3. Finding Details on that Elusive Danish Family Member

 Danish Research Techniques - When Other Methods Fail - an instructive example.

Here is a Danish family with two daughters, Karen and Maren, whose later lives are a mystery. We have records for them up until they were teen-agers, and then…  nothing.

This shows Karen and Maren (only Maren will be the focus of this document). The last we know of her is that she was confirmed in 1853. In this document we will use her research as an example of additional steps that can be taken when the usual methods fail to give conclusive information.

Sometimes you find a member of one of your families, similar to Maren, shown here,  who seems to elude normal record searching methods. Normally, a lot can be found through taking advantage of searching indexed and transcribed records provided by FamilySearch, Ancestry and other sources, including the Danish State Archives. One of the problems comes when you have a very common name or are in a location where there is a large population (e.g. Copenhagen). When this is the case, you will probably spend a lot of time poring over actual records images in fruitless searches.

I usually focus on a family member when we know basic information, but when death and/or marriage details are missing. If a death is found and we are sure this person was not married, at least we know that we need not pursue more research for expanding the family records for this person. So, here I first looked for a death date (missing for Karen, Maren and their mother, illustrated above). We do know that in some cases, a missing death date does not indicate an end of the line (as for their mother). As for marriages, at first glance at the details, you cannot tell whether a person shows as married in the FamilySearch records. If connected with the church system of temple ordinance information, it is possible to see a quick indicator whether the person has no marriage connection (as shown here):

If you click on the person’s name (e.g. Maren Hansdatter), you see a review of that person’s details. With temple ordinance information, we see the lack of a spouse (the “SS” in a dotted box). If a spouse is present in the system, then the “SS” will be in a solid square with some color, usually green, gray or yellow. In this case we know, by a simple glance, that there is no spouse listed for Maren in the FamilySearch system. Of course, we can go to her page to find this, but this is a quick method I use. At this point, I would normally start searching the Ancestry or FamilySearch systems for possible matches in the transcribed records. As already mentioned, nothing was found.

A Summary of Danish Records

The Danish State Archives (Rigsarkivet) provides images of their parish records over the period of many years (see chart shown later in this document).  These are based on county and parish. Within those records there are several sets or kinds of records. Records before about 1815 are called “Enesteministerialbog” where ministerialbog means “ministerial book.” After about 1815, the records usually come in two copies, one is the main, or primary ministerial record, or “Hovedministerialbog,” and the other the counter-ministerial record or “Kontraministerialbog.” I usually find the counter, or second record to be more readable, especially the “Ny scanning” or new scans. The image quality is significantly better. 

In these records, you find records of births/christenings, marriages, deaths/burials and confirmations. Children were confirmed at about age 14. In addition to these, the records usually contain details of people moving from one parish to another, but those are not consistently available. Sometimes you find them in the “Hoved” records when they are not found in the “Kontra” records. If you find records for the years you need, they may help trace people who move from place to place. Be advised that these records are often difficult to read and are not conclusive because some people are not recorded in their moves for some reason. Also included in some records are dates of vaccination. All people in Denmark received smallpox vaccinations starting in the late 1700s. These vaccinations were often recorded in the confirmation records, but also appear in some other records, but not consistently so. When found they can be very helpful in identifying someone. When they are available, they help, but it depends a lot on the diligence of the parish officials.

Also available are military levying rolls, extending from about 1790 to 1850, but this document will not address these records. They are handled differently from the usual parish church records.

Of all these records, the basic parish records have been indexed (extracted or transcribed) to a great extent by FamilySearch (church volunteers) up until about 1892 and by Ancestry.com (their own people) for those years and later years as well. In addition to these, the census records are transcribed and are available from the Danish State Archives, the Dansk Demografisk Database (DDD). These are the census records which occurred in these years: 1787, 1801, 1834, 1840, 1845, 1850, 1855, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1885, 1890, 1895, 1901, 1906, 1911, 1916, 1921, 1926 and 1930. (There are a few other years in the south Jutland area as well.)

All of these searchable records are very useful, but this document is focused on people who are hard to find using such methods, though some census searches were used in this process.

This document illustrates, through the example of Maren, a process that can be used in doing your own searches when the search engine services are not conclusive.

