Industrious Swedish immigrants often established their own businesses. This Swedish bakery was located in Rockford.

Marshal Hackerson
Oregon High School, Oregon

What would it take for you to leave your country, your friends, or your family and travel four thousand miles across dangerous lands and the cold north seas? This is what thousands of Swedish immigrants did to get to America in the hopes of starting a new life.

Like the rest of Europe, Sweden's mostly agricultural economy gradually changed from village farming to private farm-based agriculture. The cities then became centers for the villagers to go in search of work during the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, the changes in the way they made their living failed to provide economic and social improvements for them. Between 1850 and 1890, about one million Swedes emigrated to the United States. Many of them came to the midwest, especially Illinois.

Rockford and Bishop Hill became the most common destinations for Swedish immigrants. Rockford, founded in 1834, was known as Midway because it was a stagecoach stop halfway between Chicago and Galena. The earliest settlers in the area were from New England, but around 1852 the Swedes began to arrive and established a very prominent furniture industry.

Life in Rockford and the surrounding area was not always an easy one. In 1908 Hulda Belin, a Rockford resident who was born in Smaland, Sweden, traveled to Canada. She wrote:

So the Train continued on and we were in Michigan U.S.A., and then in Minnesota's snowy wastes. The train made a stop and off of the train climbed a youth; he was tall and gangly, eighteen or nineteen years old, and you could see he was Swedish. Not a person was to be seen at the stop, that little square wooden house. He had no overcoat and it was cold. No one was in sight to meet him and no dwelling houses were to be seen. Then the train went on and he stood there alone. I have often wondered what his fate was.

Much of Rockford's current population is of Swedish or Italian decent. Each year Rockford holds a Swedish-oriented Winter Carnival at Rock Cut State Park.

The second well-known settlement is Bishop Hill, which is located near the Henry County town of Kewanee. Bishop Hill was established in 1846. The Swedes constructed beautiful buildings and accumu-

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lated twelve thousand acres of surrounding farm land. They also created local industry.

The history of Bishop Hill started in Sweden when the established Church of Sweden suppressed those called "Devotionalists." They were arrested for holding secret Bible studies. One of the founders of Bishop Hill was Olaf Olson. He was arrested and fined one hundred crowns for repeating the Lord's Prayer and ten crowns for breaking the Sabbath.

The Devotionalists decided to emigrate. They contacted leading members of their persuasion who had prestige, funds, and a strong faith. The group planned the finances for the journey, and they recruited colonists who had skills in various trades and in farming.

One of the leaders of the new colony was Eric Jansson. Because of his religious beliefs, he had been arrested many times. Before leaving Sweden, the police sought Jansson. He hid in attics and under barn floors, he disguised himself in women's clothing, and reportedly had his front teeth punched out to change his appearance.

During the winter of 1845-46, Jansson and his family snuck out of Sweden by traveling crosscountry at night. They were able to get over the mountains that separate Sweden from Norway, and they entered Oslo, where the Janssons boarded a ship and sailed to America. They eventually joined the others at Bishop Hill.

The Swedish people provided this country with skills in various industrial trades, such as furniture making and agricultural experience as farmers. Part of my family, on my father's side, immigrated from Malmo, Sweden. Just before my great-great-grandfather left Sweden, a clan killed everyone in his family except him. Today, many people of Swedish descent still live in Illinois and they hold onto their Swedish heritage.—[From: George Swank, Bishop Hill Showcase of Swedish History; H. Arnold Barton, ed., Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840-1914; Thomas B. Allen, ed., We Americans.]

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