Hansen Placeline

I actually have several Hansen branches in my family tree, so I will clarify here that this is my grandmother's father's line, who lived in Jutland, Denmark for most of the time I have info on them. This line starts with my dad's mother, Margaret Hansen Hillinger, who was the first generation of her line to be born in the US.

As before, Bold is the location major life events such as birth, marriage, and death, and Italics is any other locations where they lived for at least a year.

1. Margaret Hansen Hillinger

A. Issaquah, Washington. When my grandmother needed more help in her daily life, she moved to a place close to both my aunts, settling in Issaquah. She passed at my aunts' home at the age of 90.

B. Seattle, Washington. She and my grandfather moved to Seattle with their young son (my father) after he finished his schooling at Ohio State because they heard it was close to skiiing, which tipped their decision of where to move in Seattle's favor. They raised all four of their children here, and all of their children still live in Washington today.

C. Columbus, Ohio. Nana lived here with dad and her husband while he attended Ohio state to become an accountant.

D. Frankfurt, Germany. Nana applied to help out cleaning up the war front after the war was over, and was stationed in Weisbaden, Germany, which is a suburb of Frankfurt. While here, she met and married my grandfather, and their first child, my dad was born. 

E. War years. Nana had several posts throughout the war, including: Fort Hays, Ohio, where she was first inducted into the US Army; Daytona Beach, Florida; DesMoines, Iowa, where she trained for Officer Candidate School; Fort Oglethorp, Georgia; and finally a position in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she was when the war ended. After that, she transferred to the European front to help in the cleanup after the war.

F. Cleveland, Ohio. After finishing her schooling, she moved back in with her father full time, and worked in town as a secretary until she signed up for the war.

G. Willoughby, Ohio. Nana got the chance to attend Andrews, a boarding school for girls in a town near Cleveland, and graduated from there with a sense of purpose, wanting to make her way in the world. The school still exists today, now called Andrews Osbourne Acadamy, which is now co-ed.

H. Cleveland, Ohio. Nana was born in a growing community of Danes in Cleveland. Her father ran a business building houses, and the family moved often from one house to a new one as he finished houses. She and her sister and brother had a good life with their parents until their mother passed in 1929. After her death, their father remarried, and Nana struggled until she got the opportunity to go to boarding school, despite the fact that the whole country was in a depression.

2. Holger Skov Hansen

A. Cleveland, Ohio. After meeting his future wife, Oline, Holger moved to Cleveland, where they married in 1918. They had three children together before her death in 1929. He married again soon after to a woman named Rose, and the two raised their five children together in a difficult time. He continued his house building business until it became too difficult to do so, and she spent her time selling houses, so they worked well in tandem. She died in 1972, and he died five years later in 1977.

B. New York, New York. When Holger first came to the US, he landed in New York. I don't know a great deal about this time of his life. I haven't even been able to pin down when he first came. His paperwork says he was going to Long Island, where I think his aunt and uncle lived, so he may have lived with them full time, or may have lived on his own, but either way, he did bricklaying in the area to make a living until he met his first wife, and they moved together to Cleveland to marry.

C. Thyregod, Vejle, Denmark. Holger was born in a small town called Hinskov in the Thyregod area of Vejle, Denmark. His family had lived there for several generations, and he was only able to move to the US when the national train service chose to put a station near their home. He and his father worked on the project (which still stands today), and that was how Holger made the money he used to come to the US.

3. Jens Christian Hansen

A. Thyregod, Vejle, Denmark. Jens and his family lived and died in this area for two generations. His children scattered out across the country and the world as they married. One son to England, several more across the sea to the US, but he and his wife lived and farmed here until they passed.

4. Hans Knudsen

We're now in the murky area of this part of my family tree. What I have here is what I have found on Ancestry in large part, and therefore there may be incorrect. 

A. Thyregod, Vejle, Denmark. Like his son, Hans lived and died here, never moving from the place his father had found to farm.

