Genealogy remembers them all - Ivar Bergstad

I had some time tonight to dig into my own family history (yay!) and found myself drawn to the records of a relative I haven't really researched much before - Iver Bergstad, son of Ole Sjursen Bergstad and Karen Johannesdatter, born in Fertile, Worth County, Iowa, on 8 April 1878. Ivar's father Ole was born in Norway, and was the brother of my ancestor Johannes Sjursen Bergstad.

The earliest record I have of Ivar is his baptism into the Fertile Lutheran Church on 12 May 1878, just a few weeks after his birth. His godparents were Johannes Sjursen (likely his uncle and my ancestor), Knud Sjursen (another uncle) Thorbjor Knudsen and Anna (can't read her last name). Two years later, he's in the 1880 census with his large extended family - parents Ole and Karen (aka Caroline), older siblings Carl and Shur, uncle Knudt Bergstad and aunt Caren, and cousins Albert and Anne. He seems to have lived with and near family for much of his life:

1885 - Ivar lived with his parents and older brothers, as well as younger brothers John and Nils.
1895 - Ivar lived with his parents and all the previously listed siblings, as well as additional siblings Sophia and Osker.
1905 - Ivar was still living with his parents and all his siblings, none of whom had apparently yet married.
1915 - Iowa decided the best way to record the census was to make individual cards for each person. That makes it unclear who lived with who, since home addresses weren't recorded. 
1917 - He listed Ole Bergstad (maybe his father) as someone who would always know his address.
1920 - Ivar lived with his parents and brother Osker (also known as Clarence).
1925 - Ivar's father had passed away, but his mother and brother Osker still lived with him.
1930 - Osker had married a woman named Ida, and they had two children, Otto and Betty Ann. They lived with Karen, Ivar and Osker's mother, in Ivar's home.
1940 - Ivar's household included his mother, his nephew Otto, and his brother Nils.

He was physically pretty fit too - his WWI draft registration said he was 6 feet tall, 175 pounds, blonde hair and blue eyes. He worked as a farmer in every census, and in every census of his adult life, Ivar was the head of the household, even when his parents lived with him. Though he apparently never married or had kids, he took care of his family well in to his 50s and maybe longer. He seems to have been one of those men who just did what needed to be done to take care of those he loved. He passed away in North Dakota in 1971.

Family History Month - post 10

For this post, I wanted to throw it back a few centuries. This is the baptism record of my 7th-great-grandfather, Johannes Andersen Flantzaas. He was baptized on 14 November 1728 in Evanger, Voss parish, Hordaland, Norway. Flantzaas was the name of the farm they lived on, which was also spelled Flantsaas and Flansås.

The family moved to the Berstad farm, where Johannes' mother Marita was from, and his family stayed on that farm for the next four generations. His great-grandson, Sjur Johanneson Bergstad, moved his family to the US, and after 20-30 years, the family took on the name of the family farm as their surname - Bergstad.

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!

 

 

Black Sheep Sunday - The Lies of Philip Hammer

Now that things have calmed down a bit, I can finally begin to talk about Philip Hammer's second, and much more serious, episode of...misrepresentation of the facts, shall we say. In my beginning stages of research on Philip, I found he was born in Norway in 1848, and immigrated to the US sometime in the 1860s as he married his first wife Christine Steenson in Wisconsin in 1869. I couldn't find him in any 1860 or 1865 censuses, but I did find him in various federal and state censuses in 1870, 1875, 1880, and 1885, and various other documents I came across for him along the way. Through the help of distant cousins I connected with over the years, I received copies of a record Philip's son Peter Hammer made in 1940 as part of a historical data project on early North Dakota pioneers. The information from this record was apparently all provided by Peter, with no original documents (at least there were none in the copy I received), just a typescript of Peter's answers to various questions about when the family entered North Dakota, what they brought with them, where they lived, and so on. As part of the record, there was a typewritten document written by Guy M. Chance, the field worker who documented Peter's father's story, that told the story of Philip's life. Interestingly, the first full paragraph of the story is all about Philip serving in Civil War - that he was a member of Capt. H. M. Stocking's unit in Co. G, 48th Wisconsin Regulars, and that he even marched with General William T. Sherman on his march through Georgia to the sea. My first reaction was "wow, my ancestor was right there in Sherman's famous march!"

