The first Norwegian immigrants to settle on the western frontier in the Bosque River Valley arrived in late 1853 and early 1854.[1] The North Bosque River begins in north central Erath County, flows through Hamilton County, and continues east through Bosque County and into central McLennan County before it flows into Lake Waco. Bosque River runs through rolling hills. The dominant vegetation included live oak and cedar. The word bosque is Spanish for “woods” or “woody lands”. It was untilled and from a farming and ranching perspective undisturbed. The hunters and gatherers who had used the land as their base, had been driven away, and settlers had been moving in from the 1830s.
Founders of a new county – Erath and McLennan
Homesteaders from south-east Texas began to establish settlements along the Milam frontier around 1840 on land adjacent to the South, the Middle, and Main Bosque rivers in Central Texas. They followed in the wake of successful Texas Rangers, wrote William C. Pool in his history of Bosque County, and “raided and harassed the Indians and forced them to stay farther west.”[2]
George Bernard Erath was both an engineer and a Texas Ranger and came to play a crucial role in the settlement of Central Texas. Erath led a company of rangers northwest to the headwaters of the Bosque River in early winter 1839. They were scouting for signs of Indians but did not find any. On the way back the scouting party chose a different route, which brought them to the banks of the Bosque River. The Rangers were struck “with the beauty of the country” and became interested in taking land. Since Erath was an official Texas surveyor, the group began surveying. Several among the men in the scouting party registered land claims.[3]
An Austrian immigrant in Texas
George Bernard Erath was born in Vienna, Austria, on January 1, 1813, and died in McLennan County, Texas, in 1891. His father was an immigrant from Würtenberg, Germany, who did well in the tannery business in Vienna, and his mother was of Greek heritage. Young Erath was sent to school at the age of six. He got an education far beyond the normal for a boy with his background.[4] He became a student at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute at the age of twelve and studied there for two years.
His widowed mother lived in fear that the Austrian authorities would recruit him to the Austrian army. Therefore, she sent him on a visit to the relatives of his father in Rothenburg on the river Neckar, Würtenberg. His relatives took very good care of him. They even offered him to take over the tannery business of the Erath family. George had already decided that he wanted to emigrate to the United States. Since he could not be persuaded to stay, his relatives paid his journey from Germany to New Orleans.
Erath left Germany in early April 1832
George was on board the American cotton brig Motion when it left Le Havre, France, on April 18. The brig arrived in New Orleans on June 22, 1832. Many German emigrants on board continued to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Erath chose to join them. Some months later, however, he decided to go to Texas, where he arrived in March 1833.
Because of his good technical schooling in Vienna, he soon got involved in surveying work in Robertson’s Colony, Texas. In March 1836, at the age of 23, he enlisted as a private in Captain Jesse Billingsley’s Company C, of the Texan Volunteers for service in the Texas Revolution. Erath participated in the battle against Mexico at San Jacinto. Between 1843 and 1845, during the Eighth and Ninth congresses of the Texas Republic, Erath represented Milam County in the House of Representatives. He was strongly in favor of the annexation of Texas to the United States. The towns of Waco, Stephenville, and Meridian in Central Texas were laid out by Erath as surveyor, and Erath County was named in his honor.
The pathfinder Neil McLennan
Highland Scots had settled in the Cape Fear River district in North Carolina since the 1730s. Emigration ships from Scotland landed in Wilmington at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and the immigrants followed the river inland, settling along its banks and creeks.[5] The land close to the sea had been taken by 1800, but new immigrants moved farther west. The family had relatives in Richland County, west of Scotland County, and settled there. The McLennans spoke Gaelic and were strict Presbyterians.
When the Norwegian immigrants arrived in the area west of Waco in early 1854, 15 years after Erath’s first survey with the Texas Rangers, the Bosque Valley was part of McLennan County. It was organized in 1850 and was named in honor of Neil McLennan, the first permanent settler in that county. He was a Highland Scot, born on the Isle of Skye in northwest Scotland on September 2, 1787. His father, John McLennan, and his mother, Catherine MacKinnon, emigrated together with their children and other kin to Richmond County in North Carolina in 1800 or 1801.