5. Knud Knudsen

A. Thyregod, Vejle, Denmark. By the time Knud married, he was in the Vejle area. I'm not sure how he met his wife, or why he moved there (possibly because of the marriage, but perhaps not), but all of his children were born there, and he died there in 1866 at the age of 71.

B. Hammer, Skanderborg, Denmark. According to the records I currently have, this is where Knud was born. I have no idea when he left the area and came to Vejle.

6. Knud Madsen

A. Hammer, Skanderborg, Denmark. I have even less information on Knud Madsen than I have on his son. I don't have a birth location beyond Denmark for him, but his marriage record locates him in Hammer, and I know his son was born there as well. I presume he likely lived in the area until he died, though I don't have more than Denmark as his death location as well. 

I have a seventh generation back, but as of yet, I can't be certain I have the right names, as I have an alternate as well, so I won't put him here for now. As you can see, this gets sketchier as I go back in time, but I keep working to find more information on this line, so hopefully someday soon, I will find more.

Nine locations for this one. Less than the previous two, but still a good number. I'm finding it fascinating that even back in the "old world," my family moved around a lot more than we think they did. 

52 Ancestors: Courting - Daniel & Bessie and Holger & Oline

So for the second time this month, I can't resist doing a twofer for this prompt, because both of these stories are just too lovely not to share for it. I actually have a third, but it's a different generation, so I'll hold onto that for something else.

1) Daniel and Bessie (born Eliza) were both born in Wales, less than five hours walk from each other, as I posted in the Maps post. 

Bessie (Eliza) Jones Nee Howells

When Bessie was young, she and her family moved away from the mining town she was born in, and to Canada, where her uncle lived, running his own farm. The family eventually settled in Winnipeg, as her father wasn't interested in farming. As her brothers and sisters grew up and married, they all, in their turns, felt the need to move away from the snow of Manitoba, and so they all moved west, eventually settling in and around Vancouver, BC. I'm not sure when Eliza moved there, but I do know that she was here in Seattle for the Alaskan Yukon Goldrush Exposition, which took place in 1909. I'm not sure if she was living in Vancouver at that time, but if not, it was probably around the time she decided to settle there. I do know that she was married and living there in 1911, so it probably wasn't much later.

Daniel Thomas Jones

Daniel lived with his family in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales until he was a young man. Then he and his friends decided to take a trip to Canada, just to experience life before settling down. By the time they got about halfway across Canada, they knew they needed to make a choice. Either continue on, and stay in Canada for another year, or start back to the east coast. They chose by flipping a coin--and moved on west. When they got to Vancouver, Daniel met Bessie. According to stories my grandfather told, Daniel said he remembered seeing her before, when he was in Winnipeg, though Bessie disagreed that could have happened. But either way, Daniel decided this lovely girl was the girl for him. By 1911, they were married, and Daniel only returned home with family in tow to introduce them to his family back in Wales.

2) My other lovely romance of my great-grandparents is the story of how my other grandmother's parents met and married.

Oline Hansen

Oline Hansen was born on the island of Sealand, Denmark, right in the center. She was the third of six children born to a farmer and his second wife. When she was nine, her father died. She and her older siblings attempted to take up the slack. But from what I have been told, she didn't enjoy farming. So she ended up going to work for a neighbor, becoming their cook and seamstress. That neighbor was Ole Hansen (no relation, I believe), who was already involved in local politics when she began working for him. Eventually he became the first non-noble to act as a minister in Denmark. See this post for more info. His family moved to the outskirts of Copenhagen during his time in office, and Oline moved with them. Eventually, she decided to use her good fortune working for the family to move to the United States, to see if she could make a better living there. We know that she moved to Chicago, but not much of her time there, though we believe she again worked for other families as a cook and seamstress.

Holger Skov Hansen

Holger Hansen was born in Jutland, Denmark, also in a farming town. The family was not well off, and I have been told a story (which I have since proven using a census record) that when Holger got sick with pneumonia, the family had to walk with him to town because they had no cart they could use to transport him, and so afterwards, he stayed with his grandmother until he was well enough to walk home. As a young man, his father taught him bricklaying, and they made extra money around their town doing bricklaying for the people around town. When they got the chance to work on the train station that was finally being built in their area, Holger and his father (and I believe a brother or two as well) quickly joined in. This was how Holger earned the money to come here to the US. His mother had a sister in the US, and so he traveled and stayed with his aunt and uncle until he could make his own way doing brickwork in the New York area. 

