Norwegian emigrants chose land in Bosque County, Texas, in November 1853, but Cleng Peerson was not one of them. He was present and helped them with his knowledge and experience. Peerson had lived in the United States for more than thirty years and had been the pathfinder for Norwegian settlers more than once. He knew a lot more about American land laws than the men in the scouting party to Bosque County. Some of them had literally just come off the emigrant ship.
Peerson was now seventy years old. He had owned and sold or given away land several times in his life, but did not show any interest in becoming a homesteader again. The last three years he had lived with the Canuteson family in Dallas County. Would he continue to live with them after the move to Bosque County?
Anders Bretten was one of the Norwegians who pre-empted and registered land in November 1853. Most of the Norwegians went back to their families in East Texas to prepare themselves for the final trek to their new land in Bosque County and to sell the land they owned in East Texas. But Anders Bretten stayed behind, together with Ole Ween, who was also a bachelor. Bretten shot himself accidentally when hunting for food, his wound festered, and he died some weeks later. What would happen to the homestead he had registered?[1]
Bretten’s claim lay between the land Canute Canuteson had chosen and that of Jens Ringness. He was unmarried, and “his heirs and legal representatives being aliens and bound by the statutes of this state from holding land,” others could freely claim the Bretten land. There was, in fact, no owner who had a right to sell it. The other Norwegian settlers had already pre-empted the maximum of land allowed them by Texan law. Moreover, they had their hands full meeting the requirements for acquiring full ownership of their own land.
Cleng Peerson was never wealthy
Cleng Peerson was far from rich, rather the opposite. However, he owned and sold property several times in his life. Never known to accumulate wealth, when he joined the Bishop Hill colony in 1847, he gave the sect all he owned. After he fell ill with cholera in 1849, he left the colony. Maybe Cleng Peerson could move on to Bretten’s claim and fulfill the requirements of the pre-emption law and become the owner? Even if he did not intend to begin farming, he would get the land for free. He could sell it and use the money to make life a little easier for himself in his old age. There was already a log cabin on Bretten’s land, and the neighbors were willing to help Peerson meet the requirements for full ownership of the land. They discussed the idea back and forth.
An “Act for the relief of Cling Pearson”
Cleng Peerson took possession of Bretten’s land at the end of 1854. In a document dated December 17, 1855, Cleng Peerson filed a petition to the Texas Legislature for a Pre-emption Patent for the 313 acres of the “Anders Broten Survey”. Peerson had lived on the property since winter 1854 and cultivated it after the death of the original pre-emptor “Andris Broten”.
Hendrick O. Dahl and Ole Canuteson met as witnesses for Cleng Peerson before the Bosque County Justice of Peace, J. K. Helton, on that date. Jasper N. Mabray, Clerk of the County Court of Bosque County, certified the petition on December 31, 1855. There were no heirs to Bretten’s land, and according to Texas law, Peerson would have to apply to the Texas Legislature.
Speculation among Norwegian-American historians
Over the years there has been a lot of speculation among Norwegian-American historians how Cleng Peerson got his land in Texas – and for free? However, they only had a few hard facts to build on. Texas Governor Pease did indeed sign the deed on fine sheepskin, on January 26, 1857. But did this generous gesture come as a surprise to Cleng Peerson and to his Norwegian neighbors? Did he perhaps get it as a reward because he had brought Norwegian immigrants to Texas?
The language problem
The Norwegian immigrants had language problems. English was not their mother tongue and most of them had problems just to communicate everyday meanings in English. Hardly any of them had the skills needed to write the necessary documents in English, in the specialized legal language required to get the Peerson petition processed in the legal system. Their American-born neighbors, however, came to their assistance. Several of them had in 1854 been elected to political positions on the county level. The Norwegians had probably consulted them several times about the right phrasing before Peerson delivered the correct formal application.
Eight months later, on August 13, 1856, the Texas Legislature awarded Cleng Peerson a Letter Patent for the land he had “squatted” on. The document transferred for free to Cleng Peerson the survey for 320 acres of land for “Andries Braten” by the Deputy Surveyor of Milam Land District on November 6, 1853. It instructed the Commissioner of the General Land Office to issue a patent for this land to Cleng Peerson, as “ascribed in the field notes of the said Andries Braten as pre-emptor.”[2]
The Deed on fine Sheepskin
On January 26, 1857, the governor of Texas, Elisha Marshall Pease, signed a deed for 313 acres of land to Cleng Peerson. The land was located “on the North side of Neill’s Creek, about 8 miles from its mouth into the Bosque, and about 12 miles South 5 (degrees) West of Meridian. The land began at the North East corner of a survey made for John Ringnes for the West corner of the Survey.”
