A Hedalen Baptism

Hedalen Stave Church

Two months ago, I was sitting in the pews of the 12th century stave church where my great-grandfather Helge had been baptized and confirmed. His mother Barbro had been baptized, confirmed and married there. Her parents—baptized, confirmed, married and buried. 

 

I had been looking forward to this event since the time I started planning my Norwegian ancestor- hunting expedition. The group of people I was traveling with all had ancestors from the region called Valdres, and we had spent the week visiting each Valdres town—six in all—and its corresponding church: Vang, Oystre Slidre,Vestre Slidre, Etnedal, Nord Aurdal, and now the Hedalen church in Sor Aurdal. In each town the group members with ancestors there would say, “This is my home church.” I had been patient and polite through five visits to other people's churches. Now finally, in Hedalen, it was my turn to say, non-churchgoer that I am, “This is my home church.”

I felt particular pride in having the only stave church in Valdres to call my home church. Built in 1160, it is still standing. It had been altered, added on to to allow for the growing congregation, but there it still stood on its original site. It was the last church we went to and, as the visit fell on Sunday, we were invited to attend the service. And, as if that weren't exciting enough, there were to be two baptisms that day. This old agnostic was all agog anticipating the experience.

Two baby girls were brought to the center of the church where the baptismal font was located. They were accompanied by their entire families: parents, grandparents, god parents, siblings—all in their traditional regional costumes or “bunads”. The minister started in on the first infant, addressing her tenderly as the little girl was held in the familiar arms of a family member. Then came the moment when she was transferred to the minister's arms to be cradled for the next stage of the ritual. I braced myself for the inevitable outcry, but the baby simply looked interestedly into the face of this new person. There was commentary throughout, of which I understood not one word (well maybe “gud”), but I caught the gist.

Sometimes the minister addressed the whole family, sometimes the parents, sometimes the congregation at large. And then the time came when she looked directly at the baby and spoke lovingly to her. The baby studied her face, totally open to this novel experience. The minister removed the little white cap to reveal a shock of dark hair (yes, there are non-blondes who are sometimes referred to as Black Norwegians) and the dousing began. Still no objection from the baptizee—she and the minister held each others' gaze throughout. Then the minister triumphantly held the infant aloft, facing her outward toward the assembled witnesses. I'm sure her words told them, “Here! This baby is now in your keeping—you are her community, her protection, her family.” While everyone beamed, the baby girl was handed over to her godmother who looked to be about twelve years old.

And then the whole process began with baby #2 and I got to experience the wonderful ritual all over again—this time knowing what to expect, anticipating my favorite parts, memorizing the looks that passed between minister and babe. The second subject was as cooperative as the first and all ended happily, with the exception of a meltdown on the part of a two-year-old sibling who had had enough of standing around in uncomfortable clothing. An exuberant procession of both families down the center aisle, accompanied by the jubilant ringing of church bells, had me thinking wistfully that there definitely were perks to being a Lutheran.

Detail of Door

How I Ended Up in Norway

 Here is something I wrote way back last March, when the idea of going to Norway first presented itself.

 

A year ago I had just gotten back from Argentina and was already planning my next trip down there when I would stay for a whole month. But when November rolled around and it was time to start looking for flights and finding a cat sitter, I realized that I didn't want to go any more. I gave up my plan of a month of tango in Buenos Aires so that instead I could go to...wait for it....Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin! Whoopee! 

 

If I were telling you this out loud I could use that weighing hand gesture that people employ when they're comparing something delightful with something dubious or downright undesirable. Like attending a concert by your favorite performing group...heft, heft...or going to the dentist for a root canal...heft, heft. An eye brow is usually lifted as part of the hefting, weighing, considering process. Like, “Really?” So yes, I passed up Argentina because I'd rather go poke around in libraries, county courthouses and cemeteries in the Midwest.

