¹ The principal books available to me in English are the following: Rasmus B. Anderson, The First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration (1821–1840), its Causes and Results, Madison, Wis., 1895. The articles in the American Scandinavian Review mentioned in notes 5 and 28 are merely repetitions of parts of this book. Neither its later editions nor the author's anniversary articles from Skandinaven, , collected as a book, Cleng Peerson og Sluppen Restaurationen, Chicago, [1925]Google Scholar, represents any substantial fresh research during thirty years. Nelson, O. N., History of the Scandinavians and Successful Scandinavians in the United States, Vols. I and II, second, revised edition, Minneapolis, Minn., 1900.Google ScholarBabcock, K. C., The Scandinavian Element in the United States (University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. III, No. 8), Urbana, 111., 1914.Google ScholarNorlie, O. M., History of the Norwegian People in America, Minneapolis, Minn., 1925.Google Scholar On the Quaker side, Richardson, George, The Rise and Progress of the Society of Friends in Norway, London, 1849Google Scholar; Hanson, John Frederick, Light and Shade from the Land of the Midnight Sun, Oskaloosa, Iowa, 1903Google Scholar; Wick, Barthinius L., ‘Quakerism in Norway,’ in The Friend (Philadelphia), Vol. LXVH, 1894, pp. 258 f., 268 f.Google Scholar; and other literature referred to below. Albert J. Crosfield, ‘The Rise and Progress of Friends in Norway,’ in Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, 4 mo. 1894, reprinted in 1907 both in The Friend (Philadelphia), Vol. LXXX, pp. 234 ff., and in the American Friend, pp. 244 ff. In Norwegian there are many books and articles not easily accessible to the general reader. Special mention should be made of a series of articles ‘Norsk Landnam i U. S.,’ by Gunnar Malmin in Decorah-Posten (Decorah, Iowa), beginning Nov. 14, 1924, from which some newly discovered data are quoted by the number of the instalment.

² Anderson's account is based on interviews with at least eight members of the party; Wick's, p. 269, on the recollection of Ove Rosdal, a Friend. There is also extant the report of the Norwegian Consul General, Wisconsin Magazine of History, VIII, 1924, pp. 77 ff. Oral tradition (as collected by B. B. Anderson) has required correction with the discovery of written records. Further errors may lurk undetected in the account that is given in the present article, so far as it rests on oral sources. The spelling of Norwegian names often varies and the manner of reference to persons. Here also is a fruitful seed of error.

³ Translated with introduction and notes by Blegen, Theodore C., Minnesota History Bulletin, II, 1917, pp. 221 ff.Google Scholar The quotation is from pp. 240–242.

⁴ Anderson, pp. 45–47, 64–66, 91–131; Norlie, pp. 122–135.

⁵ A facsimile from the Customs Book is published in the American Scandinavian Review, XIII, 1925, p. 353. It had been argued that the whole story was unhistorical since “the clearance records of Stavanger show no such name as the Restauration,” Babcock, pp. 25 f., note 13. Another entry includes the information that the Restaurationen, when the cargo was loaded, drew only seven and a half feet of water. For the Norwegian newspaper referred to see below, p. 310 and Malmin II and the discussion between Anderson and Malmin, ibid. III and V. The statement in the American press, namely, arrival on October 9 after 98 days’ voyage, if accurate, would fix the sailing on July 4 at the latest. Beside stopping at Madeira, the sloop is said to have sailed to New York by way of the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico (Vestlandet, Stavanger, Norway, Oct. 25, 1910, cited by Blegen) and via Long Island Sound (Commercial Advertiser, New York, Oct. 10, 1825, cited by Anderson).

⁶ Malmin II ingeniously suggests that “Holland” in these notices is due to the fact that the skipper's name was, according to the marine records, L(ars) O(lson) Helland.

⁷ Babcock, p. 26 note 14. The smallness of the vessel chosen is perhaps explained by the advice which Cleng Peerson sent to the immigrants in a letter which they received while planning their voyage (see below, note 28): “I spoke with many persons in New York in regard to selling the vessel. You will certainly be able to dispose of a small ship, but the law forbids the sale of a large one.” Norlie, p. 121, gives the length as 54 feet, tonnage as 38 or 40 tons. This tonnage is less than one quarter of that of the Santa Maria or of the Mayflower. On the size of the sloop see further the information collected and published by the Arkivar at Oslo, Fr. Scheel, ‘Kleng Persson (sic) og Restauration, in Nordmandsforbundet, Vol. XVI, 1923, pp. 323 ff.

