USA > Maine > Aroostook County > New Sweden > The Story of New Sweden as told at the quarter centennial celebration of the founding of the Swedish colony in the woods of Maine, June 25, 1895 > Part 3
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And so this township stood for nine years - set apart for settlement, largely run out into lots, but without a settler.
The Board of Immigration very prudently refrained from making any preparation for the proposed colony
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
until it knew the result of my mission to Sweden. When, however, it appeared from my letters that this mission was a success, and that a Swedish colony would surely come to Maine, the Board at once set about making suitable preparations for the reception of the Swedes. This duty devolved upon Hon. Parker P. Burleigh of the Board, and it is fortunate the work fell to such tried and able hands. In the latter part of June, 1870, Mr. Burleigh proceeded to Aroostook County. Here he instituted a relotting of this town ship, reducing the size of the lots from one hundred and sixty acres, which for nine years had been offered to Americans, with no takers, to lots of one hundred acres for the Swedes. The surveying party was under the charge of that old and experienced state surveyor, the Hon. Noah Barker. Mr. Burleigh con- tracted with Hon. L. R. King and Hon. John S. Arnold, of Caribou, to fell five acres of forest on each of the twenty-five lots. He also bushed out a road into the township and commenced building twenty-five log-houses. In addition, Mr. Burleigh bought and forwarded to the township necessary sup- plies and tools for the colony, and in many ways rendered services indispensable to the success of the enterprise.
The Swedes had arrived much earlier than Mr. Bur- leigh anticipated. Only six of the log-houses had been built, and these were but partly finished, only two of them having glass in the windows. On our arrival, the supplies and the commissioner of immigration were stowed in one house, and the Swedes and their baggage
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
packed in the other five. So the colony passed its first night in New Sweden.
The next day was the Sabbath. The first religious service on the township was a sad one - the funeral of Hilma C. Clasé. The services were held at the bark camp at the corner, and were conducted by Rev. James Withee, of Caribou, an American Methodist. All the Swedes, and many families from Caribou attended the funeral of this little Swedish girl. We buried her on the public lot, in a spot we were forced to mark out as a cemetery on the very first day of the occupancy of this town. So peacefully slept in the wild green wood the only one who had perished by the way.
I had anticipated some difficulty in assigning homes to the settlers. Some farms were undoubtedly better than others. To draw lots for them seemed to be the only fair way of distribution ; yet in so doing, friends from the same province, who had arranged to help each other in their work, might be separated by several miles. Every difficulty was finally avoided by dividing the settlers into little groups of four friends each, and the farms into clusters of four, and letting each group draw a cluster, which was after- ward distributed by lot among the members of the group. The division of farms was thus left entirely to chance, and yet friends and neighbors were kept together.
The drawing took place Monday afternoon, July 25. With but two exceptions, every one was satisfied, and these two were immediately made happy by exchang-
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
ing with each other. When this exchange was effected every Swede was convinced that just the right lot had fallen to him and was enabled to find some- thing or other about his possessions which in his eye made it superior to all others. So surely does owner- ship beget contentment.
After the homesteads were thus distributed, Mr. Burleigh, Mr. Barker, and myself, took the Swedes to a hillside " chopping," northeast of the cross roads, and showed them the vast woodland wilderness of Maine, stretching away unbroken to the horizon, and await- ing the ax and plow of the settler. "Here is room enough for all our friends in old Sweden," said the Swedes.
Tuesday morning, July 26, the Swedes commenced the great work of converting a forest into a home, and that work has gone happily on, without haste and with- out rest, to this day.
Much remained to be done by the State. The Swedes, too, must be supplied with food till they could harvest their first crop. To put them in the way of earning their living by their labor was a natural suggestion. I therefore at once set the Swedes at work felling trees, cutting out roads, and building houses, allowing them one dollar a day for their labor, payable in provisions, tools, etc. The prices of these necessaries were determined by adding to the first cost the expense of transportation, plus ten per cent. for breakage and leakage.
Capt. N. P. Clasé, a Swede who spoke our language, and could keep accounts in single entry in English,
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ORATION BY HION. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
was then placed in charge of the storehouse. He opened an account with every settler, charging each with all goods received from the store. Every Swedish working-party was placed under a foreman, who kept in a book furnished him the time of each man. These time-books were handed in once a week to Capt. Clasé, the storekeeper, and the men credited with their work at the rate of one dollar a day. The Swedes thus did the work which the State would otherwise have been compelled to hire other laborers to do, and were paid in the very provisions which otherwise the State would have been compelled to give them. By this arrangement, also, all jealousy was avoided with regard to the distribution of rations ; and in their consumption the rigid Swedish economy was always exercised, which could hardly have been the case if food had fallen to them like manna, with- out measure or price.
