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Friends United Meeting |
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November 2000
Quaker Sloopers: First Norwegian Immigrants to the United States
By Wilmer Tjossem
"In 1825 a sloop, 'The Restaurationen,' arrived [in New York] with 53 immigrants, mostly Quakers, at odds with the state Lutheran church and, like the passengers of the Mayflower 200 years earlier, in search of religious freedom," the Christian Science Monitor observed on October 1, 1975. Norway's King Olav V was in the United States that year to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the first Norwegian settlement in the U.S. During April, 2000, the King and Queen of Norway opened an exhibit at Ellis Island entitled "Norwegians in New York, 1825-2000" featuring the Quaker Sloopers as harbingers for the 800,000 immigrants who were soon to follow.
The world has little noted nor long remembered the circumstances that drove a tiny boatload of Norwegian Quakers on a hazardous three-month journey to New York in 1825. And what became of them after landing? It's a parable of Christian faith and courage deserving renewed public and Quaker attention.
Two waves of immigration brought Norwegian Quaker emigrants. The first were the fifty-three "Sloopers" described above, and the second, around thirty years later, brought many more who went directly to the Midwest, especially Iowa. Most 1825 Sloopers moved no farther west than Rochester, although a few eventually moved to Illinois. This rural settlement near Kendall survived only a few years, and their Quaker faith dissolved as well. Language difficulties, laborious land-clearing, and grinding poverty drove them to seek fortunes elsewhere.
However, the 1825 migration is worth remembering for its unique and religiously-inspired origins. During the Napoleonic War, seven hundred captured Norwegian merchant seaman were interned on crowded prison ships in British harbors. Characteristically, British Quakers took pity on their misery, and secured permission to take them food, clothing, and reading materials, particularly copies of Barclay's Apology in the Scandinavian language.
Several prisoners, upon reading the Apology and meeting the kindly local Friends, became "convinced" and started regular meetings for worship shipboard. Upon returning to their homeland in 1814, a few began meetings for worship in their homes. Immediately, various Friendly British and American missionaries arrived to take the Gospel to every local meeting they could find. In 1846, they helped organize Norway Yearly Meeting which is alive and well to this day.
The state Lutheran church, however, wouldn't tolerate Quakers, and persecution was immediate. Friends were fined or imprisoned for conscientiously disobeying church law, refusing to pay tithes, and generally for resisting church-state authority. To make matters worse, Norway had fallen into severe post-war poverty and drunkenness. So amid these seemingly hopeless conditions, several Friends, led by Lars Larsen, looked to America, the land of religious freedom.
Quaker sympathizer Cleng Peerson, a well-known Norwegian dissenter who had recently returned from New York, encouraged fifty-two Stavanger Friends to buy a second-hand, 53-foot sloop and emigrate as soon as possible. Furthermore, Peerson had fortuitously pre-arranged their welcome by New York Friends whom he had met. On July 4th, 1825, the newly christened "Restaurationen" sailed for America from Stavanger harbor, leaving behind a much weakened Quaker fellowship.
Upon arrival in New York, October 9th, sloop captain Lars Helland was arrested for permitting such a tiny and overloaded ship to cross the Atlantic. But intercession by influential New York Friends was enough to persuade President Adams personally to release Captain Helland and dismiss the $3000 fine. Soon these very first Norwegian immigrants were on a riverboat chugging for Rochester via the new Erie Canal.
While the Quaker settlement at Kendall didn't endure, the Sloopers' successful journey immediately inspired "America Fever" in Norway. In Norway itself, because of his personal connection with Lars Larsen, Friend Elias Tastad became an overwhelmed "travel agent" for the hundreds now scrambling to emigrate. The Lars Larson family home in Rochester soon became a welcoming center for hundreds of immigrants, most of them not Friends. Unfortunately, scores of unscrupulous non-Friends in Norway found it expeditious to "put on a Quaker hat" to obtain material assistance and shelter from trusting U.S. Friends, though few bothered to darken meetinghouse doors once safely settled.
Norwegian Quakers Migrate to Iowa and Midwest
With little written about Friends' spoken ministry in Norway in the early
years, likely it was a Bible-based, Christ-centered fundamentalism. Devoid
of dogma, it was randomly exercised in an unprogrammed setting. The Lutheran
"hireling ministry" was anathema to Friends in particular, and
to many of their compatriots as well. The State Church had become an institution
of form rather than faith.
