CHAPTER VIII

_Causes of Emigration continued. The Influence of Successful Pioneers. "America-letters." The Spirit of Adventure. Summary._

Far more influential, however, than the factors just noted were the efforts put forth by successful immigrants to induce their relatives and friends to follow them. Numerous letters were written home praising American laws and institutions, and setting forth the opportunities here offered. These letters were read and passed around to friends. Many who had relatives in America would travel long distances to hear what the last "America-letter" had to report. Among the early immigrants who did much in this way to promote emigration from their native districts was one whom we have already spoken of, Gjert Hovland. He wrote many letters home praising American institutions. These letters "were transcribed and the copies distributed far and wide in the Province of Bergen; and a large number were thus led to emigrate."[57]

[57] See _Billed-Magazin_, p. 74.

The interviews in _Billed-Magazin_ contain statements from several among the early settlers on Koshkonong Prairie and the neighborhood of Stoughton which give evidence of the part that "America-letters" played in their emigration. On page 123 occurs a statement of Gaute Ingbrigtson (Gulliksrud) who came from Tin in Telemarken in 1843 and became one of the earliest pioneers of Dunkirk Township in Dane County. He says: "Two of my uncles and a brother emigrated in 1839. I, however, remained at home with my father who was a farmer in the Parish of Tin. But then letters came with good news from America, and my relatives as well as other acquaintances on this side of the ocean were encouraged to emigrate. From this it came about that I and many others in my native district prepared for leaving in the spring of 1843. The party numbered about one hundred and twenty...."

We have already had occasion to refer to a letter received by Ole Menes of Stoughton in 1845. Ingbrigt Helle came from Kragerö in 1845 and settled in the Town of Dunn. The ship he came on brought one hundred and forty immigrants and he mentions the fact that many had been induced to emigrate by letters from America, and he writes: "Such letters from America urging emigration was, as far as I can see, the thing that brought the majority of emigrants to bid farewell to Norway." Ole Knudson Dyrland, who emigrated from Siljord, Telemarken, in 1843, and became one of the earliest white settlers in Dunn Township, Dane County, testifying to the same fact, mentions Ole Knudson Trovatten as one who, through letters, exerted considerable influence upon emigration in Telemarken (page 218, _Billed-Magazin_, 1870). We shall meet Trovatten again below as a pioneer in the Town of Cottage Grove in the same county. The editor of _Billed-Magazin_ writes of Trovatten elsewhere, page 283, after giving a brief sketch of his life: "he settled on Koshkonong and wrote therefrom many letters to his numerous friends in his native country in which he, with much eloquence, made his countrymen acquainted with the glories of America, and there is no doubt that Trovatten in a large measure gave the impulse to the rapid development of emigration in the region of Telemarken."

Of Trovatten's influence as a promoter of immigration Gunder T. Mandt, himself an immigrant of 1843 (died 1907, Stoughton, Wisconsin), gives similar testimony. He speaks of the opposition to emigration in Upper Telemarken, which found expression in all sorts of adverse accounts of America, especially among the clergy, and that much uncertainty prevailed among the masses as to the advisability of going to America. During all this, Trovatten, he says, "came to be looked upon as an angel of peace, who had gone beforehand to the New World, whence he sent back home to his countrymen, so burdened by economic sorrows, the olive-branch of promise, with assurances of a happier life in America.... 'Ole Trovatten has said so,' became the refrain in all accounts of the land of wonder, and in a few years he was the most talked of man in Upper Telemarken. His letters from America gave a powerful impulse to emigration, and it is probable that hundreds of those who now are plowing the soil of Wisconsin and Minnesota would still be living in their ancestors' domains in the land of Harald Fairhair, if they had not been induced to bid old Norway farewell through Trovatten's glittering accounts of conditions on this side of the ocean." (_Billed-Magazin_, 1870, p. 38.) Similar evidence of the influence of "America-letters" is also given by Knud Aslakson Juve, a pioneer of 1844, in the Town of Pleasant Spring, in Dane County.

At the close of the preceding