Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘Genealogy’ Category

My mother’s grandparents emigrated from the Nordic countries in the early 20^th century. I know a lot about their lives in America but not so much about their lives in the old country. They were young married couples when they arrived in the United States. Immigrants are said to have been pulled here because they wanted a better life. But what, exactly, did they leave behind? What pushed them away from their homeland?

Family members spoke of how my Norwegian ancestors, Ole Bentsen and Sofie Sivertsdatter, had left their home farms in Bø and Eidsfjord when they grew up to find work in Stokmarknes, a larger city in the Vesterålen District of Norway. What did they do there? Both were literate but had no higher education. They must have worked as laborers of some sort. Stokmarknes lies in the cod fishing area of Norway, so perhaps Ole worked on a boat, a trade he could have learned from his fisherman father.

What did Sofie do? Domestic help? Fish processing? I know she had some baking skills. After she settled on a Montana homestead, she made bread not only for her own family but also for a bachelor neighbor. I also know that just before moving to Stokmarknes, she had tended sheep on her uncle’s place. Maybe she put those skills to use on one of the farms surrounding Stokmarknes. Bervik perhaps, where she lived in the months after her marriage and where her daughter Riborg was born.

I know less about the background of my Finnish ancestors, Alexander Mattila and Ada Alina Lampinen. They said only that they were from Viipuri which was the second-largest city in Finland at the time. In looking at their records, I find that neither of them was born there. It appears that they, too, were born elsewhere, Alex in the rural parish southeast of Viipuri, and Ada in Juuka parish north of there. As young adults they, too, went to the closest city, Viipuri, probably to find work.

So what work did they do? Alex was listed as a laborer when he emigrated, but no particular line of work was specified. Later in life, he worked as a carpenter. I do not know whether he acquired that skill in Finland or in the United States.

As for Ada, I do not know what she may have done in Viipuri. Worked in a shop? Domestic help? My mom remembered her baking skills—homemade bread and cakes.

Both of these couples worked hard, but obviously they saw no opportunity in their home countries. They felt the push of wanting something better. The Norwegians wanted their own land, impossible to acquire as part of the laboring class in Norway. The Finns may have wanted to get away from their strife-torn country that suffered from hunger and disease. Under the harsh rule of the Russian czar, worker unrest was brewing, food was scarce, and public health did not seem to be a priority. Alex’s father and one sister had both died of tuberculosis.

So America beckoned. Ole and Sofie followed their dream to live in a country that gave away land to people willing to work had for it. Relatives in America urged Alex and Ada to come and settle in a healthy Finnish community in Minnesota where there was plenty of work, food, and political stability. Both couples saved their money and took steamships to a new land to build a new life. And they never talked much about the old one.

Since I began writing this blog several years ago, it has been a part of the larger norsky.net site that contains various family enterprises. In addition to our genealogy work, it contains links for my husband’s music arrangements and his media conversion business. A mixed bag, to say the least.

I have wanted to carve out our genealogy work and create a dedicated site for some time now. This month we finally did it.

The new site goes by the blog name, Genealogy Jottings, and you can find it at www.genealogyjottings.com. The blog appears on the home page, and hot links take you to our family trees. Of course you can still find Genealogy Jottings and the family trees if you visit the norsky.net site.

So, update your bookmarks if you wish to visit the blog directly. I would love for you to visit my new home.

As I do every year, I chose one family line for my research focus in 2014. This year my husband/tech advisor and I plan to take a trip to Finland, so guess what? I will target my research on my Finnish line. Two of my great-grandparents emigrated from Finland in 1905.

I worked on them once before, a couple of years ago. At that time, I pretty well fleshed out my great-grandfather Alexander Mattila’s birth family. He was from the area outside Viipuri, then Finland’s second-largest city. Today, the city lies in Russia and is known as Vyborg. We plan to take a canal cruise to see Vyborg while we are in Finland.