At least that was my plan until recently when I made a slight alteration based on some information I received from a Norwegian-American genealogy group about some upcoming events. They're called stevnes—don't really know how the word is pronounced or translated, but basically it seems to mean a convention of Norwegian-Americans. This information came in the form of real hold-in-your-hands newsletters. It seems the Norwegian-American associations are just beginning to venture into the world-wide-web world and still conduct most of their communications with letters and envelopes and stamps and trips to the post office.

 

The first stevne described caught my interest because it was being held in Austin. “Oh,” I thought, “I could visit my cousin in Austin—I haven't seen him since I was about 10 years old. And Austin sounds like a cool place—my friend Lani liked Austin.” Then I noticed it was Austin, Minnesota. Oh...Well that could still be good—let's see what the plan is. I read an account of a previous stevne to get an idea of the agenda. It got a little scary. One of the major attractions of that particular stevne was a visit to the site where the largest lefse had been made—it made the Guinness book. A lefse evidently is a large round unleavened pancake-like bread, and there was a grainy photo showing the stevne-goers gathered around what looked like a large circular concrete pad. Was it a monument to the mighty lefse? Or was it the very griddle (a concrete griddle?) that the record-breaking lefse had been baked on? So.... if that was the highlight of that particular stevne, what other activities went on during the week-end? Well, it looked like there were a fair number of religious activities: Norwegian Table Prayer recited before the festive final banquet, Norwegian hymn singing, a memorial service for those members of the group who died during the previous year. In addition to being religious, these people seem to be quite patriotic too. At the beginning of many of the events both the Norwegian and the American national anthems are sung.

Could I do this? Could I spend several days with people for whom being Norwegian, Christian and patriotic seems to be the bedrock of their lives? And why, you may ask, would I even consider it? Well, because a main feature of this gathering is to share genealogical information. The group has its resident genealogist who owns every copy of every relevant book of church records from Hallingdal, the region where our ancestors lived. And she brings them all—cratefuls of them—along with her considerable knowledge and expertise to the stevne. So that would be the big draw for me. Even being a little worried about the praying and the singing, I could probably manage most of what's on the agenda for this year's stevne in Austin. But I can tell you right now, I would definitely take a pass on the visit to the Spam Museum. Austin Minnesota, of course, is home to the Hormel meat-packing company. And yes, a field trip is on the schedule.

 

As it turns out, though, my plans have taken another detour since I learned of a stevne that another Norwegian American group has scheduled—IN Norway! This group has ancestors from the Valdres region which abuts the Hallingdal region--kind of like Iowa and Illinois except without the Mississippi River running between them. Some of my ancestors were born in Valdres and married others born in Hallingdal, so I sort of have dual-citizenship and can chose between stevnes. There might still be the hymn singing and the grace saying. There would definitely be a Sunday church service, but I would willingly go to that because it will be held in one of the stave churches that Norway is known for. This particular one, the Hedalen stave church, is one that my ancestors actually prayed in and were baptized in. It dates back to the 1100's, I believe, and I would happily spend an hour or so there. Another great attraction is that the annual Jorn Hilme Music Festival takes place in Fagernes, the headquarters of the stevne, and we would have access to the performances. I love Hardanger fiddle music, and the photos of Fagernes show it to be a beautiful town with its backdrop of mountains.

 

So ...Austin, Minnesota? Or Valdres, Norway? Hmmm. Heft, heft.

 

View of the town of Fagernes

 

Off to Norway!

I'm in the throes of packing my bag, getting my house in order, and learning how to write a blog post using my brand new Samsung Galaxy tablet. (It's taken me about 10 minutes to figure out this much. My next task is getting the photo to display.)

On Sunday I fly to Norway to see where my great grandmother Bergit was born and where she spent the first 17 years of her life before she sailed to America with her parents.  Actually, for the first week I will be in the region of Valdres, where her mother's ancestors came from. The second week, I'll travel over the mountains to Bergit's birthplace in the region of Hallingdal.