Finding Elusive Details for the Life of Maren Hansdatter.

Both Maren and Karen and very common female names in Denmark. That made it difficult to determine the correct person among so many possible options. Therefore, I started to go directly to the parish records to find some additional information that might give some clarity in finding the correct Maren.

First I need to note something else about this family. There was a reference that Maren’s mother died early, without details, e.g. a different mother appears in later census records. I felt I should verify Maren’s mother’s death. Death records sometimes include useful information. She apparently died while Maren was young. It is not unusual for a child, especially a daughter, to move away from home after her father remarries. This might have been the reason for her move.

1. I determined the specifics of the death of her mother. 

First I looked for Maren in the 1845 census. To do this, I searched the DDD for Hans Andersen in county Maribo in 1845, listing his birth year as 1798 ± 2 years and came up with a hit (first of 6), noting that the family was living in Vigsnæs at this time (where Maren was confirmed in 1853):

Clicking on “vis alle felter” gave me:

At this point I see that Maren’s father had remarried (the second wife showing in FamilySearch). As for the mother, Kirsten Mortensdatter, we do not (yet) have death information, but it was between 1841 (when her brother was born and died) and 1845. Here I searched the death records in Vigsnæs:

which gave me her record on image 12 (page 202):

showing that she died on 11 April 1842 (Maren was almost 4 years old).

2. I tried to find Maren in the usual searches.

As already mentioned, we last see Maren in Vigsnæs, but she does not appear with the family in the 1855 census records. Also, there were not any record suggestions for her in FamilySearch. Ancestry.com searches were not conclusive. These searches presented a lot of possibilities, but because her name was so common, it could not be determined from those suggestions where she went after her 1853 confirmation.

Maren was born in Tårs (or Taars), but the family soon moved to Vigsnæs where Maren was later confirmed at age 14. Sakskøbing was a large city near by and often young people went there to work (as I soon learned was the case for Maren and Karen). In my search process, several parishes of Maribo County were examined, including Vigsnæs and Sakskøbing. Our example of details shown here is for the Sakskøbing parish. Others were used in this process, and this example mainly shows the different kinds of records available for Sakskøbing from the Danish State Archives, “Rigsarkivet.” The details of such records will be explained shortly, but first I will show the process where I found her move from Vignæs to Sakskøbing in 1857.

3. I went to the “Tilgangs-” and “Afgangs-” lists for Vigsnæs. 

There were several groups of records, by date:

Many parishes do not have records going this far into the later 1800’s.

I found these details of a young woman, named Maren Hansdatter, who moved from Vigsnæs to Sakskøbing in 1857. Her age was off a bit (as noted in my notes), but later research proved this to be her:

https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/billedviser?bsid=353446#353446,70316760

Vigsnæs, Musse, Maribo Kontraministerialbog new scans 1846-1873 arrivals and departures

page 110 image 23 entry 217 in  1857 departures

Maren Hansdatter  age 18  to Sakskøbing 31 October 57 (she actually would have been 19, barely)

Now I will show in more detail how to get to these kinds of records.

This graphic shows the access method into the parish records of Denmark. County and parish are specified in the upper section, and when the parish name is chosen, then the different record collection groups appear in blue with a plus sign at the left of each. This method of records is as described above. 

Our first approach is to search the departure records for Maren.  As already described, the “afgangslister” records for Vigsnæs were used first. Now, in this search, in Sakskøbing, I clicked on the bottom Kontraministerialbog (new scan) group of records (on the plus sign) and then on the Til and afgangslister for 1844 to 1863. In those records (shown below) I found an entry for Maren’s move to Sakskøbing from Vigsnæs which corresponded to the one recorded in Vigsnæs. The details of the index connected to this move record were noted. As I then went to the Jævenførelses register for 1844 to 1891, I found, in the appropriate record, an additional event in the index connected to Maren (also shown below): a reference to a marriage record in the same parish. That marriage record, when reviewed, showed vaccination dates for both parties which matched Maren and also helped verify the correct person who was her husband, Ole Nielsen (also a very common name). The details of this search follow.

4. I went to the records in Sakskøbing to find her arrival there (Tilgang).

 I followed the steps as listed above. 

