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Note: mmunity of Time, just outside Stavanger, Norway, left his homeland at the age of forty-six, with his wife, Olina, and eight children, for a new life in America. They sailed out of Stavanger harbor the morning of April 10, 1881, bound for England. One of those eight children was my grandfather, Ommund Martinsen Westley. The others were: Mary, Hans, Axeliana, Martin D., Ole B., Ola C. and Martha. The ninth child, Anna, was born in this country. After a choppy voyage of several days across the North Sea, the immigrants docked at Newcastle, England (according to Ommund) - at Hull, England (according to Hans Westley and Omon Herigstad). From the map, Hull would seem to be the logical place to debark and catch the train for Liverpool. However, Ommund mentions the "little city of Shields" across the harbor -and Shields is across the harbor from Newcastle. Perhaps the ship docked first at Newcastle and then proceeded to Hull. From Hull, then, they took the train to Liverpool, where they remained a few days in an "emigrant hotel" awaiting the arrival of ships from other parts of Europe whose passengers were to cross the ocean with them. (The passenger list for their ship lists many from Germany and England.) Hans Westley refers to the "cattle boat" across the North Sea and to the disgusting seasickness, audible and visible. Their food was mostly flatbread, plus some other foods stored in a trunk brought just for that purpose. Evidently steerage passengers provided their own food for the journey. Both Hans and Ommund report that the ship out of Liverpool was to have been larger and better than it was. What they did board, on April 18, was the S.S. Palmyra of the Gunard Line, which docked in New York on May 12, 1881, after a harrowing experience about five days out of Liverpool when the propellor broke and they had to be towed into St. John's, Newfoundland. They stayed in Newfoundland for nine days while repairs were made to the ship. Ommund described Newfoundland as very much like Norway - mountains and birch trees, also heather, and along the shoreline in the city of St. John, a fish market. Knowing Omnund, I'm sure he took advantage of every opportunity to explore St. John's whenever he could go ashore. "Shore leave", however, was cancelled after some of the seamen and immigrants got into a fight on shore. There was ice on the water in Newfoundland, and five days later they were in hot springtime in New York, a sudden change that was hard on those from the north. The trip thus far had taken them one month. Relatives back in Norway, who did not hear from them because of the delay in Newfoundland, thought they had been lost. I wonder who were the most upset, those on the ship who knew they would never return to their homeland, or those in the homeland who knew they would never see the emigrants again! The stay in New York was short and they soon boarded the train with their leader and friend, Betuel Herigstad, who had come to America in 1872, returning to Norway some years later as an agent for a shipping line to encourage emigration to America. This party consisted of about thirty-five people, all from the same community - friends, neighbors, relatives. Many names on the passenger list are familiar to me from the Hannaford-Cooperstown area. Other groups of emigrants on the ship were in charge of similar agents. The agents received 5% commission on all tickets sold to emigrants under their supervision. An article in the October 30, 1978, issue of Forbes Magazine gives two bits of information about the immigration into the United States at this time: 1) "To cope with the rising flow of immigrants, the state of New York opened its Castle Garden facility at the tip of Manhattan Island in 1855. It was to serve as the chief point of entry into the United States until the federal government opened Ellis Island, in upper New York Bay, in 1892."
Note: FROM FJORD TO PRAIRIE OLE HANSEN WESTLEY, born in 1835 in the rural co
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