SEARCHING THE DIGITAL ARCHIVE NORWAY 06.02.2014 Norwegian records online for free This speech is about searching the Norwegian Digital Archive for relatives. We will start with people in the US and follow their history backwards through the sources.
Searching the Digital Archive Norway N O R W E G I A N R E C O R D S O N L I N E F O R F R E E WELCOME Searching the Digital Archive Norway NORWEGIAN RECORDS ONLINE FOR FREE Fellow genealogists. Welcome to one almost one hour walking through some digitized sources for your ancestry back in the Old Country Norway. I hope you will enjoy it. PRESENTATION SPEAKER Presentation Speaker Finn, the Finn not a Finn Work at a regional office of the Norwegian National Archive - Trondheim Former president of a genealogical assosiation of Norway - DIS I am Finn, the Finn not a Finn. Presently I work at the State Archive in Trondheim, which is part of the National Archive in Norway. My work is primarily to help people wanting to find historic information from our 200000 meter with documents and protocols. Part of this work is also to guide users through the digitized records at our Digitalarkiv. I am a former national president of the largest genealogical association of Norway DIS Slekt og Data, which is about genealogy and computing. I have also been president of our regional division of this organization. Side 1
AIM FOR THIS HOUR Aim for this hour Present the Norwegian Digital Archive Show some of the possibilities Show some of the difficulties The aim for my presentation to day is to give you some ideas of what the Norwegian Digital Archive is and how it might be used. I will show some of the possibilities for genealogists in USA. But I will also point at some of the difficulties that you might meet. Some of you has never visited this site and some has used it for years. I hope that I will give something to all of you. HOW How Start with someone in the US of Norwegian heritage Try to follow them back in time When you are going to show someone how to use some computer systems, you have to provide some examples. My experience is also that if you can follow a person or a family, it is easier to identify with the work done and to transfer the knowledge to your own research. I will start with people who have lived in America and who s family comes from Norway. If you by any chance know this family, then you are lucky, but with several million people in the US with Norwegian heritage, the chance is not very big. THE OLD DIGITALARKIV Side 2
The Old Digitalarkiv Digitalarkivet Norwegian Digital Archive The sad news: Some of you might have used the DA for years You might even have saved links to interesting pages In 7 weeks all is dead If you have saved links, they need to be changed For those of you who has been using the Digitalarkiv for some time, this picture will be familiar. To you I have some sad news: In around 7 weeks all this is dead. Some of you might have saved links to these old pages in your computer systems. I am sorry, but in 7 weeks the links will be dead. Some of us are trying to postpone the limit, but we do not if we will have any success. The last day is said to be March 31. If you have such links saved, I do not have time now to tell you what to do, but stop me during the conference and I might give some advice, or send me an email and I might help. The address comes at the end. DIGITALARKIVET THE NEW ONE Digitalarkivet Norwegian Digital Archive The good news: We have a new system that is larger and in some ways better This is what I will show you Side 3
The good news is that we have a new system that is larger and in many ways a better system. This is what I am going to show you today. RULE NO 1 Rule no. 1 Do your homework! Find everything possible in US records Make a note of every piece of data, it might help in the search It is important in all parts of our genealogical work that we always do our homework, and do it thoroughly! That is also important when you are going to another country where you do not know the language, you do not know the geography or what sources that exist. You have to first search all available sources in the US and note every little bit of information. It might help in identifying your search areas. EXAMPLE: JOHN SWARVA Example: John Swarva I must admit, I have not done a good enough research on this fellow, but I have found quite a lot. This page shows the result when I search for him at Family Search. John lived the last part of his life in Napa, California and died there in 1986, 91 years old. The result page shows him in the 1940 census, there are two draft cards for him and two records about his death. MISSING INFO Side 4