When I asked my cousin about it, she said that Philip probably never actually served in the Civil War. I asked how she knew that, and she said she had a copy of the pension file created for Philip's second wife Mathilda Kruger, and that his service was disputed in the file. At the time, I didn't go any further, and sort of let it sit there for a couple years. I attribute the wait to my genealogy ADD, where I get sidetracked on another line, and revisit things years later when they randomly pop in my head again. That happened with Philip earlier this year - I got hit with the "whatever happened to him?" bug and started digging.

I noticed on the 1885 Minnesota census, Philip was marked positive for the column "Served as a soldier in Federal army during rebellion." So he apparently said himself that he'd served in the Civil War. That was interesting, and led me to wonder whether Philip would appear in the 1890 Veteran's schedule. I went looking, and found him. By that time, he was living in New Rockford, North Dakota. He told the census taker that he did serve in the Civil War as a private in Company C, 15th Regiment of Wisconsin Infantry from 27 November 1861 to 2 July 1865. Pretty detailed information, right?



Philip Hammer in the 1890 Veteran's Schedule

So I went looking for information on the 15th Wisconsin Infantry, to see if there was any record Philip having served with them. It turns out, this regiment was known as the Scandinavian regiment, as almost all the soldiers in it were Norwegian, with some Swedes and Danes thrown in. Company C, where Philip allegedly served, was mostly from Racine County, at the southeastern corner of the state. Philip was living in Pierce County, in the far west of the state, in 1870, though he could easily have moved over the years since the war's end if he did serve. So if Philip was going to serve, that would be the perfect unit for him. Luckily, the FamilySearch Wiki has a link to the roster of Company C, so I went looking, and guess what?

 

No Philip Hammer. No Hammers at all. Not even a single Philip.

 

So I asked my cousin if she could send me the pension file she mentioned. It turned out to be about 100 pages of various documents - depositions, statements, inquires, letters, all kinds of stuff. Some of it was hard to read, and it wasn't in chronological order. So I started going through and transcribing it, and putting my transcriptions in chronological order, to make easier sense of all the documents. What I found surprised me.

 

Apparently Philip told Mathilda that he served in the Civil War, but never told her any details about the company he supposedly served in. Mathilda also recalled that he had a military discharge that was framed, but had been lost in all their moves. She also recalled visits from a man named "Big" Peterson and a man named Christianson, who she said were war buddies of Philip's. With that information, I went back to the roster of Company C, and was blown away. There was indeed an Ole Peterson, Sr., as well as an Ole Peterson, Jr., who both served in Company C. The senior Peterson could easily have been "Big" Peterson. What's more, there was a Christian Peterson as well. Could Philip have indeed served in the war, and the roster somehow missed him?

 

Since I couldn't find Philip in any Civil War rosters from this Company or Regiment (I searched various databases, as well as the entire 15th Regiment manually - no Philip Hammer), I figured the only way to answer this definitively was to look for him in Norwegian records. If I could prove he was still in Norway during the Civil War, that would put this to bed once and for all.

 

I went back to the files I had on Philip, and found that one record that I had labeled as a birth record for Philip wasn't that at all. I don't know if someone told me it was his birth record and I just noted it as such, or if I just guessed because the first couple columns are information about his birth. But upon closer inspection, it not only noted his birth date and place, it also noted the place and date of his confirmation in the Lutheran church - Domkirken parish, Bergen County, Norway, 4 October 1863.

 

Military lottery book for Bergen, 1850-1875

Here was proof that Philip not only did not enlist in Company C in 1861 (as he told the census taker in 1890), it was physically impossible for him to have done so, as he was still in Norway.

 

I later found out that this was a record of entries in the military lottery for Bergen, 1850-1875. Men were noted in this book, and (if I'm remembering correctly) were randomly selected for military service, kind of like a random draft. Kind of ironic that the first confirmation that Philip did not serve in the Civil War was a military record from Norway.

 

So then I wondered, did Philip come to the US before the Civil War ended at all? I went looking in the 1865 Bergen census to see if Philip was listed in it. It tallied all the people living in Norway as of 31 December 1865, 8 months after the end of the Civil War. A few mouse clicks, and I had my answer.