Onward from North Carolina
Neil McLendon married Christain Campbell in 1812. According to History of Walton County, Florida, Neil McLendon, the pathfinder, in spring 1820 decided to seek new land in the Florida Panhandle east of Pensacola. He “longed for a newer and better country – a cattle, hog and sheep range.”[6] Furthermore, the United States had recently taken Florida from Spain. In December 1817, President Monroe sent General Andrew Jackson to police the Seminole Indians who raided settlers in Southern Georgia. Jackson took the Spanish capital Pensacola in May 1818 and established an interim government.
These actions of General Jackson put the United States in a difficult position in relation to international law and other nations. But American public opinion was strongly in favor of what he had done. In the end Spain sold Florida to the United States for $5 million. President Monroe appointed General Andrew Jackson the first civil governor of the territory, and Jackson took formal possession of Florida on July 10, 1821.[7]
Moving to Florida in 1828 on a wagon train
The McLendon family, together with the family of his brother Lochlin, his mother, his unmarried brother-in-law Daniel D. Campbell, and John Folk and his family, traveled from North Carolina by wagon in the direction of Pensacola, Florida. The route they took, went through South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. The group of Highland Scots chose land in what in 1828 became Walton County, Florida. The land lay between the Black Water River in the west, Choctawhatchee River in the east, Alabama to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the south.
The wagon train was the beginning of a strong migration chain of Highland Scots to Walton from North Carolina. Almost every year in the 1820s five or six families moved to Walton. Some immigrants arrived at Pensacola directly from Scotland.
Around 1830 Neil McLendon began to feel crowded again. The family decided to move to Texas and was accompanied by the family of his brother Lochlin and three other families.[8] A rather primitive two-mast schooner was built during eight to ten months and was baptized Euchee in honor of an Indian chief. The ship left Florida in November 1833. Months later, his relative John McKinnon got a letter from Galveston, Texas, dated February 6, 1834. The group was now in Galveston, after a long and perilous trip. Neil McLendon had recently sold the schooner Euchee in Galveston for more than it had cost to build. He reported that he had now left his family while he scouted for virgin land.
The McLennans settled in Robertson’s Colony
The McLendons (in Texas, McLennans) settled in Robertson’s Colony. The main source for what happened to the group of Scots in Texas during the next years is based on Volume X of Papers Concerning Robertson’s Colony in Texas. In 1835, the families settled at “Sugar Loaf”, later called McLennan’s Bluff.[9] In the late 1830s approximately 75 families lived at Nashville-on-the Brazos. Many of them soon moved further west into the frontier areas which later became the counties of Bell, McLennan, Coryell and Bosque.[10]
Indian attacks at McLennan’s Bluff
After the war with Mexico in 1835 and 1836 many settlements on the northwestern frontier in Texas were raided by Indians. The McLennan family paid dearly for their willingness to settle on the frontier. In early October 1835 Indians attacked them. They came upon Laughlin McLennan “where he was at work making rails in the bottom, and shot him to death with arrows, twenty-five of which were sticking into and through his body when he was found. They then advanced on the house where Aunt Peggy, Laughlin’s wife, her three boys and aged mother were awaiting the return of the son, husband and father to dinner, and killed the old lady by a blow on the head with an axe and cast her body into the house which was set on fire.”
After killing cows, calves and chickens, they left and took the distraught mother and her boys with them. The boys captured were John (8 years), Neil (6 years) and Daniel (4 years). “The mother was never recovered, but after several years died in captivity. The boys were traded from tribe to tribe and the eldest, John, was returned to his relatives after being with the Indians ten years”.[11]
McLennan was the first permanent settler west of the Brazos River
Neil McLennan was a member of the Erath expedition of Texas Rangers in 1839, and he was one of the men who registered a land claim on their return. In May 1845, major George B. Erath began surveying land along the Bosque River, and McLennan was again a member of the group. This time he was prepared, and brought with him a wagon and people to build a house on the South Bosque River. During the summer, he also brought cattle.
The Texas legislature established McLennan County on January 22, 1850, with Waco as the county seat. On March 1, 1849, Erath laid out the first block of the new town on the site of the former Waco Indian village on the Brazos River.[12] It began with 72 inhabitants. Soon a small business district developed.
Most of the settlers in McLennan County before the Civil War came from the southern United States or other regions of Texas. They brought their culture, and their tradition of slavery with them.[13] Well educated planters established cotton-based plantations along the rich bottomlands of the Brazos River. Livestock grazed on the surrounding prairie land. According to the United States census of 1860, McLennan County had a free white population of 3,811, and 270 of the white men owned 2,395 slaves. The county seat Waco had around 800 inhabitants.