My great-grandmother, Alex’s wife, was Ada Alina Lampinen. I think she came from the Kuopio area of Finland. She presents a more difficult research subject than her husband Alex did. Their eldest daughter, my grandmother, knew a lot about her father’s family, and she passed that information along to me. Not so with her mother’s family. All she could say was that her mother was the only member of her family to emigrate, and she knew nothing of those who remained behind.

Obviously, then, my goal is to learn more about Ada’s family this year. Lampinens, I am on my way to find you. I do not want to be visiting the wrong places when I take my trip.

Every year about this time, the media puts out lists of celebrities who passed away during the year. Locally, my church holds a Service of Remembrance on the last Sunday of the year to remember those connected to our congregation who have died this year. We all seem interested in taking this opportunity to remember those we have lost before we turn the calendar page to another year.

My family said good-bye to just one soul in 2013, my great-uncle Otto Sigurd Bentsen. He lived a long life, and died in January at the age of ninety-four.

Otto saw many changes during his lifetime. He was born on his father’s homestead southeast of Redstone, Montana. He went from helping his dad farm with horses to watching his daughter and son-in-law run a highly technical farming operation on that same land. During his lifetime, his farm received an award from the State of Montana for keeping the farm in one family for 100 years. Otto was very proud that the farm had only two owners during that time, his father and himself. They kept the farm going through two world wars and the Depression.

Otto worked hard to live the life his parents hoped for their children when they emigrated from Norway in the early 20^th century. He went to high school, served in World War II, married, and raised a family on his own land. He was a respected member of his church and community.

Otto was the last member of his generation in our family. With his passing, a new generation takes its place as the family elders. Otto set a good example for all of us to follow.

During my lifetime, genealogy has progressed from a paper-and-pencil hobby into one requiring a sophisticated knowledge of technology. For the past 30 years, the Computer Interest Group (CIG) of the Colorado Genealogical Society has pushed us along the learning curve.

This week the club celebrated its 30^th anniversary with a potluck supper and a program given by several of the members. We looked back at the early days of the club, when members pondered the big questions of whether to purchase a computer (they were so expensive!), and how to make the best use of one (spreadsheets? software programs? modems?). We then looked to the future, with demonstrations of portable scanners and camera technology.

Over the years, all the techies in the group inspired me to keep upgrading my hardware and learning new applications. Years ago, I attended a CIG Symposium in the United Methodist Church basement where they demonstrated several genealogy software programs. From information gleaned that day, I chose my first program and stepped into the computer age.

Now I attend CIG workshop meetings to share information with other users of the same genealogy program that I use. I attend program meetings to find out about social media and the world of genealogy websites. It would be hard to gather all this knowledge on my own. Belonging to this club has helped a Luddite like me use modern tools to find family information in the most efficient way.

We are always encouraged to “Bring a Friend to CIG”. We welcome anyone desiring a little technological help, or some genealogy fellowship. For more information, see the CIG website http://www.cogensoc.us/cigmain.htm

For the past several years, my husband/tech advisor and I have prepared genealogy-related Christmas gifts for our extended families. This gives us the incentive to digest our findings for the year and distribute the information. Here is what we will send out this year:

• For the Hjelmstad and Walz descendants, a map detailing the European points of family origin in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. The map also shows emigrants’ ports of departure in Europe and ports of arrival in the United States.
• For the Bentsen descendants, family group sheets and biographical sketches for the members of the Norwegian immigrant generation and a copy of the only photo I possess of one of the couples, Karen and Nick Bentsen.
• For my husband’s Norwegian family, this year’s rosemåling Christmas ornament from the Sons of Norway. http://www.sofn.com/‎

Last night we put the finishing touches on our maps and documents. Everything will be ready to mail out soon!

Recent news about deaths from natural disasters, accidents, and crimes made me wonder how many deaths in my own family occurred this way. These events cut a life short, so they usually make the news. As a genealogist, I try to collect this information as part of my research. I have found several news stories in my own family tree.

