Ole's Blog

Bygdebok for South Fron

Back in June, I did some work on the bygdebok (farm & family book) for Fron parish, the source cited by Ragnhild Kjorstad in her landmark letter of 1989 regarding the pedigree of Lars Paulson. Based on my reading of this prior source, I concluded that Ragnhild made a mistake when she connected Lars’ father, Paul Svensen Flaade, as a son of Sven Paulsen Lillegaard, who owned the latter farm prior to his death in 1756.

It is true that the bygdebok states that Paul Svensen Flaade is “possibly” from Lillegaard. The problem is that another Paul Svensen, son of Sven Paulsen and no way the same person as Paul S. Flaade, owned the Lillegaard farm itself from 1760-1790. That would seem to prove that “our” Paul Svensen Flaade must be (a) not from Lillegaard after all, or (b) at least the son of some other “Sven.”

But there is another possibility I did not consider at the time: (c) What if Sven Paulsen Lillegaard had two sons named Paul! Wildly unlikely, to be sure, but not completely unprecedented. In poring over a large amount of census data from a variety of places and periods, I have seen it once or twice, where two children in the same family had the same given name. Here is a related fact: it was customary in 19th c. Norway, and elsewhere, to reuse a child’s given name if an older child  died before another of the same sex was born. One can imagine possible reasons for expanding on this custom; for example if the first son was sickly, with a poor prognosis for survival, or possibly in the case of an illegitimate child (!- and we have bumped into a few of those in our closet, haven’t we ).

In our own time, we have the example of boxer, buffoon, and pitchman George Foreman, who named all five of his sons “George.” I thought that was just a joke just made up for a TV commercial, but I looked it up. It is a bona fide, legal, factual joke.

I’m not “rehabilitating” Sven Paulsen Lillegaard and his 4 generations of ancestors back into my data just yet, but perhaps I was a bit hasty in ruling them out.

Øyer, Gudbrandsdal, Norway.

Jorgen Gulbransen Bierke,  Ømbjør Samuelsdatter, Samuel Jonsen Stalberg, Lisbet Johannesdatter, Gulbrand Christensen Melum, Anne Christensdatter Bjerke, Samuel Jorgensen.

When I got back to around 1750, the amount of info thinned out badly. Samuel Johnsen’s christening (Samuel Jorgensen’s maternal grandfather):

Samuel Jonsen christened 1744

Year 1744. Date is given by the Sunday of the church year. FamilySearch.org index says it is 9 Feb. Father: Jon Stalsberg, no patronym. No mother’s name at all. Other christening records are equally uninformative. “Faddere” are the witnesses. Table from Arkivnett Oppland.  Note: Arkivnett Oppland searches ONLY by given name and farm name. Searching by “fathername/ family name” is an option but seems to be broken as of 03-16-09. Recheck later.

The baptized:

Parents:

Faddere:

= = =

A similar record for Gulbrand Christensen’s birth (Samuel Jorgensen’s paternal grandfather):

Year 1746, 9 Oct. (18th Sun. after Trinity). I have tried Arkivnett Oppland for several names, but this is the only other one I have hit so far. Their transcription:

The baptized:

Parents:

Faddere:

Two of these witnesses link to above record: Madme. Wielsgaard (perfect match), and Marie Lunche (same farm name, I’m still thinking it must be Lunde?)

Info is getting mighty sparse, but I found the marriage of one man named Christen that could be the right one.  The connection: one of the witnesses is from Melum (and is also a Pedersen, same as bridegroom).

Cristen Pedersen married 1740

Year 1740, date 20 Dec. Christen Pedersen Valberg fra Taaberg and Marie Christensdatter  Ensbye. Witnesses Friderik Pedersen Melum, Torger Christensen Jetsend(?).

Christen’s two farm names,Valberg and Taaberg, are both near Trondheim, very far from Øyer. At least I could not locate any other farms by those names. Such long distances (in 1740) would normally be traveled only by someone like a soldier. Perhaps Christen was a soldier, as we know that his son Gulbrand was (from Gulbrand’s marriage record). Marie’s farm, Ensbye, is in Øyer parish, about 20 miles south of Tretten.

