On Oct. 9, 1825, Kari Pedersdatter and Cornelius Nilsen landed in America after setting sail from Stavanger, Norway, on a sloop — a type of single-masted sailboat — called the Restauration. They were among the first group of Norwegian citizens to migrate to America.
On Oct. 9 of this year — exactly 200 years to the day after the original Restauration’s arrival in New York — Pedersdatter and Nilsen’s third-great-grandson Steve Washburn and his daughter Olivia watched a replica of the sloop arrive in Lower Manhattan, New York. The ship had departed from the same port in Stavanger on July 4 — the same day as the original voyage — and spent 70 days on the open water.
Watching the replica’s arrival was especially meaningful to Olivia Washburn, who was serving in Stavanger as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the Restauration left for New York earlier this year, according to a news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
“It’s just so special to celebrate our ancestors, who sacrificed so much,” she said. “It makes me so grateful for the journey that the Norwegian people made 200 years ago.”
Seeking religious freedom
The Norwegian government organized the commemorative journey to celebrate 200 years of Norwegian migration to America, and members of the Church joined the celebration to honor Norwegian ancestors and their contributions to the Church.
Many early Norwegian immigrants came to the U.S. seeking religious freedom. Sunday School General President Paul V. Johnson said almost half of the Church members who joined the Church in Norway emigrated to the U.S.
Several of the Restauration’s original passengers migrated to Fox River, Illinois, where they helped establish the Church’s first non-English-speaking congregation in 1842, according to the Church’s Europe Newsroom.
“The early Norwegian Saints were really critical for the growth of the Church,” President Johnson said. “They came at a time when the Church needed strength.”
President Johnson has many Norwegian ancestors of his own, and he served there as a young missionary 50 years ago. He said watching the ship come in and seeing the connection between Norway and the Church was a powerful experience.
Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon also made an appearance at the celebration and spoke of the immigrants’ search for liberty.
“The millions of stories that make up two centuries of Norwegian emigration to the United States tell of hope and disappointment, success and also challenges, but above all, they bear witness of generations of Norwegians who were inspired to seek a new life of freedom and possibility,” the crown prince said.
Rolf Idar Isaksen, a Norwegian historian for the Church, attended the celebration and was pleased at the opportunity to remember and pay homage to the Norwegian emigrants.
“This has been an opportunity for us to come more out of obscurity,” he said. “We are on common ground of interest in our ancestors and want to celebrate [these immigrants] who wanted religious freedom. And that’s a story that needs to be a part of the Norwegian immigration history.”
Connecting to ancestors
Many members of the Church joined the festivities to remember their Norwegian ancestors.
One such member was Ivan Nelson, who discovered through FamilySearch that he was related to all but two of the original “sloopers,” as the immigrants were called. The two unrelated to him turned out to be ancestors of his wife.
“It was more than just a ship sailing in,” Nelson said of the celebration. “This is part of my history, part of my ancestry. There’s a spiritual connection there.”
The skipper of the modern-day Restauration, Kjell Morten Ronaes, also felt the importance of connecting with the original immigrants.
“I hope [participants] feel pride to befriend the Restauration, to be descendants of the first sloopers,” he said. “I hope they feel bonding with Norway, that we are all one people and we are all friends.”
Those who want to learn more about the original sloopers can visit FamilySearch’s Celebrate Crossings 200 page. There, they can find short bios of 49 of the immigrants, check their own relationship to the voyagers, see a timeline of the ship’s voyage and more.
Additionally, the Church History Library in Salt Lake City opened an exhibit about the Crossings 200 project on July 1, which will run until Nov. 30.