From Dallas County to Bosque County – the Canuteson family
The Norwegian Canuteson family had lived in Dallas County since winter 1851, and Cleng Peerson lived with them. Countless times he had described the good land he had seen to the south along the Brazos River when he walked there in 1849-1850. Twenty-year-old Ole Canuteson listened intently to the Peerson stories. In summer 1852 the young man decided to explore the country south of Dallas along the Brazos. Three decades later Canuteson wrote: “In the month of August 1852, I started out with a man by the name of Bryant, to search for vacant land, the legislature having just passed an act donating 320 acres to actual settlers.”[14] The Indians no longer seemed such a big threat, and Canuteson and Bryant reduced the risk by following the military road between the forts, just as Peerson had done three years before.
1853 – a window of opportunity for land seekers
The Canutesons were not disappointed with their land in Dallas County. But the new homestead law the Texas legislature discussed would be more favorable to settlers than the first Pre-emption Act in Texas from January 22, 1845. According to the new law, a homesteader would get 320 acres of land for free, on the condition that he lived on it for three years and made improvements. The pre-emption act became a homestead grant “when an act approved on February 7, 1853, declared that those who had settled under the provisions of the pre-emption act need not cover the grant with a valid certificate. The grant became an outright gift with only the requirements of occupancy.”[15] Seymour V. Connor characterized the 1853 law as the “western world’s first homestead law.” In 1854, however, another act reduced the amount of land granted under these conditions to 160 acres per person.
Canuteson used the window of opportunity that arose, along with thousands of others. On their way south to find good land, Canuteson and Bryant traveled through Fort Graham. The fort was established in March 1849 near the eastern bank of the Brazos River at Little Bear Creek, fourteen miles west of present-day Hillsboro. For a short while Fort Graham was the most important post on the upper frontier. It was close to the camps of many Indian groups. When the line of settlement moved west, Fort Graham ceased to be of strategic importance. It was still in operation when Canuteson passed through the area in 1852, but closed in August 1853.
Future neighbors meet while scouting for land
The two travelers continued south along the military road to Fort Gates. When they came to the north side of the Bosque River, they left the road and found shelter and hospitality “at the house of the then well-known pioneer settler Jewell Everett.”[16]
His son Francis went with them up the Bosque Valley. At the place where the town of Clifton was later established, they “overtook three men eating their lunch – L.H. Scrutchfield, Jaspar Mabray, and a man by the name of Bell, a brother-in-law of Mabray, that had just come from East Texas to prospect for land on the Bosque.” The whole group continued upriver, crossed Meridian Creek and camped close to the later county seat Meridian. “We found a bee tree and killed a turkey and had quite a feast that night.”
The group returned down river again next morning, but Bryant and Canuteson left the others to visit William McCurry, a recent settler on Neil’s Creek. “Mr. McCurry had just been out with a surveying party conducted by that well known pioneer, George B. Erath.” McCurry followed them up along Neil’s Creek. He pointed out “vacancies that had been shown him by the surveying party. I concluded to enter land on Neil’s Creek, went to Waco and engaged Major Erath to come and survey these lands and found enough to accommodate many more than at first contemplated.”[17]
Early Norwegians in Bosque
The land Ole Canuteson chose in the Bosque territory in August 1852 was still a part of McLennan County.[18] News of the good land in the Bosque Hills soon traveled from Dallas County to the Norwegian settlements at Four Mile Prairie in East Texas. Several Norwegians there were interested, especially the immigrants who had looked for land in the counties Dallas and Tarrant in North Texas in summer 1852.
After the harvest in 1853 and the worst heat had worn off in the autumn, a group of men, including Cleng Peerson, Ole Canuteson, Canute Canuteson, Carl Questad, Jens Ringness, Ole Ween, Anders Bretten, and Ole Pierson traveled to the Bosque Valley to investigate, claim or buy land there. They found successive ranges of hills and intervening valleys, each seemingly more charming than the other. The land had clean, running water from many springs, in addition to an ample choice of trees, and beautiful and pleasing views on valleys and creeks.
They liked the land very much. Each member of the scouting party chose the place he found best and they asked George B. Erath to survey their land. He executed the formal part of the survey on November 6 and November 8, 1853. Each member of the Norwegian scouting group signed a document requesting a survey of the land.
