Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Future Hopes—Farm Life—Norwegian Pioneers—The Condition of the Immigrant at the Beginning of the Fifties—Religious Meetings—The Growth of the Settlement—Vasa Township Organized—A Lutheran Church Established—My Wedding—Speculation—The Crisis of 1857—Study of Law in Red Wing—I am admitted to the Bar and elected County Auditor—Politics in 1860—War is Imminent
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IS 4.2 Story of an Emigrant.
rich. We made a wagon with wheels of blocks sawed off an
oak log; we also bought a plow, and, joining with our
neighbors of Belle Creek, bad a breaking team of two pair
of oxen. That breaking team and that truck wagon, with
myself always as thechiefox driver, did all the breaking, and
all the hauling and carting of lumber, provisions,
building-material and other goods, for all the settlers in that
neigh-hood during the first season.
Soon others of our party from last year joined us. Some
letters which I wrote in Hemlandet describing the country
around us, attracted much attention and brought settlers
from different parts of the west, and while the Swedes were
pouring into our place, then known as "Mattson’s
Settlement," ( now well known under the name ofVasa), our friends,
the Norwegians, had started a prosperous settlement a few
miles to the south, many of them coming overland from
Wisconsin, bringing cattle, implements and other valuables of
which the Swedes, being mostly poor new-comers, were
destitute. Many immigrants of both nationalities came as deck
passengers 011 the Mississippi steamers to Red Wing.
There was cholera at St. Louis that summer, and I
remember how a steamer landed a large party of Norwegian
immigrants, nearly all down with cholera. Mr. Willard and
myself happened to be in Red Wing at the time, and the
American families, considering these Norwegian cholera
patients our countrymen, hastily turned them over to our
care. W^e nursed them as best we could, but many died in
spite of all our efforts, and as we closed their eves, and laid
them in the silent grave under the bluffs, it never occurred to
us that thev were anvthinu but our countrymen and
brothers.
From these small beginnings of the Swedish and
Norwegian settlers in Goodhue county, in the years of 1853 and
1854, have sprung results which are not only grand but
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