Through her search some years ago for primary sources about the history of the Peerson/Colwick farm, Dale Orbeck Van Sickle of Clifton and Austin unearthed several interesting official documents. She has detailed the process described above, and moreover, shown that what happened merely followed Texan law. It was both straightforward and mundane. From this website we declare: Long live stubborn and earnest historical reconstruction based on relevant primary sources. Solid knowledge, based on reliable sources, is vastly more satisfactory than the stories people – including historians – tell and retell.
The arrival of Hendrick O. Dahl and the Brunstads
A second group of Norwegian settlers from Hedmark arrived in Bosque County in fall 1854. Hendrick O. Dahl was twenty-four years old when he emigrated in 1851 together with a large group from Stange and Romedal on the ship Arendal. Hendrick was born November 28, 1827, on the farm Kjemstad in Stange, Hedmark county, and died January 13, 1873, in Bosque County. Johan and Anne Eriksdatter Brunstad and their six children traveled on the same ship. The seventeen-year-old Christine Furuseth emigrated together with the Brunstads to assist her aunt Anne Brunstad with the children. The group first landed in New Orleans in 1851 and settled in East Texas,
Johan Brunstad and Hendrick O. Dahl rented land together at Four Mile Prairie. Some months after Brunstad’s death in fall 1852, Hendrick O. Dahl married Christine in February 1853. A year later, on February 22, 1854, Christine gave birth to their son Ole. The couple had already decided to follow the others to Bosque County, but they had postponed the journey because of the newborn child. Christine’s aunt, Anne Brunstad, and her children joined them on the journey, as did the Norwegian bachelor Berger Rogstad. He had arrived at Four Mile Prairie after the death of Johan Brunstad. Berger Rogstad was born December 11, 1820, at Elverum, Hedmark county, and died December 9, 1880, in Bosque County. He had grown up in a wealthy and influential farming family at Elverum. Before the end of 1854, Anne Brunstad married Berger Rogstad.
A new beginning on Gary Creek
Anne Brunstad still retained some of the money the family had brought with them from Norway, and she bought land from William Gary. He had staked a claim in the hills the Norwegians became so fond of, where Gary Creek still bears his name. He and his wife had migrated from South Carolina to Bosque County in 1852. At the first election in Bosque County in 1854, Gary was chosen as one of the first five County Commissioners. His land on Gary Creek was registered as Abstract #306, and Anne Brunstad was registered as the patentee of 312 acres. The patent date was August 24, 1858.
Hendrick Dahl settled on 320 acres of land one mile north of Gary Creek and about six miles southwest of the town of Clifton. He bought the land from Jasper Newton Mabray, one of the first settlers in the county. Mabray was born July 17, 1822, in Florence, Alabama, married Mary Ann Hudson in Rusk County, Texas, on November 27, 1851, and died in Sonora, Texas, on October 27, 1904. He fought in the Mexican War in 1848 and was wounded at Monterrey. Mabray was notary public in McLennan County, and when Bosque County was organized in 1854, he became County clerk.[3]
New neighbors and friends to the Norwegians
Hendrick Dahl owned a fine mare that Mabray desired very much. After some serious haggling between Mabray and Dahl, Mabray was willing to trade his 320 acres of land in exchange for the mare. On September 19, 1854, Mabray transferred his land to Dahl. The Dahl family lived for a while in the log cabin already present on the Mabray homestead.
The Norwegians had grown up in peaceful valleys and on high mountains in Norway. The hills of Bosque County reminded them, on a smaller scale, of Norway. However, there were great differences: no plow had tilled the land in Texas. Changes over time were a result of floods and fires. The mountain country was full of brush and underbrush, infested with rattlesnakes, copperheads, mountain lions, and coyotes. Sage grass and other vegetation, undesirable in the eyes of the farmer, grew in the valleys. But there was an abundance of grazing opportunities and fresh and clean water.
