A Long Journey...

Sometime in August 1916, Jens Peder and Johanne Pedersen registered to emigrate to the United States and made preparations for the journey. And on August 24, 1916, the family set sail from Copenhagen aboard the USS United States. I can't imagine the emotions involved or preparing 6 children for that long of a journey!

During the conversation with cousin Gladys, she relayed stories about the journey that she heard from her mother, Emma. My dad's Aunt Emma would have been about 7 years old when the family made the journey across the Atlantic. Gladys told me that her mom remembered that the dining tables had a sort of "lip" around the outer edge to help keep the plates and utensils from sliding off as the ship moved. Emma also remembered her dad taking them above deck to get fresh air and keep them distracted and occupied.

We had always heard that Johanne was seasick during the journey, and, above all else, she was also pregnant with my grandmother! I always imagined how miserable that journey must have been for her! What none of us knew for years, though, was that it wasn't just the seasickness and nausea from pregnancy that would have been the most difficult part of the journey for her. As I had discovered in my research that she and Jens had another son, the realization of their journey to America took on a whole new dimension. Johanne left her home in Denmark knowing that she had not only just left behind her parents and sisters, but she had just left her eldest child behind and would very likely never see him again. I can imagine the seasickness and I can imagine the nausea from pregnancy. But I cannot imagine the agony of that!

Emma had passed along to her daughter, Gladys, that Jens was very worried about his wife during the voyage. I can only imagine! When they arrived at Ellis Island, the family was processed and "inspected" aboard ship. In July of that year, a fire damaged the Ellis Island buildings, including the Great Hall, where immigrants were processed. That may have proved to be to the family's benefit, as Johanne was probably very ill at this point and the inspectors may not have been so kind to them had they gone through the regular processing cycle.

The details thereafter of where they stayed or when they boarded a train bound for Iowa are not known. I recall hearing a story when I was younger that, having no knowledge of English, they almost missed the train they were supposed to board and nearly boarded the wrong train as a result.  If that's true, who knows where they would have ended up, or how they would have found their way to Elk Horn.  Regardless of that, they made their way to central Iowa and settled first in Harlan before finally making a home in Elk Horn. Jens worked as a blacksmith there. While in Harlan, they welcomed Leona Margot into their family, my grandmother. After moving to Elk Horn, they had Gladys Wanette, but lost her after only 3 months to pertussis (whooping cough). She is buried in an unmarked grave in the Elk Horn cemetery. A short year later, they welcomed another boy, Lyle Manville, and 3 years later, Norman Elvin.

Sometime after, the family moved to central Nebraska, where Jens set up another shop as a blacksmith. And that's where the family remained as a whole for even generations after. Ultimately, it was during this research, looking for the ship manifest that I finally found more information about Jens's sister, Stine, who had immigrated 12 years earlier. On the ship manifest, it lists Jens's brother-in-law, Chris Jensen, and his address. Now I knew where to look for Stine!

To be continued...

Jens Knudsen Pedersen - The Missing Sibling

In October 1902 in a town called Brødslev in Ingstrup parish, Jens and Johanne welcomed their first son into their family.  The have 6 more children after him, and in September 1916, they emigrated to America.

This piece of their family was a puzzle.  Jens Knudsen is not listed with the family on the 1911 or 1916 census records.  I would constantly come back to him, and search and search.  But I would never uncover anything.  Not only was I coming up blank in the Danish records, but it was also a name that my dad and his brother had never heard.  Jens Knudsen was their uncle.  It was a mystery.  Who was this boy?  Where did he disappear to?  And why had no one in the family ever heard of him?

My parents suggested I contact my dad's cousin, Gladys, and ask her if she knew anything of this other brother.  Gladys' mother was Emma, my grandmother's sister.  Emma would have been old enough to remember having an older brother.  So I called Gladys and told her I had been researching the family tree.  She asked what I had found, and I told her that I was hoping she could help solve a mystery.  She said she would try, but didn't know what help she could be.  I shared what I had found about this boy, Jens Knudsen.  She sighed and said, "Yes, he was the oldest boy.  Grandpa and Grandma called him Knud."  The puzzle began to take shape!

