The Restauration Reaches New York

On October 9, 1825, the sloop Restauration dropped anchor in New York harbor after three months at sea, carrying the first organized party of Norwegian emigrants to America. The ship had left Stavanger on July 4 with 52 passengers aboard, most of them Quakers and members of the Haugean revival within the Lutheran church, squeezed onto a 54 foot hull of only 39 tons. Somewhere on the Atlantic in early September, one of the couples aboard had a daughter, born at sea before the ship ever reached land. American law capped how many people a vessel that size could carry, and Restauration had blown past the limit, so customs officials fined the ship, seized it, and arrested her captain, L. O. Helland, on arrival. Guided by an earlier scouting voyage from a Norwegian named Cleng Peerson, the passengers pushed on from New York to found the country's first Norwegian settlement at Kendall, in Orleans County.