Missing info Where is his immigration? The info at Family Search has to be incomplete. Among other things, there are no immigration record. There can be several reasons for that, but the most probable has to do with names. RULE NO 2 Rule no 2 A name is not eternal Problem 1: People changes names Problem 2: Names are written several ways, even in the same document Wouldn t it be easy if everybody got a name at their birth and kept that the rest of their life? On the other hand, if that were the case, would genealogy be as much fun as it is? People changed their names, not only ones but often several times. Maybe it is special for the immigrants who needed to conform to their surroundings. The name change did seldom happen at Ellis Island at their arrival. There might be differences in spelling. The name change happened later and I suppose everybody were free to call them whatever they would like. The other problems with names are the spelling. You will meet that problem often in the Norwegian records. The person writing the name in the record wrote what he thought he heard or how he thought it should be written. REFINE YOUR SEARCH Side 5
Refine your search Let us suppose that our John had another first name at his arrival, maybe he has just shortened it, and maybe the last name should be written with v and not w which is more common in Norway. Now we got one person that it might be worth to continue with. However, we cannot be quite sure that this is the right person yet. We always have to have our minds open for other possibilities. WHAT THE KNOW What we know John / Johannes Swarva / Svarva Born: 3 July 1895 From: Snaasa, Norway Immigration: 16 May 1915 New York Brother: Alfred (in US) Death: 3 March 1986 Mothers maiden name: Heinveg Here is a summary of what we know: 1. Name: John/Johannes Swarva/Svarva 2. Born: 3 July 1895 3. From: Snaasa, Norway 4. Immigration: 16 May 1915 New York 5. Brother: Alfred (in US) 6. Death: 3 March 1986 7. Mothers maiden name: Henveg WWW.ARKIVVERKET.NO/ENG/DIGITALARKIVET Side 6
www.arkivverket.no/eng/digitalarkivet Let us go to Norway. The address to Digitalarkivet in English is: http://www.arkivverket.no/eng/digitalarkivet. As I said before, the Digitalarkivet is changing, that means there are still e few quirks around. But before we start with using Digitalarkivet, let us see what we can find. CONTENT DIGITALARKIVET Content Digitalarkivet Searchable databases Censuses Church records Emigration records Scanned images Church records Probate records Older material We can divide the content at Digitalarkivet in two parts. One part is one big searchable database with more than 20 mill. records. This database contains mainly data from the different censuses, from transcribed church records and emigration records. There are also several small data collections included in the database. The other part are scanned images. All available church records in Norway up to around 1930 are scanned and available at Digitalarkivet. These are not searchable by names etc. but can be viewed as you were reading the books. In addition to the church records, we can find a lot of the probate registers and property related documents. We can also find taxing lists back to 1600 hundred and a few even beyond that. During this presentation we will use both the database and the scanned church records. WWW.ARKIVVERKET.NO/ENG/DIGITALARKIVET Side 7
www.arkivverket.no/eng/digitalarkivet But, back to the front page. There is a dark blue area at the top of the page. This is where we start most of our searches in the database. Underneath this in the middle of the page is a section with shortcuts to several of the different sources that are available at Digitalarkivet. First we have all the censuses represented with the year. Further down this list you will find the scanned or digitized parish registers, real estate registers, emigration protocols and probate records. On the right hand side there are some useful links and on the left side some news from the Archives. It is useful to read the news because important changes will be announced here. SEARCH METHODS DATABASES Search methods databases Simple search (a la Google) Advanced search persons/property Source specific search Find source We have several ways to search for people at Digitalarkivet. The first we can call Simple search, or search a la Google. With this method you just write some words or dates in one search field. The system will then give a result list with all records where all the words are found. The second method is called advanced search. This will also search the whole database, but now we give information in every field by a search form. This form we can refine if the result is not what we want. The third method we can call source specific search. In this search we use one of the shortcuts on the front page like the census for 1900. We will then only search this source. The last method is used to find sources from one specific area. We can search for available sources and then search each of them one by one. Side 8
WILD CARDS Wild cards * (asterix) in the beginning or end or both of a word (vertical bar) either/or Combinations Example: Bernh* Nes* Næs* As opposed to a lot of other databases like Family Search and Ancestry.com, Digitalarkivet are only exact searches. There are no Sounds As or soundex. The good thing is that there are a few wildcards that we can use to help us in our search. As we know that the writing of especially names vary very much, and that makes this is necessarily. The two main wild cards are the asterisk (*) and the vertical bar ( ). The first one is used to substitute for anything in the start or the end or both of any word. The second one is meant to give the possibility to list two or more alternatives to choose from. The example shown and used in the simple search, will find anyone with a name starting with Bernh (Bernhard, Benhardine, Bernhoft etc) with in the same record something starting with Nes or Næs. SIMPLE SEARCH JOHANNES SVARVA Simple search Johannes Svarva Let us return the task of the day Finding John Swarva or Johannes Svarva that he might be called in Norway. As a start let us write the name as we found it on the Immigration record in New York. SEARCH RESULT Side 9