Gladys shared with me that Knud was mentally disabled, and that they put him in a special school/home.  She told me that they would bring him home on the weekends, but he would cry and cry that he "wanted to go home".  His siblings and parents missed him while he was away at the school all week, but he would be homesick when he stayed with them.  He didn't have any understanding that they were his family.  Gladys told me that when they made the decision to come to America, they did so with the knowledge that they would be leaving Knud behind.  That told me a number of things, most notably, that the decision to emigrate was for significant reasons, and it also told me that Knud was disabled enough that he would have not passed immigration restrictions to stay in the US.  As Gladys was sharing the story, and the realization of what it meant for my great-grandparents to leave their home began to sink in, I found myself in tears.

Also during this time, I began posting the Pedersen family tree on a site called My Heritage.  The site is set up so that, as you post entries on your family tree, it shows you matches to other trees...similar to what Ancestry.com does.  I was seeing a handful of matches to other trees, but nothing much closer than the late 1700's and early 1800's.  I was looking for the closest generation I could get, which would be the descendants of either of Jens' sisters or of Johanne's sisters.  Finally, I saw a significant number of matches on someone's family tree in Denmark, so I made contact.  Initially, we had to overcome the language barrier.  Jenny spoke very little English and I know next to no Danish.  Upon investigation into her tree, I worked out the common line.  Her great-grandmother, Ane Marie Jensen, and my dad's great-grandmother, Ane Catherine Jensen, were sisters!  Amazing!  I could only get us one generation closer than that!

Being as language was a barrier for communication, Jenny suggested that her son, Peter, could act as translator.  What we didn't realize at the time was that Facebook offers the option to "See Translation" on posts and comments by friends who write in another language.  We've been able to communicate directly that way, but, in the meantime, Peter and I have become penpal cousins.  Both of us were excited to "meet"!  Finally, a direct contact to family still in Denmark!

Making this contact proved to be not only beneficial for connecting with family still in the mother country, but finding more information about family.  Knowing someone who speaks Danish, can interpret the Danish records, and is also interested in genealogy was a HUGE bonus!  Jenny's help has been invaluable!

I didn't know how much Jenny could help in solving the puzzle of Knud, but I decided to enlist her help.  I emailed her the story, and shared what records I had already found.  I also shared with her the story Gladys told me.  She emailed me in reply and said that she knew immediately where to look for the records.

A couple of days later, she emailed me that she had found him on census records and sent me the information for finding them online.  She also said that she talked to someone in the Archives office about the institution where Knud lived.  This person was able to find his death record, and some information about the institution, which is now a museum.  It's within just a couple of km from where Jenny's husband grew up!  The person in the Archives office told Jenny that, being as Knud lived to be about 60, it was likely that there would be a picture of him at the museum.  Jenny told me that she was going to make a trip the following week and would send whatever information she could find.  That was a long week of waiting!

The following week, I received a message from her...and a picture!  The man working at the museum was elderly and actually remembered Knud!  In fact, he was the person who took the photo of him!  He told her to pass along to us that Knud was a quiet, pleasant and gentle person.  He loved horses, so he was put to work in the stables.  He also made the daily dairy trip to town for the institution.  I could not express to Jenny how much her trip meant to our entire family.  Finally, my dad's Uncle Knud would have his rightful place in the family.

To be continued...

The Beginning of the Pedersen Journey to America

In 1901, Jens and Johanne were married.  Jens was working as a blacksmith, and they were living in Jetsmark parish in Northern Jutland.  The following October, they had their first son, Jens Knudsen.  Johanne was only 18 years old.  In 1905 and 1906, they had two more sons, Ofelt and Herluf Meyer.