Excellent historical research by Dale Van Sickle, Austin
Until now, historians have had very scant primary sources available to reconstruct the land seeking of the Norwegian immigrants during the weeks in 1853, when they first visited what later became known as the Norse colony in Bosque County. Dale Orbech Van Sickle in Austin has done excellent historical research on this early phase. Regardless that the main interest of Van Sickle was to find primary sources making it possible to reconstruct the history of the Cleng Peerson/Colwick farm. She did not only unearth the primary sources which threw new light on that specific farm, but widened the context of the actions of the whole group.[19]
On November 6, 1853, Ole Canuteson and his father Canute Canuteson each formally requested that their surveys should be done in the presence of the McLennan Justice of Peace, Jasper Mabray. The other members of the group made the same request on the same day, except for Ole Pierson, who signed his request on November 8. It would not have been possible for George Erath and his surveyor team to do all the work involved in a couple of days. The Norwegians had probably used days and weeks to select the land they wanted, and a survey crew had done initial surveys and written field notes before it all came together in a formalized procedure in early November.
With help from new friends
The Norwegian immigrants got very good help from county officials in transforming their handwritten applications into the required legal language. They handed in their application to the county clerk with a request for George B. Erath, the Deputy Surveyor of Milam Land District for McLennan County, to survey the land they had chosen.
The case of Anders Bretten and the Cleng Peerson farm
Andris Bretta (as he signed himself on the request for survey) or Andrew Britten (written on the field notes of the survey) or Anders Broten (name of the original grantee on General Land Office records) will be used as an example of the general process. There are several reasons to choose the Bretten case. Specifically, it gives us an insight into the process of how Cleng Peerson later took over Bretten’s land and then sold it to Ovee Colwick. Van Sickle in fact discovered copies of original documents in different public archives. They prove beyond any doubt that even though the names are written slightly differently on different occasions, they are the same person.
Anders Andersen Bretten emigrated from Romedal, Hedmark County. He was born on July 8, 1813, at Harildstadeie, Romedal, and arrived in New Orleans on March 29, 1853, on the ship Victoria from Arendal in southern Norway. He traveled together with a larger group of emigrants from Hedmark County. Bretten, incidentally, was a carpenter by trade.
Norwegians on Neil’s Creek
In his field notes the surveyor wrote that Andrew Britton claimed 313 acres of land on the north side of Neil’s Creek, beginning on the northeast corner of a survey conducted for John Ringness for the N.W corner of this survey. Erath surveyed the land and signed the survey on November 6, 1853, and thereafter certified it on November 24, 1853. J. W. Armstrong, District Surveyor signed the final document with Erath on May 24, 1854.[20]
The Ole Canuteson claim was registered “in Milam District, Bosque County, on the north side of Neil’s Creek, about 8 miles from its mouth, and about 13 miles due south of Meridian.”[21] After that, the claim had to be registered in Austin within three years of settlement. The Bosque County Clerk filed the claim for 303 acres on April 10, 1857, and it was approved on November 9, 1857.[22] The claim included one bank of Neil’s Creek, and this assured him of enough water for his livestock. Potable water for family use came from a spring nearby.
It was a land with many resources. There was a more than sufficient supply of wood for almost any purpose – buildings, fences and fuel – close to the homestead. The buildings were put up among some large oak trees on a rise in the ground, and most of the land could easily be cultivated.[23] His father, Canute Canuteson, took land adjacent to the property of his son. His land was registered and approved on the same dates as that of his son and was measured to be 313 acres.
Back to East Texas and Dallas to prepare for the move to Bosque
The married men in the group subsequently went home to inform the families about the promising land they had chosen in the Bosque River Valley. Preparations were made for the trek to Bosque. Families who already owned land in East Texas wanted to sell their land as soon as possible and were hoping to get a good price. The first group of Norwegians left for Bosque in late 1853 and arrived there in early 1854.
Canute Canuteson, Ole Canuteson, and Cleng Peerson traveled back to Dallas County and made the necessary preparations for their move south to the Bosque Valley. Cleng Peerson was not their leader this time, but the follower. From 1854 until his death in 1865 Peerson spent some good years among his fellow Norwegians in the Norse district in Bosque County.