Raided by Indians a month after arrival
Moreover, bands of Indians were still roaming the country, and the nearest marketplace was fifty miles away. The Norwegian immigrants had never given a thought to the risk of attacks. Their main concern was locating good land in a healthier environment than they had found in Norwegian colonies in East Texas.
Within the first month after their arrival in spring 1854, “marauding Indians” stopped at the homestead of Canute Canuteson. Canuteson had bought five milk cows from Colonel Frazier, who lived in the northwestern part of the county.[4] He and his neighbor Ole Ween traveled to the Frazier place on the Brazos River to fetch the cows. While they were away, a group of Indians approached the homestead. On that day his son Andrew C. Canuteson and two other small boys from a neighboring homestead were out playing some distance away from the cabin, when they spotted Indians. Terribly scared, the boys ran to the cabin as fast as their small legs could carry them. Andrew’s stepmother, Berthe Canuteson, became as frightened as the boys. They had never seen Indians before but certainly had heard scary stories about them.
With great presence of mind Berthe found the $500 in silver money her husband Canute had put in an old chest. She grabbed the money, ran up into the hills together with the boys, and hid it there. After a while Berthe and the boys snuck back to the house to see if the Indians were still there. They were, and together with the boys she walked three miles to the Ole Pierson place.
A close call
Toward evening Canute Canuteson returned home with the milking cows. He was shocked when he found that Indians were occupying his house. There was no sign of his wife and son, and he naturally thought the worst. Canute fled to the home of his son Ole and spent the night there.
When Canute arrived at his home the next morning, the Indians had left. Canute felt great relief when he found no dead bodies. Maybe the Indians had taken his wife and son with them? They had stolen a lot of things they could carry and destroyed a lot of things they were not interested in. Later that day he was reunited with his wife and son at the Piersons, and their joy was indescribable.
Several versions of the story
It is not unusual that such dramatic and vivid stories change somewhat through being repeated. Several versions of the above story have survived the decades and still exist among Norwegian-Texans in Bosque County. The written versions are also inconsistent with each other. The version above follows the one Theo Colwick wrote down in a letter to Rasmus B. Anderson in 1894. In his master’s thesis in 1954, Oris Pierson maintained that it was 900 and not 500 silver dollars.[5] In his autobiography, the Indian fighter and Texas Ranger, James Buckner Barry claimed that: “None of the Norwegians had a gun, so they knew that if the Indians had decided to raid the entire settlement, they were at the Indian’s mercy.”[6]
Barry lived in Limestone County at the time of the raid, but was called in to lead the chase. Bosque County was only a few miles from the frontier line with the Indians in this region, Barry commented, but the “Indians had not bothered it for quite an interval.” But in the 1854 raid, the new Norwegian settlers along Gary’s Creek “suffered such misfortune when their savage enemy decided to molest their household property and run off their horses and other livestock.” According to Barry, Canuteson experienced that the Indians had carried off his wife and son, “the bed ticks ripped open and feathers scattered all over the place, and $900 in silver, in a sack, was also gone.”[7]
An introduction to Bosque County
The Norwegians soon learned the attitudes towards Indians of their American neighbors. They had grown up on the frontier between whites and Indians, and knew firsthand the disastrous consequences it could have for families if they underestimated the unpredictable behavior of raiding Comanche or Kiowa Indians. They had a tradition for accepting the risk of living on the Indian frontier, and likewise a tradition for strong retaliation when Indian attacks occurred. The Norwegians had to accept the same risk and learn to adapt. They soon began to build their houses in a way that helped them defend their homes in case of attack. It took them longer to adapt to the frontier horse and gun culture and to accept they might have to kill another human being to avoid being killed themselves.
“The Norwegians had not been molested in East Texas, and when they came to Bosque County, they took very little precaution the first year to ward off any Indian attack,” wrote Oris Pierson.[8] They had seen no reason to equip themselves with guns, since they had no perception of the risk of being attacked by Indians. They were totally unprepared.
Petition to the Governor about the “Indian menace”
After the attack their Anglo-American neighbors called in the Texas Rangers. All the Norwegian settlers were present at a meeting at Neil’s Creek. During this meeting, they were introduced to an English term most of them had never heard before – Indian depredations. The word “depredate” means plunder or ravage, and in the nineteenth century, the term “depredations” was frequently used to describe massacres, conflicts, and cruelty inflicted by Indians upon whites.
