More than 50 Norwegian immigrants spent almost 100 days at sea in 1825, hoping to reach the United States. The voyage of the small ship Restauration is considered the first ripple in what became a wave of Norwegian migration to the U.S. — Friday will mark the 200th anniversary of the day that first boatload of immigrants began their trek across the Atlantic Ocean.
Displays at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah said resources and opportunities in Norway were becoming increasingly limited during that era. Laws at the time limited inheritance of the family farm to the eldest son and, while improved sanitation, the introduction of a smallpox vaccine and an improved diet led to a healthier populace across Norway, such improvements also resulted in another issue — overpopulation.
“Official solutions to an expanding rural population, such as breaking up large farms into smaller units, proved to be only temporary,” information from Vesterheim said. “Young persons, unable to secure a farm or even a job on a farm, migrated to urban centers where labor and craft persons were needed. Eventually even those opportunities declined.”
An estimated 800,000 men, women and children left their ancestral homes in Norway between 1825 and 1930 to pursue life in the New World, according to information from Vesterheim — the total population of Norway at that time was estimated at approximately 1 million people, and a number of groups eventually settled in areas of the Midwest.
“And of course a good number of them found their way to this scenic area, that reminded them so much of their hilly homeland,” an editorial in the July 31, 1975, Decorah Journal said.
The tale of Cleng Peerson
Many local newspaper archives cited Norway’s Cleng Peerson as the man who sparked the mass migration. Peerson had traveled extensively in Europe and North America, according to accounts compiled by historian Amelia Johnson Bakken for the Decorah Public Opinion in 1943. Peerson eventually purchased a tract of land in the western portion of New York state, which was largely unoccupied territory at the time, according to Bakken.
“In looking at the wonderful beauty of the country, his thoughts went back to his countrymen in Norway, and he thought what a great and good thing it would be for them if they could come here and procure some of this cheap and fruitful land,” Bakken wrote. “Here they could make homes for themselves and their families, and he resolved to return to Norway and try to persuade some of them to come to this country.”
Peerson’s proposition was met with enthusiasm, and on July 4, 1825, a group of 52 passengers — all said to be from Norway’s Skjold parish near the city of Stavanger — boarded the Restauration and set sail for the United States.
Among the items the travelers brought with them was a Bible, printed in Denmark in 1819. The Bible now resides at Luther College in Decorah as part of the college’s rare books collection. Andi Beckendort, research and instruction librarian at Luther, said the Bible is believed to have been owned by a man named Ole Johnson and, while largely plain in description, it bears three initials written on fore edge of its pages.
Information from Vesterheim said the vessel — a type of small ship called a sloop — was originally christened Emanuel in 1801 and had been used to transport herring to Sweden and grain from Denmark before it was overhauled, enlarged and re-named Restauration. Museum displays said, even after the overhaul, the ship was “tiny by ocean-going standards,” measuring less than 68 feet in length, about 18 feet wide and 9 feet from keel to deck. Later accounts estimated the ship weighed about 45 tons — modern federal law places the maximum laden weight of a semi at about 40 tons, according to information from J.D. Power.
Restauration and its passengers — now with 53 passengers after the birth of a baby girl at sea — arrived in New York on Oct. 9 that year, after 14 weeks on the ocean.
Trouble in paradise
The ship’s arrival didn’t go unnoticed, according to an account published in the New York Daily Advertiser, which was reprinted in the Decorah Republican in honor of the voyage’s centennial anniversary.
“The appearance of such a party of strangers, coming from so distant a country and in a vessel of a size apparently ill calculated for a voyage across the Atlantic could not but excite an unusual degree of interest,” the Daily Advertiser said.
The centennial article described the immigrants as “Norse pilgrim fathers and mothers who came over in this Mayflower of the North,” later saying they were hardworking, frugal and “were better Americans before they left Norway than some of those who have been trying to Americanize them after they came here.”
Continue reading in the July 3 Decorah Leader.