Park Placeline

Just a year ago, this post would have been two generations shorter, as the g-g-g grandfather I had in this line was wrong. And I had literally nothing for him and his wife but names, and only a surname in this case. Now thanks to my cousin Kate, who kept digging and pushing until she found more information and got us a whole other generation back in the Park line. So thank you, Kate, for helping to expand our family tree. This family line was why I started my search. And aside from the above, I've made very little headway with them, so having that expansion was quite exciting. Who knows what we'll find now that we have more names.

As always, bold are important places for birth, marriage, and death records, and italics are other locations they lived in for at least a year.

1. Mary (May) Dunlop Park

A. Des Moines, Washington. When Granny grew too old to live on her own, my grandfather found a place for her here in Washington at a Masonic nursing home. My grandfather was a Mason, and used his connections to get her a very comfortable and pretty place to live. Despite that, she wasn't happy to be here. She remembered her youth in the US poorly, and hated how her father had been treated at that time. If she'd had her way, she never would have lived in the US again. But we were glad to have her close by, where we could see her, and I have fond memories of visiting her here several times before she passed away.

B. Vancouver, BC, Canada. My great-grandmother lived the majority of her life here in Vancouver. She moved here in her twenties, and lived here until late in her life. Here she met her husband, Bjarne, and here she had her two boys. I would venture to say it was the place she felt was her home.

C. Belfast, Ireland. At the time, it was before Irish independence, so I will call it just Ireland. For a short time before the Parks moved to Canada, they lived in Belfast.

D. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is where Mary and all her siblings were born. Their parents came here from northern Ireland in 1883, and only left when it became too difficult to be immigrant Irish in the Eastern US, when they returned home to Ireland.

2. Robert James Park

A. Vancouver, BC, Canada. This is where my great-great grandparents settled finally with all their children, and lived until they passed away, which for Robert was almost twenty years, a good, long time. 

B. Belfast, Ireland. After no longer wanting to be in the US, the Parks returned to Belfast before moving again to Canada. The only reason I have this confirmed is because they were there long enough to be in the Irish Census for 1911.

C. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After Robert and Lizzie married, they emigrated to the US, settling in Philadelphia. According to the work my cousin Kate has done, it seems they had at least one if not several family members and friends from Ireland in their community. Robert made a living as a cabinet maker. It was only when the push against Irish immigrants began in the US in the 19-teens that they left and returned to Ireland.

D. Belfast, Ireland. I do not know at all how long Robert lived in Belfast, only that this is where he was when he married Lizzie. And I know this is where they left for America from.

E. Ballymena, Ireland. Robert was born in Ballymena, which is also in Northern Ireland. I know almost nothing about his life there, though he had at least two sisters and two older half brothers.

3. David Park Esquire

A. Ballymena, Ireland. I know almost nothing about David or his father. They are very new in my tree thanks to my cousin. I only know that David married twice, and had at least five kids between those wives. Nearly all the locations I currently have for him are Ballymena, so I presume he lived most if not all his life in or near the city of Ballymena.

4. John Park

A. Antrim, Ireland. I know even less about John than I do about David. I have four sons for him, but no spouse, and all his locations are in Antrim. 

*

We do have one more generation back, but no specific locations attached to him, so I will not include him here at this time. Six locations for this one. Very little information once I get back to Ballymena, unfortunately, but at least that is beginning to grow thanks to all the digging my cousin is doing.

52 Ancestors: Joined together - Sam & Maggie

One of the courting stories I didn't cover last month came immediately to mind when I saw this prompt, and I couldn't resist telling their story, especially after finding some new references to it when digging through the paperwork I had for something else earlier this year. My grandparents, Sam Hillinger and Maggie Hansen, both served in the Army during World War II, and both came through the war quite safely, and were eventually assigned to the Frankfurt area after the war to help with reorganization and cleanup. 

