Mikal Mikalsen Hornnes

Mikal Mikalsen Hornnes, ca 1900
[photo courtesy of Alf Georg Kjetså]

Mikal Mikalsen was the tenth of eleven children and the youngest son of Mikal Alfsen Hornnes and Anne Gundersdatter Uleberg. He was born 24 August 1881 at Espetveit, Aust Agder, Norway and christened at Evje og Hornnes on the 28th of August 1881. I do not know very much about him except that he and my grandmother, Lil Anna, were born at Espetveit after their father retired there and they would have spent their early childhood together at the small mountain farm. About the time my grandmother was ten or eleven years old Mikal would have been 13 or 14 and probably had left to work for hire on another farm. She does not mention him much in her journals. When Lil Anna was ten she says she was sometimes left at home alone to take care of the farm while her mother went to visit or help some of her other grown children. We know that her older sister, Marie, was living there at Espetveit too but no mention was made of where her brother, Mikal, might have been at that time.

I wondered if he eventually went to work on the railroad as so many of the others did since Mikal married a girl named Karen from some distance away in Kragerø, Telemark probably around 1909. Later in life he took the name Svaba as his surname suggesting that he settled on a farm of that name. Mikal and Karen lived at Øyslebø, Vest Agder. They had two sons, Alf Mikalson Svaba born 1910, died 1983; and, Andre Mikal Svaba who was born 1911 died 1995. Andre married Bergljot Benden who was born 1913 and died 1996. They had five children.

I am hoping that one of his descendants will see this and perhaps add some information.

MIkal died in 1962 and Karen died in 1968.

Mikal Svaba
[photo courtesy of Alf Georg Kjetså]