Early Settlers of Norwegian Heritage

Overview
The Central Iowa Norwegian Project (CINP) has identified Norwegian-Americans who lived in Story, Polk, and Hamilton counties by 1860. The names have been collected from the 1856 Iowa Census, the 1860 Federal Census, church histories, town histories, family histories, obituaries, local newspapers, county histories, cemetery records, and Norwegian farm history books. Their years and places of birth, years of emigration, and burial locations are summarized in Early Settler Statistics.

A searchable database of these early settlers is available here by clicking on the "Search Early Settlers in Story County" above. The Central Iowa Norwegian Project requests your help to insure the accuracy and completeness of this database. If you know of corrections and additions/deletions that should be made or have questions about people on the database, please contact Arlen Twedt. You may also make corrections when viewing the registry entries as explained in the Norwegian Immigrant Registery.

How are these records different from those found in the Norwegian Immigrant Registery?
The CINP database includes all early settlers of Norwegian heritage rather than just the immigrants. Thus are found here not only the names of immigrants, but any native-born children residing in Story, Polk, and Hamilton counties during 1855-1860 as well. Immigrants found in the CINP database will also be found in the Registry. Where this is the case you will find a link in the CINP entry allowing you to go directly to the Registry entry. (Not all the earlier settlers are in the Registry yet. They are in the process of being added.) In addition, the information for each early immmigrant settler found here is usually not as complete as that found in the Registry because the Registry is designed as a research aid for genealogists.

Contents of the CINP Early Settlers Database Records

• Entry Number – A unique number assigned to each person.
• Registry Link – When the person also has a record in the Immigrant Registry, the word "Registry" appears which, when clicked on, takes you to the Registry entry.
• Given Name
• Surname
• Maiden Name – Not always included.
• Date of Birth
• Date of Death
• Birth Place – For people born in Norway this refers to the name of the farm where they were born or from which they emigrated. For people born in the U.S., the state of birth was obtained from the 1856 Iowa Census or the 1860 Federal Census. Information regarding the county of birth was usually obtained from obituaries which, in some cases, are not accurate. This may be especially true for births in Kendall County, Illinois. While Lisbon (Kendall County) was the destination for most of these immigrants, many of them actually settled across the southern county line in northern Grundy County, and that is where many of them were born.
• Burial Place
• Farm Name – This is the Norwegian farm name location associated with those born in Norway.
• Source Reference – This is source and citation for some of the Norwegian immigrants.