Maggie took her time in Europe to go visit her father's family up in Denmark when she was free of duties, but she also took an opportunity to go on an organized trip to relax. The Red Cross had organized trips to Switzerland for those who were helping with everything in Europe. I believe she told me her sister, who also served, was going to come with her, but didn't manage, so she chose to go alone, just to get away and relax. The trip was to Saint Moritz. Maggie found herself alone on a train, watching the scenery go by.

Sam had also decided to go on this trip with a group of his friends. But as the trip progressed, they grew loud, and upon seeing a young lady sitting alone on the train, he broke away from his friends and chose to sit with her. And this was how my grandparents met. Together, they learned how to ski, which remained part of their life until shortly before my grandfather passed away. My father still skis every winter, teaching others in our local ski areas.

Maggie and Sam at their Wedding Reception

But...that is only the beginning of their story. Maggie and Sam were both still part of the armed forces when they decided to marry, so like anyone in the armed service, they were required to ask permission to marry, and last month, I found the letters they both wrote up to request permission to marry. Permission was granted, of course, and so they were married in Frankfurt at the register's office with her sister and his best friend at their sides. The next day, they had a celebration with all their friends in attendance.

Nana told me that she'd always hated having no middle name. Her little brother had one, but she and her sister did not. She said that it was especially difficult during her time in the army, because she had to put something in the middle initial section of any form she filled out, which meant that when she filled out any form, her name became Margaret NMN (No Middle Name) Hansen. So she was very excited when she got married, because now she had three names: Margaret Hansen Hillinger.

Sam and Maggie started their family right there in Frankfurt. My father was born shortly before they got their chance to return home. They stayed for a short time in Ohio while my grandfather got his degree in accounting. Then they had to decide which of the offers Grumpy should take for a job. In the end, they chose Seattle because it was near enough to the mountains to ski. Our family has lived in the area ever since, and all of my dad's siblings were born here.

They celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1998, with crowds of friends and family in attendance. Grumpy passed two years later. We scattered his ashes at one of his favorite ski areas. Nana died ten years later, and her ashes were scattered on Mount Rainier. Any time the mountain is out here in Seattle, I think of her.

Sam and Maggie, skiers for life

Censuses!

So the 1950 Census will be out in just ten days. I'm very excited. This will have my dad and his parents in it, so long as they weren't actively on the move when it was taken in their neighborhood. I think I have the right ED, but I'll probably wait until info is at least a little searchable on Ancestry. Ancestry has a tool for looking up your family's Enumeration District (ED), if you know where they were living at the time. If that doesn't work for you, there is also Steve Morse's site, which can help you narrow your ED  down. 

However, the US isn't the only census to come out this year, and the Canadian 1931 census will come out next year. So here's what I've found out:

At this time, the 1921 UK Census is out. However, it is only available on Find My Past, only if you pay for an account, and even then, you have to pay for each image of the census you look at. So that one's not easily available, unless you live in the UK. My great-great grandfather Leon should be in that UK Census, so hopefully it will eventually be more widely available, though I doubt that will be this year.

The Danish 1950 Census is also available this year, and should be up sometime soon. I wasn't able to narrow down a date, so if you know one, feel free to let me know! I don't have anyone in my direct line who should still be in this Census, but some of my great-grandparents' siblings should be in it, at the very least.

the US 1950 Census comes out on April 1, and Ancestry and Family Search are already chomping at the bit to get the translated to data on their sites so that they are easily searchable on both sites. This one should, if I am very lucky, have my dad and his parents in it. Wish me luck!

The Canadian 1931 Census will be out next year. I don't know much about when or how this will be available, so all I can do is wait impatiently, as both my grandparents and their parents should be on this one. They were both supposed to be in the 1921 census, too, but I was never able to find the Jones family, so it is possible that they were in Wales at the time it was taken. Hopefully they'll be there this time.

And those are the ones I'm most looking forward to getting my hands on. 

Have you started prepping for the Census? Who are you looking forward to seeing on it?