Search result Search result 2 And this is the result. Four records, three census records and one emigration. Three of the men are born 1895, the last one 1887. The first column contains the full name, the second birth date, the third place of birth, the next one family position and occupation. The fifth column is for place of living, the next one is when the event that is recorded happened. The seventh column is for role in the event and last column is the source. Everything here is in Norwegian. The first record is from the census 1910 in community number 1736 Snåsa. As we see the community is also written Snaasen. The second record is from the census in 1900 in the community Inderøy. Since the birth date and place is different here, I would put this aside for the moment. The third record is an emigration record and the last is from the census in 1900 from Snåsa. We note that this person is called Johannes Paulsen but lives at Svarva. That is a good opportunity to say something about naming tradition in Norway. NAMING TRADITIONS IN NORWAY Side 10
Naming traditions in Norway Given name Johannes Fathers name (patronymic) Paulsen (fathers first name Paul) Address/birth place etc Svarva (can change a lot when people moved) Up until 1923 we had no regulation of names in Norway. Anybody could take any name and they could change whenever they wanted. We can divide the name in three parts: Given name or first name is the name that is yours, which identifies you. But as mentioned earlier, it could be written in several different ways. And it could be pronounced quite different in daily life. Two brothers baptized Olav might go by the names Stor-Ola and Litj-Ola meaning Big-Ola and Small-Ola. The next name tells where you belong, it is the first name of your father with then ending sen or son for the boys and datter or dotter for the girls. That does not change either, but is not always given in the records. The last name is more like an address and might be the name of the farm that the person lives at at the specific time. Another record might have another name. And some would use their birthplace most of their lives. With the name law in 1923, everybody should have a first name and a last name and that should be theirs. We can click on the name to see more information from the record. Let us start with the emigration record. EMIGRATION RECORD Emigration record What information that is given in the emigration records, vary over time. This form includes all possibilities, but only a few are filled with information. It states that his given name is Johannes, last name Svarva, he is male and is born 1895. He lives in Snåsa, he is not married and works as a farm laborer. Date of emigration is 3 may 1915 which corresponds well with the date of entry in the US 16 may. It does not state the name of the boat but says that he travelled Side 11
via Kristiania or Oslo today. The line is Den Norske Amerikalinjen and his ticket is paid in Trondheim. If the record had said that the ticket was paid in America that could mean that somebody in the family had left before. But it could also mean that they were recruited for some work in the US. The last information is Emigration permit and it says that he has a certificate or testimonial from his local minister. Let us continue with one of the other records: the census in 1910. CENSUS 1910 Census 1910 This record lists all the members of the household. The information is name, age or born date, place of birth, family position, marital status, occupation and residential status. The last column is b if the person usually lives her, mf if he is temporarily absent and mt if this is not his usual place of living, he is a guest. The members of the household is the household father and mother with three sons and one daughter and one girl as a servant. In this case we cannot assume that the household father and mother are the parents of all the children. Other censuses could state that quite specific. We have to go to other sources to verify that. They might also have other children not listed here. They can be at work some other place and would then be listed there or they might be married and have their own household. The housefather is called Paul. His children could then be called Paulsen or Paulsdatter. We see here that both Marius and Johannes has a P. in their name. That is probably Paulsen. We might also remember that there was a Johannes Paulsen on the result list. Back in the info from US there was some information about a brother that Johannes had as his goal and his name was Alfred. That is probably Paulus Alfred who has dropped his first name. CENSUS 1900 Side 12
