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The Norwegians

In 1825 the Norwegian sloop named Restauration sailed from Stavanger with a load of iron rods and 52 passengers on board, bound for America. Many of the travellers were Quakers who were migrating for religious reasons. The safe arrival of this ship at New York after 97 days at sea is now considered to be the beginning of mass migration from Norway which lasted nearly a full century, 1825-1920. During that time, over 800,000 Norwegians left for the United States or Canada. Yet Norway was only a small country which, in 1801, had had an official population of only 883,000. By the end of 100 years of emigration roughly one-quarter of the population had left for America.

Few of these Norwegian emigrants settled in the Windsor-Detroit border region. However, in the 1850s, some did so for particular, often unknown reasons. Looking back from the vantage point of 1985 it is possible to see a pattern with this migration falling into three periods: the first from 1850 to about 1865 when a few Norwegian emigrants, en route to the western United States, settled instead in the Detroit River region; the second from about 1865 to the early 1920s when very few arrived; the third from 1922 to the present when a small number of individuals chose to live in Windsor and the surrounding area, attracted mainly by local industrial development.

The first of these periods, 1850 to 1865, represents only one phase of the mass migration from the rural districts of Norway. After a slow beginning in 1825 to 1835 the movement had taken on great speed and impetus in the 1840s. By the 1850s thousands were leaving annually bound for Wisconsin, Illinois, and other points in the midwestern United States. In the 1850s and early 1860s, as has been mentioned, almost all of these emigrants passed through Canada en route to their American destinations. Canadian officials tried in various ways to persuade some of these rural people, most of them farm workers, to stay in Canada where they were greatly needed to develop farmland in the outlying districts.

Beginning as early as 1854 the Canadian government made an attempt to found a small Norwegian colony in Quebec, but within a few years it had failed economically and a large number of the settlers had moved on to the American west. By 1859 the Canadian authorities were alarmed at the annual sight of impressively large numbers of fine immigrants, most of them well equipped with money (for they had sold nearly all they possessed before leaving Norway) passing through Canada by train and boat. A Canadian immigration officer at Quebec city, who was himself of Norwegian extraction, was asked to prepare an official report on the situation. This officer, Christopher Closter, warned the Canadian Government as follows:

It. . . will be more difficult now to induce them to settle in this country, as the large emigration from Norway has proved to be a very profitable speculation [to the Americans], to send them through, . . . consequently, every thing is now practised, both in Norway and on their arrival here, to prejudice the minds of the people against this country ... as the Norwegians have become a subject to the Americans of great importance, they in various ways kept the western country permanently known, so as it has become a subject of everyday conversation in Norway, by means of newspaper correspondence, and agents, constantly employed for that purpose, whereas, with respect to Canada, their information is very limited. . . .¹

And so, the family groups or entire communities who moved through Windsor in this earliest period, continued without pause towards their destination in the western states, planning to join their friends and relatives.

Only a few were unable to cross the border at Detroit and remained in Canada. The Census records for 1851 to 1881 show that a few families and individuals, perhaps because of sickness or lack of funds, did settle at least temporarily in the villages and towns which had sprung up along the Great Western Railway. In Essex County there were only four “Swedes and Norwegians” in 1851, 14 by 1871, and 36 by 1881. From the sparse records which remain concerning these individuals it is still possible to sense the personal tragedies that left them behind on this great migration. For instance, the 1861 Census records an 80-year-old Norwegian living alone in Sandwich, his occupation “gentleman” and his religion “Anglican.” The same Census includes an orphan of 18 working as a housemaid in the household of an Essex County farmer. However, it would appear that most of those who were denied entry at the international border by the medical doctors at Detroit either died of their illnesses soon afterwards or, having been left behind by their friends and relatives, eventually went westward as soon as their circumstances permitted. Among the latter were the two young orphans adopted by the McEwan family of Windsor at the time of the cholera epidemic of 1854. Although they lived with the McEwans for several years, they had left by 1861 and their names do not appear in the Census.

Considerably more Norwegians settled in Michigan during these years. They were possibly diverted from their original plans by a lack of travel funds or illness after their arrival in Michigan. Although the cholera epidemic of 1854, which has been discussed in some detail in Chapter II of this book, was a particularly severe one, such epidemics were not unusual. Disease broke out frequently among the immigrants, as is mentioned in the annual report for 1852 sent by Father Point, the Roman Catholic pastor of Assumption Church in Sandwich to the Provincial of his religious order, the Jesuits, in New York:

December 31, 1852:

The cholera which had visited us only two years ago put in a new appearance. The railroad had just been opened. Numerous laborers were still working on it, alas very far from spreading among them the edification of the virtues. Suddenly on 28 July a convoy of immigrants arrived who were on their way to the United States, and the cholera broke out among them. About 60 dead and dying were unloaded on the shore on arriving at Windsor. The dead were buried immediately en masse on the very spot; the less seriously sick rushed onto the steamboat to go and die in Detroit; others were housed in the neighbourhood, and spread the epidemic.²

While some may have stayed in Detroit either temporarily or permanently because of such illness in their family, it is certain that others were persuaded to remain in Michigan. The business community of Detroit made a great effort to attract immigrants as they passed through, in particular for the outlying areas of the State of Michigan. In the late 1840s, Dutch, German, and Norwegian emigrants had begun to clear land and establish small communities not far from the shore of Lake Michigan, and new settlers, preferably agricultural workers, were greatly needed.