Hansen (part 2) Placeline

Here's my second Hansen line. Which always confuses every genealogy program I have, because Oline Hansen married Holger Hansen, so she never had to change her maiden name, and the programs all assume I entered it wrong because I didn't change it. But while Holger was from Jutland (the part that connects to the continent of Europe), Oline was born nearly in the center of the large island that makes up much of the rest of Denmark, known as Sealand.

As always, Bold is places where the major events happened--birth, marriage, and death, and italics are other locations lived in for at least a year.

1. Oline Hansen

A. Cleveland, Ohio. After meeting Holger, Oline and he moved to Cleveland, married and settled there together. All three of their children were born there before her death in 1929. They lived in a Danish community, and her brother Hans Christian and several of Holger's brothers (and possibly cousins) also came to visit them or settled there. My grandmother told me they had a very good life there.

B. Chicago, Illinois. We believe that Oline came to Chicago immediately upon landing in the US. We don't know this for certain, but she did list her home as Chicago in an Ellis Island arrival record in 1917, so we know she lived there for a time. She may have started elsewhere, but as of right now, I have no absolute proof of any other locations in the US for her.

C. Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the few records I've found, and the family information, it appears that Oline moved with the family she worked for to the Copenhagen area, living in Frederiksberg (a neighborhood of Copenhagen) with them until she left to emigrate to America.

D. Fjenneslev, Denmark. This is where Oline was born. Her father had a farm inherited from his parents, where she and all her siblings were born. It's an interesting area, because there's a very famous church here, and stories about that church and the man who built it. However, they weren't well to do enough to go to that church, so they were baptised and confirmed in the Alsted church. 

One note here for the rest of this: Fjenneslev, Alsted, and Knudstrup are all small towns that my family lived right on the edge of, so while some of my records say one town or the other, I know that the family really didn't move from this area well back in time. For the rest of this record, all I can say for certain is that it looks as though the family really hadn't moved from this location in many generations.

2. Rasmus Hansen

A. Knudstrup, Denmark. Rasmus is listed as being born in Knudstrup, but I know his family farm was the same as the one he later inherited, so I'm leaving his birth and death location as Knudstrup, but I know he lived in Fjenneslev, just like his daughter. He lived on his family farm his whole life, married in the area twice, and all his children were born on that farm. And he died there as well.

3. Hans Nielsen

A. Knudstrup, Denmark. Like his son, Hans doesn't appear to have moved from the area from birth to death. I do have one census record that shows Hans and his wife with their son with him being the new farmer, and them being the retired farmers, so I know he inherited his father's farm, but I don't know exactly where they died, but I believe it was in this same general area.

4. Niels Andersen

We're now in the murkiest part of my family tree, and these are as likely to be wrong as right, though at this time, I'm inclined to feel these seem to be correct based on location and names.

A. Alsted, Denmark. Nearly all the locations I have for Niels are Alsted, with a few slight variations, so I presume he lived and died in the area. I do not know if he owned the farm that Hans Nielsen owned, though that is a strong possibility until I've managed to dig deeper.

5. Anders Hansen

A. Alsted, Denmark. Unlike the following generations until Oline, Anders is actually listed with different birth and death locations. While that means something or not, I felt it was worth marking. His marriage and death are marked as Alsted.

B. Fjenneslev, Denmark. Like my great-grandmother, he's marked as having been born at Fjenneslev. All the rest of his event locations are marked as Alsted.

6. Hans Nielsen

A. Alsted, Denmark. At this time, Alsted is the only location I have for him, so he probably lived and died in the area as well.

*

And that's everything for Oline's father's line. Fluffled out a little with the Knudstrup/Alsted/Fjenneslev issue, but otherwise it's quite small. Six places all together, and three of them are practically the same place.

I will say, if you know this line, I'd love to talk to you about what you know, particularly about the specifics of the farm, and each of these generations and where they lived.

