Cleg Peerson was born in Tysavaer, Norway on 17th May, 1783. Peerson became a Quaker and as a result experienced religious persecution considered the possibility of emigration. In 1821 Peerson and Knud Olsen Eide went to America to carry out some preliminary research. Eide died soon after arriving in America but Peerson was able to return with encouraging news about the country.

Peerson went back to organize the buying of land. On 4th July, 1825, a 52 foot sloop, Restauration, left Stavanger, with fifty-two Norwegians opposed to the Lutheran Church. Ninety-eight days later the ship arrived in New York where Peerson gave them the news that he had acquired land in Kendall, 35 miles north-west of Rochester.

Over the next few years Kendall became a stopover on the way to the Middle West. Cleg Peerson, who also helped to organize another Norwegian settlement on the Fox River in Illinois and in Texas, died in 1865.