 

Philip Hammer in the 1865 Bergen census

 

I found Philip living in the household of Nils Bessesen, working as an uhrmagerlærling, or watchmaker's apprentice (along with Nils' apparent son Johannes). As an aside, the name Nils Bessesen was very interesting, because on the death certificate for Philip's first wife Christine, her father's name is listed as Nels A. Bassens, not Steenson as was given on the marriage record for Philip and Christine. Makes me wonder if he lived with his future father-in-law before emigrating to America, where he married his former landlord's daughter. But there we go with my genealogy ADD again.

 

So Philip was indeed in Norway throughout the Civil War, and immigrated sometime between the beginning of January 1866 and May 1869, when he married Christine in Wisconsin. He definitely did NOT serve in the Civil War in any capacity, because he was an ocean away when it happened. So how do you explain his listing of Company C, 15th Regiment of Wisconsin, the fact that the 15th Regiment was the Scandinavian Regiment, listing specific dates of service, and receiving visits from veterans of Company C? What about the framed discharge?

 

My guess is while living in Wisconsin, he met "Big" Peterson, Christian Peterson, and other war vets. He learned from them the units that they served in, and the dates that regiment was put together and mustered out. Then he, for whatever reason, at some point began telling others that he was a veteran of that war. The earliest mention I have of him putting himself forth as a veteran is in 1885, 9 years after the death of his first wife, who may have known him back in Norway, due to his probably living with her father, and would thus have known that he did not serve in the war. Philip's second wife Mathilda maintained that Philip told her he was a Civil War veteran, though she did not know the details of his service, and I wonder if Philip ever told her he was from Company C like he did that census taker. If he did, she didn't remember as she stated repeatedly in her depositions in her pension file that she did not know where and when he served, only that she believed that he did serve. As for the pension, I don't have any other record or mention of a framed document being kept or lost by the family, so I can only guess that it wasn't a discharge (since he never served) but some other document, perhaps from Norway, so Mathilda wouldn't have been able to read it.

 

After Philip's death, Mathilda, in good faith, applied for a pension. Since she didn't know the details of her husband's service, she was initially rejected, and told to come back with more information. A friend and neighbor of hers, James Patch, did some research for her, and found mention of a Philip Hammer who had served from Wisconsin, but from Company G of the 48th Regiment of infantry. Believing this to be his neighbor, Patch passed on the info to Mathilda, who updated her application and resubmitted it. Imagine her surprise then, when she was told Philip Hammer of the 48th already had a widow drawing pension on his service!

 

Upon learning this, the pension department launched an investigation as to why there would be two widows claiming service from the same soldier. They sent out special examiners who interviewed Ricke Hammer, the widow already receiving the pension, as well as people who knew her, and then did the same for Mathilda and her neighbors. They compiled detailed records of the ages, birth dates, and birth places of the children included in the two pension applications, and contacted the midwives and doctors who helped deliver those children. It was a pretty big deal, and a lot of effort was put into the investigation.

 

The end result was this - the Philip Hammer who did serve from Wisconsin had died back in the 1880s, and his widow had filed for a pension soon after. Mathilda's husband had died in 1899 in California, after being struck by a train. There was ample evidence that though they shared similar names, they were not the same person (so no bigamy here, thankfully!). But the inquiry was launched primarily to determine whether Mathilda had intentionally sought to draw pension on someone she had never been married to, and determined that she did not do so. Mathilda mentioned how Patch had gotten her the information, and that's why she used the service info she did, as she had no other details to go on. Patch likewise stated Philip had told him he had been in the war, but did not get any details of service from Philip.

 

My heart goes out to poor Mathilda in all of this. She trusted her husband's word, and applied for a pension in good faith, believing that she was indeed the widow of a veteran. She stated several times in her depositions that she was not well off at all, only getting a little income from some property she owned. So the pension wasn't meant to fatten her wallet - it was meant to help her survive. Sadly, she did not get it. I can only guess and hope that her children stepped up and helped her get by until she passed away in 1932.

 

Philip Hammer, his wife Mathilda, and two sons in 1884

 

I try not to judge my ancestors too harshly, but I really am left shaking my head at Philip on this one. He repeatedly misrepresented himself, to his friends, to his poor wife and kids, and to the federal government. I can't help but wonder why on earth he took this story to such great lengths. Did he have something to gain? Something to hide? Was he just jealous of those who were veterans? He never applied for a pension himself. Mathilda is quoted as saying "My husband never applied for pension. Blanks were sent him but he said he was able to make a living." So if it wasn't for financial gain, then why? Maybe one day I'll find the answer. But for now, it's at least an object lesson on the consequences of not telling the truth, one that I can pass on to my kids, and encourage them to be honest. You never know what the end result of your actions will be, and how long the aftershocks will continue to ripple.