52 Ancestors: Flowers - Tante Margrethe

So this one's a little bit of a tricky one. We have several flowers that mean something to our family, but nothing big, and so I was struggling a little to come up with anything. None of my female ancestors have flower names that I knew--until a Danish friend told me that the Danish queen Margrethe (the Danish version of Margaret) has a nickname--Daisy, due to her British roots. And that's when this one came to me. It's a tenuous connection, but I couldn't resist.

My dad's mother was Margaret. She went by Maggie. She was named Margaret for her father's aunt Margrethe, who helped him out when he first came to this country. I believe there are several Margarets in our family line because of her.

My three-times great aunt Margrethe (tante for those who speak Danish) was born in Denmark in 1873. She was her parent's sixth child. My great-great grandmother Else was her eldest sister. She married Isak Isaksen in 1897, and shortly after, they had their first child. They had three all told, two boys and a girl. Sometime after their daughter, their youngest child was born, Isak emigrated to the US. Margrethe and her children followed soon after. They stayed on Long Island, and so they were there for several of their family members to stay with as they emigrated as well. Margrethe lost her husband in 1958, but she lived more than ten years more before passing in 1970.

It is because of her that Holger, my great grandfather, was able to find his way in the New York area. And it's because of her family that I have as much information on Holger's mother side of the tree, as her daughter was the one to write up that side of my family tree for my grandmother and her sister. I know my grandmother felt very close to her tante Margrethe, who came to take care of them for a time after their mother died in 1929. She was obviously very close to her Tante.

Tante Margrethe and Onkel Isaksen

Tante Margrethe ca 1930 or so

Kresch Placeline

If you thought the previous one too short, this one is even shorter, at least in number of generations. Though there are more places in it. If only because my great grandmother moved around a lot once she left her home in Galicia. 

There are two major groups in the US who have problems tracking their ancestors. The first is African Americans, who for some reason can't track their ancestry easily before the mid 1800s. </sarcasm> The other is those of Jewish ancestry. Our reasons are different, and yet in some ways, far too similar to African American issues. People would rather hate and destroy us than acknowledge what has been done to us. Because of this, I don't know any generations before my great-great grandparents on either side of my grandfather's line. And I have little hope I will find more. But I keep looking. Just in case.

As always, bold is places with major events (Birth, Marriage, and Death), and italics is other locations where they lived for at least a year.

1. Dobra aka Dora Kresch Hillinger

A. Chicago, Illinois. This is where the Hillinger clan finally settled in the US, after nearly a decade of moving around the South. While her husband was not in Chicago when he passed, Dora lived here with most of her children until her death in 1969.

B. Little Rock, Arkansas. After a few years in Memphis, the Hillingers moved to Little Rock, where Dora worked at either a hospital or a school, or possibly both, as a cook in their kitchens. I'm not sure what prompted the move, but I do know they stayed here through my grandfather's time in high school before moving once more.

C. Memphis, Tennessee. After the Hillingers arrived in the US, they settled in Memphis, near where Dora's sister in law and her husband lived. They lived there for at least four years before moving on to another location in the American South.

D. Paris, France. The Hillinger family settled in Paris while Alex worked to get the money together to get the whole family to the US. They traveled from Le Havre to Ellis Island, where they landed, and the family remained in the US to this day.

E. Frankfurt, Germany. After World War I, Dora and at least one of her sisters moved to Frankfurt together. I have record of another of her sisters and also one of her brothers moving there as well, and that their mother moved there and was living there when she died. I don't know much about her pre-marriage life here, but I do know that at this time, there was a rising community of Jews in Frankfurt, and one of the last Mayors of Frankfurt before the rise of the Nazi party was also Jewish. It was a good place to be Jewish in Germany between the wars. 

So it was here she met my great grandfather, and here that they married. All six of their children were born in Frankfurt, and the older ones went to school here. Dora and Alex ran several businesses here, and her focus was on a cafe they owned. But with the rise of Nazi power, things became difficult for the Jews in Germany, and after the last of their businesses failed, her husband decided it would be safer if their family left the country. They had two options for family to go be near at the time. Since he had been kicked out of England, he went for the other option--the US, where three of his four siblings lived. So the family moved to Paris to be safe until such time as they could get a visa to the US, and could afford passage across the sea.