The fullest account of the difficulty at New York harbor has just been unearthed from the archives at Oslo by Mrs. Gudrun Natrud and published in Familiens Magasin (Minneapolis), XXXVI. 12, September-October, 1925, p. 10. It is a report of Henry Gahn, Swedish-Norwegian consul at New York, dated October 15, 1825. He mentions explicitly the requirements of the law regarding tonnage per passenger, giving the number of passengers exclusive of crew as 45 and mentioning the birth of a forty-sixth during the voyage. He further adds as giving the vessel illegal standing, the fact that among its papers “a Latin pass and an Algerian pass were lacking.” He also mentions the general interest of the public and the desire of the American officials (the Collector of the Port and the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington) to overlook if it were possible the violation of law. Altogether his report presents a most attractive picture of the welcome extended by American officialdom to immigrants a century ago. Beside the lack of proper papers mentioned, another new item given is that officially the owner of the Restaurationen was Johannes Steen. He was otherwise known only as one of the six heads of families on the expedition who were regarded as joint-owners of the sloop (Anderson, p. 92; Norlie, 122 f.). But the records of clearance at Stavanger (see note 5), as I observe, also name him as owner.

⁸ Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labors of Stephen Grellet, Philadelphia, n. d., pp. 319 f.

⁹ Richardson, p. 5. The presence of Quaker books on the prison ships was no accident. The records of the executive committee of Friends in England show that it planned to reach these prisoners. Littleboy, Anna L., ‘Quaker Embassies a Century Ago,’ in Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, No. 209, 1919, p. 43Google Scholar, says: “In 1808 the Meeting for Sufferings was informed that there were about 2,700 Danish prisoners of war in England, and Wilson Birbeck and William Allen undertook to distribute Friends’ books among them …. Barclay's Apology and Catechism, Penn's Key, Dell on Baptism in Danish … were the books granted.” Cf. the anonymous Account of a Religious Society in Norway (see note 88) which contains the earliest printed record of the prisoners' conversion to Quakerism. Even before his release Enoch Jacobsen began to disseminate the same Quaker books in Norway, and he made a Danish translation of Penn's Rise and Progress.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. xi.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 8.

¹² Ibid., pp. 11 f. Ole Edwardsen is the writer.

¹³ Ibid., p. 14.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 21. Prom Thornes Johnsen.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 13. The writer is given as Kaaver O. Dahl.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 16.

¹⁷ Grellet, pp. 361 f.

¹⁸ Life of William Allen, Vol. I, p. 272.

¹⁹ Richardson, p. 34.

²⁰ Journal of the Life, Labours and Travels of Thomas Shillitoe. The references are to the edition in The Friends Library, Philadelphia, 1839, Vol. III. This quotation is at Christiania, Dec. 30, 1821 on page 221. At Bergen he refers to their hope “to have such beds as we might venture to get into.”

²¹ Ibid., p. 236.

²² Richardson, p. 6.

²³ Shillitoe, p. 220.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 236 and passim.

²⁵ Ibid., p. 237.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 244.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 245.

²⁸ See the article by R. B. Anderson, ‘Kleng Peerson, the Father of Norwegian Immigration to America,’ in the American Scandinavian Review, VIII, 1920, pp. 502 ff. Much new information was published by T. C. Blegen in an article on ‘Cleng Peerson and Norwegian Immigration’ in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. VII, No. 4 (March, 1921). He had access to a copy of a letter written by Peerson from New York, December 20, 1824, to his “father, brother, sister, brother-in-law, and friends.” “This letter proves clearly that Cleng Peerson was the advance agent of the immigrants of 1825, that he was directly urging the enterprise and encouraging its backers, that he arranged in 1824 for the purchase of land for his friends, that he was attempting to arrange for the sale of their ship should they purchase one for the journey, that he received cooperation and aid from a group of friends in New York City who are known to have been Quakers, and from acquaintances in western New York, that he made active preparations for housing the immigrants when they came … and that, far from being a scoffer and an atheist, he evinced at this time a pious religious attitude ”(p. 812). On the genuineness of this letter see T. C. Blegen, ‘Cleng Peerson in 1824,’ in Skandinaven (Chicago) for July 11 and 12, 1924. Mr. Blegen has kindly lent me a copy and a translation of this letter. It has a religious tone, but nothing recognizable as distinctly ‘Quaker idiom.’ Blegen reports: “Elling Eielsen … told Svein Nilssen in 1869 that Peerson and Eide were Quakers sent by the Friends of Stavanger in 1821 to investigate conditions in America. Their expenses, he declared, were paid by the Quakers of Stavanger and possibly in part by English Quakers ”(p. 309, note 27). As early as 1818 Dean Sören reported that Kleng Pedersen Hesthammer, then abroad [in exile?] in Denmark had “given offense, even misleading others to absent themselves from attendance of public worship and the use of the communion” (Malmin, II). On Peerson's antecedents see Fr. Scheel in the article mentioned in note 7.