How My Father Got His Name

Thad S. Hays

1904-1996

Proud father with first daughter

 

My father was born 110 years ago today—or maybe yesterday. He was born at home. It was late at night. Nobody was looking at the clock. Those on the scene decided to call it the 24^th.   There was no birth certificate—no need for one at the time. It only became a problem some time in the 60's when he needed a birth certificate to apply for a passport. He had to find a couple of witnesses to attest to the fact that he was born when and where he said he was.

Had my father had a birth certificate in 1904, it would have shown that he was named Charles Carrol Hays—after his grandfather. (Yes, the Civil War grandfather of the captured flag story.)  My grandmother Hannah wanted her son to have his father's name: Thaddeus Stevens Hays. But my grandfather was having none of it.  Having suffered with that name throughout his life, he was adamant.  He would not saddle his son with such a name.  But a few months later he died suddenly, and his widow renamed their son with the name she'd wanted in the first place.  She was reported to have said that she missed having a Thad around the house. And so it was that my father became Thaddeus Stevens Hays.

Missing Persson Found

Who and where is this man's father?

I had an exciting genealogy breakthrough recently. Out of the blue, someone emailed me who had seen something I had posted on a message board so long ago that I had completely forgotten about it. The message I had posted was that I was searching for the father of my Swedish grandfather, John Albert Ahl (pictured at left). There was no trace of John's father at all/Ahl.

 

John's mother's name was Johanna Blade Ahl and I didn't have much information on her either, but at least I knew her birth and death dates. She was born in Sweden but by the time her son was born in 1860, she had moved to the US and was living in Illinois. I began to entertain the thought that maybe there was no father. Well, at least no husband. Maybe Johanna had gotten in the family way and had come to America by herself to put the scandal behind her—to raise her child where he would be free from stigma. Maybe in her new life she identified herself as a widow. That seemed plausible until a few months ago when I found that John had a younger sister, Ida Ahl. So back to being stymied. Where was their father?

 

In my message board post I had listed all the names associated with mother Johanna. On her birth record she is identified as Johanna Sofia and her father's name was Samuel Samuelsson. So where did the name Blade come from? In Sweden, sometimes when a man went into the military he took a different last name. When there were several Anders Anderssons or Ole Olssons or Samuel Samuelssons in the same company, these military names helped to distinguish one from another. Often the military name was short and was a noun. When I looked up Blade (blad) I found that it means 'leaf' or 'blade'—the latter quite fitting for a military name, I'd say. Some men kept their military name when they returned to civilian life, while others went back to their patronymic name. So I included Blade as a possible name for Johanna. But it was the Samuelsson that evidently caught the eye of the respondent to my post. She sent me the startling news that Johanna Samuelsson had married a man named Johan Peter Persson....wait for it....AHL!! 

 

Ta da! The missing Persson is found and Johanna is no longer a fallen woman. She is now a respectably married mother of two children bearing their father's name Ahl—which, by the way, means 'alder'. Perhaps another military name? Stay tuned.

 

 

The Flag in the Closet

Okay--this is going to be a long post.  A friend of mine who blogs says to keep 'em short or people won't read to the end.  But I've noticed the length of entries on other genealogy blogs and it appears that genealogists have a long attention span.  So here is something I wrote back in January in my weekly writing group:

 
Yesterday I spent a good deal of time trying to track down the location in East Tennessee where my great grandfather was engaged in a “fierce cavalry battle”. Until now, it has not been that important to me to know the name of the town or exactly which Confederate regiment he was battling with. It was enough for me to have the gist of it—there was a battle, his side won, and (the most important part to me) the flag that he captured is sitting in the closet in my guest room. 
 

The reason I surprisingly found myself scouring the internet for East Tennessee cavalry battles, is that First Sgt. Bill Lear, the curator of a military museum in Illinois, wants to know if I have any more details about the flag: Do I know where exactly it was captured? Do I know when it was captured? What unit did it originally belong to? It's gratifying that he is so very excited to hear about our flag and I don't want to disappoint him—I really do want to give him the answers. But I gave him everything I know already, gleaned from the fragment of a newspaper clipping, a brief entry from a family history written by his younger brother, and a paragraph about my great grandfather in a history of McDonough County, Illinois. Oh, and the vague memory of my father telling of his grandfather's war story—how Charles Carroll Hays was himself captured by the enemy, was being marched over a bridge with his fellow soldiers to the infamous prison in Andersonville when he managed to drop down under the bridge and hide there until they had all passed over. Then he made his way back to where the rest of his regiment was—a two-day trek. 
 

