Waupaca County, Wisconsin

Early Norwegian Settlement

Hans J. Eliason, Christian Olsen, and Lars Hasler, all from Eidanger; Gunsten Tollefsen from Setesdal; Østen O. Flaten from Tinn, Telemark; and Niels Gullicksen from the Skien area were the first Norwegian settlers in Waupaca County. They came from Winnebago County and settled at Scandinavia, then known as “The Indian Land,” in 1850. Most of them had only recently arrived from Norway. They were followed by Theo. Knoph from Kragerø, as well as J. Røsholt, Ole Rollefsen, Ole Ytrebø, and the Nygaard family. Mr. and Mrs. Christian Olsen became the parents of the first white child born in the county, a girl born shortly after their arrival in 1850. Tollef Gunstensen was the first white boy born there, in 1851.

Pioneer Life

The settlers built log cabins and began clearing and breaking the land as quickly as they could. Wheat farming became the area’s principal source of income. Wages for forestry and land-clearing work ranged from twenty-five to fifty cents a day and occasionally reached seventy-five cents. The oxen that had brought the immigrant families inland from the shores of Lake Michigan continued to serve them after they settled. Since they had no horses, oxen were used both for plowing and transportation. Even so, the settlers often had to make long journeys on foot, carrying bags, sacks, or boxes in their hands or on their backs. This applied to women as well as men.

Although Waupaca City was the nearest town, settlers frequently traveled to Stevens Point, about twenty-five miles away, or to Wausau, about fifty-eight miles away, when they needed to buy or sell goods. Business was more active in those places because of the logging industry. More than twenty years passed before the area received railroad service. The Wisconsin Central was built in 1871 and the Green Bay line followed in 1872.

A. H. Buslett’s Journey to America

As an addition to the account of the early settlement, the author included extracts from several letters. A. H. Buslett described the journey from Norway as exceptionally long and difficult. Buslett wrote that they left Kristiania on April 16, although the year was uncertain in the source, and did not reach their destination until August 10. The entire journey lasted nineteen weeks. They emigrated aboard the sailing ship Hannah Parr.

After about two and a half weeks at sea, the vessel was caught in a hurricane-like storm that lasted three days and suffered severe damage. On the fourth morning, the passengers were finally permitted to come on deck. They found the ship surrounded by a violent sea and the deck almost completely stripped. Only a stump of the mainmast remained, while the rigging and nearly everything else had been swept overboard. During the storm the passengers had eaten almost nothing. When they were finally able to try to eat again, the vessel was still rolling heavily and had neither proper rigging nor a rudder. 

Buslett recalled a humorous incident amid the misery. The man in the bunk beside him told his wife that he still had a dram of liquor and suggested that they drink it so they might be able to eat something. The men held tightly to their bunks while keeping the woman between them as she poured. At that moment the ship rolled violently, throwing her headfirst across the cabin, and the dram disappeared with her. After drifting before the wind for seven days and eight nights, the damaged vessel was found by another ship and towed into an English port. The emigrants remained there for several weeks while repairs were made. Eventually they reached Quebec. From there, the journey continued by canal boat to Detroit and then by cattle car to Chicago.

Ole R. Bestul

Pioneer Ole R. Bestul also endured a long journey by sailing ship. He left his childhood home in the winter of 1853, when snow conditions were suitable for sled travel, and did not reach “The Indian Land” in Waupaca County until the following fall. As Bestul later remarked, such a journey was particularly hard on the food supplies.

Tormod Torkelson Tolo

O. A. Buslett contributed another account from Waupaca County, originally written for Skandinavien. He remarked that books could be, and undoubtedly would be, written about the ordinary Norwegian pioneers: “Paal ved Springen,” “Per mellem Haugom,” “Ola paa Prærien,” “John i Skogen,” “Marit paa Nylændet,” and “Gunhild den gamle.” For his own sketch, however, he chose Tormod Torkelson Tolo.

The name Tolo was an Americanized form of Tallhaugen, the name of a Norwegian cotter’s place at Baglien. It was Tormod’s sons who adopted the Americanized form. On the deed for the quarter section where he lived, his name appeared as Thormod Torkildsen, while his citizenship papers gave it as Tormod Torkelson. His old red-painted emigrant chest and large flatbread box, however, still bore the name and destination painted in neat yellow letters:

Taarmod Talhougen

To Oskos via Chicago

Nort-Amerika

When Tormod later asked Buslett to prepare a deed transferring his farm to his son, he had long been accustomed to signing himself T. T. Tolo. For the formal document, however, he again used the original form, Thormod Thorkilsen. The property then passed to his son, Elmer T. Tolo, whose name reflected the Norwegian-American transition of the family.