Tuesday's Tip - Why I bother going after original records

About 10 years ago, I somehow came across a printout from the Norwegian digital archives website, that showed information extracted from the 1865 Norwegian census. It listed the names of all Hammers living in Bergen county, Norway, among whom was my 3rd-great-grandfather, Philip Wilhelm Hammer. I took the information from the extract, noted it in my files, and moved on.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was revisiting the info I'd collected on Philip, as well as going through some new documents provided by my awesome cousin Jackie. She's done a lot of digging on the Hammers, and had uncovered about 100 pages of data on Philip and the runaround his poor wife was given while applying for a Civil War pension (that is a whole nother story, to be discussed in a future post). But while going through my files on Philip, I saw that same printout from the 1865 census and realized I've never seen the original article. Really good genealogists will always tell you to go after the original document because there is often information that didn't make it to the transcription for whatever reason - it was in the sidenotes, or hard to read, or the transcriber didn't think it important enough to extract, or any number of reasons. So I figured I'd go after the original census and see what I could find.

After finding the census (which was super easy, thanks to the awesome website the Norwegian digital archives has) I didn't see anything new right away. The names were there, the information was all there, same as in the extract. So I flipped a few pages back and forth, and it turns out every farm had its own kind of title page, with instructions on how the document was to be filled out, and when it was due by (no later than 8 January 1866). It also gave the address of the farm, the name of the principal owner, and the name of the area the farm was in. Then down at the bottom of the page, it gives a place for the person completing the farm census to sign his or her name. I knew from the census data that Philip was living on Nils Bassesen's farm in Bergen county in 1865, who was probably connected to the trade he was learning (watchmaking and jewelry making). Imagine my surprise, then, to see this signature for Nils' farm census:

 

So far in my research, this is the only time I have ever seen his actual signature. And had I not gone after the original document and poked around, I never would have found it. This is a great example of exactly why it's so important to go after the original documents. You really never know what you will find there.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday - My ancestral hometowns





After blogging about my Gibson ancestors' hometown, I thought it'd be fun to browse Google Earth and mark the locations of other ancestral hometowns I've discovered in my research. Here they are!

 

 

Gross-Bieberau, Germany - My 3rd-great-grandfather Jacob Beilstein was born here in 1851.

 

Evanger, Norway - My 3rd-great-grandfather Johannes Sjursen Bergstad was born here in 1832.

 

Paris, France - My 9th-great-grandmother, Claude Demise, was born here in 1650. Other ancestors were born here as well.

Kepa Kikolska, Poland - My 3rd-great-grandfather Ludwig Heinrich Joseph was born here in 1836.

Reischewo, Poland - My 3rd-great-grandmother Justine Witt (Ludwig's wife) was born here in 1842.

 

Rosshaupt, Bohemia (now Rozvadov, Czech Republic) - My 2nd-great-grandmother Maria Zitzmann was born here in 1876

  

Uljanowka, Ukraine - My great-grandmother Augusta Joseph was born here in 1892. Her grandparents, Ludwig and Justine Joseph, moved here around 1865 from their native Poland.

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?

Sentimental Sunday - An only child with four siblings

My seventh-great-grandfather Johannes Andersen of the Berstad/Bergstad farm married Dorethe (or Dordei) Larsdatter from Hiornevigen farm on 22 June 1751 in Evanger sogn, Voss parish, Hordaland County, Norway. It still boggles my mind that I have digital copies of the church records from when they were married.

Marriage record - Johannes Andersen Berstad and Dorethe Larsdatter Hiornevigen

A little over a year later, their daughter Marite Johannesdatter was baptized. Marite had at least four siblings that I have found records for - sister Barbru born in 1753, sister Anna born in 1756, brother Anders born in 1759, and another sister named Barbru born in 1761.

However, Marite and her parents suffered a tragedy in 1758 when the older Barbru died at just 4 years and 19 weeks old (she never even got to see the youngest two siblings). Another tragedy struck when little Anders died in 1760, just 16 weeks after he was born. They remained a family of five - Johannes, Dorethe, Marite, Anna, and the younger Barbru - for the next 12 years. Then something, perhaps illness, claimed the lives of both Anna and Barbru, who were buried the same day, 22 March 1772. Not yet 20 years old, Marite had witnessed her family lay four of their five children to rest. I can't imagine what that kind of frequent encounter with loss and grief would do to a young girl.