F. Czudek, Galicia (now Poland). This is where my great-grandmother was born. A small village in a country that no longer exists. Galicia was a country that was part of the Austrio Hungarian empire, and by the mid nineteenth century, it was a very poor country. Many Jewish communities had been settled there, and it was an area rife with pograms, as was true of most Jewish areas of Eastern Europe. It is a short way away from Rzeszow, which was a center of Jewish learning in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the first World War, it was absorbed into Poland and the Ukrane, depending on the part of Galicia. Cuzdek itself is now part of southern Poland.

I know very little about Dora's family's life there, but I can imagine what it was like, having grown up watching Fiddler on the Roof, because that's pretty much what it was like in most of Eastern Europe. What I know for certain is this. Shortly after the end of the first world war, there was a pogram here. I don't know for certain how Dora's family was affected, though I have a guess. And it was shortly after that, in 1919, that Dora and her sister left for Frankfurt.

2. Benzion Kresch

I really know very little about my great great grandfather. Just that he lived in and probably died in the village his children were born in. I'm not even sure he (or his wife) were born there.

A. Czudek, Galicia. This is the only location I am certain of for Benzion. I believe that all his children were born here, and my speculation is that the pogram I mentioned above either affected him so that he died, or that he was literally killed in the pogram. I have no proof. Just the mention that several Jews died in the attack, and that he was gone by the time my great-grandmother left Czudek. The only other thing I want to note here is that the cemetery he was likely laid to rest in was later plowed over by the gentiles in the area and used as pastureland. Upon reading that, never had I better understood African American anger. I could say a lot of angry things here, but I won't. I'll just let you imagine them.

*

That's it. That's all I have. Six locations. In fact, until a couple years ago, I didn't even know my great-grandmother's siblings' names. Now I have names, and even a couple of photos. I still know very little about this branch of my family, but I hope someday to know more.

52 Ancestors: Worship - The Huguenots

Upon seeing the prompt for this week, I struggled to decide what to write. Two things immediately came to mind. The first was my grandfather's line. My grandfather was born Jewish, and one of his grandfathers was a Rabbi--in the old country, possibly? I'm not entirely certain. But I talk about that side of my tree a lot, and so I think today I will focus on another group of people whose religion was used against them.

Before I begin, I have to say this is an unproven story I learned from my family. That one of my Welsh lines had connections to the Huguenots. I looked into it, googling the terms Welsh and Huguenot, and came across an article (which I have since lost) stating that there was a small group of Huguenots who settled in Wales and became known for their weaving. Which is what led me to believe that my Gabriels/Howells line was the one that was likely of Huguenot descent, as I knew that line had been weavers to a certain point. But I have also learned that proving Huguenot descent is not an easy thing, unless you manage to connect them to one of the Huguenots on different lists. Which I have yet to do. But I keep trying.

So for those who don't know who the Huguenots are, I'll offer a highly simplistic explanation. They were a group of protestants in Catholic France in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Catholic Church felt threatened by this group, leading to over a century of violence against Huguenots. Finally the Church convinced the French king to make any Protestant faith illegal. Huguenots had been fleeing the country for generations, and this was the final blow, causing those who could to flee the country.

If my family story is correct, it means we have some French ancestry. I don't know when our branch would have fled France, or whether the Welsh Huguenot weavers were actually my weavers, but I do know that my great-great grandfather's family were known for their weaving skill. For generations, it was how they made their money. I'm not entirely sure when that stopped being part of my direct line, though as technology advanced, people with those skills were replaced by factory-made cloth, so probably sometime about the beginning of the industrial revolution.

