The Clifton Record (Clifton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 25, Ed. 1 Friday, June 23, 2006 Page: 69 of 110
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THE CLIFTON RECORD - BOSQUE COUNTY, U.S.A.
FRIDAY JUNE 23,2006
51
NORSE COUNTRY
Continued From Previous Page
his birth; and that is that Peerson was,
indeed, the indisputable “Father of Nor-
wegian Migration to the United States.”
Peerson’s story begins on the
Hesthammer farm near Tysvaer, in what
was then Stavanger County of Norway,
where he was bom to parents Per and
Inger on the 17th of May, 1782, a day cel-
ebrated in Norway as Constitution Day,
or “Syttende Mai.” His parents would
later have two other children; Lars, who
would buy Hesthammer from the Church
and become independent (until then it
was leased), and a sister, Kari, who in
1825 would travel with her husband and
children to America as one of the
“Sloopers.”
It is believed that Peerson spent his
earliest years at sea, and became profi-
cient in English, French, and German by
these early travels. In 1807, he married
Anne Cathrine Saelinger, originally from
Sweden, a woman much older than
Peerson. Some believed Peerson married
her for money, but there is little evidence
to show she had much. In fact, Peerson
was either her third or fourth husband,
and all had been much younger than she.
We do know that the marriage was some-
what less than ideal, for both parties.
The next time we hear from Peerson is
in 1818, in a visitation record that states
that “a married man, Kleng Pedersen
Hesthammer (his original name), has
caused moral indignation by misleading
others to refrain from public services and
taking holy communion,” and that the ac-
cused Kleng had gone to Denmark. By
1821, he was back in Norway, and was
commissioned by the Quakers to go to
American to investigate its prospects for
emmigration.
The Quakers had become a small but
growing religious force in Norway, after
Norwegian prisoners were held captive
in England during the Napoleonic wars,
which pitted Norway and Denmark
against England and France. The Nor-
wegians had received kind treatment
from English Quakers during their incar-
ceration, and many had adopted the reli-
gion, only to suffer persecution for their
beliefs upon their return to Norway.
Peerson was not a Quaker, but he did
A marker honors Cleng Peerson.
sympathize with their plight.
So in the summer of 1821, Peerson and
a traveling companion, Knud Eide, who
was in trouble with authorities because of
romantic involvements that had produced
several illigitimate children, set out aboard
a herring boat from Gothenburg, Sweden;
their destination, New York. Some reports
later said that Knud Eide died in America
shortly after their arrival, but some, includ-
ing Peerson chronicler Alfred Hauge, be-
lieved he returned to Norway and later
emmigrated to America in 1837. In any
event, Peerson returned to Norway around
1824 with glowing reports of what he had
found, and then returned again, on behalf
of the Quaker group, to purchase land in
upstate New York.
With conditions worsening for the Quak-
ers, 52 (the number is disputed) boarded
a small slooper called the “Restauration.”
After much hardship, these “Sloopers” ar-
rived in New York harbor on Oct. 9,1825.
PEERSON MONUMENT — Erected over Cleng Peerson's grave in the summer of
1886, and paid for with collections from Norwegians in Texas, including a $15 donation
from Ole Canuteson, the founder of the Bosque settlement, and driving force behind the
movement to mark the grave site, the monument is pictured in full at left. Above, the
English version inscription appears larger, and at right is the Norwegian version.
Bosque County Is Home To The Scenic Norse Historical District.
Trr> irilM 'Vr - '' ';C».
:
Waiting there to meet them was Cleng
Peerson. After some legal problems with
U.S. shipping authorities, Peerson and his
followers made their way up the Erie Ca-
nal to an area in upstate New York over-
looking Lake Ontario. But the area was
far from the paradise that Peerson had
described. Although he had labored to pro-
vide shelter for those who would arrive,
only two small buildings were completed.
The winter was harsh, and the thick
forest made farming almost impossible.
Finally, in 1833, Peerson left this “Kendall”
settlement in search of the fertile lands he
had heard lay out west. And although boat
passage was available all the way from
Buffalo to Chicago, he chose instead to
walk, traveling at one time or another
through virtually every region that makes
up the states of the modem midwest. It
was during this trip that Peerson suppos-
edly had a vision in which he saw the great
expanse of prairie transposed into cleared
and cultivated land. This dream was
passed on to the Sloopers at Kendall when
Peerson returned, and they decided to
abandon Kendall and follow Peerson to the
west.
This migration was made in three
groups for three years in a row: 1834,1835,
and 1836. The journey was made by canal
boat to Buffalo, and then by ship over the
Great Lakes to Chicago, and then in wag-
ons to the area Cleng had selected, which
came to be known as Fox River, or Nor-
way, in Illinois. But here, too, the winters
were harsh, and to make matters worse,
the summers were much hotter than in
Kendall. So in the following years, he went
on to establish settlements in Shelby
County, Mo. and in Lee County, Iowa, tak-
ing time in 1838 to return to Norway seek-
ing new emmigrants for these
settlements. It was a successful trip, with
many more emmigrants returning with
him to America in 1839.
In 1842, he returned to Norway for the
last time, with his stated purpose being
to visit friends and relatives. While there,
he passed along his usual golden picture
of America to anyone who asked, and was
subsequently accused by some in the
Norwegian press of singing a siren song
designed to lure gullible farmers from
their hard-earned farmlands to an uncer-
tain and dangerous future in America; a
charge he angrily denied. It was also on
this trip that he met and influenced a man
who later came to be known as Ole
Canuteson, from the island of Karmoy; a
man who would later emmigrate and
found the settlement in Bosque County.
When he returned to Fox River, Peerson
found that he was no longer looked upon
in a patriarchal fashion. Many of the
emmigrants were by then able to converse
in English and were no longer dependent
on Peerson in this regard; in fact, their
children were now totally conversant in
what was, for them, their mother tongue.
It is also quite possible that they had tired
of Peerson’s incessant wanderings and
search for new lands, a search which up
until then had done them little good.
As for Peerson, he was by now about 65
years old, and was somewhat disap-
pointed that he had never been able to
accomplish a notion he had sometimes
entertained of founding a communal so-
ciety based on common ownership of prop-
erty and a shared workload.
It was at this time, in 1847, that he came
in contact with a man named Eric Janson,
a Swede who had fled his country along
with many followers to establish a com-
munistic settlement known as Bishop Hill,
also in Illinois. Peerson joined the group
with enthusiasm, put all his worldly pos-
sessions into the communal ownership,
and took his second wife, a woman named
Charlotte Marie.
This time, the bride he chose was 40
years his junior, an age separation of 80
Continued On Next Page
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Smith, W. Leon. The Clifton Record (Clifton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 25, Ed. 1 Friday, June 23, 2006, newspaper, June 23, 2006; Clifton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth790015/m1/69/?q=j+w+gardner: accessed July 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Nellie Pederson Civic Library.