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 most often in the confirmation records, but also appear in some other records, but not consistently so. When found they can often 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 (or extracted or transcribed) to a great extent by FamilySearch (church volunteers) up until about 1892 and by Ancestry.com (their own volunteers) 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 difficult to find using these methods, though some census searches were used.
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. As mentioned, 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, but this example shows the different kinds of records available 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, then, contained 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, I went to the Hoved records 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 with the same birth year as Maren, but it is always good to put in as much detail as possible. 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 sometimes, 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
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