The result gave:

This is summarized (including URL) as:

https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/billedviser?bsid=353279#353279,70310193

Sakskøbing, Musse, Maribo Kontraministerialbog new scans 1844-1863 arrivals and departures

page 338 image 41 entry 76 for 1857 arrivals

Maren Hansdatter  age 19 from Vixnæs Jessen (or Jester)  31/10 57 

In this record, on the far right, you can see the reference to the index records, or Jævnførelses, with the code 283-37, indicating page 283 of the index, entry number 37. In my normal research, I rarely follow the index records as they do not often yield anything interesting, but in this case it helped a great deal.

In searching the 1844-1891 J (index) records, on page 283, I found:

… summarized as:

https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/billedviser?bsid=155350#155350,25952251

Sakskøbing, Musse, Maribo Kontraministerialbog 1844-1863 Jævnførelses (index)

page 283  Ma  image 207 entry 37

Maren Hansdatter

marriages  D289-3

arrivals D338-76

The important point of all this is that not only does the index show her move record, her arrival noted as D 338-76, entry 76 on page 338, but also a marriage record: page 289, entry 3 (of the parish marriage records, same year range).

5. I looked for the marriage record for Maren.

Based on the index, I went to the marriage records (Viede) for the same date range ( or as close as I could come): 1844-1863. In that record, I found a page 289 and entry 3 was indeed for a Maren Hansdatter and her age was correct.

I summarize it:

https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/billedviser?bsid=353278#353278,70310144

Sakskøbing, Musse, Maribo Kontraministerialbog new scans 1844-1863 marriages

page 289 image 39 entry 3 for 1861 marriages

bachelor Ole Nielsen of Ourebÿ age 23

Maren Hansdatter of Ourebÿ age 23

married 10 March 1861

index: 322-27 for him, 283-37 for her

vaccinations  27/6 39 Wilhjelm for him, 11/ [could be a 1 or a 7] 39 Wilhjelm for her

Since the 1 or 7 was difficult to determine (vaccinatoin date for her), I went to the Hoved records copy for the marriage and found the vaccination details clearly indicated:

where the bride’s vaccination is clearly 11/7 39. 

This is quite useful because Maren’s confirmation record of 1853 clearly shows her vaccination record as being 11 July 1839. To see this, you need to go to her source record in FamilySearch and view the image attached to that 1853 event. It was not indexed, nor entered anywhere else, but is appears in the original record. I find vaccination records to be very useful in solidifying a guess as to whether I have the correct person.

6. I determined the  details of Ole Nielsen to be added into FamilySearch.

I could have just entered the name of Ole Nielsen, as husband, with the same birth year as Maren, but it is always good to put in as much detail as possible to catch duplicates early. The marriage record did not contain anything about his birth nor parents. Some records do, many do not. In order to find out more about him, there are several approaches.

Again, because his (and her) names were so common, a simple search in Ancestry or FamilySearch did not come up with anything useful. My first approach then was to see whether I could find them in the 1870 census, the next census following their marriage. I assumed Maribo county, but that could have been a problem as well, but I did try it. For her I failed. For him, I found the family (and learned why her name did not work). Here is the result (Maribo County, Ole Nielsen, born 1838 ± 2 years, 1870 census:

As is sometimes the case, the census takers erroneously (or the transcribers) wrote her name as Marie, instead of Maren. I seems likely that this is him, BUT, to make sure, I will now search the parish records for him in Sakskøbing in about 1852/3 for his confirmation. He was born there and it was a fair guess that he was also confirmed there, but that also sometimes catches you with an empty search. In this case it worked. I went first for the confirmation record because that is likely where a vaccination date might be found (instead of the christening record, where vaccinations are rarely recorded). Again, I found success:

He is shown here with the vaccination date (last column) as 27 June 1839, which matches the one given in the marriage record.

I was fortunate with this. Usually it takes more searching, and often I cannot be sure I have the correct person. Since it did match, I entered his information, including birth date and parents, given in the confirmation record. I could also have gone from here to the actual christening record in Sakskøbing, but I was satisfied with these results. It turned out that there were several copies of this Ole Nielsen (marriage, parents, etc.) and I ended up merging several records and found that they had already been sealed as a couple. However, starting with this information, I was able to start putting children in the family and the expansion of Maren Hansdatter’s family was underway!

