Tracking Down Relatives

My good friend Paula Meredith, flew in from Colorado yesterday not only to visit us and see Norway, but to find “from whence she came.” Paula’s father’s mother’s parents both left Norway in 1893 for a better life in America, and Paula really wanted to see the area they left behind. A month ago, she only had their names and birthdates, but I spent several late nights tracking down church book records of deaths, births, and marriages, as well as finding her ancestors in census records. Luckily, she came from an area that had everything posted on the web, otherwise I might not have been so lucky. But as it was, I found the name of the farm where this set of great-grandparents were living for several years before they moved away, as well as the name of the farm where they both grew up (they lived on the same farm, but different houses.) Finding that information on paper, and finding it in person is a whole other thing, which was the challenge we faced today.

We left the city in a fog this morning – literally, as we headed southwest out of Oslo to the area called Vestfold. It was a two hour drive on narrow winding roads going past vast farmlands, waterways and forested areas. We stopped first at the churches where all the records were kept on her family for several generations, and we walked the cemeteries looking for familiar names. The first church we visited was built in the 1200s. (I only wish they were unlocked as the churches are so plain on the outside, but incredibly ornate on the inside.) We had a picnic lunch at the second church, built in the 1300s. We saw plenty of names from the farms her family was from, but had no way to see how they could be related. Most of the headstones in these old cemeteries are just for the latest generation of the “dearly departed.” Over a hundred years ago they used simple wooden crosses with the names and dates engraved on them, so none of the old information is around anymore. But interestingly enough, these small cemeteries often hold about 10,000 people, as everyone that has died in that parish will get buried in that cemetery – they just put them on top of the last body that was buried there, so in one spot there could be the bodies of a hundred people (a real bone-yard, for sure.)

After we visited with the dead, we headed out to see if we could find any living relatives, or at least someone who might point us in the direction of the farms. I had done my homework, but there is still no way to know exactly which farm or which building on which farm, each person lived. But thanks to the folks in the area that WERE home today and not up in the hills eating their oranges and Kwik-lunsj candy bars, we hit pay dirt. We got to the farm Nordby, but there is a North Nordby, a middle Nordby and a South Nordby so we had to ask a few people before we were sure which one was the place. One man that lived right on the farm where Paula’s great grandfather was born, invited us in, showed us the farm history book, made copies of the pertinent pages and let us look around his incredibly cool house full of family heirlooms dating back to the 1700s. I’m sure he’s related to Paula, but we haven’t connected the dots yet. He was so kind and full of good information. Then we headed off down the street to the place where Paula’s great grandmother grew up and we talked to a neighbor there that told us her house burned down a while ago, but we took photos of the house that stands in the same place. Then we drove several kilometers down the road to another parish where Paula’s great grandparents moved once they were married, and the spot where they lived before the emigrated. Before we were able to pinpoint that location, we stopped to ask for help from an old guy working in his yard. Turns out there is a good chance Paula is related to him, too. He invited his daughter Irene over (who lives across the street), and she was full of family history information and she too let us look at the farm history books so we could pinpoint which building was the right one. She made us coffee, served us a little homemade Danish treat and couldn’t have been any nicer. She very interested in family history and had written up profile information on everyone in her family, so she showed us the book and both Paula and I drooled, as we’d love to make something similar for our families. So after coffee we just went to the house down the street and went up the driveway to meet the man that bought the house of Paula’s greatest interest and he couldn’t have been more helpful either. He showed us the location of the old house where her great grandparents had lived (in the photo it’s up on the knoll just over Paula’s right shoulder between the Evergreen tree and the Birch tree). He showed us a photo he had of the house before it was torn down 15 years ago and he told us the stories of the people who had lived there. We couldn’t get to the exact spot where the foundation still stands because of the amount of snow still on the ground, but he promised to take pictures and send them to her when the snow melts. It was the kind of day that exceeded all our expectations and it just couldn’t have been any better. Dreams do come true.