Working back in time, here is my list of our twentieth century fatal events:

• Hugo Alexander Mattila (1918-1987) died in a home fire in Gainesville, Florida,
• Betty Karoline Johansen Harrigan Cummings (1904-1954) was murdered by a local handyman in her Seattle, Washington home,
• Johan Martin Johansen (1889-1947) drowned in the Gulf of Alaska after being swept overboard from a fishing boat during a storm,
• Alexander Mattila (1878-1945) died due to trauma from being hit by a train as he walked home along the railroad tracks in Hibbing, Minnesota,
• Francis Edmonds (1876-1944) fell from a horse and broke his neck while herding sheep in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana,
• Rose Wilhelmina Mattila Porras (1896-1941) froze to death in a snowbank in Hibbing, Minnesota,
• Owen Herbert Reed (1896-1935) died from injuries received in a truck accident near Brighton, Colorado.

Only one of these deaths, the Seattle murder, resulted from a crime. Another, the drowning, occurred during a storm. The rest were accidents.

Now we find ourselves well into the twenty-first century, and we have had no deaths from anything other than natural causes. With all the danger in our modern world, we can count ourselves lucky.

Attention, all you Norway researchers! As promised, here is the link to my husband/tech advisor’s guest post on UpFront with NGS: http://upfront.ngsgenealogy.org/2013/11/using-norwegian-digitalarkivet-search.html

That time of year has rolled around again where I refocus my genealogical efforts from research to writing. Every November I choose an ancestor or ancestor couple as a writing subject. For Christmas, I distribute my finished product to my children and siblings and also to any interested cousins descended from that ancestor. I like this method of preserving and sharing my research.

After my trip to Norway this summer, naturally I decided to write about Norwegian ancestors. My four Norwegian great-great-grandparents all lived in the same area of Nordland in the latter half of the 19^th century, so I will prepare a compiled work on the four of them. I will include three items with the Christmas gift this year:

1. Family group sheets for the Karen (1851-1916) and Nick (1854-1919) Bentsen family and for the Sivert Knudsen (1843-1907) and Martha Hansdatter (1841-1900) family,
2. My only photograph of Karen and Nick Bentsen, and
3. A character sketch I will write about the lives of these four people.

Amazingly, I have collected quite a bit of information on these ancestors, even though Sivert and Martha never left Norway. Much of that is due to the tireless efforts of my husband/tech advisor who has become quite an expert in navigating the online Norwegian archives.

He has a writing project of his own. He will share his expertise in Norwegian research in an upcoming guest blog post for Upfront with NGS, the National Genealogical Society blog. Stay tuned for the link when it appears.

Today is All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, a secular name by which it is more commonly known. People will dress up in costumes and celebrate at parties complete with jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, spiders, witches, etc. My young grandchildren can hardly wait to rake in the candy when they go out trick-or-treating tonight.

Yet October 31 historically has had a much more religious significance. Christians have long kept vigil this night for the observance of All Saints Day tomorrow.

Of even more significance to my family is that October 31 marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. On All Hallows Eve in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg Church to protest the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church. This shocking act marked the beginning of the Reformation and the Lutheran faith.

Luther’s teaching spread far, and the Nordic countries quickly left the Roman church to embrace Lutheranism. My mother’s family in Norway and Finland followed the state-mandated Lutheran tradition for hundreds of years.

The Lutheran church records in these countries still exist. They provide valuable genealogical information to me in their lists of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials. With these records, I can trace my family back many generations relatively easily.

So Halloween means more to me than just another secular party day. In addition to All Hallows Eve, it is the birthday of the Lutheran church. This year my Lutheran congregation celebrated, not with candy and costumes, but by performing Bach’s cantata #80 based on the great hymn of the Reformation, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. I celebrate Reformation Day today, not just Halloween.