Slooper
The company consisted of 52 persons, all but one being natives of Stavanger and vicinity; the one exception was the mate, Nels Erikson, who came from Bergen, Norway.
A sloop of only 45 ton capacity which they called Restaurationen, built in Hardanger, was purchased and loaded with a cargo of iron and made ready for the journey.
An account of that voyage was given by the New York papers at the time; it was reproduced in Norwegian translation in Billed-Magazin in 1869, and copied in other works.
The arrival of this first party of Norwegian immigrants, and in so small a boat, created nothing less than a sensation at the time, as may be inferred from the wide attention the event received in the eastern press.
Thus the New York Daily Advertiser for October 12, 1825, under the head lines, "A Novel Sight," gives an account of the boat, the destination of the immigrants, the country they came from, and their appearance.
It seems to have been upon the suggestion of Fellows that they were induced to settle in Orleans County, although it is possible that the land had already been selected for them by Kleng Peerson, who was in New York at the time.
The two explorers secured work in New York City, but Knud Eide fell ill and died not long after, and Peerson went west alone in quest of a suitable location for a colony.
Björnson brought his wife and several children with him, but left two girl twins, born in May of that year, with a relative who then lived in Tjensvold, near Stavanger.
They felt now that the U.S. offered many advantages to the able and the capable, and they began writing encouraging letters to relatives and friends in Norwayy, urging them to seek their fortune here.
And so it came about that many of the early Norwegian immigrants to America came by way of Le Havre, France, where passage was always certain, emigration from this point being as yet very limited.
The very heavily wooded land that the Norwegian immigrants in Orleans County had purchased proved very difficult of improvement, and many began to think of moving to a more favorable locality.
[3] In 1833, Peerson, who seems to have lived in Kendall at this time, made a journey to the West, evidently for the purpose of finding a suitable site for a new settlement.
He was accompanied by Ingebret Larson Narvig as far as Erie, Monroe County, Michigan, where the latter remained, Peerson continuing the journey farther west.
The marshes of Chicago did not appeal to Peerson and he went to Milwaukee, but the reports he received of the endless forests of Wisconsin soon drove him back again into Illinois.
After several days' journey on foot again west of Chicago he at last found a spot which seemed to him as if providentially designated as the proper locality for his western colony.
Among those of the Sloopers who remained in New York were: Ole Johnson, Henrik C. Hervig and Andrew Stangeland, who, however, some years later bought a tract of land in Noble County, Indiana; Lars Olson located in New York City, and Lars Larson settled in Rochester; Nels Erikson went back to Norway, while Öien Thompson and Thomas Madland died in Kendall in 1826, and Cornelius Hersdal died there in 1833.