Census 1900 Let us look at the last record from the result list the census 1900. Here we see that all the children are called Paulsen or Paulsdr (datter). There are also two older children who at the census 10 years later either has moved out or are dead. There is also a difference when it comes to the mother in the family. In 1910 she is listed to be born in Værdal, but in 1900 she is listed to be born in Snåsa. When there is an asterisk after something in the results, it means that the data is not from the source, but derived from something else. If there is an asterisk behind a year of birth, it means that in the original source we will find the age. This is then computed from the time of the event. The fact about his mother should be examined further. We have an information earlier on that we have to verify to make quite sure that we have the right man. DIGITIZED PARISH RECORDS Digitised Parish Registers Unfortunately, not all of the Norwegian sources are made searchable yet. Maybe we will be there in a couple of decades. But almost all church records for the Norwegian state church are scanned and made available for our research. They are not searchable, but readable. That means we can find the book and the year we want, and then start reading. What we should try to find, is the marriage of the parents of Johannes. From the 1900 census, we know that the oldest child living at home is Andreas born in 1882. Not all parents in Norway where married when the children was born. That fact is notoriously recorded in the church records. If we can find his baptism, we will know if his parents were married at the time. Then we will know what direction we should go. Side 13
We start at the front page where we find a shortcut to Digitised Parish Records. SELECT COUNTY Select County This page is the start-page for the scanned church records and the first thing we has to do is select what part of Norway we want to examine. Norway is divided into some 20 Counties or Fylke as we call it. So where is this Snåsa that everybody talks about. There are ways to find that out you can Google but let us examine the window a little closer. There is a field here that says: Search for parish by name. Let us try Snåsa there, and suddenly we have got 20 church books to have fun with. Just a warning, it is not always this easy. Our aim first is to find the baptism record for the oldest brother of Johannes, Andreas who was born 1882. Born 1882 does not necessarily mean baptized that year. Usually it is within a few months of the birth. We have a promising book called Snåsa: 1873-1887, Parish register (official) which we should try first. At some times, there were to series of church records. One of them, and it is called Official here, are written by the minister. In the Norwegian part of Digitalarkivet it is called Ministerialbok. The other series were written by the sexton or parish clerk. The reason for this is that several books got lost in fire. These two series should be compared twice a year and they should no night stay underneath the same roof. SNÅSA 1873 1887 Snåsa 1873-1887 The left hand side of the page includes some information about the book. It says here among other things that the County is Nord-Trøndelag, so now we know that. The main part of the window includes all the Side 14
sections that are in this particular book. Some places there are books that covers only a few of the events that are recorded in the church records. That will mean that there are several books covering the same time period. Each section is divided in years, so we have to choose a starting point for our reading. To enter the book, we click on the blue number behind the year we want. That number represent the page number in the book. Andreas is born 1882 so we starts with the Birth and baptism records for that year page 45. BAPTISM 1882 This looks interesting. Some info on the page before we start reading the church book. At the top under the heading User options we have some choices to make. First is the Image size. Medium (40%) are for the young and fresh eyes, I usually change this to 100%. The next is marked Image information. Here we should select On top. If we do that, we get 3 lines of text that is important for us. The first one is a complete source reference. The second is the url to the page which we can use to find the page again or give to other for examination. The third line is just the url to the picture which we can use if we want to download the page to our systems. Underneath this last line, there are some buttons, which are used to maneuver around in the book. There is also a field for the page number where we can write a number and push enter to go to a specific page. We can also click inside the pages to go to next page. The column in this book are: 1. The baptism number this year 2. Birth date 3. Baptism date 4. Name of the child 5. Wither the parents were married (ægte) or not (uægte) 6. Parents 7. Witnesses 8. If there has been an emergency baptism at home 9. If the child is born out of wedlock, who has brought the information to the minister No we just have to start looking for someone called Andreas with a father called Paul Helgesen. ANDREAS PAULSEN SVARVA Side 15
