Ex Safaris SEYMOUR DURST When you leave, please leave this book Because it has been said "Ever'thing comes t' him who waits Except a loaried book." Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/norwegiansinnewyOOrygg NORWEGIANS IN NEW YORK 1825-1925 By A. N. RYGG, LL.D. Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav Former Editor of the Norwegian News PUBLISHED BY THE NORWEGIAN NEWS COMPANY BROOKLYN, N. Y. This boo\ is respectfully dedicated to the people of Norwegian descent with whom I have had the privi- lege and honor to wor\ during many happy years. A. N. RYGG PRINTED IN U.S.A. ARNESEN PRESS, INC., BROOKLYN, N.Y. INTRODUCTION THE Norwegian Community in New York City is now more than a century old, figuring from the time of the arrival of the sloop Restau- rationen, which often and with justification has been called the Norwegian May')'lower. For about 115 years Norwegians have been part and parcel of this community and have made their substantial contributions to the upbuilding of the City and the land. These contributions to what may be called the Making of America have on the part of the Norwegian ele- ment embraced nearly every field of human endeavor, although it is quite natural that in the Port of New York and along the Atlantic seaboard as a whole the heaviest contribution to American life and development has been in shipping in all its various phases. Considering the fact that the Norwegian nation is a small one numerically, its contributions to Ameri- can shipping have been as widespread in extent as they have been valuable in character. Yet, in spite of our having been here for 115 years—leaving out of consideration the Norwegians who came to New Amsterdam with the Dutch in the seventeenth century 1 —no adequate history of the activities of our people in New York has been written and made available to the general public. In fact, the first fifty years — from 1825 to 1875 — have been more or less hidden in a mist, so that only a few incidents were known, and people in general have had merely the haziest notions of how our "Colony" came into being, the whys and wherefores, and how it grew into one of the largest groups of Norwegians on this side of the Atlantic. It is true that we have Professor Knut Gjerset's excellent book on Norwegian sailors in American waters, but this work covers only a section of the field and is not intended to depict the life in general of the Norwegians in New York City. It may be pertinent to say that a farmer is judged in the main by defi- nite achievements which can be seen and measured. The work of the sailor is more ephemeral. When a voyage is completed, nothing remains but a memory, so that the value of a sailor's work is less easily proved. 1 Dr. John O. Evjen: Scandinavian Immigrants in TSjetc Yor\, 16 JO- 1674. — Norwegians in New York Miss Ingrid Gaustad (now Mrs. Semmingsen) from Oslo, who re- cently spent a year in the United States for the purpose of studying the effect of the emigration on conditions in Norway, regretted the fact that so very little historical material was at hand in printed form in the Nor- wegian settlements along the Atlantic Coast, while our kinsmen in the Northwest had become well equipped in this respect, largely through the efforts of the Norwegian-American Historical Association. Owing to this backwardness on our part in getting our records in order, the contributions to the community made by the Norwegian ele- ment in New York have, to a large extent, been hidden under a bushel. Because of this lack of records, statistics and definite information concern- ing our life and activities, we do not, perhaps, show up fully as well as we otherwise might, although we do, of course, in a general way rank high as citizens of this country. For the reasons mentioned I have lately spent considerable time in gathering material for a history of the Norwegians in New York in the period from 1825 to 1925. Needless to say, this undertaking has offered many difficulties and required much patience. In the first place, the people who lived in the Sixties and Seventies and could have thrown light on conditions and events in those days, are no longer with us. In the second place, the Scandinavian newspapers published in New York in 1847, 1851 and 1863 can no longer be found with the exception of four numbers of the first one, Scandinavia, and two numbers of the second, S\andinaven, and even Nordis^e Blade, which commenced publication in 1878, seems to have disappeared completely. The only available newspaper is Nordis^ Tidende, which covers the period from