All through summer and fall there was busy work in this wilderness. The primeval American forest rang from morn till eve with the blows of the Swedish ax. The prattle of Swedish children and the song of Swedish mothers made unwonted music in the wilds of Maine. One cloudless day succeeded another. The heats of summer were tempered by the woodland shade in which we labored. New clearings opened out, and new log-houses were rolled up on every hand. Odd bits of board and the happily twisted branches of trees were quickly converted into needed articles of furniture. Rustic bedsteads, tables, chairs, and the omnipresent cradle, made their appearance in
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
every house ; and Swedish industry and ingenuity soon transformed every log-cabin into a home.
For myself it was a pleasure to share the toils and privations of our new settlers. Every day I was among them from morn till eve. On foot or on horseback I visited them all, even the most remote, and cheered all at their labors ; and every night I lay down in my log-house tired but happy, for every day I had beheld something done, something tangible accomplished on the soil of Maine.
One hundred acres of forest were granted each set- tler ; a chopping of five acres had been made on each lot. In nearly every instance, the trees were felled on the contiguous corners of four lots, and a square chopping of twenty acres made around the point where four lots met, five acres of which belonged to each of the four farms. The largest possible amount of light and air was thus let into each lot, and the settlers were better enabled to help one another 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., of Cari- bou. They were built of peeled logs; were eighteen
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
by twenty-six 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 un- planed boards, into one general front room sixteen by eighteen feet, one bedroom ten feet square, and pan- try adjoining, eight by ten feet. On this floor were
ONE OF THE LOG HOUSES BUILT BY THE STATE IN 1870.
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 run- ning 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 con- tentment and industry.
It was of course too late for a crop. Yet I wished to give the Swedes an ocular demonstration that some- thing eatable would grow on the land. There was a four-acre chopping on the public lot; this had been
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
partially burnt over by an accidental spark from the camp-fire at the corner. On this chopping seven Swedes were set at work on July 26, "junking " and hand-piling the prostrate trees. Mr. Burleigh with ax 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
J. B. HALGREN'S HOUSE IN 1895.
lad, Master Haines Hardison, on horseback out to the American 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 abandoned 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 village, 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 exclu- sively. The present turnpike to Caribou follows sub-
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
stantially the route of this road from the Turner place, now occupied by Jonas Bodin, a Swede, 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-sized turnips, many of them being fifteen inches in circumference. I am well aware that the turnip is regarded as a very cheap vege- table, but to us who were obliged to haul in every- thing eaten by man or beast, eight miles over rough roads, this crop was of great assistance. 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 Harvey 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, came in and joined the colony. He 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
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
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.
NILS OLSSON, THE FIRST LAY MINISTER.
On July 31, the second Sabbath, Nils Olsson, the Swedish 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, declaring 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.
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
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 drive in from Tobique. On Wednesday, August 3,
FIDPHOTO ENCIO
WILLIAM WIDGERY THOMAS PERSSON, [First child born in the colony.]
a cock and three hens were brought in to Capt. Clasé. 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
.
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
boy baby, born to Korno, wife of Nils Persson, the first child born in New Sweden. He is alive and well to-day, a young man and a voter. 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, occurred the first wedding. I then united in marriage Jöns Persson to Hannah Persdotter. The marriage ceremony was con- ducted in the Swedish language, but according to American forms. In the evening was a wedding din- ner at the Perssons. All the spoons were of solid sil- ver ; heirlooms from old Sweden.
Thus within the first month of the colony's existence, 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 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 ax and brand on his clear- ing, junking, piling, and burning the logs-clearing
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
the land for a crop. New Sweden became a landmark 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 suc- cessfully burnt off and cleared, and the Swedes com- menced sowing an acre or half-acre each with winter wheat or rye. Sixteen acres in all were sowed with rye and four with wheat Meanwhile the colony steadily increased. Now and then a Swedish immi- grant dropped in, took up a lot, received an ax and went to work. September 14 a detachment of twelve arrived, and October 31 twenty more followed, direct from Sweden. There were two more births, and on November 5, I saddled my horse, rode through the woods and stumps to the West Chopping, and offici- ated at the second marriage, uniting in the bonds of matrimony Herr Anders Frederick Johansson to Jungfru Ofelia Albertina Leonora Amelia Ericsson.