Blegen, p. 310 note 30, understood Peerson's brother-in-law mentioned in the letter to be Lars Larsen, but writes me that he is “practically certain now that there is no foundation for the statement.” Perhaps he was led astray by R. B. Anderson, First Chapter, p. 47, but Anderson recently writes explicitly that Martha Peerson who married Lars Larsen was not related to Cleng Peerson. On the other hand, another member of the party of 1825, Cornelius Nelson Hersdal, was married to a sister of Cleng Peerson (Kari Peerson Hesthammer); Anderson,‘Cleng Peerson,’pp. 8, 38. Whether Hersda is the brother-in-law included in the address I do not know.

²⁹ B. L. Wick, p. 259. According to Shillitoe's Journal, p. 237, Larsen met another American Quaker, a young man from New Bedford, while travelling with Shillitoe in 1822.

³⁰ Shillitoe, pp. 247–249.

³¹ One of these certificates is given by Richardson, p. 13, as follows: “To All Whom These May Concern.

“Canute Halversen, whilst having been a prisoner of war at this port, has, we believe, been favoured with tendering influences of the love of God; and becoming a little acquainted with us, members of the Religious Society of Friends (called Quakers), a people, in those parts, who, amongst other noble testimonies (an able Apology for which he has with him, in his own language), hold the inconsistency of war with the Gospel Dispensation, and therefore cannot, for conscience sake, engage therein. And we believe that he, with others of his countrymen, are made partakers, with us, of the same precious peaceable testimony; and we are desirous of recommending him to the kind attention of those with whom his lot may be cast, that he may be permitted to have their support in this religious scruple, and witness preservation.

“Chatham, county of Kent, England, 12th of the 2nd month, 1814.”

³² Rufus M. Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism, 1921, p. 822. Richardson, p. 27, says that when the meeting was organized in 1818, “eight individuals were recognized as members of the Society,” and adds in a footnote: “Four of this little company afterwards emigrated to America.” This and perhaps two like references are the only hint given by the Quaker historian in 1848 of Lars Larsen's memorable voyage, which was so significant in the history of both Norway and America. He evidently regarded emigration to America as a cowardly effort “to avoid afflictions in bearing the cross” (p. 52).

This article was already in proof when I at last secured contemporary lists of the members of the Society of Friends at Stavanger. These come not directly from their own records but (through the kindness of Mr. Malmin) from the royal archives at Oslo (Kirkedept. 3die Aflevering 27). They occur as signatories to petitions in the years 1823, 1825, and 1826. None of the sloopers except Lars Larsen appears on the lists. Two of the signers are mentioned in the Quaker minutes of Western New York in 1828 as having their membership transferred from Stavanger, viz. Even Samuelsen Mogleboust (cf. page 300) and Mallena Asbjorns Datter Waaga. The latter had married in 1820 Ole Franck (d. 1822), one of the Quaker prisoners of war (see page 802), and in 1828 she married one of the sloopers, Ole Johnson Eie, who had joined the Society of Friends in America. Another signer, Mötha Truls Datter Hille, is mentioned in America in 1837 by the Larsens in their letters. See the end of note 47 and the articles there cited.

³³ See Richardson, pp. 9–11, 21, etc. The Quaker William Alexander, of York, is said by Richardson, p. 38, to have written a little tract on the Haugeans. Joseph Smith in his Quaker bibliography makes no mention of it, but lists under the name of Frederick Smith an anonymous pamphlet which I suspect is identical with it: “An Account of a Religious Society in Norway called Saints,” London, 1814. Biographies of Hauge have been written by A. Chr. Bang (3rd ed., Christiania, 1910) and A. Olaf Röst (Chicago, 1910). For his autobiographical narrative see notice in Harvard Theological Review, XVII, 1924, p. 237. An independent Lutheran synod formed about the middle of the century in America, and named for Hauge from 1876 to 1890, perpetuated the memory of his influence on the immigrants.