Then, nearly two years later, something wonderful happened - Marite married Sjur Nielsen from Horvei farm, also in Voss parish. Part of me wonders what she thought about that day - did she remember the siblings who should have been there? Did she grieve for her parents, who would only get to see one of their five children live to be married? Or was she happy that she was able to give them that day of joy, to give them the chance to see their only surviving child find a husband and have a family of her own? It was probably a mixture of all of that, and more.

It's sad that Marite ended up being an only child, but I'm grateful that she survived. The loss of her siblings may have helped her cope with the losses she suffered as a parent - she also lost four children in infancy. Her parents lived long enough witness the first of those losses, a son named Niels Siursen who died at 8 months, and I'd like to think that they helped her and her husband get through it. But Marite also had two children, Johannes (my ancestor) and Niels, that her parents lived long enough to see. Hopefully they were able to spend time with their grandchildren before they passed away. It wouldn't have made up for all the losses they experienced, but it might have made things a little easier knowing that some of their posterity would survive.

Two brothers, one name

In doing genealogy research, I've come across habits and traditions of people in different places that sometimes leave me scratching my head. I've written before about some American traditions of this nature, but in my research into Norwegian records I've come across a new one.

My Norwegian ancestors had a habit that is, from my perspective, very unusual. If the family had a child that died young, they would sometimes name a subsequent child (of the same gender) with the same name. I'm not sure if it was just a determination to have the name in the family, or the desire to see a descendant carry on a family name into future generations, or what ever else may have inspired the tradition. But I've seen it happen in multiple generations of that side of my family. For example, my second-great-grandparents Knute and Betsy (Olson) Bergstad had a daughter named Olga, born in 7 January 1900, who died before she was a year old. Knute and Betsy's next child, another daughter, was born 12 Feb 1901, and they named her Olga as well, but added the middle name Sophia. 

Knute's great-grandparents Johannes Sjursen and Brytteva Johannesdatter did something similar a hundred years earlier. Johannes's third child and second son, Johannes Johannesen, was born about September 1807, but died just 15 months later in February 1809. Later that year, Brytteva gave birth to a baby boy, whom they named Johannes Johannesen, just the same as his older brother. The name Johannes is pretty dominant in this family, so maybe they were just determined to have a surviving son carry the name forward. But it still seems a little morbid to me to give a child the same name as an older sibling who passed away. 

However, just recently, I found a new spin on this tradition in the family of Johannes Sjursen's parents, Sjur Nielsen and Marite Johannesdatter. Sjur and Marite's firstborn son, Niels Sjursen, was born in February 1775. 

Baptism record of Niels Sjursen b.1775

I knew from previous research that he died in 1779, and that a younger son, also named Niels, was born in 1779, so I assumed it followed the traditional pattern. But then I found that this wasn't the case. 

Burial record of Niels Sjursen, b.1775, d.1779

By going to the original records, I found that the older Niels was buried on 24 October 1779, but that the younger Niels was baptized on 3 October 1779, three weeks earlier. This took me by surprise; why would the family name one son Niels, and then a second son also Niels while the first Niels was presumably still alive? If the older Niels had died before the younger Niels was born, why did they wait at least 3 weeks to bury him? I am admittedly completely ignorant of Norwegian burial customs, but I doubt the family would have waited a month to bury their son after his passing. So what happened? 

Baptism record of Niels Sjursen, b.1779

After thinking about it for a while, I came upon a possible solution that made me very sad. What could have happened is this - perhaps the older Niels had taken ill or been injured at some point, but not fatally, or at least not immediately so. By the time the younger sibling was born, it was apparent that the older Niels wasn't going to make it, and they named the younger sibling Niels to preserve the name. Then sometime in the next three weeks, the older Niels passed away and was buried, leaving only one Niels in the family. I can't imagine losing one of my kids at any point in their lives. But to lose one so close to the time that another one is about to be (or has just been) born, and to know ahead of time that he was going to die, and so name your newborn son after him, is especially heartbreaking. 

If naming the younger child after the older was a form of paying tribute to the lost child, then the older Niels must have made quite the impression on his mom and dad in the short four years and eight months he was with them. And now, 235 years later and thousands of miles away, little Niels is remembered again. 