This advances us back another generation, to a time over 250 years ago. In Europe, Johann Sebastian Bach was still writing music. In the New world, England, Spain, France, and others were still quarreling over colonial territory, without even a hint of their eventual struggle for independence. I will take a break now and update the graphics on the static pages of the site.

Jorgen Gulbransen Bierke,  Ømbjør Samuelsdatter, Samuel Jonsen Stalberg, Lisbet Johannesdatter Sandvig, Gulbrand Christensen Melum, Anne Christensdatter Bjerke.

Øyer, Gudbrandsdal, Norway.

Samuel Jorgensen's grandparents

The rest of this post may be a little technical, and if you’ve come here at all (*there are ^&$% few of you lately) you may want to bail now.

We left off with the christening of Samuel Jorgensen of Bierke farm in Tretten congregation, Øyer parish. Samuel (my great-great grandfather, and same for all grandchildren of Isaac, Axel, and Louise Larson), was baptized on 26 Dec. 1815. There are only his parents’ first names, Jorgen and Ømbjør. Beginning with the year 1815, and working our way back page by page to 1810 in the Øyer Ministerialbok 1784-1824.

Samuel's parents married 1810

Year 1810, date 7 January. [Bachelor] Jorgen Gulbrandsen Bjerkestunn (? – must be some variant of Bjerke; “tun” means “farmyard”) and [girl] Ømbjør Samuelsdatter Bjerke. Witnesses include Tosten Sandvig. Now we have surnames for Samuel’s parents. Not their ages, but FamilySearch will hunt for their births, between 20-30 years prior to 1810. Fortunately, the Øyer churchbooks are not cut off at 1800, as they are for Fron parish.

In the same churchbook as above, I found them both.

Jorgen christened 1789

Year 1789, Tretten, parents are Gulbrand and Ane [of] Bierke, born 11th Jan. baby Jorgen. Again, no patronymic names of parents.

Ømbjør 1789

Year 1789, parents are Samuel and Lisbet [of] Bierke, date 27th Nov, baby: Ømbjør. Once again, witnesses include a Sandvig and a Glomstad. Well, it’s back to paging through the films without benefit of an index, looking for the marriages of two sets of parents, using only first name and farm name, and a one-ended window for marriage date. It looks like Jorgen’s parents do have a Bjerke connection; this must be them:

Gulbrand & Anne married 1783

Year 1783, date 6th March. [Soldier and widower] Gulbrand Christensen Melum and [widow] Anne Christensdatter South Bierke.

Witnesses: Mogens Soelberg and Mads Bierke. Second date (Ceremony?) 28th March. Unfortunately, no age of bride and bridegroom here. Luckily a friend at the DIS-Norge chatroom led me to another search engine (with English support, even) at Arkivnett Oppland. Their index only includes a few of the Øyer parish books (and none for Fron parish), but the period I’m working on is there, and there’s a lot more to look for in it. I haven’t tried it out yet, but will report back.

Meanwhile I found two possibilities for Ømbjør Samuelsdatter’s parents. Problem is, Bierke farm is not mentioned for any parties, including witnesses, to either marriage. Here they both are:

Year 1788, date 15th April. [Bachelor] Samuel Samuelsen Klovemoen and [girl]Lisbet Jensdatter Glomstad. Witnesses are Clemet Glomstad and Samuel Klove.

No mention of Bierke here, but note that there was a witness named Glomstad at Ømbjør’s christening. However, the record below has another connection.

Year 1784, date 31 May. [Bachelor] Samuel Johnsen Stalsberg and [girl] Lisbet Johansdatter Sandvig. Remember Sandvig? That was the farm name for several witnesses in above records.

Witnesses are Clemet Glomstad (!! same witness as in previous record!!) and Clemet Stalsberg. To sort out this problem, I turned to the Census of 1801.

Unlike Skurdal, Sør-Fron, there was only one Bjerke, Øyer in the census. And eureka – There I found both Ømbjør Samuelsdatter and Jorgen Samuelsen, and their entire families! Excerpts:

.

So, Samuel Johnsen is the one. He has a different wife (Lisbet Johanesdatter must have died in the 12 years since Ømbjør was born). Of more interest: Samuel is also a “Huusbonde,” which I think means an owner, or at least “boss” or long-term lessee on the land.  Samuel is one of two “Huusbonder” on this farm. Gulbrand Kristensen, on the other hand, is one of two “Huusmen,” a familiar term to regular readers of this blog. For simplicity, I sometimes just say, “peasant.” Gulbrand’s marriage record lists him as a soldier and  and a widower when he married Anne Christensdatter (!) in 1783. His residence then was listed as Melum.