In 1916 or so, both Holger and Oline decided to go visit their families in Denmark, and ended up on the same boat together. Holger found himself drawn to this young woman, and spent most of his time on the boat with her. Shortly after they landed, the Germans imposed a blockade on the US, so they were not able to return to the US for a time. Holger, being the enterprising young man he was, decided to take a chance and visit the lovely young lady he'd met on the boat. Looking at Google maps, these days the trip is 2-3 hours. Back then, it was probably a little longer, given technology. Either way, that's a long trip, but Holger did it. I don't know how long he stayed, or if he just visited often, but either way, when the couple returned to the US, they were absolutely a couple. They made plans to move to a new city together, choosing Cleveland, Ohio, where they lived and raised three children together before Oline died in 1929. They had just over ten years together, but they lived a lifetime in those years.

So there are the stories of how two sets of my great-grandparents met and married.

Hometown Histories – Hindskov, Thyregod, Vejle, Denmark – Holger Skov Hansen and ancestors

I am now in the murkier parts of my ancestry. There are still a few major cities I will get to write about, but after this generation, nearly all of my ancestors came from small towns or villages. While I want to visit many of these areas I will be writing about, they are mostly small towns now, like Czudek, and therefore hard to find out information about. I will do my best, though I will probably generally be relying on history of the country in general and of the larger area to give me a view of the area. In some cases, I do not even know for certain the area is a town or not, so I will try to make it clear if I can. If you are from these areas, please do let me know if you have more specific information on family or on the history of the area. I'd love to hear about it.

My great-grandfather, Holger, was born in 1891 in a place called Hindskov near the town of Thyregod in the municipality of Vejle, Denmark. As it is such a small place, it is hard to find specifics on the area, so I will focus on the larger Thyregod area. He, his father, and his grandfather were all born in there.

Hindskov, from what I have been able to find, seems to be a small farming community just south and to the west of Thyregod. I don't believe there was anything much there aside from the farms, though now it houses a wind farm and a recycling business that recycles cardboard and plastic. The name of the town literally means "deer forest," though I have been unable to find out why it was named this.

Thyregod Church

 Thyregod is a town in South Jutland with a population of about 1400 today. It is the northernmost town in southern Denmark. The name of the town is made of two Danish words: Tyr meaning ox, and Guth, meaning God in Old Danish. In the 1800s, Thyregod was a local center of farm commerce, and even had an inn and a poorhouse. Roads led out from town in many directions, enabling farmers to bring their goods there to sell. There is a church that was built in the 1100s, which is located right in the middle of the town. By the 1300s, it was established as a village, and by 1688, there were six farms in the area. In 1888, the town got a dairy as well, in 1900 a co-op agreement between the farmers and the grocers, and in 1903 a technical school opened there.

NFS Grundtvig

One of the most important people from the town of Thyregod was a man by the name of Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig. He was confirmed in Thyregod Church. He was one of the most influential people in Danish history, giving rise to a form of nationalism in the last half of the 19^th century. He also influential to the rise of the co-op movement, which made it far easier for farms to sell their produce and livestock. He was a churchman, philosopher, poet, teacher, and politician, and greatly influenced the way Denmark is even today.

My first absolute date for Thyregod for this branch of the family is in 1822, when Knud Knudsen, Holger's great-grandfather, married his wife, Ane Marie Hansdatter there. I assume they were the ones who began the farm that my great-grandfather grew up at. Ane's family has even more generations in Thyregod, going back three more generations, meaning that my family lived in that area for at least seven generations. Some of Holger's siblings' descendants still live in the greater area today.

Knud and Ane's son, Hans was born in 1824, and is the first to be listed as being born in Hindskov. Hans's son Jens Christian, my great-great grandfather, was born in 1858. They all farmed that land, though it was not a hardy existence. Jens made money doing masonry in the area, and taught his sons the skill, one of which was my great grandfather.