The spirit of colonization possessed even the fowl. Although at an untimely season of the year, one of Capt. Clasé'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. I caught hundreds of trout in the lakes beyond the northwest corner of the township and shot scores of partridges while riding through the woods from clearing to clear- ing. This game was divided among the Swedes and made an agreeable diversion from the salt-pork diet of our camp life.
Every Sabbath divine service was held by Nils
THE SWEDISH CAPITOL TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
Olsson, the Swedish lay minister and a Sunday-school was soon started, which is still in successful operation. The log-houses made comfortable homes for each Swedish family, but I soon became convinced that a large, central building was absolutely necessary for the public and social life of the colony. By the wise forethought of Hon. Noah Barker, the surveyor of the township, a lot of fifty acres had been reserved for public uses at the cross roads in the center of the settlement. Here, on the twentieth of Sep- tember, we commenced digging the cellar for a public building on a commanding slope of land. We began hewing out the frame of the building 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 position on top the tower, sixty- five feet from the ground. This building is thirty by forty-five feet on the ground ; has a cellar walled up with hewed cedar seven and one-half feet in the clear, is twenty feet stud, and divided into two stories each ten feet high. The first floor contains a storeroom thirty feet square, and two offices fifteen feet square each. The second story is a hall thirty by forty-five feet on the floor, ten feet stud on the sides, arching up to fifteen feet in the clear in the center. In the large room below were stowed provisions and tools for the colony. The offices became the headquarters of the commissioner of immigration, and the hall was
5
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
used for many years as a church, schoolhouse, town- house, and general rallying-place for the 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.
From the first this structure has been called by the Swedes the "Capitol." It has been the heart of the colony. It at once gave character and stability to the settlement, encouraged every Swede in his labors, and has been of daily need and use. The Swedish Capitol is till standing to-day, and though shorn of its ornamental tower is otherwise in a good state of preservation.
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 eigh- teenth 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 doorway, and my nearest neighbor arrived to tell me there were eight trees down across the road between his house and mine. Two good choppers 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 near-
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
est spruce trees, and taking up the floor nailed a tight plank under-floor to the lower side of the beams. The spaces between the beams were then compactly filled with dry earth and the upper floor-boards planed and replaced. A 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 having been first " chinked up " with moss and then filled in with matched strips of cedar. The walls were thus made as even and perpendicular as those of a timber house, and every building 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 win- ter in the woods, and they were made as comfortable as possible.
On November 13 was held the first meeting at the Capitol, and here I 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 themselves. 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 dol-
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
lars, every dollar of which was paid by the immi- grants 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 me, or was engaged by me to follow after, had arrived in Maine and was set- tled 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-for 1870-there was not a day's sickness of man, woman, or child, in New Sweden.
The results of this enterprise to our State, which were thus achieved in 1870, the year of its inception, were briefly summed up in my official report for that year 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 hundred acres
·
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ORATION BY HON. W. W. THOMAS, JR.
hand-piled, burnt off and cleared 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 scattered broadcast over Sweden; a portion of the tide of Swedish immigration turned upon our state, and a practical be- ginning made toward settling our wild lands and peopling our domain with the most hardy, honest and industrious of immi- grants.
As illustrating how favorably the New Sweden of Maine already began to be regarded by the old country from which it sprung, I call attention to the following admirable letter, written to the Governor of Maine, by Dr. S. A. Hedlund of Gothenburg, Sweden. Dr. Hedlund is editor of a prominent Swedish newspaper, a member of the Swedish parliament, and one of the first writers and thinkers of Sweden.
To the Honorable Governor of the State of Maine :
SIR,- You must not wonder, sir, that a Swedish patriot can- not regard without feelings of sadness the exodus of emigrants, that are going to seek a better existence in the great republic of North America, leaving the homes of their ancestors, and giving their fatherland only a smiling farewell. It will not surprise you, sir, that this must be a very melancholy sight to the mind of the Swedes, and that it must become yet more so on the thought that many of these emigrants are meeting destinies far different from the glowing prospects that were held forth to their hopeful eyes. Not only Sweden will lose her children, but they will be lost to themselves in the distant new field.
The sons and daughters of old Sweden, will they maintain, among your great nation their national character? Will they retain, at least, some remembrance of their native land ?
We know well, sir, that every nationality, strong as it may be, will be gradually amalgamated in the new, common, all-absorbing
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THE STORY OF NEW SWEDEN.
nationality of the new world, and it would certainly not be of any advantage, either to America or to civilization, if the different nationalties of Europe were to continue their individual life, with their peculiarities and enmities, on the soil of their adopted country. We regard it, on the contrary, as a special mission of America to absorb and amalgamate all these different European elements.
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