Why had so many thousands of Norwegians sold their household effects, made their way to a seaport, camped for weeks near the docks waiting for passage, then made the dangerous crossing to America? The reasons for their migration have been analyzed by many scholars.³ One such summary of reasons states:

In contrast to the smiling social democracy it is today, Norway in the last century was an overpopulated land of sharp class distinctions. The government, an insular monarchy, allowed only a privileged few any political expression. The clergy were aloof to the blunt realities of poverty and injustice. Nature had yielded her blessings in scant measure, but nothing was done to help or encourage tens of thousands struggling to survive the on little scraps of barren soil. Neighbour had quarreled with neighbour for every square foot of those steep, stony, stumpy upland meadows and the plots staked out were too small to support a family. Indebtedness was inevitable, the grip of creditor on debtor strangulating. Stills on the farm were legal and too many of the luckless could find their only consolation in drink.⁴

In short, during the entire nineteenth century, migration was based on the hope of better conditions in a new land.

Letters from friends and relatives in America, the so-called “America letters”, assured those still at home that they could find religious tolerance and a chance to succeed. The local newspapers printed such letters, which were read eagerly. “America fever” spread from a few districts until it affected the entire rural countryside.

Most of the immigrants came from the rural districts of the southern part of Norway, where in 1845 more than 87 percent of the sparse population of the country was concentrated, about 53 percent in the southeast and south, and 34 percent in the west. The remaining 13 percent were scattered in the north, chiefly in small communities along the fjords and on the islands off the coast.

It is difficult to realize how extremely isolated the rural communities of Norway were in the nineteenth century when communications in this mountainous country were yet to be developed. Small communities had grown through the centuries, each with its own variations of folk customs, traditions, and ways of speech. Such was the isolation that in some cases it was difficult for a Norwegian from one valley to understand the dialect spoken in another one only a few kilometres away. It can thus readily be understood that when such country people emigrated they tended to do so not only as families but as communities, remaining as close as possible to others who understood their dialect and customs. They settled in America with others from the home community, and continued there to maintain their language and traditions, while learning to adapt to a new country. They also kept their ties with friends and relatives back home in Norway, by letter and through the news brought by each newly arrived emigrant from the home community.

By the mid-1860s most Norwegian emigrants landed at Atlantic ports of the United States and travelled directly west rather than by the Canadian route. As a result, although emigration from Norway reached its peak during the last decades of the nineteenth century, for many decades few passed through or settled in Essex County. During the 1860s nearly 98,000 left Norway for America, a number that far exceeded the total over the preceding 40 years. A particular inducement was the generous land policy in effect after the American government passed the Homestead Act of 1862. After a slight decline in the 1870s, emigration peaked in the 1880s with more than 186,000. Following another brief decline in the 1890s, more than 190,000 left Norway in the first decade of the twentieth century. About 12 years later, in the early 1920s, mass emigration came to a halt. Relatively few Norwegians have emigrated during the past 60 years. Yet so many, over 800,000, did take part in the “Great Migration” of 1825-1920 that there is a Norwegian saying that “every Norwegian family has relatives in America.” At present, these relatives are likely to be distant cousins, many of whom retain a strong interest in Norway and an interest in their Norwegian background and its colourful customs. And some of these “American cousins” are actually Canadian, for in the past 100 years although the American midwest remained the focus of Norwegian influence because of the great numbers of emigrants who had settled there, more recent emigrants turned to Canada as a destination. Among them were some who chose to settle first in the Canadian west and then moved east to Essex County, in particular Windsor.

Essex County warden Shannon Olson holds daughter Sherilynn, 6. In January 1985 he was elected to the office of warden after serving since 1977 as reeve of Rochester Township. He has been a school principal for 23 years, and has taken a particular interest in helping children with either special abilities or with disabilities. His grandparents, Samuel and Sophie Knutson, emigrated from Norway and settled in Joliet, Illinois. In 1920 they moved to a farm near Staples.

In order to attract such settlers, as early as 1873 the Canadian government was advertising in nearly all the newspapers of Scandinavia, following the methods which the Americans had used with such great success. Canadian agents tried to convince the Norwegians to emigrate directly to Canada. In particular, they tried to attract young farm workers and their families, and so concentrated their efforts in the rural districts. There they lectured, giving glowing accounts of all the advantages of settling in the Canadian Northwest. When the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 opened up the Canadian Northwest for settlement, these efforts were increased dramatically. In only a single year 20,000 pamphlets in Norwegian were given out by special Canadian emigration agents and by representatives of the transportation companies involved in the profitable business of bringing emigrants to the Canadian Northwest. One such pamphlet reads:

Free Homes

Lands Awaiting for the Settler to go in and Occupy them — Fertile Homesteads Free to All in the Canadian North-West:

In Manitoba and the North-Western Territories of Canada there are over eighty millions of the finest wheat raising land upon the face of the globe, and these lands are to be had by any man for the asking.