STILL MORE LIGHT ON THE KENDALL COLONY: A UNIQUE SLOOPER LETTER BY MARIO S. DE PILLIS The discovery of any new material concerning the "sloop folk" or "sloopers" will always be a matter of joy and excitement to Norwegian Americans and to historians of American migration. For these sloopers, the vanguard of Norwegian immigration, belong to the heroic age of that great movement to this country and have an importance almost as great, in their own way, as the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620. Their cultural and ethnic impact on wide areas of the United States and even their effect on American religious history approach that of the English Puritans. The story of the sloopers is known by more than specialists and is easily retold. In July, 1825, fifty-two Norwegians under the leadership of a Quaker by the name of Lars Larsen sailed from Stavanger, Norway, for New York City. Their tiny vessel, the "Restoration," was even smaller than the "Mayflower"; so small, indeed, that it was confiscated by the Federal government for breaking safety regulations, and released only after a pardon had been granted by President John Quincy Adams. But the sloop carried more than human freight; it was heavily laden with the same religious and social aspirations that have drawn people to America from the beginning : to obtain freedom of worship and economic opportunity . Religiously, the sloopers were mostly of the Haugean Lutheran persuasion - the Norwegian form of Lutheran pietism - with a handful of Quakers among the leaders. Neither denomination enjoyed complete freedom of worship. And while they sought economic opportunity, the immigrants did not come from the lowest classes of Norwegian society. Most of them had been free farmers and artisans sadly oppressed by social conditions in early nineteenth-century Norway. 24 A SLOOPER LETTER 25 Upon their arrival the sloopers were met by their advance agent, the famous Cleng Peerson (1783-1865). A half-legendary figure, Peerson was an adventurous and somewhat eccentric dreamer who nevertheless accomplished a great practical feat: the successful colonization of the first Norwegian groups in the United States. From him, and from the movement of sloopers, stems the great nineteenth-century flood of Norwegian immigration. In proportion to Norway's population, this flood was exceeded at its peak, among all the European countries, only by Ireland. Among Peerson's just titles are the Father of Norwegian Immigration and the Norwegian Pathfinder. The main purpose of the letter that follows was to request a loan from the Harmony Society of Economy (now Ambridge ), Pennsylvania. This German communistic society was, with the Shakers, the most successful of all those religious communitarian ventures in which the nineteenth century abounded. The Harmonists were also known as Rappites, after the name of their founder, "Vater" George Rapp, a Pietist who had brought the group from southern Germany in 1804. By the 1820's they were rather affluent. And in 1825, just before the letter was written, they had sold their colony of Harmony, Indiana, to the famous Robert Owen. The longer statement on the first page of the letter describes to the wealthy Rappites the piteous conditions of the Norwegian settlers and is signed by seven of them - all sloopers. They are writing from Murray (Kendall) Township, Orleans County, New York, then a wilderness area which later became known in Norwegian-American history as the "Kendall colony" - the first Norwegian colony in America. The signers wanted to borrow $1,600 to purchase land. Apparently their capital had all been tied up in the sloop, which they had hoped to sell for about this amount in the port of New York. After their legal troubles had ended, they were able to get only $400 for the ship. Of the seven persons who signed the letter with Cleng 26 MARIOS. DEPILLIS Peerson, one, "Andrew Knudson," has not been positively identified. This may have been the slooper Andrew Dahl (Endre Knudson) . Or it may have been Andrew Stangeland (Andrias Stangelan, Knudson), who arrived before the sloop and had been a comrade of Peerson. The other six had been passengers on the sloop. The usual spellings and complete forms of their names follow: Thormod Madland, Daniel Stenson Rossadal, Gudmund Danielson...