USA > Maine > Aroostook County > New Sweden > Celebration of the decennial anniversary of the founding of New Sweden, Maine, July 23, 1880 > Part 3
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One hundred aeres of forest were granted each settler ; a chopping of five acres had been made on each lot. In nearly every instance, the trees were felled on the contig- uous corners of four lots, and a square chopping of twenty aeres made around the point where four lots met, five aeres of which belonged to each of the four farms. The largest
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possible amount of light and air was thus let into each lot, and the settlers were better enabled to help one an- other in clearing. As the choppings had not yet been burnt over, the houses were built outside them, and being placed in couples on the opposite sides of the road, every household had a near neighbor. Nearly every habitation was also within easy distance of a spring of living water.
The houses built by the state in New Sweden were all of uniform pattern. They were designed by our able and efficient land agent, Hon. P. P. Burleigh, and erected under the immediate superintendence of Jacob Hardison and Judah D. Teague, Esqs. They were built of peeled logs; were 18x26 feet on the ground, one and a half stories high, seven feet between floors, and had two logs above the second floor beams, which, with a square pitch roof, gave ample room for chambers. The roofs were covered with long shaved shingles of cedar, made by hand on the township. The space on the ground floor was divided off, by partitions of unplaned boards, into one general front room 16x18 feet, one bedroom 10 feet square, and pantry adjoining, 8x10 feet. On this floor were four windows; one was also placed in the front gable end above. In the general room of each house was a second-size Hampden cooking stove, with a funnel running out through an iron plate in the roof. On the whole, these log-cabins in the woods were convenient and comfortable structures; they presented a pleasing appearance from without, and within were full of contentment and industry.
It was of course too late for a crop. Yet I wished to give the Swedes an ocular demonstration that something eatable would grow on this land. There was a four acre 3
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chopping on the public lot; this had been partially burnt over by an accidental spark from the camp fire at the cor- ner. On this chopping seven Swedes were set at work on July 26 junking and hand-piling the prostrate trees. Mr. Burleigh with axe and hands assisted in rolling up the first pile. Good progress was made, and the next day, Wednes- day, July 27, we set fire to the piles and sent a young lad, Master Haines Hardison, on horseback, out to the Ameri- can settlements in quest of English turnip seed and teeth for a harrow.
On July 28 we explored with the surveying party an old tote road running from the Turner place (one of the aban- doned American farms in Woodland) out to Philbrick's corner, on the road to Caribou. We found the tote road cut off three-quarters of a mile of the distance to the vil- lage, saved a hard hill and a long pole bridge, and gave a good level route. We at once put the tote road in repair and used it exclusively. The present turnpike to Caribou follows substantially the route of this road from the Tur- ner place, now occupied by Jonas Bodin, across Caribou stream to Philbrick's.
Friday, July 29, we sowed two acres on the public lot to English turnips. This was the first land cleared and the first crop sowed in New Sweden. The land was hand- piled, burnt, cleared, and sowed within six days after the arrival of the colony. The turnips were soon up, and grew luxuriantly, and in November we secured a large crop of fair size, many of the turnips being fifteen inches in circumference. I am well aware that the turnip is re- garded as a very cheap vegetable, but to us who were obliged to haul in everything eaten by man or beast eight miles over rough roads, this erop was of great assistance.
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Furthermore it gave the Swedes a tangible proof of the fertility of the soil.
On this day the first letters were received; two from old Sweden, directed to Oscar Lindberg. Four basket bottomed chairs for headquarters were hauled in on top of a load of goods-the first chairs in New Sweden, and Har- vey Collins, the teamster, brought in word that a Swedish immigrant was at Caribou on his way in.
July 30, Saturday, Anders Westergren, a Swede thirty- nine years of age, eame in and joined the colony. Ile sailed as seaman in a vessel from Philadelphia to Bangor. there he took up a paper containing notice of New Sweden, and immediately came through to us. He was the first immigrant after the founding of the colony. A stalwart man and skilled in the use of the broad-ax he rendered valuable aid in building hewed timber houses.
On this day Mr. Burleigh left us, after a week's efficient help. The fame of the colony was spreading. I received a letter of inquiry from seven Swedes in Bloomington, Illinois.
