If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 530

 

 

 

 

 

Aurland, Norway

 

This used Normann color photo postcard has the number 631 at the upper right corner on the reverse.  The picture shows the community of Vangen and the fjord.  When Dick Thompson and his sister Anna visited this area in 1951 they met with a cousin, Monrad Johnsen and his family.  Monrad sent this card with a Christmas greeting to Dick in 1958. 

 

Like many of the picturesque communities in Norway, Vangen is small, with the buildings clustered around the fjord and hugging the mountainsides.  The largest building in the center of the picture is the 800 year old Vangen church.  The style of the church is attributed to the English merchants who used to stay in Aurland for long periods to buy different goods and they helped build the church.  The building is described as an early Gothic style.  There have been several restorations with the most radical changes made in the 1860s.  The most recent renovation was in 1926.  The stained glass windows were made by the Norwegian artist, Emanuel Vigeland.  The pulpit and candlesticks date from the 1600s.  The church is open to the public with no fee.

 

Although it cannot be told from the picture on the card, the fjord is long, 18 miles or 29 km, and narrow with a depth of 3,156 ft or 963 m.  It is less than 2 km or 1.2 miles wide.  The mountains surrounding the fjord are steep, rising to about 5,900 ft or 1,800 m.  There are other villages along the fjord in small valleys.  Large sections of the fjord are part of the West Norwegian Fjords UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

 

Monrad Johnsen was the son of Eli Andersen Johnsen sister to Dick’s mother, Sigrid Berentine Andersdatter Thompson.  He was a teacher at the agricultural college in Aurland.  Dick noted in his Scrapbook that Monrad was awarded the King’s Medal of Merit during World War II.

 

Marie and Monrad Johnsen, 1955

 

 

For more information about Aurlandsfjord, see:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Aurlandsfjord

If this Thursday it must be postcards, 519

 

 

 

 

 

Near Voss, Norway, ca 1950

 

Another Normann postcard from Dick Thompson’s Scrapbook, this one has a photograph of the countryside near Voss.  The title and the number 11-54-31 appear at the lower left.  Normann’s signature logo is at the lower right.

 

It is possible to see that every inch of arable land is used no matter how steep it may be.  A tourist hotel is in the background but not easily seen in the photograph.  When Dick traveled to Norway in the 1950s, he stayed here for a few days.  Voss is on the rail route between Oslo and Bergen.  There are many scenic places and waterfalls along that route.  Trains and tourist buses often stop at Voss and Flåm so that tourists can take pictures.  One of the sights along the way is the magnificent waterfall, Tvindefossen.  The falls attract thousands of visitors per year.  When we visited Norway in 2014, my cousin and her husband drove us down the western coast of Norway from Ørsta to Hornnes.  Along the way we had the pleasure of stopping to see Tvindefossen as well as several other waterfalls.  

 

 

Tvindefossen, 2014.  Tourist buses can be seen at the right near the fencing.

 

 

Tvindefossen, closer view, 2014
 

There is a parking area for cars and buses.  A path allows visitors to walk up to the foot of the falls, where it is possible to enjoy the cool breeze and light mist coming from the falls.  

 

Voss is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers.  It is a popular tourist area and is notable as a center for skiing, water sports, skydiving, paragliding and adventure sports.  The Voss Museum has outdoor displays of old farmsteads as well as an indoor displays from traditional farm life.

 

For more information, see:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tvindefossen

 

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 461

Strandgaten, Bergen, Norway, 1916 fire
 

Today's postcards are a good argument for never using magnetic photo album pages and/or tape on postcards or photos. These remarkable, but in far less than perfect condition, photo postcards show the devastation from the 1916 fire in Bergen, Norway.  This first unused Eneret & M (Mittet) & Co. postcard is of Strandgaten and has the number 50 at the lower left corner on the reverse.

Torvet, Bergen, Norway, 1916 fire

 

The second card shows Torvet and has the number 55 on the reverse.  It seems to capture a feeling of woe with the rain, umbrellas, lingering smoke and people walking around. 