The bachelors Anders Bretten and Ole Ween stayed behind
Bretten and Ween established a camp at Upper Turkey Creek. Ole Ween, from Løten parish, Hedmark County, had also been a passenger on the Victoria in 1853. The two men worked actively during the weeks when the other men prepared their families in East Texas. They found suitable timber and used the tools they had available to build primitive log cabins on their land.
Even though all formalities concerning Bretten’s land were in order, it did not help him much. In early 1854, while he was out hunting near Neil’s Creek at the head of Turkey Creek, Bretten accidentally shot himself. He did not die immediately. But there were no doctors out in the wilderness and the wound became infected. Bretten contracted typhoid and died after a long illness. Bretten was the first of the Norwegians to die in Bosque County.
How many Norwegians had moved to Bosque County?
In late April 1854, the well-known farmer and politician T. A. Gjestvang received news at Løten, Hedmark County, Norway, that several Norwegian families and unmarried men had moved from East Texas to Bosque County. Several of them had emigrated from Hedmark County. Among them, he found, were Carl and Sedsel Questad and their two children Even and Marthe. That was indeed very good news, wrote Gjestvang in a letter to Carl Questad in May 1854. Gjestvang had tried to find Bosque County on the Texas map he had available, but he could not find it.
It would please him very much if their new colony succeeded.[24] He asked Questad to include a detailed description of the place in his next letter. How many Norwegians had moved to Bosque County and who were they?
Sedsel and Carl Questad’s homestead
Questad had selected 256 acres in a valley between low cedar mountains above Gary Creek.[25] He placed his house on a high knoll with a panorama view of beautiful twin mountains to the east. As can be seen in the images from 2015, fields were cleared on the lower land, between small creeks and streams of water.
The first house Questad built was a log cabin for himself, his wife and children. Cultivation of the land and sowing of small grains and corn came first. Questad was primarily a farmer, but he had above average skills in several other fields. He had worked as a blacksmith before his emigration. He was also a skilled carpenter, stone mason, and cabinet maker. While working on his land he located suitable building materials, trees as well as rocks. He chose to build large and very solid stone houses.
The defense of family and animals against Indian attacks played a central role in the layout of the buildings. To attack the Questad house, Indians would have to ride uphill on two sides before reaching the buildings, and the field of fire was unhindered by grass and small brush.
Carl Questad owned land at Four Mile Prairie, and when the decision was made to move to Bosque County, he had still not sold it. He had left the sale of the land to Judge Harrison, and in July 1856 the Norwegian immigrant Sigurd Ørbæk informed him that the land had now been sold for $1.00 per acre.[26] As a result, Knud Olson, the older brother of Sedsel Questad, who remained at Four Mile Prairie, asked Ørbæk to inform Questad about the sale.
Gjestvang knew Jens Ringness and his family
Ringness had chosen land neighboring that of Anders Bretten.[27] When Gjestvang wrote his letter, Bretten had already died. The bachelor Ole Larsen Ween was working hard on the land he had claimed. He was born October 23, 1822, at Grønsveen, Løten, Hedmark, and died in Bosque County in October 1871. The patent date for the land Ween settled on was October 13, 1858 (Abstract 82, Patent #847). It was 312 acres and lay on the north side of Gary Creek. Ween registered the neighboring land to Carl Questad on August 23, 1858 (patent date, Abstract #872, Patent #211), measured to be 294 acres.
Since Ween was a bachelor, he had to take care of a lot of daily chores both around the house and in the field. In the US census of 1860, the property of Ole Ween was valued at 936 dollars and his personal estate at 528 dollars. Cleng Peerson was on this occasion listed as living on the Ween property as well as the Olson family from Karmøy.[28]
Two families from southern Norway arrived later
Some months later two other families came to Bosque County, and like the earlier arrivals they too had crossed the Atlantic on board the ship Victoria to New Orleans in 1853. The Jens Jensen family emigrated from Holt parish east of Arendal, and the Ole Pierson family emigrated from Tromøy, an island just outside Arendal. Jens Jensen Oddersland was born in May 1808 at Brovold in Austre Moland, and died on August 25, 1889, in Bosque County. In 1834, he married Tonje Knudsdatter, born December 9, 1812, Austre Moland, and died April 15, 1883, in Bosque County. They brought with them seven children; the oldest was eighteen years of age and the youngest three years. According to family lore, Jens Jenson brought with him 1,000 dollars, which was a great sum of money at the time.[29]
During the short time the Jensen family stayed at Four Mile Prairie, their son Knud (born August 4, 1837) was shot and murdered on the street, without any kind of provocation. The law did nothing to catch the murderer. The Norwegians learned an important lesson from this incident. They had obviously emigrated to a country with wholly different attitudes towards violence and law compared with the country they had left. In Bosque County, Jensen chose to settle at Gary Creek in the Norse area. On his first homestead Jens Jenson built a log house with a rock fireplace.