So here's the line as I have it, working back in time:

• My great-grandmother was Eliza (known as Bessie) Howells who was born in southern Wales in 1885 
• Her father was Gabriel Howells, born in northern Wales in 1849
• His father was Howell Gabriel, born in northern Wales in 1822
• His father was Gabriel Howel, born in northern Wales in 1794

Beyond this point, between myself and the extended Gabriel/Howells clan online who have been tracing their family tree, we do have two more generations back:

• Gabriel Howel's father we now have listed as having been born in 1766 in northern Wales
• And his father was Howel Gabriel, born in 1740.

I don't have a birth location for that last Howel, but it's still at least 60 years after the Huguenots fled France, so still well after the person who would have come from France. That means that if this is my Huguenot line, that they'd been in Wales for at least three generations by the time that Howel was born.

For me, the real curiosity of this family line is the naming tradition. While Wales is a patronymic country, meaning that children take on their father's name as their surname, that is not quite what my family did. For generations, the eldest son took on his father's name as his surname--but his siblings used their father's surname as their surname. It leads me to wonder if maybe this special naming tradition of switching back and forth between Gabriel and Howel as surnames has something to do with our Huguenot heritage. I have no proof of this, though, just a supposition. If anyone knows of a tradition like this, I'd love to hear about it.

Jones Placeline

Like the Hansens, I do have a handful of Jones lines, so I will clarify that this is my grandmother's father's line. Unfortunately, it doesn't go back far because it is not as well traced as the Howells line is, and tracing Jones family is like looking for a needle in the famed haystack. I will say here that I am amused that both of my grandfathers had super uncommon surnames, and both of my grandmothers have two of the most common European surnames. It's almost like someone did that on purpose...

As usual, Bold is Birth, Marriage, and Death locations, and italicized is any other locations they lived in for around a year or more.

1. Merle Tydfil Jones

A. Bellevue, Washington. My mother's family moved down to the Seattle area in 1960, and my grandmother lived in the Bellevue area until her death in 2012. So much of our family history was in the house they moved into shortly after moving to the area, including my parent's wedding party, my great-grandmother living with them for a time, and so much of my mom and her younger brother's childhood, as well as mine and my sister's.

B. Vancouver, BC. After Grandpa went to war, Grandma returned to Vancouver and lived with her parents there while he served. My uncle was born here. They moved to a suburb of Vancouver after grandpa returned to Vancouver, and all three of their other children were born there. They lived there until they moved to the US in 1960.

C. Truro, Nova Scotia. For a time, Grandma lived with Grandpa here while he trained to go overseas for the war. I am not sure how long they were here together, but I feel the need to include it because it was the beginning of their marriage to each other.

D. Vancouver, BC. Grandma and her three siblings were all born here, and lived here their whole childhood and young adult lives. None of them moved away from the area until after they were married, but they generally stayed near the Vancouver area even after they moved.

2. Daniel Thomas Jones

A. Vancouver, BC. I don't know exactly when Daniel arrived in Vancouver, but shortly after, he met my great-grandmother, Bessie. They married in 1911, and so he never went back home to Wales except to visit. They raised all four of their children here in the city. They celebrated their 50th anniversary with three of their four children and all their grandchildren in 1961, just three years before his death in 1964. 

B. Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Daniel was born here in 1882, the fourth of eight children. His parents ran the local post office, and he stayed here with his family until he and his friends decided to take a working trip to Canada, where they worked at farms to make money to travel across the country. When he reached Vancouver, he met and fell in love with Bessie, my great-grandmother.

3. Benjamin Jones

Here's where my knowledge fades. I have a picture of Benjamin and his wife with their daughters, but until I found some census records, I didn't even have all their childrens' names. I do have one story about one of their sons dying from pneumonia, but otherwise, my information is very minimal.

A. Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Benjamin lived here with his wife and children until his death sometime between 1901, where I have him in the census and before 1920, which is when my grandmother and her family came to visit the family. I have all their children having been born here, including my great-grandfather, and I believe I have a census record showing him with his mother and a brother, but I have almost nothing else about how he came here, or who he came with.