The card below shows Strandgaten from a different angle is number 51.  Dick Thompson’s scrapbook collection has a series of a dozen or so cards of the fire all in similar condition.  A few of the cards are shared this week.

Strandgaten, Bergen, Norway, fire 1916

There are have been at least 15 major fires in Bergen.  During the 10 hours of the fire on the 15th and 16th of January 1916, 380 buildings housing 388 shops, 242 workshops, 42 factories, 219 offices, 612 apartments, and 219 storage rooms burned down in the city center and 2700 people were displaced.  Also affected were 3 newspaper companies, 4 hotels, 6 insurance companies, and two schools. 

Wooden buildings along the waterfront area in Bergen, Norway ca 1930s or 1940s

Many of the buildings along the waterfront area in Bergen are wooden but as the pictures from 1916 show, many others were stone or brick.  The postcard above looks to have been taken probably in the 1930s or 1940s and does not have the publishing or distributing company named or an identifying number on the reverse.

 The 1916 fire started when a workman accidentally set fire to a ball of black oakum made of tarred fiber and used to seal joints in wooden vessels and deck planking on iron and steel ships.  It was an extremely windy day and when he tossed the lit piece of oakum out of the work shed instead of going into the sea as intended it was blown back to the shed where soon the entire structure was a blaze.  The wind spread the fire along Strandgaten, shown in the top card photo, and towards the Market Square and the wooden warehouse buildings that “burned like tinder.”  Soon it was evident that Strandgaten could not be saved and fire-fighting efforts moved to stop the fire at Torgallmenningen or the Market Commons area.  The worst of the fire was to the west; however, with help from the military the fire was stopped at the art museum.  The destroyed area was fenced off and ruins that posed a threat were later dynamited. 

 Markeveien, Bergen, Norway, 1916 fire

The fire burned upward along Markevein toward the Engen district.  This card has the number 52 at the lower left corner on the reverse.

 The burned out remains of the Holdts Hotel, Bergen, Norway, 1916 fire.

This card is identified as number 54 at the lower left corner on the reverse and shows people looking at the ruins of the fire.

Torgallmenningen (Market Commons), Bergen, Norway, 1916 fire

This card has the identifying number 53 at the lower left on the reverse.  Efforts were made to control and stop the fire here at Torgallmenningen.  Spraying water on the Stock Exchange Building and the Bank Building making it possible to rescue them and to stop the fire from spreading.  The entire area between Torgallmenningen and where the fire started on Murallmenningen, including the fire station that was built following the 1855 fire, was destroyed.  In one night the city center, with some buildings dating from the Middle Ages, was reduced to ashes. 

For additional information, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_fire_of_1916

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 453

Chautauqua Hotel, 1903, New York

The other day I was looking for something in my grandmother’s (Lil Anna’s) old photo album and unexpectedly came across this postcard of the Chautauqua Hotel (New York State) identified and dated on the photo at the lower left and middle.  The card is pasted in the album and as it resisted removal and I did not want to damage it, the reverse side remains somewhat a mystery.  Since this was during the period when postcards had undivided backs and therefore only the name and address could be on one side any message would have appeared across the photo.

When Anna left Norway in 1902 she traveled with a ticket paid for by a sponsor family living in Buffalo, New York, which is not too far away from Lake Chautauqua.  Their name and address was printed on a card and pinned to her coat while she waited at Ellis Island to go through immigration.  She described feeling like a parcel post package waiting to be delivered.  This was a fairly common way for young people to be able to travel to American.  Boys would end up usually doing farm work and girls did mostly housework or tended children.  In 1907 when Anna returned to Norway on a visit she began encouraging friends and relatives to come to America.  She became a sponsor and paid for the tickets, when the ticket was paid off she turned it around and sent for the next person.  Axel and Anna even had a small house on their Lake Union property where the newly arrived immigrant could live until he or she got a job and could be on their own. 

