal and family, Nels Nelson Hersdal, George Johnson, and Carrie Nelson Hersdal with family of seven children moved to La Salle County. Nels Hersdal secured six hundred and forty acres in exchange for one hundred acres he owned in Orleans County, New York. The slooper Thomas Madland, as we have seen, died in 1826; his widow and family of seven also moved to Illinois in 1831. Gjert Hovland came in 1835, and on June seventeenth purchased one hundred and sixty acres of land in Miller Township. Nels Hersdal purchased on September fifth Thorsten Bjaaland's eighty acres in the same township; the latter, however, bought a hundred and sixty acres again on January sixteenth, 1836, in the same locality. The record of these purchases was copied by R. B. Anderson and printed in his book, _First Chapter_, etc., cited above and also in Strand's _History of the Norwegians of Illinois_, page 75.