³⁴ Shillitoe, pp. 225 f. A Norwegian Quaker had interviewed Hauge about 1814. See Richardson, pp. 20 f.

³⁵ Quoted in the New York American, October 22, 1825.

³⁶ The documents are given in full by Malmin, II. I see no way to escape the statement of Tastad that only Lars Larsen was officially a Quaker, no matter how much one supposes his associates on the sloop to have been influenced by Quakerism without being actual members of the Society. It may be argued that Tastad, having in 1823 sent in the names of certain members (see above, note 32) petitioning for permission to reside in the country in accordance with the requirements of the government, could not now, without getting himself into difficulties, acknowledge that others of the émigrés were also Friends, since they must have joined secretly and against the law. But their petition was not granted until 1826. Besides, the English Friends themselves were conservative about admitting to full membership persons whom they did not know, and the difficulties were sufficient to dissuade many sympathizers from conforming to the requirements of the government. In 1823, according to a statement of the Stavanger Amstcontor, the applicants for permission to be Quakers included only men above military age and their wives — the former “having left the realm as Lutherans and after several years of English internment having returned as Quakers” (Malmin, II). Now of the names of twenty-four sympathizers given to English Friends (Richardson, p. 8) Lars Larssen Geilene alone reappears in the list of sloop passengers. The records of Friends’ meetings in New York State seem to confirm this also. Only one minute of membership dated 1825 is apparently extant, and that is for Lars Larssen: “As this our friend and member Lars Larssen Geilen with his family (viz. his wife Martha and child named Margaret) think proper to leave us, to spend the rest of his days in the United States of America we can give him no farther help than to recommend them to their friends in that country, who no doubt will give him the best advice; in other respects we must recommend him to the help of his Maker. Stavanger the 30th day of the 6th mo. 1825. Elias Eliasen Tastad ”(Rochester Monthly Meeting Records — Hicksite). That other passengers on the sloop subsequently became full members of the Society of Friends and that other members of the Quaker meeting in Stavanger came to America subsequently is evidenced by minutes of the Friends in New York State. See note 32 and note 47 (at end). Anderson regarded most of the sloopers as Quakers, and names several explicitly as such. Dr. Andreas M. Seierstad, the church historian at Oslo, who has made a careful study of Quakerism in Norway in his Kyrkjelegt Reformarbeid; Norig i Nittande Hundreaaret, Bergen, 1923, pp. 219–254, thinks that beside Larsen three other sloopers were Quakers, though not formally, viz. Cornelius Nelson Hersdal, Ole Johnson, and Daniel Stenson Rossadal. Meanwhile we await further evidence perhaps to be found in the Quaker records of Stavanger, London, New York, and possibly Illinois. Though there have been many Norwegian Quakers in Iowa, I am not sure of Illinois. About 1835 the majority of the surviving sloopers and their children moved from Kendall, N. Y., to the Fox River Settlement in Miller and Mission townships, La Salle County, 111. Yet neither the two histories of La Salle County (Elmer Baldwin, Chicago, 1877; and anonymous, Chicago, 1886) nor the History of the Norwegians in Illinois (compiled and edited by Algot E. Strand, Chicago, [1905]) suggest in any way that these first Norwegians settlers in Illinois had any Quaker organization or connections. In 1847 the Consul General reported to the Norwegian government that “a few of those who came with the sloop” were still living there (English translation in Wisconsin Magazine of History, VIII, 1924, p. 77).

³⁷ Richardson, passim. Among many incidental evidences in the Norwegian records that religious repression was a motive in the early emigration is the fact that originally one chapter of Rynning's True Account of America was devoted to a criticism of the official clergy of Norway. Unfortunately for us one of them, Dean Kragh in Eidsvold expunged this chapter from the proof.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 23.

³⁹ Grellet, p. 374. In the same year a written appeal to the king was made by the “Meeting for Sufferings,” as the executive body of English Friends is still quaintly designated.