While in Buffalo, Anna worked for the sponsor family for 2 years to pay off the passage fare and save some money so she could go to a young ladies finishing school in New York.  Unfortunately, she did not include the name of the family in her journal.  Later she worked in the garment industry sewing clothing before going to Boston, Massachusetts to live with her brother, John, and his wife, Lydia for a short period of time and eventually traveling by rail across the country to Seattle in time to visit the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo in 1909.  She married Axel Schroder in Seattle in 1912.

Anna Hornnes Schroder, 1912

Lake Chautauqua is about 17 miles or 27 km long and 2 miles or 3.2 km wide with a maximum depth of 78 ft or 24 m.  Buffalo is on Lake Erie and Chautauqua is not far from Lake Erie.  The name of the county and the lake come from the language of the Erie people who lived in this area.  The Erie language is now extinct.  The lake is used for boating, fishing and tourism.  There are many shops, restaurants and entertainment.  There is also a stern-wheeler replica, the Chautuaqua Belle, that offers sight-seeing cruises on the lake. 

Since it is a souvenir card, and more than likely purchased while on a vacation, it seems likely that sometime during the 2 years Anna worked for the family in Buffalo they took a trip to the lake and that is how the card came to be pasted in her photo album.

For additional information, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chautauqua_Lake

John Hornnes & Lydia Marstad, Update- 2

John Mikalsen Hornnes and his wife, Lydia Gabrielsdatter Marstad, ca 1901

As extended family members will recall, Lydia Gabrielsdatter Marstad was the wife of John Hornnes, the son of Mikal Alfsen Hornnes and Anne Gundersdatter Uleberg and the older brother of my grandmother, Lil Anna Hornnes Schroder.  Anna lived with John and Lydia for a period of time before moving to Seattle.  The last time Anna saw Lydia was just before leaving Boston to come to Seattle for the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition in 1909.  At that time Lydia was very ill with tuberculosis.  Using that date plus the 1910 US Federal Census records that showed John widowed we were able to place Lydia’s death between 1909 and sometime in 1910.  After several fruitless months of searching I finally found Lydia’s death.  She died 2 February 1910 in Melrose, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts.  The Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose could possibly be where she is buried. 

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a friend who is from Boston and returns there to visit his parents at least once a year.  He said he is very familiar with the Wyoming cemetery and the next time he goes back he will see if he can find the grave and perhaps get a photograph.  With his help and knowledge of the area we found the street address where John and Lydia lived while in Melrose, 282 East Foster Street.  The pictures below from Google Maps show the street.  They lived in the house situated off the street in back of the large white house with the flag.  In the aerial view the house is on the left side, dark brown with a red-tan roof.  There is a park across the street.  It appears to still be a very nice neighborhood.

 Above & below, Google Maps images, 282 E Foster Street, Melrose, MA

I have been trying with little success to find out when and where Lydia and John’s little boy, Mikal Alfred Hornnes, died.  I found his birth and christening record in the Helleland, Rogaland, Norway parish register:  #18, page 32, born 2 June 1900, christened 8 July 1900.  Sometimes when a child dies very young there will be a notation in the margin that will give a death date or at least a cross marking a death but there is nothing in the margin of this record.  The family moved often due to John’s employment with the Norwegian railway beginning with a short stay in Flekkefjord, moving next to Helleland where Mikal Alfred was born, and ending up in Voss north of Bergen before they returned to Kristiansand then leaving Norway for America.  All the moves makes it more difficult to discern where Mikal died or if he lived long enough to accompany them to the United States in 1901.  In 1905 when John applies for US citizenship he says he has no children so we know that Mikal died sometime between 1900 and October 1905. 