Sometime between 1906 and 1909, the family moved to Tylstrup, about 13 miles east of their home at the time.  While I was researching this, I found it strange that they would move so far away from "home" and from their families.  By modern measurements, 13 miles is only a 15 minute drive away.  But, in the early part of the 20th century, it was a significant distance.  Based on everything else I had found up to this point, it was  very uncommon for families to make major moves for no significant reason.  Once a couple married and started a family, they stayed where they were.  So, as I uncovered more and more records, I also had more questions.

In 1909 and 1910, Jens and Johanne welcomed two little girls to their growing brood of boys.  Emma Henrietta and Erma Gudrun were welcomed into the family.  Being a mom, I can only imagine how delighted Johanne was to have a couple of little girls to cuddle after having rough-and-tumble boys.  A couple of years later in 1913, they had another boy, Erik Randlen.  And just over a year later, they welcomed another girl, Helga Ragate.  The family was growing by leaps and bounds!

Around this timeframe is when I stumbled onto a mystery.  Jens' and Johanne's oldest son, Jens Knudsen, disappeared from the 1911 census.  He was also not present on the 1916 census.  I scoured the census records around the area looking for him, thinking he might have been living with another family and working as an apprentice somewhere.  When I still didn't find him, I began looking through the death records with some trepidation.  I really didn't want to find him there.  That search turned up nothing too.  So, for the time being, I had his name with a birth date and a big question mark setting in a folder on my desk.

In September 1916, Jens and Johanne, along with 6 of their 7 children, arrived in the Port of New York at Ellis Island.  It's still unclear why they emigrated to the United States.  While talking to their grandkids and collecting family information, it can only be speculated that, because the economic climate was changing in Denmark and the population was increasing, they decided to try their luck in America.  And, as it turned out, Jens' youngest sister, Ane Christine, had already been in the States for 14 years.  They wouldn't be coming to a country and starting anew alone.

At this point in my search, there were so many revelations.  Every day, I seemed to find more and more that just amazed me.  Up to this point, I was operating solely on a "maybe" from my dad and uncle that their grandfather had a sister here already.  No one knew for sure her full married name or even where she lived.  When I found Jens and Johanne on a passenger manifest, it told me her husband's name and their location.  I finally had something to go on.  So, after a bit of searching, I could confidently state that Ane Christine Pedersen emigrated to the USA in 1902.

But that's a different story...for later.  The biggest question I had at this point in my research was, "What happened to Jens Knudsen Pedersen?"

To be continued...

The Start of the Journey, Part 2

As I've shared a bit of the family information about my great-grandfather, Jens Peder Pedersen, and his parents, I'm going to detour for a bit and share the family information of my great-grandmother, Johanne Jensine Kristine Jensen.

My dad's maternal grandmother, Johanne, was born in the parish called Vester Hjermislev, close to where her future in-laws lived.  Her parents were Christen Jensen and Mette Marie Christensen.  She had three sisters and one brother.  Her oldest sister, Karen, was actually a half-sister.  Her mother had been married previously to a man named Paul Christian Sørensen, but he died in 1878, and she remarried in 1882. 

Mette's second oldest daughter was Pauline Kristine, who was born in 1882.  After Jens and Johanne left Denmark, Johanne kept in contact with her sister Pauline through WWII, but eventually lost touch.  Johanne would send her sister coffee and cocoa during the war.

In 1886, Jens Christian was born, but he only lived to be about 18 months old.  In 1889, Jensine Katherine was born.  She died just short of eight years old.  It's not noted in the church records the cause of either of these children's deaths.  My suspicion is that the hardships of life during that time, with the lack of modern medicine, took their toll...especially on children.