⁴⁰ Richardson, p. 37.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 53. The belated arrival of certified copies of these petitions (see note 32) enables me to avoid some errors, but they raise some interesting questions. The petition of April 22, 1825, adds three new names among the petitioners, but omits Lars Larsen. It is natural to suppose that he had already decided to emigrate and did not care to ask again for permission to remain in the realm.

⁴² Blegen, p. 317. “In general the migration of the Quakers and their associates in 1825 acquires added importance as the background, motives and influence of that movement become clearer” (Ibid., p. 318 note 63). T. C. Blegen gives a fuller account of the material in an article, ‘The Norwegian Government and the Early Norwegian Emigration,’ Minnesota History, Vol. VI, No. 2 (June, 1925), and Gunnar Malmin in Decorah-Posten gives some selections from the letters and journals of immigrants which originally formed an appendix to the report, though not printed with it. None of this material is available in English.

⁴³ “Ole Olson Hetletveit, who came on the sloop in 1825, is said to have been the only one of that company who remained true to the Lutheran faith” (A History of the Norwegians in Illinois, p. 140). On the beginnings of Norwegian Lutheranism in the United States see E. O. Mörstad, Elling Eielsen og den “Evangelisk-lutherske Kirke” i Amerika, Minneapolis, 1917, and J. Magnus Rohne, Norwegian American Lutheranism up to 1872 (a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Theology at Harvard University, soon to be published).

⁴⁴ Kendall township on Lake Ontario was part of Murray township until it was set off from the latter in 1837. Hence Ole Rynning in the quotation above (p. 295) still called it “Murray.” In his letter written in 1824 (above, note 26) Cleng Peerson said he had arranged with the land agent at Geneva for the purchase of land. Now Geneva is in Ontario, not Orleans, County, but this difficulty is removed (cf. T. C. Blegen, ‘Cleng Peerson in 1824’) by the fact that Joseph Fellows, though he had his office at Geneva, was sub-agent (later agent) for the Pultney Land Office, which controlled lands in Orleans County, including Kendall Township. The newspaper notices in Niles's Weekly Register, XXIX, p. 115, and elsewhere, speak in a similarly misleading way of the emigrants as “destined for Ontario County, where an agent has purchased a tract of land for them.”

On Fellows and Kendall see Turner, O., History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, Rochester, 1851, p. 281Google Scholar; Thomas, Arad, Pioneer History of Orleans County, New York, Albion, 1871, pp. 269, 273, 284.Google Scholar The Kendall settlement passed through difficulties, including “the sickly season” of 1828. Many of its members removed to La Salle County, Illinois, about 1834 or 1835.

⁴⁵ Translation in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 1,1917, p. 168.

⁴⁶ American Scandinavian Review, XIII, 1925, pp. 361–364, (corrected).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The date of this letter is not given, but it is limited to the three years 1838, 1839, 1840, which are the ones when according to his Journal Joseph John Gurney attended New York Yearly Meeting. Probably it was written before 8 mo. 1839, when he spent two days in Rochester, the population of which then was, he says, about 20,000. Memoirs of J. J. Gurney, Phila. 1854, II. p. 184. Farmington was a Quaker community, having been bought by some Quaker settlers from Massachusetts in 1789 (see [McIntosh, W. H.,] History of Ontario County, New York, Philadelphia, 1876, pp. 193 f.Google Scholar, and the county histories of G. S. Conover and C. F. Milliken as cited by Blegen, p. 311 note 31). Cleng Peerson had been in touch with “friends [Friends?] in Masedon” and “Fanningtown” when he returned to America in 1824. Macedon and Farmington lie near each other, east of Rochester. Metha is called in another letter Metta Hille (see above, p. 305), while her brother Thomas Hill is greeted as still in Norway. Thomas Shillitoe visited Rochester and the neighboring Quaker communities in 1828. Did he and Larsen meet each other again at that time? Elias Hicks travelled to this part of New York several times, for example in 1820, in 1825 (opening of Scipio Quarterly Meeting), and in 1828 (holding meetings at Farmington, Macedon, Rochester, and a dozen other places). See the Journal of Elias Hicks, pp. 390, 397, and 432 f. Ole Johnson and several other Norwegians joined his party, but not the Larsens. See above, note 36, and Norlie, p. 152. On evidence from Quaker records about Norwegian Friends in Western New York, see articles by J. Cox, Jr., Friends’ Intelligencer, Vol. 82, 1925, pp. 829 f., 848 ff., and by the present writer in Deeorah-Posten, November 20, 1925.