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This experience, with this example and documents provided are given with the hope that it might be useful to give hope to any of you who read this, that there are ways to expand these families of yours in Danish records.

- Joseph F. Buchanan

2. Extending families in Danish research - a Case Study

 An Example and Guidance to Help Extend Families in Danish Research.

There are many kinds of records that can be useful to extend information known about a person in Denmark, especially after about 1815. Major help comes from the digitization of records that have taken place over recent years. I use three main sources for this digitized information and use the parish records (a fourth main source) to take that information and try to extend it even further with details.

The four sources are:

1. Danish census search system provided by the Danish State Archives (Rigsarkivet) - the Dansk Demografisk Database (DDD)

2. FamilySearch

3. Ancestry.com

4. Rigsarkivet - Parish (church books) collection of scanned images of the actual records.

Finding Where Extending Information Might be Possible.

Look at a family in FamilySearch. I like to look at children in a family where not much information is shown, usually there is no death date and often no spouse listed. Here is an example I will follow in this process.

In this case, there are a number of points to note. First, with Peder Rasmussen, there is no death date given, being merely listed as “deceased.” Also, as you click on the name in FamilySearch, it shows some details including temple work and in this case, there is no sealing to spouse. This usually means that there is no spouse recorded for this person. If the SS is yellow, then there probably is a spouse attached, but not enough information provided to really identify that person (critical dates and places).

Also in this example I note that there are two children listed in the family named “Hans Rasmussen”. This usually means that the earlier child died young and the later child was given the same name, a standard practice in Denmark. In any case, it is good to look for death information for the particular child. Death records can also be useful in that if the person was an adult when died, and there was a spouse, sometimes the spouse’s name is listed and other useful information included to help identify that spouse. For this example, I focus only on Peder Rasmussen.

Research Process Based on Discoveries

At this point there are a number of options to explore. Digitized records can help a lot. Though since there are always problems in records or in digitization, you cannot count on any of these to bring results. It takes patience and a lot of time sometimes (also prayer). 

Here is what I did in this case:

When I see the actual details for Peder Rasmussen (with him as the subject on the FamilySearch page), I click on the 

link in the “Search Records” panel on the right. Sometimes I need to fine-tune the search criteria by moving the controls in the upper left part of the ancestry screen presented:

 -->  (change as shown)

 

This is my usual method, but sometimes a more general focus is necessary.

Look at the list presented in the main panel. Sometimes you are fortunate and find something right away. In this case, I do see a very good match (the 3rd one down the list):

Since we know that he was from Kirke Skensved and the birth year was close, we try this suggestion and it pays off, with death information and a widowed spouse listed. Click and hover on “Denmark Church Records 1812-1924”. In this case his parents’ names also match. It mentions a wife, “Marie Johansen.”

Clicking on the “View Image” gives an image (from which I extracted this and added notes):

died: 1898 21 June                                                                                       born in Kirke Skensved  son of

Jersie town and parish, Thune district         buried 1898  27 June      Rasmus Christensen and wife     aged 58 years

                                                                                                                     Karen Pedersdatter

                                                                                                                  married to Marie Johansen

Often, useful results are not so quickly found. Usually, I have to alter the search to include only death or marriage sources, for example you could do this:

Click the “>” for  “>Birth, marriage & death” to get the three options. Then click on the option desired of those three for that focus, but for this example it is not needed. 

Searching Using the DDD (Census Searches):  https://ddd.dda.dk/soeg_person.asp

When you search using the Danish state archives system, you need to know the county (or Amt) where the family lived. Peder Rasmussen lived in the Copenhagen area, specifically Roskilde county. I note here for this specific example that in some record sets, Roskilde is combined as being in Copenhagen (København) instead of as a separate county. I have not seen any other county handled this way. Locations take a bit of learning and patience. Tune (or Thune in some spellings) is a district in Roskilde county. The DDD considers Roskilde a separate county.