The Piersen family settled on Gary Creek
Ole Pederson Songe (Ole Pierson) was born on December 4, 1804, and died August 26, 1892, in Bosque County. On June 29, 1833, he married Anne Helene Olsdatter. She was born on March 2, 1812, at Tromøy, and died April 29, 1899, in Bosque County. Ole Pierson was almost 50 years old when he and his family decided to emigrate to Texas in 1853. This family also brought with them seven children, the oldest was eighteen years old and the youngest not yet two years. After their arrival at Four Mile Prairie, their youngest daughter died in mid-July.
The Pierson family brought with them some money and arrived just in time for Pierson to join the group of men from East Texas seeking land in the Bosque Valley. Pierson also chose to settle on Gary Creek, ten to eleven miles west of Clifton and the same distance from Meridian, later to become the county seat.
Wood and fresh water was very important to the Norwegian settlers, and Pierson was no exception. A large spring with a waterspout at least two inches wide came out of the creek bank.[30] Live oak, elm, mesquite, hackberry, and pecan grew along the creek, and cedar was plentiful in the hills. He built his house 500 feet from the north bank of the creek. Between the house and the creek there was a clearing where the stock could graze.
Norwegian-Americans lived among seasoned settlers
The first Norwegians – families and bachelors – to actually settle in the Bosque area, chose homesteads on Neil’s Creek and Gary Creek in what became known as the Norse District. The land they found was on the frontier of the Indian lands and had only 12 years previously been visited by surveyers. The new immigrants met earlier arrivals from other European countries, often 2nd or even 3rd generation Americans from the Eastern States. We meet the same names as surveyers, public officials, and co-signers on petitions for protection from the Texas Rangers. They were willing to show the newcomers good sites for a farm. No doubt they gave valuable advice to the Norwegians on raising corn, a crop largely unknown where they came from.
Their cultural differences were great. The first generation Norwegian-Americans had neither the capital, education, knowledge nor networks that their neighbors had acquired, not even the ones who had skills or brought ready money with them. Where many of the Norwegians prospered compared to what they could have expected in Norway, the statistics show that many of their American neighbors were decidedly better off. But the differences were not only between Norwegians as a group and “Americans”. There were significant variations of cultural and economic backgrounds among the American-born neighbors, as among the Norwegians. Some migrated from the Kentucky hills, others from the plantations and slave economy on the southern East Coast. Erath hailed from Vienna, Austria, McLellan from Scotland. Many other European arrivals came to the valleys and hills of Bosque County. Their roads crossed and paths joined in the following decades.
Credits
Color images by Inger Kari Nerheim. Black&White images courtesy of Bosque Museum, Clifton, Bosque County, Texas.
Notes
[1] This article is a shorter 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. The book was launched at College Station in March 2024, was well received and later got very good reviews, both in the The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol 128, No. 1, July 24, 2024, pp. 103-104, and in the Western Historical Quarterly, 2024. For an in-depth discussion of the different cultural and economical traits of American groups settling in Texas, read the book. For a summary of earlier years’ settlement by Europeans in this area, see https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/anglo-american-colonization.
[2] Pool, William C., Bosque Territory: A History of an Agrarian Community. Kyle, Texas: Chapparal Press, 1964, p. 30.
[3] The following registered land: Clairborne Pool, November 20, 1839; John C. Pool, November 20, 1839; John McLennan, November 22, 1839; Anson Darniel, November 19, 1839; James Hughes, November 19, 1839. Pool, Bosque Territory, p. 34.
[4] Lucy A. Erath, “Memoirs of major George Bernard Erath,” Southern Historical Quarterly 26, no. 3 (January 1923): 207-233.
[5] Duane Meyer, The Highland Scots of North Carolina 1732-1776 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1957, 1961), pp. 69-101.