On July 31, the second Sabbath, Nils Olsson, the Swe- dish lay preacher, held public religious services in the Swedish language at the corner camp.
Tuesday, August 2, the immigrants wrote a joint letter to Sweden, delaring that the State of Maine had kept its faith with them in every particular; that the land was. fertile, the climate pleasant, the people friendly, and advising their countrymen emigrating to America to come to the New Sweden in Maine. This letter was published in full in all the leading journals throughout Sweden.
The only animals taken into the woods by the colony were two kittens, picked up by Swedish children on our
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drive in from Tobique. On Wednesday, August 3, a cock and three hens were brought in to Capt. Clase. These were the first domestic fowl on the township. They soon picked up an acquaintance with two wild squirrels, who became so tame that they ate meal out of the same dish with the fowl.
Friday, August 12, the second immigrant arrived in the colony. He was a native American, a good sized boy baby, born to Korno, wife of Nils Persson, the first child born in New Sweden. The youngster is alive and well to-day. He rejoices in the name of William Widgery Thomas Persson, and is happy in contemplation of the constitutional fact that he is eligible to the office of President of the United States.
On Friday, August 19, Anders Malmqvist arrived from Sweden via Quebec and Portland. He was a farmer and student, twenty-two years of age, and the first immigrant to us direct from the old country.
Sunday afternoon, August 21, Jons Persson was united in marriage to Hannah Persdotter by your historian. The marriage ceremony was conducted in the Swedish language, but according to American forms. In the evening was a wedding dinner at the Perssons. All the spoons were of solid silver. This was the first wedding in New Sweden.
Thus within one month from the arrival of the colony, it experienced the three great events in the life of man- birth, marriage, death.
Between August 10 and 20 nearly all the choppings were fired. On some, good burns were obtained, and nothing but the trunks and larger branches of the trees left unconsumed on the ground; the fire merely flashed over others, leaving behind the whole tangled mass of
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branches, trunks, and twigs to fret the settler. From this time forward till snow fell, every Swede that could be. spared from the public works was busily engaged from sunrise to sunset with axe and brand on his clearing, "junking," piling, and burning the logs-clearing the land for a crop. New Sweden became a land-mark for twenty miles around. From her hills arose "a pillar of cloud by day " and "a pillar of fire by night."
By September 15 large patches of land were successfully burnt off and cleared, and the Swedes commenced sowing an aere or half-acre each with winter wheat or rye. Six- teen acres in all were sowed with rye and four with wheat.
Meanwhile the colony steadily increased. Now and then a Swedish immigrant dropped in, took up a lot, re- ceived an axe and went to work. September 14 a detach- ment of twelve arrived, and October 31 twenty more followed, direct from Sweden. There were two more births, and on November 5 your historian saddled his horse, rode through the woods and stumps to the West Chopping, and officiated at the second marriage, uniting in the bonds of matrimony Herr Anders Frederick Johans- son to Jungfru Ofelia Albertina Leonora Amelia Ericsson.
The spirit of colonization possessed even the fowl. Al- though at an untimely season of the year, one of Capt. Clase's hens stole a nest under a fallen tree in the woods, and on September 24, came back proudly leading eleven chickens. Game was plenty. Your historian caught hundreds of trout in the lakes beyond the northwest cor- ner of the township, and shot scores of partridges while riding through the woods from clearing to clearing. This game was divided among the Swedes and made an agree- able diversion from the salt-pork diet of our camp life.
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Every Sabbath, divine service was held by Nils Olsson, the Swedish lay minister, and a Sunday-school was soon started, which is still in successful operation.
By the wise forethought of Hon. Noah Barker, the survey- or of the township, a lot of fifty acres was reserved for public uses at the cross roads in the center of the settlement. Here, on the 20th of September, we commenced digging the cellar for a public building on a commanding slope of land at the cross roads. We began hewing out the frame and shaving shingles for the roof the same day. On Fri- day, October 7, we raised the frame. Work was pushed rapidly forward, and on Friday, November 4, four weeks from the raising, the house was finished with the exception of lathing and plastering, and the vane was placed in po- sition on top of the tower 65 feet from the ground.
