Why I'm a bad genealogist - Ingeborg Fadness family edition

Have you ever set out to document one side of your family that you didn't know much about, and make some amazing discoveries (which you sourced carefully in your files), but didn't write down right away what you did or how you did it? Unfortunately, I did exactly that with the family of my 3rd-great-grandmother, Ingeborg (Fadness) Olson. I'm going to try to reconstruct what I did, based on the information I put in my file, and the timestamps on the documents I found.

I do remember that I had documentation on Ingeborg (aka Ingebor, Ingebjor, etc), going back to 1880, when she'd have been about 24 years old. At that point, she had 4 kids, ages 8, 5, 3, and 8 months. Which means she must have started having kids when she was 15 or 16! Wow, times were different back then. I also knew from later censuses that she started going by (or was at least referred to as) Emma rather than Ingeborg. I didn't have anything that directly stated she was the daughter of Gullick Knudsen Fadness and Martha Helgesdatter Kjenes, as I'd found somewhere years ago (online? distant cousin? no idea now...). So I wanted to prove it. I found online that I could order her death certificate for only $9, which I did. The problem was, they only sent them out by snail mail, so I'd have to wait a week or two to get it. I couldn't wait that long to start digging into the problem, so I launched into Ancestry to see what I could find.

First off, I found a marriage record for Ingeborg's older brother Helge Fadness to Hanna Johannsdatter Bergstad. (These families intermarried a lot - Hanna was a sister of my ancestor Knute Bergstad, and Knute and Hanna were first cousins to Helge and Ingeborg, plus Knute married Ingeborg's daughter...like I said, lots of intermarriages). Helge's marriage record said he was born in "Vos" in Norway. I thought that could be Voss parish, Hordaland county, Norway, the same parish my Bergstad ancestors are from. So I went looking in the Voss parish emigration records on the Digitalarkivet website.

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And that's exactly where I found them. I found that Gullick, his wife Martha Helgesdatter, and their sons Knud and Helge (named after Gullick and Martha's respective fathers) immigrated to America in April 1854. This fit perfectly with what I had in my files for Ingeborg's family, as she was born in Wisconsin in January 1855. I also found another immigration record for this family from 6 years earlier, in 1848 (minus Helge, as he wasn't born yet). It seems the family intended to immigrate then, but changed their minds and stayed in Norway a few more years, and then left. It's really interesting to think that they had made up their minds to move to another country, and then for whatever reason, had to stick it out a few more years before leaving. I wonder what those years were like - were they anxious to move? Were they putting off a difficult decision because of cold feet? The answer is unknowable, but the fact that they vacillated on the decision makes them seem more human to me. It wasn't just a "pack up and go!" option for them - it was a tough choice, with consequences that would likely be permanent for all involved.

 

I kept looking for more info, and soon found Ingeborg's baptism record in the Lutheran church records in the US (though still written in Norwegian), confirming that she was born and baptized on 21 January 1855 in Wisconsin. Now that I had her exact birthdate, I just needed one thing to clinch the theory that this Ingeborg Fadness was the same as my Ingeborg Fadness - the death certificate of Ingeborg/Emma Olson.

 

Once the death certificate arrived, I compared it to what I had pieced together, and found what I needed. Ingeborg/Emma's birthdate was 21 January! The year was off (1851), but I've seen enough records where ages vary by more than that to know that this wasn't a deal breaker. Also, her father's name was listed as Gilbert Fadnes, easily an Anglicized version of Gullick Fadness.

 

Now I can finally say I have documented evidence that my Ingeborg Fadness was indeed the daughter of Gullick Knudsen Fadness and Martha Helgesdatter Kjenes. Now I can look them up in Norwegian records in Voss parish, and push the line back even further. And hopefully - I'll document it this time!

Genes Day Friday - DNA Circles at last!!

One of the cool things about DNA testing at Ancestry is their use of DNA Circles. The circle is basically a group of people who share autosomal DNA with at least 3 other people in the circle and have a common ancestor in their family trees. This means that Ancestry figures, because of the comination of DNA and family tree matches, your shared DNA probably comes from that common ancestor. Because autosomal DNA inheritance is random, you won't match everyone in the circle, even though you have the same ancestor. Ancestry looks back as far as 9 generations in your tree, so you could potentially be matched with some pretty distant cousins.

When I first got my DNA results, I didn't have a tree uploaded to my account. I've kind of been holding out for Ancestry and Rootsmagic to get their sync issues worked out, so I postponed putting up my tree for a while. But when I saw their recent blog post about how the tree sync feature is delayed (as any complex software could be) I decided to post my tree. Because I had no tree, I wasn't put in any DNA circles, so I figured my circles would show up soon after uploading the tree. I was pretty disappointed when, after a couple weeks, I still had no circles. So I did what I always do when I have to wait for something - I distracted myself with other projects, and came back later. And voila - it worked!!

 

 

All I've really had time to do so far is check out which ancestors the circles are centered around. The variety is really interesting. I have 12 circles so far, and 8 of them are for Norwegian ancestors! The closest to me in generations are Betsy Martha Olson and Knute J. Bergstad, my 2nd-great-grandparents (and spouses to each other interestingly). Four more of the circles are dedicated to each of Betsy and Knute's parents - Betsy's parents were Andreas Olson and Ingeborg Fadness, and Knute's were Johannes Sjursen Bergstad and Torbjorg Knutsdatter Fadness. The other two Norwegians in the lot are Knute Gulleikson Fadness and Ingeborg Olsdatter Rongen, who turn out to be Torbjorg Fadness's parents. That means half of my circles come from one ancestral couple and their parents or grandparents. Either these ancestors have a LOT of descendants, or my Norwegian DNA is strongly biased towards them. Or both.

