Norwegians (5010)

Immigrants from Norway flooded this area – 1860s to 1890s, with the town of Stanwood (then Centerville) bringing lumber mills and fishing foci. Farming and logging then spread the radius of pioneer settlement. Compounded by crop failures, Norwegian agriculture was unable to keep up with population growth while in the US the Homestead Act promised fertile, flat land. No single country contributed as large a percentage of its population to the United States (other than Ireland). In the Pacific Northwest, the 2 largest Norwegian communities were in Ballard* and Stanwood, many migrating first to Montreal and then across Canada to Saskatchewan, then south to Montana and then west. Freeborn Church across the street, built in 1904, was known as the Skandinaviske Evangsliske Lutherske Menighed; annual church minutes were recorded in Dano-Norwegian until WW II. This was Heaven to the Norwegians who believed in hard work and individual salvation in Christ, lived under English Law with a language where an individual was sovereign – a concept enhanced by America’s equal rights and opportunities granted in the Constitution; this being contrary to rights by tribal affiliations that reflect origin, race, gender, religion and/or other group favoritisms. Private property rights were (and are) a cornerstone of the American experience and it was the Homestead Act that attracted Scandinavians here, first as subsistence farmers, then with youth going to public schools and becoming the maids, drivers, janitors during the Depression and after WW II with the G.I. Bill, the next generation of teachers and leaders. It was a “shuffling of the cards” unique in human history.