In the process of looking for this little boy I noticed that someone I did not know or recognize as an extended family member had posted pictures of Lydia and John from this blog on Ancestry.com.  I suspected that whoever had posted them might be related to Lydia’s family, the Marstad line, and that proved to be the case.  Lydia was one of 10 children born to Gabriel Johan Sivertsen Marstad and his wife Olene Elisabeth Olsdatter who is sometimes found as Alene or Line on the records.  Several of Lydia’s siblings also left Norway for America around the turn of the century.  Many thanks to Kelby Sodeman who very kindly sent me a genealogical fan chart of the Marstad family that was originally compiled by Gladys McKee and Sidney Marstad in the 1960s and later amended in 1993 by Ruth Hanssen and Edna Marstad.  Although this chart does not have places and dates it does have all the names of descendants of Sven and Ingeborg Marstad from 1775 forward in time up to the 1990s when the chart was revised. 


The Marstad family name comes from a place or farm located not far from Flekkefjord and Kristiansand.  On the map below the place is marked with a large dot to indicate the location; however, it is not as large a community as Flekkefjord even though it appears so on the picture.  Evje og Hornnes where John was born and lived is at the upper right, the port city of Kristiansand is at the lower right and Flekkefjord is just above Marstad.

Map as found on Digitalarkivet.no, digital collection

A previous update to Lydia’s information, found in the blog on 2 February 2013 can be viewed by putting Marstad in the search field.  Lydia’s siblings are listed in that update.  Kelby asked what I knew of George Olai Johan Bernhard [now it is confirmed the Bernhard should be Elexanhard*].  What follows is what I told her in an email reply. 

George’s complete name on the Hidra parish register is really difficult to make out.  When magnified the image is still hard to read and it is not clear whether the name is George Olai Johan Bernhard or Alexanhard/Elexanhard* or something else beginning with a C.  The old handwriting style also complicates things a bit.  The original blog entry, as noted above, gave the 4th name as Bernhard with a birth date of 13 December 1873 but the correct date should be 3 December 1873.  The corrected middle name should be Elexanhard (*see correction below) as found on his Railroad pension papers.  His name is often found in a variety of spellings in different records and he does not always use all of his names.

What I learned about George is that he came to the USA in 1892 and might be the first of the Marstad children to emigrate.  He and his family appear to have settled in and lived in New York from the beginning.  George became a naturalized citizen with one petition dated 1918 and another 1920.  He married Johanne Kristine, known as Christina, Tønnesen Sunde on 4 November 1905 in Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Brooklyn, New York.  She was 11 years his junior and came from Nes, Flekkefjord, Vest-Agder, Norway. 

Kristine/Christina left Norway for the USA in 1902.  The children of George and Christina as found on the 1930 US Federal Census:  Edward age 24; Mabel age 22; Clifford age 16; and Helen age 14.   Not found on the 1930 census is another child: George Clifford born 1910 died 1912.  His death is listed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church records, 1826-1945 at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church.  He is buried next to his parents in the Green Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

The 1940 census has children, Clifford and Helen single and living at home with their parents, George and Christina and Jacob Sunde, brother-in-law (Christina’s younger brother) and William Sunde, nephew, living with the family. 

On the 1885 Norway census Kristine’s parents are given as Mikal Tønnesen Sunde and Amalie (Malie) Tønnesen Sunde.  Kristine’s birth year is given as 1884.  The Nes, Flekkefjord parish register lists her birth as 23 October 1884, christening 16 November 1884.  Since I had access to the bygdebok for Nes it seemed worth it to look and see if there was anything more about Christina's ancestry that might be interesting.  It was a common tradition to name children after grandparents and Christina was no exception.  She was named for her paternal grandmother, Johanne Kristine Olsdatter Sunde (1827-1862).  The fascinating thing about her ancestry is that her great-grandmother, Christiane Rosenvind Steen, was born in Greenland in 1796 the daughter of a Greenland colonist, Johan Christian Steen who left Greenland and settled in Flekkefjord where he is listed as a merchant.

George was a boat captain and worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.  He died 9 February 1956, Queens, New York, New York, USA and was buried at the Green Wood cemetery 14 February 1956.  He was 82 years old.  Johanne Kristine (Christina) died in 1969 and was buried next to her husband and son, George Clifford (1910-1912) on 17 June 1969. 

