In
1825 the sloop _Restoration_, the _Mayflower_ of the Norse, landed a
band of fifty-three Norwegian Quakers on Manhattan. These peasants
settled at first in western New York. But within a few years most of
them removed to Fox River, Illinois, whither were drawn most of the
Norwegians who migrated before 1850. After the Civil War, the stream
rapidly rose, until nearly seven hundred thousand persons of Norwegian
birth have settled in America.
The Swedish migration started in 1841, when Gustavus Unonius, a former
student of the University of Upsala, founded the colony of Pine Lake,
near Milwaukee. His followers have been described as a strange
assortment of "noblemen, ex-army officers, merchants, and
adventurers," whose experiences and talents were not of the sort that
make pioneering successful. Frederika Bremer, the noted Swedish
traveler, has left a description of the little cluster of log huts and
the handful of people who "had taken with them the Swedish inclination
for hospitality and a merry life, without sufficiently considering how
long it could last." Their experiences form a romantic prelude to the
great Swedish migration, which reached its height in the eighties.
Today the Swedes form the largest element in the Scandinavian influx,
for well over one million have migrated to the United States.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150