January, 1891, up to the present time and is, of course, very valuable, but cannot be expected to contain much information concerning events and persons ten, twenty, thirty and forty years earlier. I have, however, gathered material from all kinds of sources: books, interviews, reports from institutions and societies, etc., and as one bit of information often leads to another, I have on occasion been able to develop some valuable items. This, then, is an attempt on my part to dispel some of the fog that has hung over the history of our group. It has been my belief that a care- ful and systematic search of accessible sources would yield a plentiful and interesting harvest. I have tried to show not only what outstanding men among us have accomplished, but also what we have done collectively Norwegians in New York as a group. Our complete record, I am sure, will turn out to be a proud and an honorable one and will show that the Norwegians have been a valuable element in the population, at all times ready to carry their full share of the burdens of the community. It is very interesting to follow a community on its way up from abso- lutely nothing and to notice how it acquires form and substance as it goes along. In 1825 the Norwegian community in New York barely did exist, but little by little it grew in size and strength. As the need made itself felt, it established churches, societies, institutions, newspapers and other communal requirements, until it finally has built up an excellent apparatus for taking care of all those necessities that cannot be handled by the individual, but must be met by the community at large. Of the population of Greater New York, 62,915 are classed as Nor- wegians in the United States Census for 1930. Of these 38,130 were born in Norway and 24,785 were born here of parents born in Norway, or were of mixed parentage. It is, indeed, quite an increase from 1825. It may be permissible for me to add that as editor of Nordis^ Tidende for eighteen years, from 191 1 to 1929, I have personally had to do with a great many of the events, churches, societies, organizations of various kinds, and private persons mentioned in this book. In numerous instances the reports appearing in Nordisf^ Tidende have been written by me. Consequently, in preparing the material for the book, I have had quite a store of information of my own to draw from. The attention of the reader is called to the fact that the subject matter, as nearly as possible, is dealt with chronologically. For valuable advice and assistance I beg to offer my most sincere thanks to Miss Hanna Astrup Larsen, editor of the American-Scandina- vian Review, New York; Rev. C. O. Pedersen, rector of the Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses' Home and Hospital, Brooklyn; Mr. Juul Dieserud, Cand. Mag., Washington, D. C; Mr. Carl J. S0yland, editor, and Major S. J. Arnesen, publisher of Nordis\ Tidende, Brooklyn; Carl Christian Jensen, author of An American Saga, Brooklyn, and to the many others too numerous to mention, who have been happy to furnish required information. A. N. RYGG. Brooklyn, October 1, 1941. CONTENTS Introduction PART ONE CHAPTER PAGE I. The Curtain Rises i II. Shipping and the Men of the Sea .... 22 III. The Beginnings of Religious Work .... 35 IV. In the Civil War 43 V. Interesting Personalities 55 VI. The Invasion of Brooklyn 64 PART TWO VII. Societies 75 VIII. Charitable Institutions 88 IX. Churches 95 X. The Sailor and His Friends 103 XI. Song, Music and Theater 117 XII. In the War With Spain 127 XIII. Newspapers 133 XIV. Various Activities 137 XV. Staten Island, Harlem and the Bronx . 152 PART THREE XVI. Engineers and Scientists 161 XVII. The Norwegian America Line 169 XVIII. The Temperance Cause 173 XIX. During the World War 177 XX. In the World of Art 192 XXI. Literature 204 XXII. Skiing and Other Sports 209 XXIII. Miscellaneous Items 213 XXIV. Along the Waterfront 239 XXV. From Various Localities 250 XXVI. General Observations 264 Epilogue Index PART ONE CHAPTER ONE THE CURTAIN RISES THE Beginning of the Norwegian immigration to America in mod- ern times starts from the year 1825, when the thirty-nine ton sailing vessel, Restaurationen, left the harbor of Stavanger in southwestern Nor- way and arrived in the Port of New York on October 9. We are, in this history, going to pass by Leiv Eiriksson and Thorfinn Karlsefni and the Norwegians in New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. The sloop carried fifty-two passengers, which number before the arrival had been increased to fifty-three by the birth of a child on board.