I am still searching for little Mikal but if in the process I find more about some of the other Marstads, I will do another update at a later date.

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*Name spelling correction:

The Bygdebok for Hidra herred, Gård og slekt, volume II, by Jan Helge Trelsgård and published by Flekkefjord Historielag, pages 522 and 523, have the correct spelling of George Marstad's complete name.  It is Georg Olai Johan Eleonhard Gabrielsen (Marstad).  His first name has the Americanized spelling George.

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 183

 Sørfjorden, Hardanger, Norway, 1921

Reverse

I wanted to share a little more about our trip in June 2014 to Norway and Austria when I found this dark sepia toned 1921 Mittet & Company postcard sent to my grandmother, Petra Landaas Lee, from her friend Jenny.  The note on the reverse of the card sends best wishes to Petra, her husband, and daughter.  It also mentions Jenny's mother who just turned 79 years old.  The postal horn stamp is a dark pink color in the amount of 25 øre. 

 The card shows Sørfjorden in Hardanger, Norway located somewhat near the farms grandma used to visit when she was a girl.  The Landaas family lived in the city of Bergen but the children often spent the summer or parts of the summer on farms owned by relatives where they would help with the general farm work and tend the goats or sheep.  Since we did drive along this fjord on the way south from Ørsta to Hornnes it seemed a good time to combine a postcard with some pictures of the trip. 

Sørfjorden is a 24 mile or 38 kilometer long fjord arm that branches off the Hardangerfjord and runs from Kinsarvik south to Odda.  In this part of Norway the farms produce fruits such as apples and cherries.  The hillsides are very steep and the trees grow straight down or up as the case may be.  In one place we saw where the farmers had placed ladders and ropes on the hillside to tend the trees because the ground was too steep to stand on and do the work of pruning and picking.  Petra used to describe her memories of the strawberries growing on the mountainsides and how wonderful it smelled when the berries were ripe and how sweet they tasted when the sun was warm and bright in the summer. 

We stayed one night in the beautiful Ullensvang Hotel, below, located right on the fjord near Lofthus where there was a map showing the nearby communities and hiking trails.   The Norwegian composer and musician, Edvard Grieg, had a small cottage here where he would retreat to work on his compositions.  

Late afternoon on the fjord side of the Ullensvang Hotel

The small brown cabin is where Edvard Grieg would work. 

The trail map

Unlike the trails here in the U.S. that show the number of miles these distances were measured in the time it would take to make a round trip.  They must expect a lot of tourists here as the sign is in English and I really didn’t notice it was in English until much later.  Bob is pointing to Ullensvang where we were staying.

The photos above show fruit trees growing on the hillsides.  The picture just above is a view across the fjord from the hotel showing orchards.

Here are a few more photos of the fjord.  There were hundreds of waterfalls cascading down the mountainsides into the fjord all along the route we drove.  Individual farms and small communities like the ones in the pictures were found here and there.  Most of the villages had ferry service across the fjord to another community on the opposite side.  The scenery was breathtaking everywhere we looked.

Many of the houses and farms were flying flags like the one above.

The ferry pulling into the dock was typical of the ones we took, and we took many, as we crisscrossed our way down the coast on the way south from Ørsta to Hornnes.  

Many, many heartfelt thanks to my cousin and her husband for being our hosts, tour guides, drivers and everything else that was needed to make our Norway visit a dream come true.

This funny little bird with his beak full of something politely posed on the dock for me.  This was one of several birds we saw that we could not identify because we could not find a birding book for Norway in English in the regular touristy type stores and did not have time to find a more specialized book shop.  Perhaps someone will let us know what this little guy is called.

For additional information, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8rfjorden_%28Hardanger%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ullensvang

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Grieg

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Note:

Tusen takk! to Bjørn Arnhaug who provided a name for the little bird above.  The bird is a Wagtail or in Norwegian Linerle.