Someone skilled in the language of politicians and lawyers wrote a petition to Texas Governor E. M. Pease at the end of the meeting about the “Indian menace”. “We the undersigned,” they wrote, “inhabitants of the Frontier Counties of Bosque and McLennan, would respectfully represent, that our settlements have within the last two or three weeks been repeatedly attacked by several parties or tribes of Wild hostile Indians, who have robbed our houses, killed and stolen our horses, pursued our people and menaced our lives; compelling us to seek temporary security by abandoning our homes and collecting our families together as our only recourse until aid and assistance can be sent for our protection.”[9]
A first joint action by a diverse group of new settlers
The petition demanded that a company of Texas Rangers should be formed “with the greatest dispatch”, consisting of experienced volunteers and that it should be “maintained for a period of twelve months or as long as the service might require, for the purpose of scouring through the adjoining border country, and to hunt down and punish our Savage Enemies, and to drive them off effectually from our exposed settlements.”
If such measures should not be taken, “before another moon shall have passed, the fate of our devastated homes and murdered Families may be held up to the world as an awful example of the willful neglect of those in authority whose duty it is to afford protection to the lives and property of ourselves and families.”[10] An impressive list of early settlers signed the letter – the McCurrys, Saachers, Gandy, Morgan, several Garys, Goodman, Robertson, Thomas, several Everetts, Mabrays as well as the lawyer J. H. Scrutchfield. All Norwegians present signed their name on the petition to the Governor – Ole Canuteson, Canute Canuteson, Ole Pederson, Peter Spangburg, Ole Ween, Carl Questad, Jens Ringness, and Cleng Peerson.
The good life on the frontier
To succeed as subsistence farmers represented the good life for these new Americans. They learned from their neighbors: Shelter for the family on the new homestead as quickly as possible had priority. The Norwegian immigrants soon followed the local tradition and built houses using rocks and logs which were easily accessible. As a matter of course, neighbors helped each other during the erection of houses.
Since the first log houses were built with the help of neighbors, there were variations in notching and chinking techniques. When the need arose, these early log structures were expanded with additions made of stone.[11] Jens Jenson built a log house with a rock fireplace, which took less time to build than a stone house.
The homesteaders often placed their houses snugly along the mountainside or on high ground. “A variety of immigrant groups directly from Europe copied Anglo-American log construction styles after arriving in Texas,” wrote Terry G. Jordan in his book on Texas Log Buildings. He mentioned the buildings of “the Germans of south-central Texas, the Norwegians of the Bosque County hills, the Wends or the Serbians of Lee County, the early Czech settlers in Austin and Fayette counties, and some of the Irish Catholics in the border area of Goliad, Refugio, and Victoria counties.”[12]
Mechanical skills above average
Compared with the general level of mechanical skills among farmers in Norway around 1850, the antebellum Norwegians in Bosque County had skills far above average. A remarkable number among them had practiced the blacksmith’s trade. They were able builders of their own houses, and they made their own equipment to build houses and till the land. Their combined skills helped them succeed individually and as a group on the Texas frontier, also compared with many an earlier arrival in Texas.
In Bosque County, a gentle and cool breeze came from the Gulf of Mexico. Without this breeze the nights might not only have been very hot, but scorching. To take full advantage of the breeze, the Norwegians learned to position the buildings so that the corner of a house faced south. Then the southern breeze could waft by two sides of the house and expose more rooms to the breeze.[13] The newer houses often had a hall running through the house, and sometimes a traverse hall. This layout helped to circulate the air in summer. In accordance with Norwegian tradition, only one room was heated in winter.
They put a lot of thought into the best way to place their houses and outbuildings in the terrain in case of rainstorms and flooding. The Norwegians demonstrated an ingrained sense of the dangers of sudden floods along the creeks. As a rule, they chose to build on higher ground. The Norwegians learned to respect rattlesnakes and copperheads and developed strategies to avoid them. They took great care to avoid grass around the house, since it was easier to spot rattlesnakes on white gravel. The homes maximized comfort during hot summer days and nights.