B. Caio, Wales. This is the place I have recorded as Benjamin's birthplace. I looked it up, and it appears to be a mining area as well, so it's possible the family moved to Merthyr Tydfil because they were already part of the mining life. But I don't know why they moved, or when. Or even if his father came with them. All I know is that this is where he was born.

I do have a father for Benjamin, but at this time, I have nothing more than a name, David, and that not proven, so he will have to wait until I can prove more. So just five places for this one. Hopefully someday I'll be able to learn more about Benjamin's early life and his parents. 

If you have any more information about this family, I would love to know more about them. Feel free to leave a message, or even email me at elfflame at hotmail dot com.

52 Ancestors: Females - Karen (Kaja) Angell Bordewich

Females was so broad a topic, it took me a while to come up with an idea for this post, then one of my friends suggested I see if any of the females in my direct line had a March birthday, and that was how I came up with writing about Kaja Angell. She was the only one of all the close ancestors (within 8 generations) that had a March birthday, so she had to be the one, and I wasn't upset about that at all. She's been a favorite ancestor for a long time now, and has always been there in my written tree, even before I knew who she was, so I knew writing about her would be fun.

Here's what I know about Kaja: her full name was Karen Dorothea Angell, but she was known as Kaja. She was born March 18, 1835 in Rodoy, Nordland, Norway. I have been told she was an orphan, but at this time, I do not know if the parents I have listed for her are her natural parents, as while her listed father, Hans Christian Angell did die when she was ten, her mother, Richardine Klaeboe didn't die until Kaja was in her forties. Perhaps after her father died, the family struggled, so she was adopted into another family because her mother wasn't able to care for her three young children. Either that, or I have her mother's death date wrong. Definitely things I need to look into.

She married in 1859 at 24. Her husband, Hans Henrik Bordewich, was the son of a man with a great deal of power. I don't know much about their marriage, but I do have one wonderful story from the beginning of their life together. When she first joined the Bordewich household, they stayed with Hans's father, Johan. He was a man with a great deal of power, especially over his many children, and was used to being listened to. His wife had died thirteen years before, so his daughter had taken over her mother's duties, taking care of the household and the youngest children. Which meant she sat in the chair to her father's side as head of household. However, when Kaja joined the household, Johan insisted that Kaja take that place. The first night, knowing nothing about their household, she took the spot. But she soon learned what had happened, so the next night, she sat next to her husband at the other end of the table. Upon seeing his daughter sitting in her usual spot, Johan insisted that the two young women exchange places. Kaja, strong willed, told him no, that that was her sister-in-law's spot, and that she'd earned it, and she would sit near her husband, thank you very much. And that was that. I have a feeling I would really have loved to meet Kaja. She sounds like a fabulous lady. 

Kaja and Hans had ten children. Nearly all of them survived to adulthood, which is an incredibly uncommon thing in this time and place. As I said, I don't have a lot of stories about her life, but there is one child she had a particular connection to. Her fourth child was a boy they called Richard Angell. He was such an artistic child that he was given the chance to get schooling in painting and art. The extended family still has a few of his paintings, which we believe were gifted to the family because one of my uncles was named for him. Richard traveled to America as a young man to stay near his uncle, who had settled and made a good living there. He set up a photography business, and it is because of him that we have many photos of our family from that time. While in America, he met and married and he and his wife had a son. 

Then his uncle became American consul to Norway. Richard and his family joined his uncle as part of his household, and settled in Oslo with him. Unfortunately, in 1898, there was an influenza pandemic, and Richard got sick. Upon hearing of her son's illness, Kaja traveled from the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway to Oslo to help her daughter-in-law tend for her son while Richard was ill. Unfortunately, Richard died, and so Kaja stayed with her daughter in law in Oslo to help them both after her son's death. She died in Oslo in 1922 at the age of 87. Definitely a long-lived life. Definitely a lady I'm very glad to have in my family tree.