The next plan of the philanthropist-musician was to buy one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of land on the Susquehanna River, in Pennsylvania, and "found a New Norway, consecrated to liberty, baptized with independence, and protected by the Union's mighty flag." Soon three hundred houses were built, a country inn, store, and church, erected by the founder. To pay the thousands needed for this enterprise he worked constantly at concert-giving, taking scarcely time to eat his meals. He laid out five new villages, made arrangements with the government to cast cannon for her fortresses, and took out patents for a new smelting-furnace.
While in California, where he was ill with yellow fever, a crushing blow fell upon him. He learned that he had purchased the land through a swindling company, his title was invalid, and his fortune was lost. He could only buy enough land to protect those who had already come from Norway, and had settled there, and soon became deeply involved in lawsuits. Hon. E. W. Stoughton of New York, who had never met Ole Bull personally, volunteered to assist him, and a few thousands were wrested from the defrauding agent.
On his return to Norway he was accused of speculating with the funds of his countrymen, which cut him to the heart. A little later, in 1862, his wife died, worn with ill health, and with her husband's misfortunes, and his son Thorvald fell from the mast of a sailing-vessel in the Mediterranean, and was killed.
In the autumn of 1868 he returned to America, and nearly lost his life in a steamboat collision on the Ohio. He swam to land, saving also his precious violin. Two years afterward he was married to Miss Thorp of Madison, Wis., an accomplished lady much his junior in years, who has lived to write an admirable life of her illustrious husband. A daughter, Olea, came to gladden his home two years later. When he was sixty-six years old, he celebrated his birthday by playing his violin on the top of the great pyramid, Cheops, at the suggestion of King Oscar of Norway and Sweden.
In the Centennial year he returned to America, and made his home at Cambridge, in the house of James Russell Lowell, while he was Minister to England. Here he enjoyed the friendship of such as Longfellow, who says of him in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn":--