From the first, this structure has been called the " Cap- itol " by the Swedes. It is 30x45 feet on the ground ; has a cellar walled up with hewed cedar 7 1-2 feet in the clear, is 20 feet stud, and divided into two stories each 10 feet · high ; in addition to which the upper story or hall gains five feet extra out of the roof. The first floor contains a storeroom 30 feet square, and two offices 15 feet square each. The second story is a hall 30x45 feet on the floor, 10 feet stud on the sides, arching up to 15 feet in the clear in the center.
This building stands on state land and is the property of the state of Maine. It was built in great part by Swedish labor in payment for food. In the large room be- low were stowed provisions and tools for the colony. The offices became the headquarters of the commissioner of im- migration, and the hall has been used for ten years as a church, school-house, and general rallying place for the
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colony. In the spring, too, when the immigrants flocked in, it served as a "Castle Garden," where the Swedish families slept, cooked and ate under a roof while they were selecting their lots and erecting a shelter of their own. The building was indispensable. It has been the heart of the colony. It at once gave character and stabil- ity to the settlement, encouraged every Swede in his labors, and has been of daily need and use.
The dwelling-houses erected by the state were built of round logs piled one on the other, with the spaces between open to wind and weather. On the eighteenth of October there raged a fierce storm of wind, sleet and rain. The wind whistled through the open log-houses, and all night long we could hear the crash of falling trees blown down by the gale. In the morning I found myself barricaded by a tall spruce that had fallen across my door-way, and my nearest neigh- bor arrived to tell me there were eight trees down across the road between his house and mine. Two good chop- pers soon cut out the fallen trees from the roads; but the storm warned us that winter was coming. So the Swedes ceased for a time clearing their land, and went to work fitting up their houses for winter. They first split out plank from the nearest spruce trees, and taking up the floor nailed a tight planked ceiling underneath the lower floor beams. The spaces between the beams were then compactly filled with dry earth and the floor-boards planed and re-placed. An upper ceiling of matched boards was now put on overhead, and the room made perfectly - tight above and below. The walls of round logs were then hewed down inside and out, the interstices first "chinked up" with moss and then filled in with matched strips of cedar. The walls were thus made as even and
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perpendicular as those of a timber house, and every build- ing completely defended against the cold and blasts of winter.
Early in November, I secured places for the winter, among the farmers and lumbermen of the vicinity, for all the Swedes who wished to work out; thirty were thus supplied with labor at from ten to twenty dollars a month, including board and lodging. Supplies were hauled in for those families who were to pass the winter in the woods, and they were made as comfortable as possible.
On November 13 was held the first meeting at the cap- itol, and here the commissioner distributed to the colonists the certificates of their lots. They received them with eager eyes and greedy hands.
The state of Maine extended a helping hand to this infant colony and guarded it with fostering care. But in so doing the state only helped those who helped them- selves. The Swedes did not come among us as paupers. The passage of the colony of the first year from Sweden to Maine cost over four thousand dollars, every dollar of which was paid by the immigrants themselves. They also carried into New Sweden over three thousand dollars in cash, and six tons of baggage.
Let this one fact be distinctly understood. The Swedish immigrants to Maine from first to last, from 1870 till to-day, have all paid their own passage to Maine. The state has never paid a dollar, directly or indirectly, for the passage of any Swede to Maine.
At the close of 1870, in reviewing the work already accomplished, it was found that every Swede that started from Scandinavia with your historian, or was engaged by him to follow after, had arrived in Maine and was settled
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in New Sweden. No settler had left to make him a home elsewhere, but on the other hand our immigrants had already bought, paid for, and sent home to their friends across the water, five tickets from Sweden to Maine.
So healthy was the climate of our northern woods, that for the first year there was not a day's sickness of man, woman, or child, in New Sweden. The results of this en- terprise to our state, which were thus achieved in 1870, the year of its inception, were briefly summed up in an official report as follows:
RESULTS IN 1870.
"A colony of one hundred and fourteen Swedes-fifty- eight men, twenty women, and thirty-six children-have paid their own passage from Sweden and settled on the wild lands of Maine.
