Part one of a series
It has long been called “Swede Bottom,” in honor of early settlers and reflecting on the agriculturally-rich bottom land where the South Fork of the Root River flows near the town of Houston. On August 18, 1853, a group of five immigrant families from Halland Province, Sweden arrived to become significant citizens in Houston County. They were already significant in Sweden.
About three and a half months previous (May 6, 1853), they had sailed from Gothenburg, Sweden aboard the vessel, named Jennie Pitts. The previous year, some men had been in the Root River Valley, one of which a Swede named Lundplad had written home about the valley, and the letter was published in a Swedish newspapers. On the way, these families passed through much good government land in Illinois, but they would not be satisfied until reaching the Root River Valley – their intended destination before embarking for a distant continent.
The hazardous conditions aboard some immigrant ships resulted in 10% not completing the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, perishing primarily from diseases contracted during the journey. Ben Benson (originally Berntson) was age 8, one of five children, when his family was among those headed for what would become known as Swede Bottom. His older brother Charley was charged full fare. Ben and a sister boarded for half fare, while there was no fare for two younger sisters. Sometime before his death in 1929, Ben imparted his life and Swede Bottom story to grandson Oliver W. Holmes.
Ben told of leaving their home place in Sweden, taking a big sail boat and a yacht up to Gothenburg where they boarded the big ships. In their case, it was a new United States freighter, which young Ben thought so “heavily loaded with iron,” he was amazed it did not sink to the bottom. The railing was so low that water would wash over the rails when the ship was changing course. Ben described the ship almost standing on end when encountering “big troughs.”
During storms, the hatches were down (closed) and no passengers were allowed on deck.
They encountered one storm so fierce that the vessel lost most of its masts. They “laid still“ quite a while when the masts were being repaired.
The unmarried men were partitioned away from married couples, who had a room to themselves. There were sleeping bunks three tiers high, noting they supplied their own bedclothes.
Cooking took place up on deck where each family cooked its own food over a long fireplace. With numerous families aboard, they had to take turns. His family had mostly cheeses, hams and breads along with cooked coffee.
It took six weeks on the ocean from Sweden until landing in New York at a place he called Castle. The remainder of their westward journey was typical of many who disembarked at New York and continued on to southeastern Minnesota. They traveled by train across the state of New York to Dunkirk, N.Y., on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, where they boarded a steamer (steamboat) heading west and south across the length of the lake. “We received tea from the lake boat deckhands,” wrote Ben, “our first tea – with sugar in it. They were good to us.”
Then it was back on a railroad car, westward to Chicago. “I can remember running on the board sidewalks in Chicago, the like of which I had never seen, and laughing to hear them rattle.” The train transported them as far as the railroad could take them “a ways out of Chicago.”
The fifth leg of the journey was slow, arduous and required resourcefulness. The families hired teams of oxen to take them across Illinois to the city of Rock Island on the Mississippi River. The women and children rode in the canvas-covered wagons, while the men and Ben walked. There was not space enough in the wagons for sleeping, so they stopped at places with large barns, where they could sleep in the hay.
After living in a tent in Rock Island about a week, they boarded a steamboat heading upstream to La Crosse, Wis., where Ben remembered two small stores, one kept by a man named Merrick and the other by Mr. Levy.
He could not forget the two blind horses, one a bay and the other a black, which “propelled” McSpadden’s ferry, which took them across to the Minnesota side of the river.
Ben continued, “There wagons were hired, which were to take us to the fork of Root River, but in the morning, the oxen could not be found, so the women and children started to walk ahead over the only trail which then led up across the ridge and into Looney Valley. We didn’t know it was such a wilderness. There were no houses along the road until you came to Looney’s in Looney Valley, and there was no water on the ridge, and nothing to eat, for the wagons didn’t catch up with us as we had expected them to.”
While descending into Looney Valley, they found a spring where Ben also found a sandwich “that a (land) claimer had left,” which he gave to his mother. Ben termed it a “godsend” for his mother, who he thought surely would have given out after carrying his baby sister Olivia all the way. Looney’s place, at that time, was only a small shanty, but they received there some sour milk to drink and some johnny cake.
That trail over the ridge was known as the Territorial Road, the first trail into the valley. Ben said it was not much of a trail. “The only work which had been done was some spading down of the banks of creeks and ditches.” But after six weeks on the ocean and eight more weeks across North America, they were finally nearing the Root River Valley.
Millions of Swedes immigrated to North America, but none were more significant in Swedish history than these five families of Swede Bottom.
To be continued …
Sources: “Ben Benson: An Immigrant’s Story,” as told to his grandson and later published in the Aug. 8, 15, 22 and 29, 1974 editions of the Houston County News
Photo by Lee Epps
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