Andreas Paulsen Svarva We find him on page 51 as number 27 He is born November 8 and baptized December 26, and he is Ægte, which means his parents were married at the time. There is still some information we are looking for, so we should find their marriage. We get a hint here that we are on the right track. If we look at the witnesses, there are two of them with last name Hemvæg. The marriage has in this case to have happened some time before the birth of Andreas, but not necessarily a very long time. In 1882, the mother is 24 years old. Most of the girls got married in their early twenties. Let us go back to the Content page. MARRIAGE PAUL AND ANNE MARTHA Marriage Paul and Anne Martha Let us take a guess and start with 1880, it might be before and it might be after. Now we are lucky because the marriage is on the first page as the second last marriage in 1879. The columns here are: 1. Marriage number this year 2. Marriage date 3. Name of groom and bride 4. Where the groom is living and born and where the bride is born 5. Birth year (or age) 6. The father of the groom 7. The father of the bride 8. Best man Side 16
9. Announcements days 10. Who has asked for announcement 11. If no public announcement, why 12. Small pox vaccine 13. If official person, how about pension for the bride 14. If anyone been married before, how ended the marriage and has there been a probate Here we can see that Paul has been married before, he is a widower and he is a farmer at the farm where he is born. Anne Martha is the daughter of a farmer and she is born in Verdal. And her father s name is Andreas Larsen Heimvæg. That has to be accepted as proof that this is the correct person. We remember that it was stated in the death index for California that the mother of Johannes maiden name was Heinveg. That is as close as could be. WHAT HAVE WE DONE? What have we done? We found as much information as possible in the US included the name used at immigration We used that name to do a simple search in the Digitalarkivet We found emigration record and two census records We found the marriage of his parents via his oldest brother We proved it was the right person. If we sum up our activities so far, we have: 1. We found as much information as possible in the US included the name used at immigration 2. We used this name to do a simple search in the Digitalarkivet 3. We found th emigration record and two census records 4. We found the marriage of his parents via his oldest brother 5. We proved it was the right person by his mothers maiden name. We have to do another case. ANOTHER EXAMPLE Side 17
Another example There arrived in New York 25 May 1910 a young girl, she is called Teresse Gratland from Pega, Norway at Ancestry.com There was a young girl that arrived in New York 25 May 1910. At Ancestry.com she is called Teresse Gratland and she is from Pega, Norway. She married short time after arrival another Norwegian called Magnus Ree and they lived later under the name Ray. That is another story. Our aim is to follow the girl back to Norway. And we should start with the passenger manifest. In my Norwegian ears (with or without a hearing aid), I cannot remember a place in Norway called Pega. Let us look closer. THE NAME The name A closer inspection of the name reveals that there are two dots over the third letter in her last name. That might indicate that the name registered at Ancestry might not be quite correct. NEAREST RELATIVE Side 18
Nearest relative At a first look, it might that she is from Pega Helgeland, but if we look a little closer at the first letter and compare with other similar letters, it seems clear that it has to be V Vega, Helgeland. It also states here that her father is Ola Larsen Gr..tland. Ok, back to Norway and Digitalarkivet. SEARCH FOR TERESE Search for Terese At the Digitalarkivet, we first use the simple search from the front page. As there are some doubts about the name, and that the spelling of names in Norwegian records might differ a lot, we use some wildcards. The first name might start with T or Th and after the s there are uncertainties. Therefore, with use both the vertical bar and the asterisk to search for several alternatives. We do not know much about the last name, except that it should start with Gr. So here, we also use the asterisk. The result list says there are 585 records the meet our search. That is too much. Advanced search for individuals which we also find on the front page, should be our next try. Here we can specify which fields should be search for what. ADVANCED SEARCH INDIVIDUALS Side 19
Advanced search individuals Let us put our search into this form and let us add place of birth starts with Veg. The result is not very good. Maybe place of birth was not so good idea, let us move that to place of residens. ADVANCED SEARCH, CHANGED Advanced search, changed That gave one record, which is somewhat promising. This is an emigration record from 14 may 1910. The girl is called Teresse Josefine Grøtland and she is 21 years old. And her place of residence is Vega, Helgeland. The emigration was from Kristiania (Oslo today). Just for trying it out, let us refine the search a little. We simplify the first name, remove the last name and put in her year of birth. REFINED SEARCH Side 20
