The Scandinavian Element in the United States: University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 3, September, 1914Babcock, Kendric Charles
History
The Scandinavian Element in the United States: University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 3, September, 1914
Babcock, Kendric Charles
Scandinavians -- United States
[76] 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.
[77] _Billed Magazin_, I, 10.
As the emigration movement from Norway increased, the planning of
settlements and the organization of parties took on a more definite and
business-like air. The process is well illustrated in the case of the
town of Norway in Racine County, Wisconsin, which was one of the most
successfully managed settlements in the Northwest. In the fall of 1839,
two intelligent men of affairs, Sören Bakke, the son of a rich merchant
of Drammen, and John Johnson (Johannes Johannesson), came to America on
a prospecting tour, for the purpose of finding a place where they might
invest money in land as a foundation for a colony, which they may
possibly have intended to serve as a new home for a sect of dissenters
known as Haugians.[78] After visiting Fox River in Illinois, and various
locations in Wisconsin, they found a tract that suited them--good land,
clear water, and abundance of game and fish, enough to satisfy the most
fastidious. This they purchased, building a cabin on it and awaiting the
coming of their friends to whom they sent a favorable report.[79] The
party arrived in the autumn of 1840, under the leadership of Even Heg,
an innkeeper of Leir, who brought still more money, which was also
invested in land. Altogether, the money which Bakke brought with him, or
received later, amounted to $6000.[80] It was all used for purchasing
land, which was either sold to well-to-do immigrants, or leased to new
comers. This business was supplemented by a store kept in the first
cabin. Upon the death of Johnson in 1845, Bakke went home and settled
upon an estate owned by his father in Leir, one of the first of the very
small number of men who have returned to permanent residence in Norway
after some years spent in America.[81] Even Heg became the real head of
the colony at Norway, Wisconsin, after the departure of Bakke, whose
interests he continued to look after, and under his management a steady
development followed. This settlement became the Mecca of hundreds of
immigrants arriving in Milwaukee in the late forties, and "Heg's barn
was for some months every summer crowded with newcomers en route for
some place farther west."[82]
[78] _Ibid._, I, 12.
[79] _Ibid._, I, 18.
[80] _Ibid._, I, 12.
[81] _Ibid._; Anderson, _Norwegian Immigration_, 280 ff.
[82] Langeland, _Nordmændene i Amerika_, 44; _Billed Magazin_, I, 13.
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