More American Records that Support Norwegian Research

This is so true!!!

Norwegian Words of the Day

Witnesses/Godparents-Fadder, testes

Age-Ålder

Child-Barn, Barnet, Born

Welcome back friends to another exciting episode of discovering my Norwegian ancestor. 

In this post, I will be talking about what I found on Johanna’s Nebraska death and marriage records that linked her with her immigrant record from before. We left off last week finding more of her American records. Findagrave.com was very helpful in pointing us in the right direction. This site led us to Nebraska.  We now have census records, an immigrant record, and a findagrave article that all have clues leading to the right person. At this point, we have clues about her spouses, which are John H Webb and Jacob Hirsch. We have her children’s names of Benjamin Webb and Gertrude Webb. We have her death date as 17 Aug 1935 and her approximate birth date of 20 June 1894.

Let’s go ahead and dive in to her death record. Now with death records there is someone who does the information recording and someone who does the information sharing. The information sharer is called the informant on these records.  This person is usually a relative or close friend of the deceased. In this case, the informant was her second husband Jacob Hirsch. The closer the relation to the deceased, the more accurate the information is on the record. Therefore, this information is more accurate because it was her husband and not a friend. However, just because the information was more accurate doesn’t mean it was perfectly correct. Human beings are known for their clerical errors and faulty memories.

This is the death record information that Jacob gave to the clerk:

·         Johanna Hirsch, resided in St. Edward, Boone County, Nebraska

·         Husband-Jacob F Hirsch

·         Born-20 June 1894

·         Age 41 yrs when died

·         Birthplace-Norway

·         Father’s Name-Johannes Krogh

·         Mother’s Name-Gertrude Rygg

·         Death date 17 Aug 1935 from internal bleeding from uterine fibroid tumors

Now we have her parent’s names, an accurate death date, and a birth date for her. Her father Johannes’s name is similar to her immigration record that lists her closest relative from the mother country. She listed a Johannes Kolbeinsen as her father. However, the info on her death record isn’t good enough to say that this is the correct Johannes. Therefore, I turned to her marriage records.

Her first marriage was to John H. Webb and they were married 12 February 1916 in Albion, Boone County, Nebraska. The record lists info for both the bride and the groom; however, I’m going to focus on the bride’s information since we are trying to trace her back to Norway.

Johanna was the informant for this record and she says:

·         Full Name-Johanna Karen Krogh

·         Residence-Greeley County, Nebraska

·         Age at last birthday-22 (this puts her birth year around 1894)

·         Single

·         Birthplace-Norway

·         Father’s Name-Johannes Kolbensen born in Norway

·         Mother’s Name-(is illegibly written, I couldn’t figure it out)

We see from her marriage record that her father was Johannes Kolbensen, which matches the immigration record with a slight spelling variation. In addition, this document is her first American document since she immigrated.  This would make the information more accurate because it was closer to the immigration event. Her birth year is also consistent with the 1930 census and death record. 

So now let’s see what her other marriage record has to say. Johanna was also the informant on this record. Again, I’m only going to focus on her information even though the information for both bride and groom was written on this document.

She says:

·         Married 23 January 1923 in Albion, Boone County, Nebraska

·         Full Name-Karen Johanna Webb

·         Residence-St. Edward, Nebraska

·         Age at last birthday, 29

·         Widowed

·         Birthplace-Norway

·         Father’s Name-John Kolbensen born in Norway

·         Mother’s Name-Gertrude Rygg born in Norway

By this time, Johanna has Americanized her father’s name calling him John and not Johannes, but she leaves his surname as Kolbensen. Her mother’s name matches the one given on Johanna’s death record. Therefore, it’s reasonable to say that Johanna’s father is Johannes Kolbensen and her mother is Gertrude Rygg. This means that the Johannes Kolbeinsen found on the immigration record is the same person as on her death and marriage records. Now we have the documents to support her information so far.  If any of you want to see the original Nebraska death and marriage records, just make a comment and I will send you a copy.  I don’t feel comfortable putting those documents on the blog.  So I hope all of you will understand.

These three documents lead us back to the Passenger List that showed Johanna coming to America from Liverpool, England to Canada then on through Vermont on 27 June 1912. Next week we will talk more about why we’re back at the immigration record and how that can help us jump the pond to Norway!

See you then and happy hunting!

Tiffany