Samuel Jorgenson Immigration

Some time ago, I found documentation on the 1867 immigration of Anne Samuelsdatter, who later married Ole Larson and became great-grandmother to a big chunk of the Larson clan. She was 22 years old, and none of her family was on the passenger list. We knew her brother Ole Samuelsen had immigrated at some point, as he has a slew of descendants here, some of whom were close with my parents and grandfather. But it was not clear whether Anne’s parents or other siblings had immigrated.

It turns out they did, ten years later. As part of my preparation for our Norway trip, I have been corresponding with our shirttail relative Knut Kvernflaten, about farm names and locations, and other details. Knut referred a question of mine to his friend Tordis Trønnes in Tretten. In addition to answering my question, Tordis sent a bunch of information on Anne Samuelsdatter’s ancestors. Besides correcting an error in my data that misidentified one set of Anne’s grandparents, Tordis had the date of Samuel Jorgenson’s immigration, 01 June 1877. Armed with the date, I easily found the pertinent record at digitalarkivet, in the emigration protocols of the Oslo police. Here is an excerpt from that record.

Note that here, as in most or all of the Norwegian sources, the first vowel is “ø” rather then “o. Also, it ends with “sen,” not “son.”

More interesting is the “Jorgensen” surname given for the entire family.  This is an early example of the modernization, one might even say “Americanization,” of the patronymic surname. However, in this case, Samuel’s children reverted to the old tradition (for themselves only), and in America were known as Samuelson.

Tusen takk to Tordis and Knut for the new info. So far, I have not been able to locate Samuel or Marit in any US census records, nor any burial info. Stay tuned.