Now we have solid info – Names, ages, and residences, for not only Samuel Jorgensen’s parents and grandparents, but his parents’ siblings as well! Furthermore, with the Øyer churchbooks intact back to the 1600’s, There are good prospects of getting back another two or more generations. Stay tuned!

Now that I have broached the question of how Great-grandpa Ole got his name (see part I), Kari Larsdatter’s son Ole, christened in 1855,  raises similar issues. Since the baby was illegitimate, it is understandable that he was not named for his paternal grandfather, Knut. I think we can safely assume that Kari had not met her future husband Ole Pedersen Nesseth of Gausdal parish; she didn’t move to Gausdal and marry him until seven years later.

Why was the baby not named after some male ancestor of his mother?  “Lars” would have been logical;  Lars was not only the name of this boy’s maternal grandfather, but also the name of Kari’s maternal grandfather.  Incidentally, Lars Poulsen had died just 10 months before this Ole was born, which would seem to make “Lars” even more appropriate. Another choice might have been Poul. Did Kari name him Ole after her 14-year-old brother? That doesn’t seem likely. Or is there some “Ole” in the life of the Lars Poulsen family, or even two Ole’s, related or not, that we don’t know about?

Back to the earlier Ole, Ole Larson: here’s a dark, hugely unlikely, but fictionally intriguing scenario: Suppose that then, as today, babies were occasionally named out of gratitude for some benefactor of the family.  The sentencing document that sent Anne Larsdatter to prison for thievery (of food) says she acted in cooperation with “two other persons” who were tried in a lower court. While the printed version of that document as posted on the site does not name the other persons, the handwritten version does; one of them is Ole Engebretsen. And just suppose that besides being responsible in a way for Anne’s imprisonment, Ole Engebretsen was also responsible for saving her family from starvation. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Anne named her prison-born baby after him?

Why was my great-grandfather named Ole? The question sounds downright silly at first blush, since it seems like about half of all males in Norway had that name. Indeed, among Kari Larsdatter’s relations and in-laws, there are enough Ole’s to make for a lot of confusion. Her eldest son (more about him later), her husband (not the boy’s father), and her son-in-law, are all named Ole. And the proportion overall certainly is very high. I started with 1840 and tallied the first 100 boys christened in S. Fron: 16 out of 100 were named Ole. So what’s to question?

Well, the naming of children in Norway followed rather strong customs back then; not  100% of the time, of course, but in rural areas, not far from it. Here is an explanation of the tradition, again from the invaluable Digitalarkivet :

… Speaking of names, your search might benefit from a unique Norwegian custom. In Norway, especially in the rural districts, there have long been very strict rules about naming descendants. Some of these rules persist even today. It was customary, for example, for the eldest son to be named after his paternal grandfather and the second son after his maternal grandfather. In a similar fashion, the eldest and second daughters were named after the respective grandmothers.

After the grandparents’ names had been used, the great-grandparents’ names were the next to be given, although without strict rules as to the order. Special circumstances might interfere with these rules. For example, the name of a deceased spouse was to be used first; and the name of the father or mother was given if the child was baptized after a parent’s death.

Based on this tradition, one would expect to find one or more Ole’s among the male ancestors of our great grandfather. But, as you can see on the Generations page, there is not a single Ole among his two grandfathers and four great-grandfathers.

Ole was the second son, and his maternal grandfather’s name was Lars. So was his father’s, which may have triggered an exception, since naming after the father was normally only done if the father died before the child was baptized (see above). Secondly, he might well have been named Poul, after his paternal grandfather, since the first son Poul had died several years earlier.  This type of “recycling” was quite common. But barring that, there were still Svend, David, Peder, and Johannes to choose from.

Since it was very un-customary to choose a name based only on the parents’ impulse (as is often the case today), there must be a story behind this. And since there is virtually no chance of finding that story, I just may have to invent one for my fiction. Yes, I am also writing fiction with a loose connection to these people and the circumstances under which they may have lived. I haven’t “published” any of it yet. Stay tuned.