[6] McKinnon, John L. History of Walton County. Atlanta, Georgia: Byrd Printing, 1911, p. 13.
[7] Reynolds, David S. Waking Giant. America in the Age of Jackson. New York: Harper, 2008, pp. 23-24; Rohrbaugh, Malcolm J. The Trans-Appalachian Frontier. People, Societies, and Institutions 1775 – 1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 246-261; Seymour V. Connor, The Peters Colony of Texas, Texas State Historical Assn, 1959, 2005.
[8] McKinnon, History of Walton County, pp. 98-101.
[9] Malcolm McLean, ed., Papers concerning Robertson’s Colony in Texas, Volume 10: March 21 through July 25, 1835: The Ranger Rendesvouz (Arlington, Texas, 1983), p. 34.
[10] Pool, Bosque Territory, p. 24; Handbook of Texas Online; Evelyn Clark Longwell, “MCLENNAN’S BLUFF,” http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rjm51 (accessed June 07, 2020, uploaded on June 15, 2010). Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
[11] Handbook of Texas Online, Evelyn Clark Longwell, “MCLENNAN, NEIL,” http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmc89 (accessed June 07, 2020, uploaded on June 15, 2010). Published by the Texas State Historical Association; A Memorial and Biographical History of McLennan, Falls, Bell, and Coryell Counties (Chicago: Lewis); Lelia M. Batte, History of Milam County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor Company, 1956); Roger Norman Conger, A Pictorial History of Waco (Waco: Texian Press, 1964).
[12] Pool, Bosque Territory, pp. 46-47.
[13] Sharon Bracken, ed., Historic McLennan County: An Illustrated History, San Antonio: McLennan County Historical Commission, 2010, pp. 7-8.
[14] Citation from Pool, Bosque Territory, p. 57.
[15] Thomas Lloyd Miller, The Public Lands of Texas 1519 – 1970, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1972, pp. 35-36; Connor, Seymour V. Kentucky Colonization in Texas: A History of the Peters Colony. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1989, p. 69; Connor, Seymour V. The Peters Colony of Texas: A History and Biographical Sketches of the Early Settlers. Austin: Texas State Historical Society, 1959; Connor, Seymour V. “A Statistical Review of the Settlement of the Peters Colony, 1841-1848.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 57 (July 1953-April 1954): 38-64.
[16] Bosque County History Book Committee, ed. Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County). Dallas: Curtis Media Corporation, 1985, p. 285.
[17] Citation from Pool, Bosque Territory, p. 57.
[18] H. J and C. M. Cureton, Sketch of the Early History of Bosque County (Meridian, Texas, 1904), p. 3.
[19] Van Sickle, Dale Orbeck, “The Reconstruction of the History of the Cleng Peerson/Colwick Farm in Bosque County, Texas.” Manuscript, Austin 2019.
[20] Texas General Land Office Land Grant Search, GLO Land Grants Records, Abstract Number 81, Milam 3rd District/Class, File No. 913, Patents Volume 13, on January 4, 1857.
[21] Pierson, Oris E. Norwegian Settlements in Bosque County, Texas. Clifton, Texas: Bosque Memorial Museum, 1979, p. 40.
[22] Boyd, Gregory A. Texas Land Survey Maps for Bosque County. Norman, Oklahoma, 2010, p. 35.
[23] Pierson, Norwegian Settlements in Bosque County, p. 40.
[24] Letter from Taale Andreas Gjestvang, dated Hougstad, May 11, 1854, to Carl Questad, Questad archive, NAHA.
[25] Abstract #671, patentee Carl Questad, patent date October 9, 1858, Patent #842, 286 acres. Boyd, Texas Land Survey Maps for Bosque County, p. 61.
[26] Letter to Carl Questad from Sigurd Ørbæk, Prairieville, July 9, 1856. Questad archive, NAHA.
[27] Syversen, Odd Magnar, and Derwood Johnson, Norge i Texas. Et bidrag til norsk emigrasjonshistorie. Elverum: Stange Historielag, 1982, pp. 262-263.
[28] US Census 1860 for Bosque County.
[29] Syversen, Odd Magnar, and Derwood Johnson, Norge i Texas. Et bidrag til norsk emigrasjonshistorie, p. 411.
[30] Abstract #652 Ole Pederson, Patentee Ole Person, Patent #298, patent date December 15, 1859, 320 acres.
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