The Story of Missing Christiane Jørgensdatter
After spending time working on a family group sheet of my father's, a handwritten record showing his research on my mother's maternal Danish line, I stopped, thinking that I need to take a look at my father's own Danish line for some reason.
I pulled out the fan chart I printed recently for the ancestry pedigree of Dad's grandmother, Caroline Sophia Sorensen. One name seemed to pull my attention, Niels Pedersen, so I looked him up and started looking at some of his children's lines. I ended up looking at the family of Niels Pedersen's granddaughter, named Maren Andersdatter and her husband, Jørgen Jensen. In the process I noticed that there was a gap in the existing recorded records (in FamilySearch) between some of her children (after correcting a few errors in what was there for the family). Before the gap, the family lived in Ruds Vedby (see picture below of Ruds Vebdy taken on a trip we took to Denmark in 2016).
After the gap, the family lived in Ørslev. What everyone missed in previous research work was that the family, in between this move, lived a few years in Skellebjerg. As I looked there, I found the correct birth information for one of the children already in the system (Frederikke), but decided to look a little further to see whether another child was born in that gap. It was here I that I discovered Christiane.
To put this in context, Christiane is a second cousin to our ancestor Hans Sørensen. He joined the church in the county of Holbæk, where this whole family lived. Christiane was 22 when Hans was baptized.
Because of poor economical conditions, children in these families moved out of their families in their teen-age years to work and earn money for themselves or the family. Because of this, the census records did not help a lot in completing family records. I felt an excitement about finding this lost child of the family and I added her name to my reserved names in FamilySearch.
From here, I did some more research to find out about where Christiane went as an adult, hoping to find a marriage and family. I found nothing. I started working on one of her sisters, Ane, and ended up putting together a family for her comprising of 11 children and reserving their names for temple work.
Still, I felt the need to keep working at Christiane. I found nothing for a while but finally took a look at the Tilgangs/Afgangs list (arrivals and departures) in a record that was fairly hard to read. These records often do not help, but after searching in vain for her in death records and marriage records after the date of her confirmation in 1849, and not finding her in any census records after 1845, I decided the best I could do was to try to find her in these records of moving in and out. It was hard to read, but it worked. I found the record showing her departure from Ørslev to Årslev, Sønderup (see below) in the neighboring county. Looking in that parish's records, I found the record of her arrival, which also included her vaccination date, another remarkable blessing, because it matched the one listed in her confirmation record. I found her and am sure of it.
But then, I could find nothing more. She just simply disappeared again.
After a few days. she seemed to urge me on, so I tried once again to find her in census records on FamilySearch. This time, I found a Christiane Jørgensen in the 1860 census, this time in Niløse, another town in the area, back in Holbæk. Here she was listed with a few people who were hired help in a farm. Both she and another person there, Niels Hansen, were listed as being born in Skellebjerg and she was of the proper age.
After searching Niløse for a while, I found a marriage record: of Niels Hansen and Christiane Jørgensen. He was listed as being from Skellebjerg, but the marriage record did not show her birth place. Being fairly certain that this is really her, I moved on, with the feeling that I was headed correctly in these records.
I then found Niels Hansen listed in the 1880 census, but with a different wife, and several children more. I searched and found that Christiane died in 1876.
Through it all, I found eight children born to this couple in Niløse. Two of the children did not live past infancy. The last child was Niels Peder Hansen, the second by that name, the first dying two years prior. I noted with sadness that this second Niels Peder Hansen was christened on 8 June 1876, the same day that his mother, Christiane, was buried.
Six of her eight children were alive when she died. Niels Hansen remarried within a few months of his wife's death, which often happens when there are small children left when the mother dies. He needed a new mother for their children.
This is but one of the families I found recently for the Maren Andersdatter/Jørgen Jensen family and descendants. As of the date of this writing, I have reserved ten ordinance reservations for Christiane’s family and an additional 73 for other children of the Maren Andersdatter family and descendants. I am still finding and attaching more family members. The process of discovery has been an adventure. Some family members and attachments were fairly easy to find, but many of these required going back and forth through the original parish records and comparing information. Occasionally I found some people who had been erroneously attached to other families, and fixed those.
I feel that through this time of lockdown, I have been moved by the Spirit to find these close relatives on the other side of the veil. - Joseph
