Eric Jansson

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Eric or Erik Jansson or Janson (21 December 1808[1]—13 May 1850) was the leader of a Swedish pietist sect that emigrated to the United States in 1846.

Jansson was born in Biskopskulla in Uppland, near Uppsala, the son of Jan Mattsson, a farmer, and his wife, Sarah Eriksdotter. After believing that he was miraculously cured of rheumatism, he became devoutly religious, and developed beliefs that were contrary to the Lutheran Church of Sweden. He believed that the Bible was the only proper book, and was several times arrested by the authorities for burning the works of Luther and other writers in public and encouraging his followers to do the same. From 1844, he claimed to be a true prophet speaking the Word of God. After repeated brushes with the law in Sweden, and having outraged followers of the Church of Sweden, he departed for the United States in 1846, condemning his homeland to eternal damnation and taking 1,200—1,500 followers with him.[2]

A trusted follower, Olof Olsson, was sent ahead to scout for a suitable place to settle. He arrived in New York on the Neptunus on 16 December 1845. He met a countryman, Olof Gustaf Hedström, who sent Olsson to meet his brother, Jonas Hedström, in Victoria, Illinois. Other followers were not so lucky: several vessels foundered during the journey, consigning hundreds of Janssonists to the deep. Many others were killed by cholera on the journey, or soon after they arrived.

Jansson arrived in New York in June 1846. With 400 of his followers who had survived the journey, he founded the village of Bishop Hill, Illinois, named after his birthplace. 96 died in the first winter, but others arrived from Sweden to swell their numbers. The villagers lived as a collective religious colony for 15 years, from 1846 to 1861, tilling the soil, tending their animals, and building their settlement with bricks that they made by hand. Local pioneers were amazed at their lifestyle and the relative success that it generated. Jansson sent 9 followers to California in 1850, hoping that they would bring back funds to support the community from the California Gold Rush.

But the idyllic life in rural Illinois was not to last. Jansson was shot and killed by John Root, an educated Swedish immigrant from Stockholm who had married Jansson's cousin, Charlotta Louisa. Root wanted to move away, but the other colonists prevented him taking his family. Root shot Jansson dead at the courthouse in the county seat, Cambridge, Illinois, on 13 May 1850. Root was convicted of manslaughter, but was released after serving just one year in prison. The Janssonists waited in vain for their prophet to rise on the third day.

The village continued and prospered for several years, but suffered in the 1857 financial crisis. It was dissolved in 1861, after the American Civil War broke out, although court cases dealing with the division of the colony's property were not resolved until 1879. The village is now a state park. The surviving buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

While there had been several Swedish immigrant colonies earlier in US history, notably the short-lived colony at New Sweden in Delaware, the Janssonist emigrants were an early group of Swedish immigrants that triggered a larger wave of immigration in the latter half of the 19th century. Letters home from Janssonists to their friends and family, telling of the fertile agricultural land in the interior of North America, stimulated substantial migration for several decades and the formation of a distinct Swedish-American ethnic community of the American Midwest.

The transformation of the Bishop Hill Colony from religious sect in Sweden, to fledgling outpost, to prosperous economic engine, and finally to Swedish-American community, marks a unique pattern of Americanization and assimilation. Swanson (1998) has argued that this transformation and Americanization resulted from the degree of interaction between the colonists and the local citizens of Henry County: the colony was not insular, as the many documents held in archives of Bishop Hill demonstrate. The Bishop Hill Colony makes a useful contrast to the Mormons at Nauvoo, Illinois and the Amanas in Iowa, both rough contemporaries to Bishop Hill.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ According to Nordisk familjebok, the birthdate was 19 December.
  2. ^ The lower figure is from Nordisk familjebok, the higher from Barton, 16.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Owl Edition This article contains content from the Owl Edition of Nordisk familjebok, a Swedish encyclopedia published between 1904–1926 now in Public Domain.

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