Waukesha County Wisconsin Genealogy

History of Pine Lake

See also early settlers of Pine Lake
Early Landowners of the Pine Lake Area

Source: A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States From the Earliest Beginning Down to the year 1848, by George T. Flom, Ph.D. privately printed, Iowa, City, Iowa, 1909.
pgs. 297-299

At Pine Lake and Nashota in northwestern Wausheka (sic) County a considerable number of Norwegians lived among the forties and fifties, since which the settlement has dwindled very much. At Pine Lake the first Swedish settlement founded in America in the last century had been established in 1841 by Gustav Unonius. In 1843 about fifty Norwegian families located at Pine Lake, according to Unonius Minnen, 1862, page 3. Unonius mentions especially:

Captain Hans Gasman as a principal figure there. Gasman had a large family of sons and daughters, and the name is a well known one among the early pioneers of Racine, Waukesha, and Dodge Counties. Other members of the family were Charles, Peter, and Captain Johan Gasman, who commanded the Salvator, plying between Skien and New York. This very ship brought a number who located at Pine Lake, among them Halvor Salveson from Gjerpen.

Among the fifty families who came to Pine Lake in 1843 I may name:

Engelbret Salveson from Gjerpen;

Erik Helgeson,
Hans Roe,
Christen Puttekaasa,
Halvor Rosholt,
Jacob Rosholt,
Peter Naes, from near Skiep and Gjerpen;

Ellef Bjornson,
Halvor Halvorson from Saude, Telemarken;

Tollef Waller from Eidanger in Lower Telemarken;

Christopher Aamondt,
Hans Uhlen from Modem, Tolleiv Roisland;

Ole Nummeland from Vallo in Saetersdalen;

Ole Lia from Gausdal.

Some of these, as e.g. Halvor Halvorson located in the extreme northern part of the settlement at Toland, and John Lia settled across the Jefferson County line, but most located in Waukesha County at Hartland or Nashota.

In subsequent years there arrived constantly new settlers from Skien, Saetersdal and Gudbrandsdalen, but even in the later forties many began to go to the counties immediately northwest to Waupaca and Portage counties and elsewhere. In 1850-54 these counties, as also Waushara and Winnebago counties on the south, received hosts of Norwegian settlers, some coming direct from Norway, a large number however from Racine and Dane Counties, and the Pine Lake Region….