"Seven miles of road have been cut through the forest; one hundred and eighty acres of woods felled; one hun- dred acres hand-piled, burnt off and cleared ready for a crop, and twenty acres sowed to winter wheat and rye. Twenty-six dwelling-houses and one public building have been built.
" A knowledge of Maine, its resources and advantages, has been seattered broadcast over Sweden; a portion of the tide of Swedish immigration turned upon our state, and a practical beginning made toward settling our wild lands and peopling our domain with the most hardy, hon- est and industrious of immigrants."
The winter of 1870-71 was safely and comfortably pass- ed by the Swedes in these woods. They were accustomed to cold weather and deep snow. Their fires erackled
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brightly and the festivities of Christmas time were observ- ed as joyously in the Maine woods as in Old Sweden.
In the meantime, active and efficient measures were taken to increase the stream of immigration thus happily started. A circular was printed in Old Sweden describing the voyage of the first colonists, their generous and honor- able welcome at the American border, the attractions, healthfulness and fertility of their new homes, the loca- tion, extent and productiveness of the settling lands of Maine, the advantages our state offered to settlers, inter- esting letters from the Swedish colonists already on our soil, and every other fact and suggestion which seemed ap- propriate or advantageous. This circular was issued early in December, 1870; a month in advance of the circulars of any other state or association. Five thousand copies were distributed, and the information they contained read and discussed at thousands of Swedish firesides during the most opportune time of all the year-The Christmas holi- days.
Capt. G. W. Schröder was appointed agent in Old, and Capt. N P. Clase in New Sweden. Large editions of cir- culars were struck off and distributed in the old country in quick succession; two columns of the "Amerika," a weekly emigrant's paper, were bought for six months and filled every week with new matter relating to Maine and her Swedish colony; advertisements were also inserted in all the principal newspapers taken by the agricultural and other working classes, and a brisk correspondence carried on with hundreds intending to emigrate to Maine.
A special agent was employed to travel and distribute information in the most northern provinces of Sweden, their population being deemed best fitted for our northern
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state ; and another agent, Mr. Carl Johan Ek, one of our first colonists, was sent back from New Sweden to the old, well equipped with maps, plans, specimens of Aroostook wheat, rye, corn and potatoes, also maple sugar made by the Swedes in New Sweden ; for many in the old country had written " if one could only return to us, and with his own lips tell us what you narrate on paper, we would be- lieve." This last agent was sent out without expense to the state, he charging nothing for his services, and the In- man Steamship Line generously furnishing him with a free passage out and back. A condensed circular was printed in Swedish at Portland, placed in the hands of the pilots of that harbor, and by them distributed on board the trans-Atlantic steamers, while yet miles away from land.
Seed thus well and widely sown was soon followed by a harvest. With the first opening of navigation, Swedish immigrants began to arrive in New Sweden; first, in little squads, then in companies of twenty, thirty and forty, till the immigration of the year culminated in the last week of May, when one hundred Swedes arrived via Houlton and Presque Isle, followed within five days by two hun- dred and sixty more by the St. John river.
Provisions and tools for the colony and its expected ac- cessions, were shipped in March direct to Fredericton, New Brunswick, and thence with the first opening of naviga- tion up the river St. John to Tobique landing. From this latter place the goods were hauled into New Sweden, a distance of but twenty-five miles. Seed, consisting chief- ly of wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, beans and potatoes, was early purchased in the neighborhood of the colony and hauled in on the snow. A span of young, powerful draught horses was bought in the early spring to help on
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the work. They were employed in harrowing in the crops, grubbing out and plowing the roads, hauling logs and tim- ber, until November, when they were sold for $425, the exact sinn paid for them in the spring.
A stable, thirty by forty feet, was erected on the public lot, one hundred feet in the rear of the capitol; the capi- tol itself painted, the first floor, comprising the store-house and offices, lathed, plastered, finished and furnished, and the hall above lathed and provided with benches and a pulpit. The stable was erected and the capitol completed before the snow was off. This work was alnost exclusive- ly done by Swedes, at the rate of one dollar a day, in pay- ment of supplies already furnished them by the state.
