Ole Rynning was born in Ringsaker, as the son of Reverend Jens Rynning and wife, Severine Catherine Steen, in 1809. In 1825, the father moved to Snaasen. Having finished his education in 1829, he taught school for a time. Then he bought a small farm[74] which he had to give up again, not being able to pay for it. His ultra democratic sympathies were displeasing to his conservative father, and an unhappy love affair, which his father disapproved of as being a mesalliance, seems, at least, to have been, in part the cause of his leaving Norway. We have recited, briefly, his short career in America.[75] Of his nobility of character and the self-sacrificing spirit he showed in helping the grief-stricken and suffering colonists in the unfortunate Beaver Creek Settlement, in the spring and summer of 1838, his surviving associates give ample testimony. His book, _Sandfaerdig Beretning_, was written on the sick-bed.[76] When he died, there was only one man in the settlement who was well enough to make a casket for him from an old oak which he hewed down. Rynning was buried out on the prairie, but no one knows now where the spot is. [74] This he bought of the father of Rev. B. G. Muus, well-known in Norwegian-American church history, and a long time pastor at Norway, Goodhue County, Minnesota. [75] See above p. 103. [76] Ansten Nattestad, of whom below, took it with him to Norway that year and got it printed in Christiania. CHAPTER XII _Some of the Immigrants of 1837. The First Pathfinders from Numedal and Telemarken._ Besides the 177 immigrants, who came to America from Stavanger and Bergen in 1837, there was a considerable number who embarked from Gothenburg, Sweden. These came mostly from Numedal and Telemarken in the south central part of Norway. Among the immigrants of 1837 were, also, the brothers, Ole and Ansten Nattestad, from Vægli, Numedal, both of whom came via Gothenburg, and Hans Barlien, who emigrated with _Enigheden_. These men played such a part in the immigration history of the period as to deserve something more than a mere mention.