As word spread of the new Quakerism in the Land of the Vikings, missionaries and evangelists from England and America arrived to help it along. Notable from the U.S. came Lindley M. Hoag, New England, John Hansen, Iowa, and Indiana's Thomas Arnett; and from England came John and Elizabeth Maeder and Eli and Sybil Jones--among others.
Anna Ravnaas Olson
From this milieu came two convinced Friends who had a permanent influence
in Iowa and surrounding states: Anna Ravnaas Olson and John F. Hanson,
both from the Norwegian Stavanger vicinity. As a young woman appearing
to be in fragile health, Anna was sent by her Lutheran parents to the
city to be a seamstress. Shortly after arriving, she met Quaker educator
and prohibitionist, Asbjorn Kloster, and joined the local Quaker movement.
(Kloster is honored today by a statue in Stavanger for being the founder
of Norway's temperance movement.)
Despite vigorous objections from her family, in the 1850's she sailed to Quebec, then traveled by train to Iowa where, in Salem Monthly Meeting, she married Soren Olson, another arrival from Norway who had been imprisoned for refusing military service. It was Friend Erich Knudson's strong connections in Norway that brought Soren and Anna and many others to Salem.
Newlyweds Soren and Anna moved north to Marshall County and joined Westland Meeting in LeGrand. The energetic and charismatic Olsons immediately attracted boatloads of immigrants. By 1863, Marshall County had the largest Norwegian population in the United States and was the principle center of Norwegian Quakerism. In the 1880's, Anna was widowed and, with two young children, moved to O'Brien County in northwest Iowa where she had bought a large farm for a bargain. There she started another thriving Quaker community, this time a blend of Norwegians and Anglos. She lived to be 93.
Largely due to the Olsons' leadership, Marshall and O'Brien Counties were to become the only permanent sites of organized Norwegian Quakerism in the United States.
John Frederich Hanson
Becoming a Friend in Norway at age fifteen, John Frederich Hanson immigrated
with his parents to Iowa Falls in 1856. Later the Hanson family moved
to Oskaloosa in Mahaska County. By his own account, John had an early
call to evangelical ministry among Friends on both sides of the Atlantic,
even while serving a succession of pastorates in Iowa! Later he farmed
a few years in Dallas County in central Iowa, and was the father of ten
children.
During the second half of the 19th Century, the traveling Hanson was a frequent evangelist to Norway. His late grandson, Wilbur Watland of New Sharon, Iowa, wrote that his "grandfather made seven religious visitations to Norway and was supported [in his travels] by London Yearly Meeting."
The Hanson family was the first known Friends to homestead in the "Dakota Territory" where, in the 1880s, they acquired 400 acres near Mitchell and started six monthly meetings. In 1903, John Hanson published a book, popular in its time, "Light and Shade from the Land of the Midnight Sun" (Western Work Publishing Association, Oskaloosa), giving his interpretation of the numerous "miracles of faith" he observed in the evolution of Norwegian Quakerism. John died at age 75 on March 30, 1917, in Portland, Oregon.
Scattered Norwegian Friends
Many immigrant Norwegian Friends chose not to settle in ethnic monthly
meetings or communities. Erich Knudson, known as "Erich and Elder,"
lived his life in the Salem community (once a busy station on the Underground
Railroad) and encouraged many Norwegian friends and relatives to come
to the U.S. Two of his grandchildren, Charles and Elizabeth Maxwell, were
leaders in the Earlham Friends Church in central Iowa, and Charles served
35 years on the Penn College board of trustees.
The Watland and Rinden families, who immigrated in 1869, were prominent in the New Sharon and Oskaloosa Friends communities, and some family descendants were to become distinguished alumni of Penn College. Salve Bakke, Einer Rasmussen, and Ole Torstenson joined the Friends Church in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
Too numerous to include here were other "scattered Norwegian Friends" deserving to be remembered. They led in the building of thriving communities and churches wherever they went, especially in the Midwest, and carried with them their Quaker witness. Through thrift and hard work, many became prosperous, yet remained true to their Quaker faith.
Copyright (c) 2000 Friends United Meeting
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