The snow lingered late. Weeks after it had disappear- ed in the nearest villages, it still covered our new clearings in the woods. As soon as the black burnt ground showed itself in considerable patches, we commenced putting in wheat, sowing it partly on the melting snow. The first wheat was sowed May 12, rye followed, then came oats and barley. The state horses harrowed in the grain. Then men, women and children were busy from morning till night hacking in potatoes among the stumps ; and last of all, each Swede cleared still a little piece more of land and put in turnips.
Saturday, May 14, Jacob Hardison and I rode into New Sweden on horseback, through a storm of sleet and rain, with nineteen young apple-trees lashed on our backs. With these we set out the first orchard in the town on the publie lot, just west of the capitol. The trees flourished, and for some years have borne fruit.
In the spring of 1871, one hundred and sixty-five acres of land were cleared and put into a crop, including the
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one hundred and twenty-five acres on which the trees were felled the year before by the state.
The song birds found us out. The year before the for- est was voiceless. This spring, robins, sparrows and chick- adees flew into our clearings, built their nests among us, and enlivened the woods with their songs. The birds evi- dently approved of colonization.
All this while the immigrants with their ponderous chests of baggage were pouring in. They filled the hall of the capitol, the stable, and one squad of fifty, from Jemptland camped under a shelter of boards at the corner.
Albert A. Burleigh Esq., took the place of Mr. Barker as surveyor. Mr. Burleigh, with an able corps of assis- tants arrived at New Sweden as soon as it was practicable to commence surveying in the woods, and pushed on his part of the work with vigor and ability throughout the season. Roads were first laid out in all directions from the capitol, then lots laid off to face them. Straight lines were not deemed essential to these ways, an easy grade was everywhere maintained, and hills and swamps avoid- ed. Working parties of newly arrived immigrants, each in command of an English speaking Swede, were detailed to follow the surveyors and cut out the roads. Thus ave- nues were opened up in all directions into the wilderness. Bands of immigrants eagerly seeking their farms followed the choppers, and lots were taken up as fast as they were made accessible. Some enterprising Swedes did not wait for the working parties, but secured choice lots by ranging the woods in advance ; the principal of " first come first served " having been adopted in the distribution of these prizes of land.
Thus the stream of immigration that poured into the
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capitol, was continually disappearing in small rills through- out the forest. A party of one hundred crowding our ac- commodations on Monday, would vanish before Saturday night. A walk along any wood road soon revealed them ; the blows of the axe and the crash of falling trees led to the men, and the smoke curling from a shelter of poles and bark near by, to the women and children.
Our main road to the outside world for three miles from the capitol was simply a passage way cut through the woods a year ago, to let in the first colony. The heavy immigrant wagons and supply teams had since then rapid- ly worn away the earth ; and protruding stumps and deep- ening ruts rendered the road ahnost impassable, yet not a day's labor could be spared to it, till the crops were all in. June 26, however, a force of fifteen men and four horses were put upon this important highway. We commenced work at the edge of the center, chopping about a stone's throw south of the capitol, and until October, whatever hands could be spared from their own clearings were kept at work on this road. The entire three miles were grub- . bed out full width of thirty feet through a heavy growth of standing trees ; two miles of this turnpiked in as thor- ough a manner as any county road in the state, and a sub- stantial bridge of hewn cedar thrown across the east branch of Caribou stream. The road is three-quarters of a mile shorter than the old one by which the first colony entered New Sweden, curves around, instead of over the hills, and maintains an easy grade throughout. It was built under the immediate supervision of Jacob Hardison Esq., than whom no man in Aroostook is better acquainted with everything that pertains to frontier life in the woods of Maine, and who in one capacity or another has assisted
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the Swedish colony from its foundation. In settling New Sweden, my right hand man was always Jake Hardison. It does me good to look into his honest face to-day.
Meanwhile, branch roads were being cut through the woods by smaller parties of workmen. One road was made west four miles through Woodland into Perham, an- other east toward Lyndon, a third northeast four and one- quarter miles to the Little Madawaska river, a fourth sev- en and one-half miles to the northwest corner of New Sweden, beside still other shorter connecting roads.
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