Gustaf Unonius
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Gustaf Elias Unonius, founder of the early Swedish settlement known as the Pine Lake Settlement or 'Nya Upsala' (New Upsala), a settlement that was a catalyst for early Scandinavian emigration to the United States. He was born August 25, 1810 in Helsinki, Finland ('Helsingfors' in Swedish) and his family moved to Sweden when he was a child. The stories of his travels to the United States in 1841 and the trials and tribulations of life on the frontier were the subject of his two volume memoirs 'Pioneer in Northwest America 1841-1858: The Memoirs of Gustaf Unonius', a translation of which was published in 1960 for the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society by the University of Minnesota Press. Unonius' letters to Swedish, Danish and Finnish newspapers about pioneer life in America sparked a wave of immigration by Scandinavians to the Midwest. [1] Unonius was later ordained as a Priest in the Episcopal Church. He returned to Sweden in 1858 from a life in America and died October 14, 1902.
