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.

Church record bonanza - Lutheran church records in US Midwest

Earlier this month I received a text message alert from Twitter, notifying me of a new tweet from FamilySearch. The tweet mentioned several record sets that had been posted or updated by Ancestry.com, one of which was the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940. I was really intrigued by this, because my Norwegian ancestors were staunchly Lutheran, and lived in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota after immigrating to the US. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to find more information about them, and maybe even fill in a few gaps.

Little did I know how right I was. Just searching for the surname Bergstad generated 219 hits! Many of these turned out to be for people not connected to me (not that I know of, at least). But I did find 70 records of my family - baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and a few burials. Most of the records were in Norwegian, right up until around the early 1900s-1910s, though the books used Norwegian titles and column headings up into the 1920s and beyond. I knew there were areas in the US where German immigrants clung onto their identity and language for many years after coming to the US (my Waechter and Beilstein ancestors were prime examples of this), but I had no idea that Norwegians had clung just as tenaciously to theirs. It was fascinating to see generation after generation of my family documented in these books, with the entries continuing in Norwegian decades after they came to this country.

Of all the records I found, three records really stood out:

Baptism records of the four oldest Bergstad children

 



First is the baptism record of four of my grandfather Tom Bergstad's siblings. Virgil and Clayton were children of John Knute Bergstad and his first wife, Mamie Wells, while Katherine and Lorraine were children of his second wife, Katherine Hammer. These were all of the children living at the time, and they were all baptized on the same day in 1928. Maybe they had lapsed in church attendance, or maybe something about Lorraine's birth (sixth months before the baptisms) spurred them to get everyone baptized. Whatever the case, I was really interested to see that they had all four of their children baptized on the same day.

Baptism record of Roland John Thomas Bergstad

Next up is the baptism record of my grandfather, Tom Bergstad. I wasn't expecting to find a record for someone so closely related to me, so this was a pleasant surprise. For some reason I'd always thought that he was named Roland John Bergstad, and that Thomas was a nickname or added into his name later. This pretty well proves that Thomas was part of his name from the beginning. It's interesting that, after four older siblings were all baptized together, that Tom's baptism didn't happen until he was over a year old. His older sister Helen, born in 1929, was baptized at seven months, so it just seems odd that they'd wait until Tom was twice that age almost. But then, I'm not Lutheran and I don't know their customs that well, so maybe this wasn't unusual.

The record that impacted me the most, though, was this one. This is the baptism record of Frances Alvira Brennan, a first cousin twice removed (our common ancestors were Knute Bergstad and Betsy Olson, my second-great-grandparents). Before finding her baptism record, I had no previous records of her existence. I tried searching Google, Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Newspaper Archive, and Findagrave.com, and can find no other records of her anywhere. So far as I can find online, this is the only record of her out there, which makes it all the more important. What gets me about this record isn't that it's a baptism; it's the little note at the far right. Next to the names of the witnesses (Mr. and Mrs. Knute Bergstad, Frances' maternal grandparents) is a note that says "Burned in fire that destroyed home in Bad Lands, died next day." It doesn't give a death date, and I don't know where the home in "Bad Lands" was. But that's a horrible way to die at any age. Her baptism occurred a little after her 3rd birthday, so I know she lived to be that old at least. I don't see her in the 1930 census, so I'm inclined to say her death occurred between Nov 1928 (the baptism) and April 1930 (the census). If that's true, she would have died at 4 1/2 at the oldest. What a tragedy for that family.

In short, I am once again blown away by the wealth of information contained in church records. I now have exact birth dates for several dozen more relatives, and a greater sense of the role religion played in the Bergstad side of my family. The records also led me to the short story of one little cousin, and even if I'd found nothing else, I'd be glad she can now be remembered.