Genealogy Jottings

This month we began the process of moving my 83-year-old Dad out of his big ol’ house and in with us. As a friend and I were comparing notes about this process, we talked about what to do with all the heirlooms and mementos that one finds in a long-time family home. So many memories attach to the items stored away. She talked about her family’s hand-made quilts and I mentioned doilies that my grandmother had crocheted. My friend and I talked about the wisdom of labeling the special things–who owned it, when it was acquired, why it is meaningful. In my own family I find this to be so true, and not just for my children’s sake. My own younger sister does not know why some things should be kept rather than tossed. I need to get busy with the labeling!

Seasoned genealogy researchers always advise spending time early in your search seeking out cousins for family information. A couple of weeks ago, my mother’s cousin contacted me after seeing information I had posted on this website. We are now enjoying updating each other after our families lost touch with one another over 20 years ago. This is not the first time this has happened over the years, and I love to get these requests. The more people we have working, the faster the search moves ahead. Cousins often have relevant material (photos, correspondence, Bibles) that passed down through their line. Until you contact those distant cousins, you do not know what treasures you will find.

A lot of Norwegian jokes feature Ole and Lena, the stereotypical Norwegian immigrants. My family actually had siblings with these names, my great-grandfather Ole Bentsen and his sister Lina Bentsen Johannesen Torbergsen. Ole came to America in 1904, their parents came over in 1905, and Lina followed in 1909. The other child in the family, a sister named Riborg, had died at age 16 in Norway. Ole and his folks settled in northeastern Montana while Lina went to Seattle. I never met any of these people myself, but I wonder if they appreciated Ole and Lena jokes.

We switched internet providers recently, and during the transition period we were without high speed service for about 3 weeks. Boy did that affect my research! So many records are now online, and I really missed being able to just sit at the computer and go, go, go. So far this year I have been able to dig through Norway’s online archives, to search the BLM’s lists of recipients of government land, to look at U.S. census records, and to contact librarians all over the U.S. for obituaries, all from home. None of this has cost me dime! And then abruptly, I was at a research standstill until our new internet service was installed. Okay, I did use the time to clean up some stuff in the office, but that is not nearly as fun. Now I am back online and back in the archives with even faster internet service than I had before.

A couple of years a group of us started the Germanic Genealogical Society of Colorado, and we meet once a month at the Denver Public Library. Oftentimes, genealogy groups do not meet over the summer, and we discussed taking a hiatus, too. But instead, we decided to take a field trip together. One day this week we picked up box lunches at a local German deli and then met in a nearby park to eat. Afterwards, several of the group went on to a German bakery to get dessert. Conversations ranged from trading research tips to learning about several members’ plans for traveling to Germany later in the year. I think we all enjoyed socializing with our fellow German researchers on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Colorado.

This week we are in a transition between internet service providers. Although I can get online, our wireless service is slow. I am remembering dial-up all too well! So instead of sitting impatiently at the computer waiting for pages to load, I decided to clean up the office space instead. All those stray pieces of handwritten notes and all those torn out magazine articles are being filed or digitized. I made lists of websites to visit and books to read. When I have our high speed line back, I will be able to work more efficiently in a less cluttered office. I can hardly wait!

This week I ordered from the National Archives my 8th land entry file for one of our direct ancestors.  Our family really liked that free or cheap land! In fact, great-aunt Signe told me that her parents and grandparents left Norway in the early 20th century because they could get free land in “Amerika”. They homesteaded in Montana, and Tony’s Norwegian family homesteaded in North Dakota, perhaps for the same reason. The 1893 file for his great-grandfather, Hans Jorgensen, is the one I ordered this week. I still have a couple to go for another of Tony’s great-grandparents, and I will order those when I do other research on that line. Often these files contain naturalization information that is otherwise hard to find. The files themselves are easy enough to locate these days. The Bureau of Land Management website has the lists of land patentees with all the pertinent information needed to order the files from the National Archives.

Visiting the port city of New Orleans last week has inspired me to collect all the ship passenger lists for our ancestors who came from Norway. Some are easier to find than others. Ole Bentsen’s ship and arrival date were in his homestead file. His wife Sofie popped up on the Ancestry.com index. Tony found the Hjelmstad clan information on the Norway Heritage website. Now I am looking for the tougher ones–my great-great grandparents Nick and Karen Bentsen and Tony’s great-grandparents, Syver Nelson, Margit Pedersdatter Vareberg, and the Thore Hvalstads. So far, we have found that most arrived through the port of Boston although Sofie and Riborg Bentsen sailed to Quebec and entered the U.S. through Canada. The book I am reading, They Came In Ships by John Coletta, is giving me some good guidance for finding these records.

We have been visiting New Orleans while Tony attends a conference. Not much genealogical research going on here! But for the hours while he is in class, I brought along John Coletta’s book They Came in Ships to read. I have been meaning to read it for a long time, and this is the week I will finally have time to do it. Tony’s family actually did arrive in the port of New Orleans from Germany. So in some ways we are walking in their footsteps this week. I will bet though, that they did not party on Bourbon Street while they were here.

We just learned that one of Tony’s relatives founded the town of Mohall, North Dakota. The town’s name is derived from the name of its founder, Martin Olson (M. O.) Hall. Mr. Hall was a first cousin of Tony’s great-grandmother, Beate Walstad. Both M.O. and Beate were grandchildren of Anders Nilsen and Berte Torkildsdatter of the Bjerke Farm in Norway’s Ringsaker District, and both were born in Norway. Their families later immigrated to the U.S. Mr. Hall (1852-1925) had great energy and ambition and trained in the law. He founded Mohall about 1901 when he learned that excellent farmland in western North Dakota was opening to homesteaders. He recruited a large number of his relatives who were land-hungry to file claims adjoining the new town he envisioned. He even went to Norway and tried to recruit some relatives there, but he found no takers. The town grew slowly, and M.O. himself was the first postmaster, banker, storekeeper, and newspaper editor. Mohall eventually became the county seat of Renville County, North Dakota.