My Telemark Roots

In 1843 my great great grandmother and part of her family came to America from Telemark Norway. Kari Overland Rui, 7 of her 8 children and other relatives (28 in all) were among the first to leave Kviteseid Telemark Norway. One of the 3 ships sank on the Skakarak. and 2 nieces (one was my great grandmother) went back to Norway because they lost all of their belongings. They left from Haavre France on two different ships - the second leaving two weeks apart. The ocean voyage to New York took 9 weeks and nearly everyone became sick. They traveled by canal boat pulled by horses to Buffalo and by the great lakes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They probably slept in Heg's barn as the men located land. They started the Skoponong Settlement in Walworth County, Wisconsin where they remained for the next ll years.
 

More relatives came in the next few years. The Johannes Overland family came in 1851 on the same ship as the pastor Herman and his young bride, Linka Preus. Linka wrote a diary which was published in 1947 telling about the trip on the ocean. I identified 3 occasions that she was visiting with my great great grandmother. She thought they were such kind people. (I got permission to use the information about the ocean voyage in our 450 Overland Family History that I co-authored with Audrey Overland in 1987.)
Two of my great grandparents explored the area in Fillmore county around Highland Prairie in Norway township searching for a place to settle the summer of 1853 when Minnesota was a territory. During the explorations of Halvor Erickson and Ole Overland, they saw only two other people. They all spent the winter in a dugout near Calmar, Iowa. In March of 1854, the men of the party again searched for land on the "waterless prairie," finding a spring which became the center of the Highland Prairie settlement. They chose land and sent word back to relatives and friends in Walworth County, Wisconsin that they had found available land, and water. That first summer (1854) 100 settlers came, mostly relatives and friends of the Overland's, Rui's and Erickson's. In June of 1854 they met under the oak trees on the Overland farm with Pastor Koren to have church services and organize the FIRST of two Lutheran Churches in Minnesota, Highland Prairie Lutheran Church and Elstad Lutheran Church a little further west. The Highland Prairie Lutheran Church was built in 1865. In 2004 both churches celebrated their 150th Anniversary