Treasure Chest Thursday - My first foray into Norway

I was lucky enough a couple years ago to attend a class for Norwegian genealogy research at the local Family History Expo taught by Jan Sjavik, a Norwegian native who teaches Norwegian at the University of Washington. The class was awesome, full of real examples of how to use the records, and great explanations of how to use the Norwegian digital archives website. I've been a total Johnny-come-lately in getting around to making my first real attempt at original Norwegian research, but a week or so ago, I thought I'd give it a shot and see what I could find.

I've written before about getting some help in searching these archives, so I kind of knew how to go through them, I'd just never made the attempt on my own before. But I knew from Prof. Sjavik's class that the best and most reliable records for Norwegian research are the parish registers, and that all available registers have been digitized and made available online for free by the Norwegian national archives (pretty sweet deal, huh?). However, there aren't indexes for these records yet, so you have to know what parish your people came from, and then search the registers manually. Some of them are broken down by year and event type (baptism, burial, banns, etc), and some of them are just everything together in one book. Based on my previous research, I knew that my Bergstad ancestors came from Voss parish in Evanger, Hordaland county. So I decided to take a family I had some info on that I'd found in Ancestral File years and years ago when I was first starting out, but hadn't confirmed with actual records yet, and went in search of information to confirm or refute that info.

I started with the family of Johannes Sjursen Bergstad, my fourth-great-grandfather, who was supposedly born in 1777. He and his wife Brytteva Johannesdatter Horvei were the parents of 10 children:
Marita, Sjur (my ancestor), Johannes (who died as an baby), Johannes (they reused the name), Niels, Anna, Olav, Anders, Ivar, and Dordei. According to my info, Marita was born in 1803 and Dordei was born in 1820, so they had kids in pretty rapid-fire succession. Much moreso than me, I must say, with only 3 kids to show for 9 years of marriage. I figured I'd start with the patriarch, Johannes Sjursen, and see what I could find for him. I pulled up the Voss parish register book for 1777, went to the births, and started going through the entries one by one. I don't read or speak Norwegian, but I can recognize names, and I hoped that would be enough. Turns out, it was!

With some help from the Norway Genealogy Research group on Facebook, I confirmed that this was indeed my ancestor, who was baptized on the 21st Sunday after Trinity, or October 19, 1777. No actual birth date was given, but it does give his parents' names as Siur Nielsen and Mairtta Johannesdatter Bergstad, which was exactly what I have in my files. The names of the witnesses were interesting too - Knud Biørge, Knud Andersen Herveij, Niels Siursen Wasenden, Anna Biørge and Brita Andersdatter Bergstadnæs. I'm still not sure if or how Bergstadnæs is related to my Bergstad family, but I would tend to think so. That's something I still need to research. But boy was I excited by all this info! I had actually done original research, and found what I was looking for! I thought, if I could find him, why not look for all his children as well? So I did. 

I learned a couple things right away from finding all these records. First, the research I found on Ancestral file was very, very accurate. The only details that were wrong were Olav's name was actually Ole, Dordei was Durdei, and the first son Johannes died in February 1809 and not 1808. But everything else was spot on. That made finding these records a lot easier, and my confidence in the data grew with each record found. 

Another thing that stood out to me was the names of the witnesses for these baptisms. Some of the witnesses were from families whose surnames I recognized - Bergstad obviously, but Flantzaas (spelled Flansas in my files) and Horvei are both families that married into the Bergstads. There were many I didn't recognize, but kept seeing over and over again, especially Biørge. I wonder if there isn't a family connection there, maybe cousins or in-laws or something. 

I was also interested in how rare the name Johannes was, comparatively speaking. I thought it would be tough finding my Johannes, given how common the name John is in English speaking countries, but it actually turned out to be pretty rare. It made finding the birth records a lot easier, as the records all start with the name of the father, and I learned to skim the page for the father's name and just search for Johannes. 

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised at how easily the search for Johannes' family was concluded, and how I was able to put the family together so quickly. I now have baptism dates for all of his kids, and exact birth dates for a few of them. Plus there's just something magical about seeing a two hundred-year old record in a foreign language, with the name of your ancestor in it, and you're one of only a few family members to see that record since it was written. I am really looking forward to finding more of my relatives in these records, and maybe (hopefully) learning how to read more than just the names.