Over the years, my sisters and I have wondered what we should do about this flag of ours but never got any farther than wondering. Recently, my niece asked my sister about the flag and was perturbed with the answer, expressing the opinion that a civil war flag “shouldn't just be sitting in a box on a shelf in a closet”. She was right, of course, so with a little internet research my sister and I found a website devoted to the history and preservation of flags from the Civil War. There we learned that Illinois has a military museum where they store flags in “a humidity-controlled environment.” Hmm—could this be the final resting place for our flag? 
 

A little history. Evidently every regiment had its own flag which it carried into battle—both to invigorate and encourage its soldiers, and also to help them find each other if they got separated during the fighting. So my great grandfather's flag is the one that was being carried by the regiment he was doing battle with. According to the dog-eared, disintegrating newspaper clipping, he captured not only the flag, but the captain of that company and some of its soldiers. 
 

At Christmas, my sister, my niece and I decided to unfold the flag and determine the degree of its disintegration. With trepidation we lifted it from the box where it had sat for at least my lifetime and began to delicately open it. There were tassels that had become tangled, so that required special attention. 
 
 From cut-up strips of their own silk dresses, Confederate women had stitched this flag for their men to carry into battle. We had expected to find the silk fabric to be crumbling and frayed. It wasn't as bad as we had feared—a few tears here and there, but mostly intact. Faded, yes—a quite pale green background with an even lighter cross against it, pinkish stars stitched onto the cross. The whole flag measured 29 x 53 inches. We took pictures of the flag and then, instead of refolding it, we gently rolled it into the bed sheet we had used to spread it out on. (My sister had been the archivist at a historical society so she knows about proper treatment of artifacts--folding is bad.)
 

The next step was to contact the military museum that was described on the website to see if they would be interested in giving a good home to our flag. As I wrote an email to some faceless, unknown curator, part of me was thinking, “Oh, they're probably always getting inquiries from people who think they have something special.” Another voice said, “Oh, maybe they'll be really excited. Maybe they'll send some official team to come collect it and carefully transport it to their humidity-controlled environment. Maybe they'll display it with a copy of our dog-eared newspaper clipping!” Another thought was, “Don't be too disappointed if you never hear anything, or get a 'delivery failure' notice. After all, this website was created in 2002 and maybe nothing of this even exists anymore.” So when I got an instant reply, I was ridiculously elated. 
 
Now, in spite of myself, I have gotten curious about the exact battle, the exact captain (I know his name was Marshall), the exact origin of the unit. After a day of searching, I'm no closer to any answers, but maybe with the resources of the Illinois Military Flag Museum, more will be revealed. I eagerly await further word from Sgt. Bill. Until then, the flag lies—rolled, not folded—on the shelf in my guest room closet.

The Village of Ål, Norway

 

Usually when my research uncovers some new bit of information I feel a thrill, sometimes an elation. Sometimes simply a pleasant surprise. Recently I made a discovery and the resulting feeling was none of the above.  It was just, well...disappointing. I mean, how would you feel if you learned that your ancestral village—the village you were planning to visit this summer on your pilgrimage to Norway—if you learned that that village's name (Ål) meant “ditch”? 

 

Well, to be totally accurate, the site offering this information says, "The name is identical with the word áll which means 'ditch' or 'gully'." While 'gully' is marginally better--it doesn't carry quite the whiff of unpleasantness--it's the word 'ditch' that jumps off the screen and stays with me.

 

Oh well, the  pictures of Ål look lovely. After all, the town lies in the Hallingdal Valley—which I suppose could itself be considered a really, really BIG ditch.

The local town centre 1895, © Ål Bygdearkiv