 

All of these Norwegian ancestors are from my maternal grandfather's paternal side, the Bergstads. There aren't any DNA circles for his maternal Norwegians, the Hammers. I wonder if I'll see any of those pop up later?

 

My remaining four circles cluster around another family group. Adoniram Shute is my 3rd-great-grandfather on my paternal grandmother's father's side. His wife was Mary Groff, and her parents were Paul Groff and Susanna Garlinghouse. So that group of circles basically covers the ancestors of my great-great-grandmother Eldora Shute (Adoniram and Mary's daughter).

 

Of my four grandparents, my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather have ancestors represented in these circles. That means I have no circles as of yet for any of my paternal grandfather or maternal grandmother's lines. My grandpa's lack of circles, I can understand - relatively small families and recent immigrants to the Americas (1840s-1900s). My maternal grandmother's side though, I'm surprised. Colonial English, plus German immigrants with large families, plus French-Canadians with HUGE families. And no circles for any of them? Maybe they'll pop up later. I wonder how often Ancestry updates their circle roll call.

 

All in all, very interesting to see who my circles center around, and what ancestors pop up in my DNA. I'm very much looking forward to delving deeper into this!

 

 

Why my genealogy is so awesomely hard to trace - part 2

Picking up where I left off, here's a summary of where I'm at with my maternal ancestral lines, and what I want to do from here.

1. Bergstad - Thanks to a Bergstad cousin and the awesome online archives of the Norwegian government, I've got original records taking my Bergstad line back to the 1700s. I could try to push back further, but what I'd really like to do is get copies of the records about the farms they lived on, because that seems to be how things were organized in Norway back then. There are books in the FHL, I know which ones I need, I just need someone to get the copies for me.

2. Fadness - I've got some of the records for my Fadness lines that I have for my Bergstads, but not as many or as complete. I intended to go get them, just got sidetracked and never got back to them. I need to flesh out my record collection from the Norwegian archives for the Fadnesses I know about before going any further back on them. Plus I need to do a little more study on how the Norwegian naming system actually worked. I don't know enough about how the farm name worked, if it was considered part of the person's name or not. In both the Bergstad and Fadness families, they eventually adopted the farm name as their surnames, and there has to be a reason for that.

3. Olson - Another Norwegian line, in about the same situation as the Fadnesses - need to flesh out the documentation, but both in the US and Norway. This is one case where the surname came from a direct ancestor, not a farm.

4. Hammer - My last Norwegian line, slightly better documented in Norway than the Olsons and Fadnesses, but not by much. I do have some really cool homestead documents for the immigrant on this line, Philip Wilhelm Oleson Hammer for his settlement in North Dakota. I think this is another family that took the farm name as the surname. I want to document them better in Norway, and see what I can pull up on the farm records.

5. Krüger - One of my German lines in my mom's ancestry, and one where I have a lot of names and dates and places but no supporting documentation. I really want to research these guys and trace them back to the old country, but haven't because I've thought it would be too tough. Maybe I should test this and see what I can find out?

6. McDonald - My one and only Scottish line. Well, sorta - one line of McDonalds was apparently English, while the other was probably Scottish. The problem is, I'm stuck in Ontario in the mid 1800s, where there were approximately 50,000 George McDonalds/MacDonalds. It's like looking for a single strand (blade? string?) of hay in a field of haystacks. If I could track down a modern descendant and get them to take a DNA test, I might stand a chance of tracing them back to Scotland.

7. Harris - I've got some pretty good documentation on them going back to the late 1700s in America, and then it stops. Although I've always thought I need more solid info on my 4th-great-grandfather, Lewis Harris, tying him to his parents Nathaniel Harris and Mary Howard. That and colonial Virginia research is way beyond me at this point, so I'd really have to bone up before trying to tackle this line.

8. Berry - Lewis Harris married Lucinda Berry, so the time and location for the Berry's is pretty close to that of the Harrises. I've got some good info on Lucinda and her folks, but not much beyond those two generations. Again, this is colonial Virginia and perhaps Maryland, so I haven't really tried to push beyond what I already know about them.

9. Scribner - This is another early American family, where the data I have goes back to England, but I haven't verified it yet. I'm sure there's a lot of good info out there to corroborate it, I just haven't taken time to learn about how to winnow it out of the records yet.

10. Craddock - This is a probable English connection, but I only feel comfortable with my documentation on them going back to about 1830 (and even that's pushing it a bit). It's southern research, so you're dealing with missing/destroyed records much moreso than any other of my lines. I'd like to shore up what I have going back to 1850, and see where I can go from there.

11. Beilstein - I've written pretty extensively about Philena "Lena" Beilstein, probably more than any other single ancestor in my whole tree. Her story is just so fascinating and so tragic. I was recently able to find a little more info about her parents, and the man who married them. I have a lot more info on her ancestry, but not a lot of documentation to support it. I'd like to confirm it if I can and explore the Hessian connection.

Well, that about sums it up. Any recommendations on which line I should research first?