Genealogy Jottings

The Norway Digital Archives has now posted the 1910 census online at http://digitalarkivet.uib.no/cgi-win/WebFront.exe?slag=vis&tekst=meldingar&spraak=e. Yesterday I looked at the new site. Although our forebears had all left Norway by 1910, parents and siblings remained behind. Locating people on any Norway census presents challenges due to the uncertainty of whether they used patronymics or surnames, so one must sometimes try several variations of possible names. It helps if a family member has an unusual name. The 1910 census also has an advanced search feature that enables you to limit results by birth year, etc. Using these strategies, I found the people I sought without too much difficulty. The family tree has grown again.

We genealogists try to use family gatherings like Thanksgiving as an opportunity to glean family information from relatives. This year I hardly had time for that because I spent Thanksgiving weekend readying my father’s house for sale. Still, I did find a way to use my time productively for genealogy as well as disposing of furniture and household items. I found family correspondence, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks stored in boxes and cupboards all over the house. These genealogical treasures, which I did not know existed, will take me a long time to sort and archive. Who knows what family history gem I will discover in the process?

Every year at this time, I start getting genealogical gifts ready for Christmas giving. Relatives like to learn about the family, but they do not really want to read family group sheets or pedigree charts. Instead, I select an ancestor or two and then gather information and photos about the person. I write a character sketch and send it along with copies of pertinent pictures and documents. This synthesis of information helps me focus future research while providing a unique and entertaining gift for the recipients. This year, of course, my subjects will be my Bentsen family, Norwegian immigrants whom I have researched all year.

Researchers at my German genealogy club have told me to install Google Translator if I want to look at foreign websites. I finally did, and it came in handy this week. When I did a search for one of Tony’s Norwegian family members, Lars Haagensen/Haakensen, his name came up on a Norwegian genealogy discussion page. With Google Translator, I could read the information in English. Although the translation was imperfect, I learned when and where his family immigrated. Thanks to Google Translator, I now  have several good clues for pursuing additional research on this family.

Given a choice, which do most genealogists prefer? Researching their ancestors or digesting and publishing their findings? This week the Denver Family History Center’s Barb Price, when speaking to our Germanic Genealogical Society, mentioned how she loves the thrill of the research hunt but not so much the grind of creating reports. I find the same to be true of myself. I went years without writing any more than anecdotes on my ancestors. Then I realized that I really wanted to leave behind more than a collection of family group sheets. I want to preserve real family history. To keep myself on a writing schedule, I began writing character sketches and sharing them with family members at Christmas time. Today I started on this year’s subject–Ole and Sofie Bentsen who immigrated from Norway in 1904 and 1905. Sometime next month I will send out my composition on them together with photos and copies of documents. Contact me if you are related to these people and want one of these packages.

Last weekend I spent a day attending the semi-annual seminar put on by the local chapter of Palatines to America. Shirley Riemer, author of The German Research Companion, spoke on German research strategies, including use of an Ortissippenbuch (German Town Genealogy). She packed her handouts with valuable information, and I came home with some ideas for further research. A wonderful feature of these seminars is the German lunch and dinner they offer. Some people do not even care what they will learn at the seminar; they go for the food.

When internet use first became widespread, genealogists began using online message boards to locate others who might be researching the same family lines. I have followed the Genforum on genealogy.com and the message boards on Rootsweb for a long time. Although traffic on these has slowed in recent years, enough people still log in to make the effort of checking them worthwhile. I have found relatives in Canada, Germany, and all over the United States, either through messages I have posted or by responding to those of others. You can join two different types of boards–surname or locale. Recently I learned that a couple of my relatives early in the 20th century had married into the Susag family (no message board for that name), so I posted a query on a board for Griggs Co., ND (where the marriages took place). A couple of days later, a Susag researcher sent me a Susag family tree that included my relatives!

An ancestor’s will makes good reading and provides insight to his family structure and circumstances. A couple of weeks ago I felt letdown upon learning that none of my Norwegian family in Montana left wills or probated estates. I had felt certain that since they owned land, I would find estate settlements for them. But the County Clerk in Sheridan County could not find a file for either Ole Bentsen or his father Lorents. These men must have disposed of most of their property before they died without a need for a formal probate proceeding. Convenient for the family, but disappointing for me.

An article in Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter touched a nerve with me today. He talked about some counties in Maine that charge exorbitant fees for digital copies of public records. You can read the story at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/10/maine-lawsuit-tests-limits-on-county-fees-for-records.html. We should all object to this new trend of using fees to create government profit centers. Isn’t government supposed to be non-profit?

One of my Education professors once commented on how difficult it is to impress upon high school students that the grades they earn are “forever” because they follow you for the rest of your life. This week as I looked at Norwegian church records, I found that high school grades are not the only ones with this longevity. The Lutheran church confirmation records in Norway list not only the adolescents names and other family information, but they also record a rating of each student’s knowledge of the catechism. Now, over 100 years later, we can see whether an individual scored Very Good, Good, or Not So Good. My family mostly scored “Good”, but Tony’s had several who achieved “Very Good”. Did they study harder, or was their minister an “easy grader”? And why is one of Tony’s family, Simon Hjelmstad, missing from the record? Did he fail the test altogether? I wonder whether any of these people realized at the time that their scores truly would be forever.