Surnames.........
Holly	If anyone caught the post I deleted, I have an American brain & we write our dates backwards. [:)] I'm sure questions like this have been gone over here before, but help!!! I begin with the surname Thompson. I was told it was Americanized, so fine, I'm looking for the Norweigian equivalent of Thom or Tom. Torge? Torje? Something else? Regardless, the ancestor's name was Torjesen, at least it was if it didn't include any non-english characters, but I don't know. But then someone threw a wrench into the works & told me an identifier for the name was Songe. Songe? I has to be a location, right? But I was told the location he was from was Holt parish in Aust-Adger, Norway near Tvedestrand & sometimes having info confuses, rather than making things clearer. Is there something like a sub-parish deal? Would Songe be a farm in the Holt parish in a town named Aust-Adger?
jwiborg	Hi, first of all, Aust-Agder is a county, or "fylke" as we say in Norway. The spelling is AUST-AGDER, not -Adger. [:)] The county is located in the southern part of Norway, see [url="http://kart.norge.no/"]map[/url]. As you can see from the map (click on county to zoom), Tvedestrand is a city in Aust-Agder. If you go [url="http://129.177.171.80/cgi-win/wc/webcens.exe?slag=meny&kategori=1&emne=3&spraak=e"]here[/url], and search for name of farm=Songe, you will get 339 hits (people) living in Aust-Agder! 31 of them are located under "Holt". Holt doesn't exist as any municipality any more, it's now under Tvedestrand! [:)] But Holt church exists, and the parish is still called Holt. So there is both farm names and a place called Songe in Tvedestrand! The place is halfway between Tvedestrand and Risør, but is located in Tvedestrand municipality, next to the "Songe water". A Norweigian equivalent of Thom could be Thomas. Thomas (first name) and Thomassen (last name) was very common norw. names in the 19. century. Jan
Holly	first of all, Aust-Agder is a county, or "fylke" as we say in Norway. The spelling is AUST-AGDER, not -Adger. [8D] Is it any wonder why my searches came up empty? f you go here, and search for name of farm=Songe, you will get 339 hits (people) living in Aust-Agder! 31 of them are located under "Holt". Holt doesn't exist as any municipality any more, it's now under Tvedestrand! But Holt church exists, and the parish is still called Holt. My ancestors emigrated before 1865 (married in Wisconsin in 1856), so the 1865 census would only have family that stayed in Norway. I've come across other descendants of my g-grandparents & they've already put a lot of work into researching them, but unless I can also learn the process, I can't help them much, nor can I get any further for myself. Ellev's father was Torje Tjostolvsen, born 12 Mar 1796, ancient county estate "Amtmannsgaard" at Angelstad. Emigrated to Wisconsin in 1853. Landowner.. I haven't gotten a response from an email I sent to the poster providing the info here: [url="http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec?htx=message&r=rw&p=localities.scan-balt.norway.general&m=1470"]Rootsweb Post[/url] Without being able to duplicate the work, I have no way of knowing how dependable it is, which is how I ended up at this site. Before emigrating, my g-grandfather's name was Ellev Torjesen. He was born 7 Oct 1828. I was given this info from an unconnected person, so I feel it's pretty dependable. Following the same proceedure you gave me for the 1865 census for the 1801, I get back a page of info I do not understand when I try Amtmannsgaard & Angelstad & all variations I can think of. When I checked using Songe, none of the people there fit the name & I didn't just look at the 5 year old boys.
ninakarls	This is the only candidate (right age, close enough name) I find in the 1801 census: Gierrestad (Gjerstad) Parish, Vegaardshejen, farm: Aas Tiøstel Pedersen 42 Widower after 1ste marriage Farmer Peder Tiøstelsen 20 Inge Tiøstelsdtr 18 Nils Tiøstelsen 17 Tarje Tiøstelsen 6 Birte Tiøstelsdtr 12 Kirsten Tiøstelsdtr 3 Tiøstel Larsen Fosterchild 15 Tiøstel Tarjesen 28 Carpenter
jwiborg	Hi, some translations first: An "amtmann" is an old [Danish] word, and can be translated into "county governor". It's not used in Norway anymore, but I believe they still use it in Denmark. The modern norw. word for the profession would be "fylkesmann". A "gård" is a farm, thus "amtmannsgården" means the farm where the county governor lived. There was one "amtmann" in each county, thus there should be only one amtmannsgård in each county as well. This can differ some, because the county borders might have been changed since 1801. So instead of searching for farms named amtmannsgården, you can search for occupations containing "amt". You should cover "amt, amtet, amtets, amtmand, amts, amtsforvalter, stiftamtmand, stiftamtskriver"... However, I could not find any county governor living in Aust-Agder in census-1801, but I belive he would live in the city of Arendal, the biggest town in that county. In the 1865-census, the amtmann for Aust-Agder can be found [url="http://digitalarkivet.uib.no/cgi-win/webcens.exe?slag=visbase&filnamn=f60903.wc2&variabel=0&postnr=2499&fulle=true&spraak=e"]here[/url]. Jan
Holly	I realize it's been awhile since I was here, but I've felt remiss in not thanking you both for your help. Your help is appreciated. I've been told there has been a book that has a great deal of information about my ancestors, linking them to the Ingling (sp) kings. I'm more than a bit skeptical, but will know more after I get a copy of the book. I have a feeling I will need to get more deeply into scandanavian history before I even begin a search for documentation. My mother vaguely remembers a discussion among her older relatives about giving up some sort of inheritance in Norway, whether to try to scrape together money to pay taxes in order to claim it or whether to turn it over to the Norweigian government. I think this would be sometime in the mid to late 1940's. Any ideas on how I can research this, to find out it it's true or whether it was a figment of my Mom's imagination? She said it's almost like she dreamt it.