With that, this is my search for Peder Rasmussen using DDD:

Note that Amt = county, Herred = district, and Sogn = parish. The word Vælg means, “choose.” In this case, I chose Skensved parish (Sogn), but I normally do not choose a parish, leaving the search focused on the entire county. Also note in the name the “wildcard” character, %, which is a substitute for any character or set of characters. Since Peder is often spelled Peter, this makes the search work for either. I include birth year (Fødeår) of 1840 in this case, with an interval of 2 years (±). Census years are presented in a list, but you can choose “All Years” (Alle år). For this example, with 1845 selected,  clicking “Sog” for search, I see the single result:

Now click “vis alle felter” to see all fields:

Here we see his family in 1845!  He is shown as 5 years old in that census. “Deres Barn” means “their child.” “Gift” means “married.”

“Roskilde, Tune, Skensved, Kirke Skjensved Bye” is:

Roskilde = county; Tune = district, Skensved = Parish, Kirke Skjensved Bye = Town  (note that some place names include the letter “j”, which indicates a “yeh” sound)

Now, when I search again in Roskilde, I was not able to find him in the 1890 census, for some reason, but when I tried the 1880 census, I found:

which yielded:

Now I know that Marie Johansen was born (Fødested) in Ejby parish of Copenhagen county and was 34 years old in 1880. I can now search Ejby in the parish records for her birth record. Using her information, specific searches could be made in either FamilySearch or Ancestry.com. I choose to manually search the parish records. The age is sometimes off by a year or two, so I keep that in mind. This also shows that they had at least two children by this time (Rasmus and Karen), which I can try in later searches.

Direct Searching in the Parish Records

Since we have some fairly specific information, I go directly to the Danish state archives for the parish records, looking for her christening in about 1845/6.

The address is   https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/geo/geo-collection/5

The record form looks like this (with the first fields chosen, so far):

Each one of these five items shown here represents a set of records, all scanned images, not indexed. The best one in any search between about 1815 and 1892 is usually the one for Kontraministerialbog with the “Ny Scanning i farver - indtil 1892” which basically means that the records are of a more recent scan project and are more readable, but the records go only up to about 1892. For records after 1891 click on the one above it. In this case, we choose the new scan. I click on the plus symbol in front of that line to see:

I click on Fødte kvinder (birth of females) 1834 -  …  1852 which brings up the set of record images for that book.

The image scan appears with a directory list on the left side and other tools on top showing for navigating the scanned images of the book:

This particular book covers the years 1834-1852 for female births and christenings. The first page is displayed (in part) here. Since Marie Johansen was born about 1845-1846, we will need to go a ways into this book. I try 30 on the left and see if I am close. 

Image 30 brought up page 73, late in 1847. I will need to go back a bit to get to 1845.

As I go back page by page, I finally find the record image on page 68, image 25:

In entry 155 on that page, I find the best match and her name was Maria Johansdatter, born 1845, 19 December, christened (Døbt) 1 February 1846, and her parents were Johan Rasmussen and wife (hustru) Kirsten Pedersdatter. (Note also the green boxes by the image numbers on the left, indicating that those records have been seen already by me.)

Marriage Search (a manual search through the Parish record books)

I usually like to try to find the actual marriage record if I can, because that might give additional information, plus, it might help keep me from making an error in assuming I have the right person. Many names in Denmark do not vary much and assumptions often lead to mistaken connections with people of the same names. It is always good to find additional records to make sure you have things right.

In Denmark, people did not move a lot (except when they did!) and marriages often occurred in the birth parish of the bride or the groom. Since the family lived in Skensved later (1880 census), also his birth parish, I will look there first. The oldest child listed in that census was born in Karlslunde, so we might also search there. He was 9 in 1880, so we will start looking around 1870.

Here is my start point for searching in Skensved for the marriage. [Note that in these records, Roskilde is combined with København (Copenhagen) county in the parish records.] I clicked on the last item (plus sign), then marriages for 1848-1891

and found it on image 4 (page 305):

7 March 1868

I am pretty certain now that this is the correct Peder Rasmussen, based on location, age, and the death record showing him married to her. This example ends here.

Note: This process actually surprised me with how quickly I found the appropriate information. Usually it takes a lot more trial runs at such processes over time.

-  Joseph F. Buchanan  -  16 November 2025