They were passengers on the great Western Railroad traveling from Hamilton on the newly constructed Niagara Falls-Windsor line.

Upon arriving here, they were to be inspected by Detroit medical officers before entering the U.S., Instead, some 68 would be buried in unmarked graves, victims of cholera.

Joan Magee, in her book A Scandinavian Heritage: 200 Years of Scandinavian Presence in the Windsor-Detroit Border Region, follows the series of events that led to the incident.

It was due, in part, to the lure of fertile agricultural land in America’s midwest, the ultimate goal of the 19^th-century Norwegian immigrants anxious to establish farms in Wisconsin, Illinois and the surrounding area.

These Norwegians were leaving a harsh life behind them, coming primarily from the nation’s southern rural districts which were reportedly overcrowded, relatively barren and isolated from one another by ranges of mountains. As Magee explains, it was not uncommon for a community to emigrate en masse, selling everything they couldn’t carry but finding comfort in the fact their traveling companions shared their dialect and customs.

The Norwegian casualties were actually part of a wave of settlers who began coming to America in 1825.

During the 1850’s and early 1860’s, most of the immigrants heading to Chicago and Milwaukee on the way west traveled from Quebec through Canada via rail and boat. From 1854 to 1865, Magee says 44,100 Norwegians took this route.

The train service from Hamilton to Windsor actually started in January 1854. With the local rail system still in its infancy, Magee reports, accidents and delays were common. Overcrowding was also a problem. Anxious to accommodate the massive traffic to increase the rail line’s profitability, immigrants were regularly transported in converted freight cars.

"The cars were 8.8 meters long, 2.6 meters wide, and about 2.1 meters high, with sliding door at the sides. When opened, these sliding doors left apertures 1.4 meters wide, the only means of ventilation. These freight cars were made into makeshift passenger cars by arranging boards for seats. Twelve such seats were placed in each car." Magee wrote.

As for the Great Western Railway, the number of passengers must have seemed overwhelming. "Already in the month of June 1854… the railway had carried a total of 4,891 emigrants." Magee noted.

The trek of those ill-fated Norwegians began probably from Norway’s Sognefjord region in May 1854 when they joined thousands of their countrymen, sometimes waiting weeks for passage to America.

Magee believes the Windsor group cam to Canada on several ships that arrived in June. They were taken to a quarantine station on Gross Isle and there mingled with other immigrant passengers before continuing their journey. While the Norwegians were given a clean bill of health to travel on to Montreal, Magee contends their first exposure to cholera was on the island.

The disease had killed six on the Glenmanna, a ship from Liverpool. Instead of reporting the incident, Glenmanna’s captain allowed his remaining passengers to land at Gross Isle and ultimately infect those they contacted. By June 22, outbreaks of cholera were reported in both Montreal and Hamilton. The Norwegians passed through both cities.

They boarded the Great Western in Hamilton on Friday, June 30, in the midst of an intense heat wave. At Desjardins Canal, the two second-class and three or more freight cars carrying them to Windsor were delayed because the track was out of line. Although passengers usually stayed with their luggage – it contained their food – at the canal the Norwegians were separated from their baggage and loaded into other cars. There was another change at Paris with second-class passenger cars heading to Windsor the next day.

It stopped at Rochester, 32 KM from Windsor, at 9 p.m. because the heat wave had caused the rails to expand and an engine had derailed. A train from Windsor could exchange passengers with the Norwegians’ train.

Norwegians without first-class tickets were not included in the exchange. They were taken back to Baptiste Creek near Chatham to wait.

Left unattended in a strange land with no food, no water and unable to speak the language, these Norwegians found they were in the middle of marshland on a hot humid night. One trainman at the station reported he counted 150 people in a car trying to sleep on the floor.

Hungry and thirsty, some resorted to drinking swamp water. This perilous journey began to take its toll. By the next morning, the trainman witnessed the burial of two passengers. Two others, suffering from what appeared to be cholera symptoms, were brought into the fresh air. As this same trainman testified in an inquest, fearing exposure to the highly contagious disease, no one came with assistance.

Help in the form of a train to Windsor wouldn’t come until Sunday, July 2. The Norwegians’ freight cars were added to the train heading west, now with some 600 passengers. They pulled into the Windsor Station House after 4 p.m. One Norwegian was found dead, 33 others collapsed on the platform.

In 1854, the village of Windsor had a population of 750. There was no hospital and only one doctor, Alfred Dewson. He was called to the station house when the Norwegians arrived.

The doctor told authorities at the inquest, "I found several of them sick in various stages of cholera. I am quite satisfied that the emigrants who died of cholera were all, or nearly all, among those that were detained at Baptiste Creek."

Dewson moved his patients into a Great Western storehouse at Moy Avenue and Riverside Drive, then north of the village, and set up a cholera hospital. There were few to help care for the sick and the dying. In addition to Dewson, a Dr. Hewitt of Detroit and several other medical professionals were aided by such selfless volunteers as Isaac Askew, John McEwan, who himself became afflicted with the illness, and his wife, Margaret.

By Monday, July 3, nine more died and were immediately buried. Cholera spread among the Norwegians for almost two weeks. Later, the stationmaster would estimate 58 adults and a number of children had died.

The incident is still one of Windsor’s unsolved mysteries. The exact location of the victims’ graves unknown.

Their names are equally elusive. There are no records kept by either the shipping companies or Canadian government officials for these immigrants.

As for the impact on the community, there would seem to be virtually none. According to Magee’s findings, it didn’t even make the pages of the newspapers in Canada, Norway or Detroit.

The inquest was held in London (Ontario) Nov. 25 to 28. The jury found for the Norwegians "their deaths were accelerated by the manner in which they were conveyed" by the railway.

The railroad accepted limited liability, paying only for the burial of those victims who died up to August 11. The municipality of Windsor supplied 125 for some of the patients’ care. The rest came from public donations.

Margaret McEwan would later be commended for her nursing assistance by the railroad. There were two Norwegian children who lost their parents to cholera. They were adopted by the McEwans, but left Windsor by 1861.

Cholera was not a selective disease. The 1854 outbreak would continue through August and kill almost 3,600 in Canada. Reports of other immigrants waiting entry into Detroit being denied admission for illness were common enough. Magee says most Norwegians recovering from poor health and dwindling finances who ached for homesteads in America found their way west. Few remained in Essex County.

Still, the death of the Norwegians precipitates several observations. Were employees of the Great Western Railway Company deliberately callous in their treatment of immigrants whose language and culture were unfamiliar?

Perhaps there was a patronizing bigotry, a Canadian sense of elitism aimed at the flow of immigrants who swept across this region in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

The railway used an incomplete rail system to transport thousands of people.

Some would argue the very nature of the nation circa 1854 was one of burgeoning industry and enterprise that would require time to catch up with the demand for services.

Efficiency is, after all, an acquired thing.

They may also add that few could foresee the magnitude of immigrants who would come to rely on the Great Lakes’ transportation system to help them reach their final destination.

No doubt. But as one writer noted in the Montreal Gazette in 1854: "Emigrants arriving here are not properly cared for but are left on the wharf all day exposed to the boiling sun and drinking filthy canal water. It’s a disgrace to our humanity."

As for the immigrants, they exhibited a single-mindedness of purpose that few can comprehend, so strong was the drive to create a new life for their families. They endured everything to reach their "Promised Land."