Tips to Looking at the Whole Norwegian Genealogical Marriage and Census Records
Hello everyone! How’s everyone doing this week? It’s been a slow week for me so I’ve had an opportunity to catch up on my projects. I love weeks like that. I just don’t want to have them all of the time. I really like it when there’s a balance of busy weeks and slow weeks. However, I don’t get my way all of the time especially when other people are involved with their wants and needs and lives. I wouldn’t change it! I get to learn many things from other people and from myself.
In addition, Happy Halloween next week! My next post will come after Halloween so I hope all of you have fun for the holiday!
Now let’s get on to genealogy. I love genealogy! I love it when the pieces come together and the mystery isn’t much of a mystery anymore. We talked about censuses last week and there’s so much more to cover for those records, however; I’m going to move on to marriage records. I feel that’s where I need to go in this post for this week.
Therefore, over time I found Johanna’s family in the census records. It took many hours of searching because of different name spellings, different surnames being used, even different census forms being used. Norway is not that consistent in their record keeping. However, I eventually found them all and here is her family from the census records.
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Name
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Birth Year
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Birth Place
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Johannes Kolbensen
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1834
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Imsland inVikedal
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Gjertrud Sjursdatter
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1841
|
Etne
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|
Knud Johannesen
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1861
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Vikedal
|
|
Kari Johannesdatter
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1862
|
Vikedal
|
|
Ane Johannesdatter
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1862
|
Vikedal
|
|
Lisabet Johannesdatter
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1874
|
Vikedal
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|
Sonneve Johannesdatter
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1876
|
Vikedal
|
|
Kornelius Johannesen
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1878
|
Vikedal
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|
Severina Johannesdatter
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1881
|
Vikedal
|
|
Sven Johannesen
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1884
|
Vikedal
|
|
Johannes Johannesen
|
1887
|
Vikedal
|
|
Johanna Johannesdatter
|
1893
|
Vikedal
|
Usually when we have the whole family, if they were traditional with no deaths or divorces, then we would go to the oldest child and see that he was born in 1861. Then we would go to the marriage records in Vikedal around 1859-1860 and search for the couple’s marriage. That’s one way of doing that. However, we don’t know if the husband or the wife was married previously from looking at the census. Therefore, if we don’t find this couple in the marriage books, then they may have married previously. That’s a possible answer. There could be more reasons for not finding them. Such as name spellings, married in a different parish then moved, married earlier than one year from the child’s birth, they’re not the oldest child, etc. So keep your options open when trying to figure out a marriage date.
In this case, after searching marriage records and finding nothing, I looked on the census records again to see if I was missing something. I noticed that between Ane and Lisabet there is a huge twelve-year birth year gap. That perked my curiosity. I began brainstorming why that was possible. They could’ve had other children that died within those years. They had economic stresses that caused infertility. A spouse could’ve died and then the other one got remarried in that gap. I know they didn’t move because all of the children were born in Vikedal, but that is another possibility when you see a huge gap like that.
Again, in this case it turned out that Johannes had been previously married and that his first wife had died. Then he married Gjertrud and had Lisabet soon after. However, I didn’t know this at the time. So I had to search again in Ancestry and FamilySearch and Norway Digital Archive for documents to prove my theory that it was either a second marriage or a death of a child.
I searched in Norway Digital Archive for a marriage record for Johannes and Gjertrud before 1874 and found one. It turns out that they were married 10 October 1873 in Vikedal. The marriage record says that Johannes was a widower, which clued me in that he had been married previously and his first wife had died. The record also shares that his father was Kolben Helgesen, Johannes was from Haugeland farm in Stolsmark, and that Johannes was 40 years old when he got married. Gjertrud was 24 years old, from Rygg farm in Etne, and her father was Sjur Sjursen. See what you can learn from one document? I didn’t even know the language at the time and I could still figure it out. When it’s using one Norwegian word at a time, then I can handle it. It’s when the document is in multiple paragraphs that my skills get hung up.
From that document, I went back to the census record to see when the oldest child was born. He was born in 1861. I didn’t know the first wife’s name, but I did know that Johannes probably married sometime in 1859-1860 in Vikedal. I chose to search page by page in the marriage books looking for a Johannes Kolbensen from Stolsmark. That’s when I discovered the next marriage record.
Johannes Colbensen Haugeland married a Lisbet Knudsdatter Stolsmark on 11 November 1858 in Vikedal. He was listed as a bachelor and she was a maiden or unmarried girl. His father was Kolben Helgesen Berge and her father was Knud Johannesen Stolsmark. Johannes was 24 years old and Lisbet was 27 years old. So now we see the bigger picture when we combine the two marriage records and the census records.
The story here is that Johannes married Lisbet and had three children with her. Then she died and he married Gjertrud and had seven children with her. They lived in Vikedal their whole married lives.
This is why I’m a genealogist. I wanted to find out the story of my ancestors and I could only do it with documents. Now the story isn’t finished because we still need to know when and where Johannes, Lisbet, and Gjertrud died, but that is for another day. Right now, we can sit back and see how these people are real people with real lives that are unfolding to us. They had real families, married and died like real people. The documents only help to prove that they existed. I personally am glad to know more about these people just from using census and marriage records.
I hope you have an awesome week and I’ll talk with you next time!
Tiffany