The Piersen house
By 1860 most of the first settlers had moved out of their log buildings and into larger and more solid stone houses. Permanent buildings were often erected on a spot with sand, gravel or clay, where little would grow. Ole Pierson built a two-story house, measuring 40 x 25 feet with walls 24 inches thick. It had two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs with porches on the length of the house on both floors and the stairway outside. Each room had a doorway opening onto the porch, but there were no doors connecting the rooms. The west downstairs room had a large fireplace. Hand-hewn beams supported the second story and the roof.[14]
Jens Ringness began building a large stone house on his property near Neil’s Creek in 1859. In 1860 the census enumerator visited household no. 27, “John Ringless”, 57 years old. Four Americans lived in the household in addition to his wife and children. Two of them were carpenters, John E. Brown, 38, born in Kentucky, and T. H. Brown, 30, born in Missouri. Two women named Brown also lived in the Ringness household – M. V. Brown, 60 years and born in Georgia, and M. I. Brown, 29, born in Indiana.[15]
The Questad house
Carl Questad built two solid rock houses and a large stone barn with slits in the walls for defence.[17] He constructed a vertical type of lime kiln to make mortar from limestone rock. It was located to the west of the farm in the mountains. Limestone rock chiseled to the right dimension was used to build the walls.
The first building was a bedroom and living area with a huge fireplace for cooking. Next a kitchen building was erected on a slanting hill. Below the hill was a clay tank for storing water. The kitchen room had a “dog-run” at the back, connected to another storage room, and under this room thare was a kind of cooling-room. A little spring of dripping water made its way outside to the big clay tank of water. A winding curve of steps led below to the cellar.[18]
Because of fire hazards, the rooms were built separately from each other. A second bedroom was close to the main bedroom, with an attic used as a sleeping quarter for agricultural workers. Large and impressive log rafters lay on the top of the stone walls. Questad let the Swedish entomologist, Gustave Belfrage, use the upstairs attic room to live in and also use as a storage room for his collections of bugs and insects between 1870 and 1879.
The barn, smithy and workshop
Questad erected a fourth building mong the cluster of houses, and placed it on the south side. He used part of this building as a smithy and workshop and the second part to house buggies and carriages in later years. Tha house had a big bell on the roof of the smithy, used to call workers for meals during the day and in emergencies.
The barn was the largest building on the Questad place. It had storage rooms for grain and corn, and a hayloft on the second floor. The west side of the building had a huge room for farm implements, buggies, and wagons.
The Dahl family built a two-room house between 1854 and 1856, and added two more rooms during the 1860s.[16] At the time of the US Census in 1860, two Norwegian blacksmiths lived with the Dahl family – the fifty-year- old Ole Arneberg and the twenty-two-year-old Ole Wold. Both men had emigrated from Romedal, Hedmark, in 1858, and arrived in Bosque in 1859. The Dahl family had a scenic view of the winding Gary Creek valley to the southwest and Neil’s Creek valley to the southeast. The buildings lay on high ground, and the land they intended to clear and cultivate between the houses and the stream below.
Victoria passengers in 1853 ended in the Norse District in Bosque
Questad hired skilled workers to help him with his building projects. When assistant marshal Allan S. Anderson registered the inhabitants in Bosque County for the census on June 29, 1860, Christian Olsen Strand lived in the household of Carl Questad, where he worked as plasterer. Strand was born at Elverum, Hedmark, in 1831. He had been one of the emigrants on board the Victoria in spring 1853.
After arriving at Galveston, Strand and several others had traveled on the steamboat Jack Hays up the Trinity River as far as Magnolia in Anderson County. From Magnolia, they traveled north for 190 miles to the Norwegian settlements in Henderson and Van Zandt counties. Strand remained there for some years but then moved to Bosque County.[19]
The distance between the Norwegian homesteaders was considerable. From the Ole Canuteson place to the Bronstad/Rogstad family the distance was close to fourteen miles. Jens Ringness lived along the way between the two. From Ole Canuteson to Carl Questad the distance was approximately seven miles, and no other Norwegians lived between them during the first years. Before the Civil War broke out, other Norwegian families took up land in the open spaces between the first settlers.[20]
Subsistence farming
The Norwegian immigrants had been subsistence farmers in Norway, and their ideal of a good life in Texas was to be able to continue as subsistence farmers. They might lack many implements and tools, but this did not bother them to any great extent. Many of them constructed their own implements, like primitive plows and harrows. Sowing was done by hand. The farmer carried a bag of grain fastened with straps around his shoulder and walked back and forth across the field and scattered the grain with one hand. The cradle was used at harvest time. The Norwegians were avid growers of wheat but also planted some oats and barley. They soon learned to raise corn, like all other migrants to Texas, but did not start growing cotton until after the Civil War.