Tallhaug at Rolling Prairie

Buslett described the landscape as resembling the Atlantic Ocean after a storm, with the rolling land rising and falling like great swells. It was there that Tormod Torkilsen Tallhaug, newly married to Aslaug, claimed a quarter section of 160 acres in 1855. The land was then covered with forest, much of it burr oak. Among the Norwegian settlers this became humorously known as “Navor Eik.” Buslett explained that the expression arose from an improvised Norwegian translation. Ole Olson had apparently confused the English word burr with bore, producing navar, the Norwegian word for an auger or drill, and thus transforming burr oak into “Navor Eik.”

After the long voyage across the Atlantic, travel through the canals, and many days of walking across prairie and low, wet ground, Tormod finally reached his own piece of America. With oxen and a “kubberulle” borrowed from his neighbor “Knut i Knipen,” five miles away, he fetched Aslaug, their emigrant trunk, and the flatbread box. He then began cutting the oak and built a twelve-by-twelve-foot cabin beside a spring on a sloping hillside. The site gave good protection from the weather, although the mosquitoes could be severe during the summer.

From Log Cabin to Farm Home

Years later, Buslett invited the reader to stand in Tormod’s farmyard, where the pioneer had gradually erected one building after another. Yet the most important thing he had built, Buslett suggested, was not simply the collection of farm buildings but the secure home and life that had developed there. The main house was what the Norwegian-American settlers called the “levinghuset,” their adaptation of the English “living house.” Buslett humorously noted that traditional Norwegian terms such as våningshus, beboelseshus, and gård somehow did not seem quite right in Norwegian America. The house had a wing, two stories, and two chimneys. In Buslett’s description, Tallhaug shone white in the moonlight of Norwegian America.

The contrast with the old country remained powerful. The small Tallhaug cottage at Baglien under the mountain was still much as it had been sixty years earlier, with its small cultivated patch and large pile of stones. In the parlor of the prosperous Wisconsin farm, however, a picture of that humble cottage hung in a gilded frame. For Buslett, the old cottage still possessed a strong emotional pull. It represented the home left behind, standing beneath the mountains while winter snow covered the neighboring farms and Christmas lights shone in the darkness.

The Old Pioneer

By the time Buslett visited him, Tormod was stooped after a lifetime of hard work. His hands were knotted, and arthritis had marked his joints. He was still steady on his feet, although his trousers seemed too wide and his overcoat too large for his aging body. Beneath his bushy white eyebrows were blue eyes that usually revealed little, except when conversation turned to stories from the pioneer days. Buslett found the company of the old settlers warm and comfortable. “Navor Eik” logs burned in the large Old Oak heater. The house had three rooms: a sitting room, kitchen, and bedroom. The kitchen door stood open, and old Aslaug was preparing food with a roast in the oven. The sitting room contained a bookshelf filled with books, while numerous newspapers lay on a new oak table. Images of Christ on the cross and the Virgin Mary stood side by side on the bookshelf. Above the sofa hung framed pictures of the cottage at Baglien and the Tolo farm at Rolling Prairie. Buslett also noted a large mirror in the bedroom. As Tormod remarked, “One must always see to it that the pleats are set in the old style. From that, the man is known.”

Churches and Congregations

Scandinavia Congregation, established in 1853, was the first Norwegian congregation in Waupaca County. Its church, built in 1856, was the first Norwegian church in the county. Pastor O. F. Duus of the Norwegian Synod was the congregation’s first pastor. By 1905, Waupaca County had six Norwegian congregations and seven churches. Three congregations belonged to the United Church, two to the Evangelical Free Church, and one to the Norwegian Synod. The Norwegian Synod congregation had two churches in the county.

Education

Scandinavia Academy was established in 1893.

Norwegian Place Names

Norwegian place names in Waupaca County included Northland, Norske, Scandinavia, Lind, and Matteson.

Sources:

[Ulvestad, Martin. Nordmændene i Amerika. Utg. History Book Company's Forlag. Minneapolis, Minn. 1907.]