Yorkville

Nord Kapp (North Cape) is at Norway’s northern tip above the Arctic Circle. The village of North Cape is in Racine County’s Yorkville township. Mons Aadland, a survivor of the Norwegian’s Beaver Creek settlement in Illinois was the third Norwegian settler of “Yorkville Prairie.” In the twenty years before the Civil War, Mons and other Norwegians built a community. They shared a minister with Muskego-Norway and built a church in 1850. The North Cape and Norway Lutheran churches are only nine miles apart, so Norwegians from the two communities interacted with each other.

Svein Nilsson, the first to write about Norwegian-Wisconsin history, liked Yorkville. Between 1868-1870, Nilsson printed a history column in his monthly magazine, Billed-Magazin. Nilsson wrote that his Yorkville countrymen were more knowledgeable, were better readers and had some of the most productive farms. He thought of them as more forward thinking then their other countrymen in America.

At the time Nilsson wrote these articles, Wisconsin agriculture was changing. Intense farming had depleted the wheat fields of southern Wisconsin of its nutrients. Wheat, the main cash crop, was failing. Converting to dairy farming was the solution for many Wisconsin farmers, but it was a difficult transition. Establishing a dairy farm is cash intensive. Barns had to be built for the cows and fodder had to be grown, harvested and properly stored. As the operation grew, additional farmhands had to be hired. Milk had to be processed into butter and cheese. Nilsson described the process being used by Mons Aadland and his son Thomas to change their still profitable farm from wheat to dairy. Aadland’s statement about the emergence of Wisconsin dairying may be the earliest information ever published, on Norwegians in Wisconsin embracing dairying.

Dairying is so important in Wisconsin today that the state nickname is “America’s Dairyland.” In 2024, dairying accounted for over 150,000 jobs and almost half of agricultural income in Wisconsin. Mons Aadland and other Norwegian-Americans were part of the history of the Wisconsin dairy industry.

Mons Aadland had had enough of marshy land. He and his family joined Ole Rynning, then met up with Ole Natesta on the Great Lakes on their way to the Midwest. The group landed in Chicago and headed south. They claimed land along Beaver Creek in Iroquois County, Illinois, seventy miles from Chicago. Sadly, one third of the colonists died of malaria the first year. Their leader, university-educated Ole Rynning, died the second year. Understandably, most of the survivors left Beaver Creek. They headed back to Chicago or made their way to the Fox River Illinois Norwegian settlement northeast of Ottawa, Illinois. Mons Aadland was one of the more stubborn settlers who kept trying to make the poorly drained soil productive. Aadland came to America with 1000 speciedollar (about $1000) sewn into his clothes. When he left Beaver Creek, he had only three dollars, and a few head of cattle. He heard that recently surveyed land in Wisconsin was coming on the market. Mons hitched up his oxen and loaded up his family and their few belongings. He led his oxen 150 miles to drier prairie on the edge of the frontier. He sold most of his cattle to buy his new farmland.

Svein Nilsson interviewed Mons Aadland in 1868, the year before he died. Aadland’s persistence and hard work over the years had paid off. Actively farming at age 75, Nilsson described Aadland as the wealthiest farmer in the area, with eight hundred acres of land and property worth $40,000. Aadland would be a multi-millionaire today.

Nilsson describes a visit to Aadland:

Before leaving the Yorkville congregation I will ask the reader to visit with me one of the homes in the settlement. We will call on one of the prosperous farmers . . . The house . . . has a very fine appearance and in general resembles the homes of well-to-do farmers in the neighborhood of Christiania . . . Spinning wheel and loom speak of home industries, and that they are not showpieces is proven by masses of yarn and bundles of home-woven cloth whose lively colors and beautiful patterns betray an artistic sense not present in every Norwegian valley.

Our friendly host shows us around the farm; we follow him to the barn where we find twenty cows all apparently contented as they stand there along the limestone walls. We let the farmer speak:

‘I find that cows pay well for their upkeep, but you must take good care of them if cattle-raising is to succeed. I grind grain with the aid of a windmill and mix the grain with finely-cut hay to make the mash used as fodder. When I get an apparatus for warming water close to the barn door, the work will be easier. It is best for the farmer to tend the cattle himself. We Norwegians help the women too little with work like this which, following our old country ideas, falls to their lot.

It takes some time before a farmer can raise a superior herd of cattle which pay for the trouble and expense of keeping them. But once this is done, the cow-barn can become his greatest source of income. I have just barely gotten a start; but still, from a week’s milk supply I sell fifty dollars worth of butter. The Norwegians’ care of cattle is not to be sneered at. Even the Yankees are beginning to realize this.”[1]

In Nilsson’s Yorkville articles, he told several interesting stories. One is that, in 1868 North Cape had a singing society, which would have been one of the first Norwegian singing societies in America. He also wrote about two interesting blind brothers, who came as children with their parents to North Cape. Nilsson wrote:

Elling Spillum’s two youngest sons live on a well-kept farm which not only gives them a good income but leaves them a considerable annual surplus. Both of them have now been completely blind for many years, and a feeling of sadness instinctively gripped me when, during my stay in Yorkville, I had the opportunity to visit these two brothers whom fate apparently had given so heavy a cross. But if it is true that only those are unfortunate who think they are, then undoubtedly many who have the great gift of sight might envy these two men their peace of mind and their trust in the will of Providence . . .

In these men creative imagination, keen thinking, good memory and an unbelievably fine sense of touch have combined to take the place of sight. The two blind brothers have built the house in which they live, and no one can deny that everything, even down to the most delicate carpentry work, has been well done. The older brother, Hendrek, now a man of fifty years, is a master of all sorts of woodwork. Not only is he a wheelwright and cooper but also a cabinetmaker. Even experts declare that if anything distinguishes his work from that of seeing artisans it is the greater care with which his products are made. He has invented most of the implements he works with and often employs methods which bear testimony to exceptional keenness. Various works of his reveal the real artist.[2]

[1] Nilsson, Svein. A Chronicler of Immigrant Life (1869) - Reprinted as: Clausen, C. A. (translator) A Chronicler of Immigrant Life Svein Nilsson's Articles in Billed-Magazin, 1868-1870 (Northfield MN, 1982), page 35-36

[2] ibid, page 33-34

Anderson, Rasmus. The First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration (1831-1840) its Causes and Results (Madison WI, 1895)

Hanson, Karen. In Jesus' name shall all our work be done : commemorating the 150th anniversary of Norway Evangelical Lutheran Church, Wind Lake, Wisconsin, 1843-1993. (Wind Lake WI,1992)