A good place to live
Bosque County was a good place to live, wrote Cleng Peerson in a letter to the sons of his brother in Norway, dated September 12, 1860.[21] The soil in Bosque County was good. Summers could be very hot and there was little rain. Droughts could have a very negative effect on crops. On the other hand, winters in Bosque County were short. The land was well adapted to cattle, horses, and sheep because of the nourishing grass. The animals hardly needed any tending, and they still got fat. It was not as flat in Bosque County as in Illinois but had valleys and hills with cedar trees and oak. Down in the valleys his neighbors tilled the land for wheat, small grains, and maize.
This is probably the last existing letter ever written by Peerson. He had left Illinois and gone to Texas eleven years ago, he wrote, and he had never been back in Illinois. Despite his high age, his health was still good. He now lived among Norwegians in Texas, and he was the only one from the municipality of Tysvær, where he grew up, who lived in this community.
Credits
All black and white images courtesy of Bosque Museum, Clifton, Tx; all color photos (c) Inger Kari Nerheim. The Ringness House was photographed in 2015.
Notes
[1] This article is a short version of a chapter in Gunnar Nerheim, Norsemen Deep in the Heart of Texas. Norwegian Immigrants 1845 – 1900, Texas A & M University Press, College Station, Texas, 2024, pp. 103-114. If you found any of the articles on Cleng Peerson in Texas interesting, and want more, buy the book.
[2] “An Act for the relief of Cling Pearson,” Chapter 121, Texas Legislature, 1856, p. 599.
[3] “Jasper Newton Mabry,” F 766, Bosque County History Book Committee, ed. Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County). Dallas: Curtis Media Corporation, 1985, p. 492.
[4] James C. Frazier came to Bosque County in 1849, but did not settle permanently before he married in 1855. He was in the land business and had acquired a good deal of land. Frazier built a two-story house on land he owned between Kopperl and Kimball.
[5] Pierson, Oris E. Norwegian Settlements in Bosque County, Texas. Clifton, Texas: Bosque Memorial Museum, 1979, pp. 21-22.
[6] James Buckner Barry, Buck Barry, Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, ed. James K. Greer (first published 1932, new edition Waco, 1978, reprinted Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 91.
[7] Barry, Buck Barry, Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, p. 90.
[8] Pierson, Norwegian Settlements in Bosque County, p 21.
[9] “Petition to his Excellency E. M. Pease, Governor of the State of Texas,” dated Neil’s Creek, Bosque County, April 14, 1854. Copy from Texas State Archives, CPRL, Bosque Museum.
[10] “Petition to his Excellency E. M. Pease, Governor of the State of Texas,” 1854.
[11] Kenneth A. Breisch and David Moore,“The Norwegian Rock Houses of Bosque County, Texas: Some Observations on a Nineteenth-Century Vernacular Building Type,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 2 (1986): pp. 64-71.
[12] Terry G. Jordan, Texas Log Buildings. A Folk Architecture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), p. 12.
[13] «Pioneer Home-building,” CPRL, Bosque Museum.
[14] Rebecca D. Radde, “Ole Pierson Homestead” (manuscript, Meridian, July 30, 1985), p. 3.
[15] See FamilySearch, US Census 1860, Texas, Bosque County, household 27.
[16] Folke Dahl, “The Family History and Descendants of Hendrik and Christine Dahl. From the Year 1854-2004,” p. 9. [17] ”The Questad House”, The Clifton Record, October 16, 1975.
[18] «The Quest of the Questad Place” (manuscript by Mary Ellen Ellingson and Martha Louise Springer 1992), p. 1.
[19] “Strand, Christian and Regina,” Bosque County. Land and People, p. 701.
[20] Pool, Bosque Territory, p. 77.
[21] Republished in Haugesunds Dagblad, June 27, 1955. The relatives in Norway got the letter in early November 1860, and they replied on November 20, 1860.
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