Refined search That gave us another record with a Terese connected to the Grøtland farm in Vega. That is from the 1900 census and should be examined further. CENSUS 1900 Census 1900 Here we have the whole family at the Grøtland farm in 1900. The father is Ole Karl Larsen. At immigration he was called Ola Larsen and that is close enough. And Terese has three brothers of which the two oldest is doing fishing like their father. One of the brother has a special first name Sandberg. Let us try a search for him. BROTHER SANDBERG Brother Sandberg We use just his first name and his year of birth and let us see what we can find. Side 21
5 DIFFERENT RECORDS WITH SANDBERG 5 different records with Sandberg There are 17 hits and 5 of them are certainly the right person. We have his baptism in 1883, his confirmation in 1898, the census in 1900, his migration from Vega in 1903 and his emigration in 1903. So, he left for the US before his sister, and if we had studied page two of the immigration record for Terese, we would have seen that she was heading towards him. Now, we have tried the two most common search methods at Digitalarkivet simple search and advanced search. There is one more, which I have called Source-specific search. I have to show you how that work. SELECT SOURCE Select source From the front page, we have a link called Select Source. That leads us to this page. There are several ways to search for specific sources here and they can be combined. What you search for here, are sources that are transcribed and put in the large database. You do not search for scanned sources. At the top, we can write a name of a place and click Search. Then we will get all sources from that place. We can also search by Source category, by geography or by period. If we write Vega in the search field and push Enter, we get a list of all available sources connected to Vega. SOURCES FROM VEGA Side 22
Sources from Vega We have 40 sources from Vega. The church records are divided into on source for each section in the book. The reason for this is that each section contains different fields. Behind each source there are some buttons or links. The one called Search opens a search form and let you search only this source. If there is a Browse link, it will open the scanned version of the source. The last called Info gives as you probably had guessed some info about the source. If we go back to the page for Select source, on the right part of the page there are many links. Each one of them has its own search form, and it makes it possible to search only in one source category. But we can search the whole country or for large or small parts. SEARCH MARRIAGES Search marriages Her I have selected the search form for Marriage records where you have all the possible fields to search by. On a left is a geography column, where you can select the whole country (default), one or more Counties (fylker) or one or more municipalities (kommuner). Moreover, this can be combined in any way needed. This concludes our tour through the Digitalarkivet and I hope you have enjoyed the trip. Just a few other things lastly. DISCUSSION FORUM Side 23
Discussion forum Digitalarkivet includes also a discussion forum where it is possible to ask question about Norwegian genealogy, and there are many users there eager to help. Most is in Norwegian, but it is ok to ask in English and most Norwegian genealogist are fluent with the language. Check this out and use it if you hit some walls. FAMILY SEARCH WIKI Family Search Wiki If you need more information about Norwegian genealogy, there are several places to go on the Internet. One of the best ones are on Wiki pages at Family Search. There you can find a lot of information about Norway, even collections of farm names. One problem Family Search will meet shortly, is that quite a few of the links show to the old Digitalarkivet, so they should be changed. USEFUL LINKS AT DIGITALARKIVET Useful links at Digitalarkivet Side 24
Digitalarkivet has on its front page a link to what they call Useful links. Here are also a lot to examine. Most is in English, but some will be more familiar for you. DIS-NORGE GRAVMINNER DIS-Norge Gravminner At last I will mention one site that is very useful for genealogists interested in Norway. The genealogical society in Norway called DIS, has for several years had a project to record all tombstones on the cemeteries in Norway. It is not complete yet, but it covers a large proportion of the cemeteries. Her you can search for cemetery or for names. I do not have time today to say anything more about this, just bring to your attention that the site exists. FINAL PAGE Final page The Short Tour Start using the Digitalarkiv Ask questions Do you have links to the old Digitalarkiv, change it now!!! That concludes my hour. I should have had three more. What you should do no, is start using Digitalarkivet and learn about all the possibilities. I hope this has inspired you to start. And don t give up when you cannot find what you are looking for. Ask again with some different spelling. If you have links to the old Digitalarkivet, change them no. If you need help, ask for it. My wife and I will be here the whole week and we might be able to help you get started. TAKK FOR OPPMERKSOMHETEN Side 25
Takk for oppmerksomheten MAYBE SEE YOU NEXT YEAR Side 26