It's interesting to think about how Jens and Johanne met, but what I also found incredibly interesting was something else.  The two of them married in Johanne's home parish of Vester Hjermislev on March 9, 1901.  But the month before, when the census was being recorded for all the parishes in Denmark, she was listed in the household of Jens' parents as a "relative".  I would love to know what was going on in that household while she was there pre-wedding.  :o)

After Jens and Johanne were married, they settled in the village of Pandrup near his parents.  On all of the subsequent records for the family, Jens is indicated as "Smed", or "Smith", meaning he was working as a blacksmith.  It was while they lived in Denmark, between the years 1901 and 1916, that they began to expand their family.

To be continued...

The Start of My Journey, Part 1

I grew up hearing that my great-grandparents were from Denmark.  It wasn't until I was a little older that I learned that all four of my paternal great-grandparents immigrated to America.  I was in my teens when the realization hit me that it meant that my dad was 100% Danish.  That made me 50%.  I thought that was so interesting!  No one else I knew was descended from anyone Danish.  I felt very unique and special.

I've not been sure about where to start this blog as there are sooo many directions it could go all at once.  So, I've decided to start my blog's journey with the start of my journey researching my ancestry in Denmark.

I decided to start with my dad's maternal grandparents.  The reason being was simple.  I had made trips with my parents to Elk Horn, IA in the spring and winter for the town's Tivoli Fest and Jul Fest, respectively.  But it wasn't until about 2 years ago that I learned that my great-grandparents settled in Elk Horn when they first arrived in America.  In fact, they have a plaque on the Danish Immigrant Wall of Honor at the Danish Immigrant Museum there.  In Elk Horn, there is a Genealogy Center in which people can use the computers there to research family history.  They also have a huge collection of old newspapers and other resources for the area that are indexed.  Being as my dad's maternal grandparents settled there (his grandfather operated the blacksmith shop on main street), I was able to find newspaper birth announcements for my grandmother and 2 of her younger brothers. 

As I was researching this branch of the family tree, my dad shared with me that he thought that his grandfather might have had a sister living in Elk Horn also.  And he thought her name was Stine.  So, onward I searched. 

While I was disappearing to Elk Horn almost every Saturday to do local research in that area, I had also learned how to look at the church books in Denmark online.  I knew the name of the village my grandfather came from (Pandrup), so I began navigating my way through the Danish websites, decoding as I went, and found his birth record.  That record gave me his parents' names: Jens Pedersen and Ane Catherine Jensen.  From there, I was able to find his siblings' birth records.

My father's grandfather, Jens Peder Pedersen, had three brothers and three sisters.  He was the only boy who lived to adulthood.  His three brothers, Jens Erik, Jens Eriksen, and Knud, all died as very young boys.  His three sisters were Karen Elline, Inger Marie Petrea, and Ane Christine.  All three of the girls grew to adulthood, married, and had families of their own.

Ane Christine was the sister the family knew as Stine (shown in the front center).  And she did, in fact, immigrate to America. 

To be continued...

In the beginning...

I guess the best place to start this blog is with me.  Who am I?  Well, that’s a big question.  I’m a daydreamer, an idealist, and a thinker.  I’m also a knitter, a secretary, and an aspiring genealogist.  And, last but not least, I’m a mother, a sister, and a daughter.  I am half Danish through my father and half American through my mother…and they are where this story begins.

My parents married in 1966, and I, their eldest daughter, was born the following year.  In the years following, they had two more daughters.  My dad was a farmer, and on a farm is where I grew up.  I wouldn’t trade my memories or experiences of living on a farm for anything, but I have to admit that I’m exceedingly glad I’m a “city girl” now! 

My purpose in writing this blog is to share and document my family history, both the genealogical facts and the stories that have been passed along.  As I said, I’m half Danish and half American.  My dad is the grandson of Danish immigrants.  Both of his parents were first generation Americans born to Danish immigrant parents.  My mom is descended from a range of different European nationalities, most of whom immigrated to America when the colonies were still being established.  So, both of my parents’ family histories offer such differing perspectives and history from one another. 

At present, I’ve researched my family history primarily on my dad’s family…both in America and in Denmark.  So that’s where I will begin…