From Stavanger to New York: The Topping Family Celebrates 200 Years of Heritage

Audrey Topping meeting her cousin Nils Helge Golf, who was part of the 2025 sailing crew

RESTAURATION

by Robin Topping

History came alive for the Topping family in New York Harbor Oct. 9 when the Norwegian schooner Restauration sailed in, recreating an arduous four-month voyage that 53 intrepid Norwegians, including our ancestors, took across the North Atlantic in 1825.

Some 1,000 people were there, along with us, at South Street Seaport to greet the 54-foot sloop, a restored replica of the original vessel.

“We honor their spirit and their endurance,” said Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, who spoke to the crowd in a ceremony after the ship’s arrival, adding that they were the first of “generations of Norwegians to seek a new life of freedom and possibilities.”

The event was part of the Bicentennial celebration of Norwegian emigration known as “Crossings 200.” Norway’s King Harold V and Queen Sonja had been at the ship’s departure July 4 from Stavanger, Norway.

Among those greeting the ship was my mother, photojournalist and OPC alumni Audrey Topping, myself, with three of my sisters and their spouses, and several grandchildren. They were the descendants of my mother’s great-grand parents, Torgram and Anna Rorem, who were among those on the original journey and her cousin, Nils Helge Golf, was part of the 2025 crew.

Before the ship docked, our family, and about 100 invited guests rode the Circle Line Boat, meeting the Restauration at the Statue of Liberty and escorting it back into the Seaport’s Pier 16.

My mother, the widow of renown journalist and longtime OPC member Seymour Topping, was overcome with emotion when the ship first came into view.

“When I watched the Restauration sail past the Statue of Liberty I felt out of this world, like I was in a time machine. Tears filled my eyes as my family history became vividly alive. I waved enthusiastically as I imagined seeing my great-grand parents, Torgrim and Anna Rorem and their five boys on board. My beautiful grandmother, Hannah, would soon be their first child born in the New World.”

Audrey wrote about the original journey in her book “China Mission,” which chronicles her family’s history.

After the ceremony, we managed to track down Nils and brought him to my mother. They sat by the stage, having a joyful reunion, after communicating online for months.

Online, Nils had written that the journey “created deep bonds” among those who sailed, as well as a “natural cohesion that is hard to find elsewhere.”

He told me that while the journey had some rough points “I never felt like I was not safe.”

The idea for restoring the Restauration came from his father, who died before it could be complete.  It is a replica of the original schooner, restored in 2010.

While a core group, that included Nils, stayed with the boat at all times, others came and went onto the vessel at the various stops along the way, recreating the route of the original journey. But the original 53 had stayed on the ship all through the voyage, and there was even a birth on board, the captain’s baby.

As I left the Seaport that day, I felt a new stronger connection to my ancestors and a new respect for what they had gone through to make a new life.

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The Topping and Cone families are sponsoring the annual OPC Foundation Seymour and Audrey Topping Scholarship:

The Scholarship recognizes the Toppings’ global legacy as pioneering journalists around the world. They worked together as team on many different, often dangerous assignments in China, Southeast Asia and Europe, including Russia. Top was a foreign correspondent and rose to become Managing Editor of The New York Times, Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, President of the International Advisory Board of Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism, and other titles. Audrey is a photojournalist with cover photographs and stories in National Geographic, The New York Times, Newsweek, Life and other major publications. In addition to the news stories that Top and Audrey broke, they authored eleven books and raised five daughters, born in four countries.