Denoon

So many Norwegians came to the area, that when it was time to name the new township surrounding Wind Lake, people voted to name it the Town of Norway. James Denoon Reymert was an important early member of the settlement. He was born in the British Isles to a Scottish mother and Norwegian father. His parents moved to Norway where his father ran a sailing fleet transporting Norwegian timber to Britain. As a young adult, Reymert clerked in a British law firm, then emigrated to America at age twenty-one with only a few dollars in his pockets. Having some knowledge of law and being able to speak English gave him an edge over other Norwegian immigrants. 

Fellow settlers elected Reymert as their representative to the 1846 and 1848 state constitutional conventions. When Wisconsin became a state, Reymert was voted in as a state assemblyman. He was the first Norwegian to hold a public office in Wisconsin. Reymert planned a booming village at the crossroads between Lake Denoon (named after his mother) and the Muskego Dam Road, with easy access to the Indian trail which later became Loomis Road, the quickest and most direct path to Milwaukee. A fire burned down his home, which also served as a hotel. Cholera in Muskego-Norway in the 1850s kept newcomers away from the area and the boom he hoped for did not materialize.

An early Norwegian settler of Muskego-Norway was James Denoon Reymert. His Scottish mother and ship captain father lived near the southern tip of Norway. As a teenager, Reymert had business school training in Christiania and studied law in Scotland. Reymert emigrated to Muskego in 1842 at age twenty-one. Being able to speak English and understand law gave him many advantages. 

Reymert partnered with Even Heg and Soren Bache to start the first Norwegian newspaper in Wisconsin. At the time, newspaper publishers printed strongly worded content to promote their political philosophy. Nordlyset had almost two hundred fifty subscribers throughout Illinois and Wisconsin during its short existence (1847-1850). A few readers as far away as New York City received the four-page 8x10 inch weekly paper through the mail. The subscriber list reads like a Who’s Who of initial Norwegian pioneer settlement.

Reymert represented western Racine County at the Territorial conventions which formed the state’s constitution. He was a member of the state assembly during the political turmoil of the 1850s. He got a state contract to publish maps of Wisconsin in Norwegian and a license to build the Waterford-Wind Lake section of the Milwaukee-Janesville plank road. He hired scores of his fellow Norwegians to chop down trees, operate a sawmill to cut the timber into thick rough-hewn planks, grade a roadway, set the planks and cover them with gravel and dirt to make a solid travel base. He dreamed of creating a Norwegian-American city at Denoon. Reymert’s inn, near the plank road at the northern end of Wind Lake, burned to the ground in the mid-1850s. The world-renowned Norwegian musician Ole Bull visited him right after the fire, giving an impromptu concert to raise money for Reymert next to the smoldering ashes of his burnt-out home.

When the Republican party formed in 1854, Reymert stayed with the Democrats, instead of becoming a pro-abolitionist Republican, like most Norwegians did. The loss of the Norwegian community’s support cost him election to Congress in 1856. No longer an office holder, Reymert was appointed superintendent of the Hudson, Wisconsin land office. He resigned after some financial irregularities were discovered. At the start of the Civil War, Reymert started a New York City law practice, then became involved in ranching in South America and silver mining in Arizona. Reymert was appointed Arizona territorial judge. Reymert retired to a ranch just south of Pasadena, California.

Langeland, Knud; Gurley, Deb Nelson (editor), et. al. Norwegians in America : some records of the Norwegian emigration to America : a transcribed and translated version of the 1888 Nordmaendene i Amerika, nogle optegnelser om de Norskes udvandring til Amerika (Waukon MN, 2012), pages 60-67.

Rønning, Nils Nilsen The Saga of Old Muskego (Waterford WI, 1943)