Learning About Wisconsin

Do you ever wonder how our immigrant ancestors decided to come to Wisconsin? Are you curious about how they learned about our state?

It’s a well-known fact that letters from America were passed around like “hot news” when they would arrive in Norway. People read them for every bit of information they could glean about this new land; they read them as they weighed their own decisions.

Other sources of information were pamphlets and booklets published by states to encourage immigrants their way. In 1869 the Wisconsin State Board of Immigration published a 32-page pamphlet with a state map both provided by Increase A. Lapham, the state’s great citizen-scientist, to attract immigrants to the state. Among Lapham’s many gifts his map-making detailed the state’s counties, cities, major towns, and railroads. This pamphlet was published in French, Dutch, Swedish, Welsh, and Norwegian — and then it was distributed in those countries. (The U.S. really wanted immigrants!)

I wondered: Could Elias and Kari Borresen have read Increase Lapham’s pamphlet and studied his map? Could this have reached them before they left Norway in May 1869? It’s possible, but probably a stretch in terms of timing.

In 1851 Samuel Freeman had prepared a precursor to Lapham’s:  “The Emigrant’s Handbook and Guide to Wisconsin.” His 148-page booklet, with the permission of Governor Nelson Dewey, was printed in Milwaukee with the intention that it be given immigrants upon their arrival in the port of New York City. This too aimed to attract immigrants to the state, providing them with helpful information such as: agriculture and manufacturing, wages, climate, a major section on Milwaukee, travel info from New York to Milwaukee, and helpful advice.

If Elias and Kari had traveled from New York to Wisconsin in 1851, Freeman’s book indicates they could have taken the following route:

• New York to Albany via Hudson River boats
• Albany to Buffalo via railroad (or Erie Canal)
• Buffalo to Milwaukee via steamboats on Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan.

Eighteen years later (1869), the route may have been similar but with changed opportunities. It strikes me as slow-going.

A postscript: What motivated this post was my read of a wonderful book, Studying Wisconsin: The Life of Increase Lapham, early chronicler of plants, rocks, rivers, mounds and all things Wisconsin (Bergland and Hayes, 2016). I highly recommend it, the story of a man devoted to science, having no college degree but an equal of formally educated scientists.