One of the main things to affect the family were the Schleswig wars. The wars were fought over the lower part of Jutland where it meets up with Germany. Both countries felt the territories were theirs, and eventually erupted into war not once, but twice. The first war took place from 1848 to 1852, when one of the cities in the area in question set up their own provisional government rather than adopt the Danish constitution. Denmark won that war. The second took place in 1864. It was a direct result of the first war, with Prussia and Austria invading the area after the Danish king died without an heir acceptable to Germany. By the end of the war, Denmark seceded the State of Schleswig to Germany. As an interesting side-note, the second war took place just after the creation of the Red Cross, and so this was the first war where they took part in helping those hurt by the war, as well as working as a neutral intermediary between the parties.

Hans would have been 24 at the time of the first war, and had died before the second began. I do not know if he was involved in the war, though I do not believe he was. Jens was born only six years before the second war began, so I am certain he was never involved, and as he was the eldest of his siblings, I know they were not involved either. I do believe one of their relations died in one of the wars. Despite their distance from the area actually under conflict, they were nevertheless ready to defend what they felt was their country, whatever it took.

Holger and most of his siblings before he left for America

As I stated, Jens Christian made extra money for the family by doing masonry in Thyregod, and taught the skill to at least one of his sons, my great-grandfather, Holger. In the nineteen-teens, when the train station in Thyregod was planned, they managed to get a contract to do some of the bricklaying, and this was how my great-grandfather made the money that allowed him to come to America. The station house he helped build was formally opened in 1914  and still stands today.

Thyregod Station

Holger made many visits back to see his family after coming to live in America. Most notably a trip he took in 1916, where he met a young woman travelling from Chicago to the middle of Sealand, where she had been born. Holger and Oline, the woman he eventually married, fell in love on that trip. When the boats were blockaded shortly after their arrival in Denmark, Holger travelled from Hindskov to Fjenneslev, where her family lived, and courted her. When they returned to America, the two settled in Cleveland and married, raising their family there together until her death in 1929.

Their daughters visited with their father's family a number of times while they were growing up, and even travelled to that part of Denmark when they came to Europe to help in the cleanup after World War II. They stayed very close with their father's family through their lives, and because of that, Holger's family line is one of the most well-traced lines in my family tree today.

Maggie (center) and her sister Marilyn with a cousin and several of Holger's siblings.

Sources:

First Schleswig War

The German-Danish war (1864)

Hansen Family Tree

Hindskov Pap og Plast

Hindskov Wind Farm

Holger Hansen Obituary

NFS Grundtvig

Schleswig-Holstein Question

Second Schleswig War

Thyregod Station (translated from Danish)

Hometown Histories – Cleveland – Margaret Hansen

My paternal grandmother, Margaret Hansen Hillinger, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, US, in 1919.

Cleveland, Ohio skyline, wikimedia commons

Cleveland is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. As of the 2013 Census Estimate, the city itself has a total population of over 390,000. It is the 48^th largest city in the US, and the second largest in Ohio. In 1920, a year after my grandmother was born, the population was more than double that size, at 796,841. It was not the largest the city has been, though. In 1950, it reached over 914,000 people. The year after Margaret was born, it became the fifth largest city in the nation.

The city is situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, and currently covers an area of about 82 ½ square miles. It was founded in 1796, and incorporated as a city in 1836. It became a manufacturing center because of its location on the lake shore, which gave it easy access for transporting goods. These days, the city has quite a diversified economy, which includes manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and biomedical. Cleveland is also home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and several sports teams, including the Indians and the Browns.

Before the Europeans arrived in the area, several native tribes lived in the area, including the Erie, Wyandot and Ottawa tribes, until at least the mid-seventeen hundreds. It is believed most of the tribes in the area were transient ones, coming and going, or settling only seasonally in the area.

The city got its name from the leader of the group who surveyed the land that would become Cleveland, General Moses Cleveland. He oversaw the plan for the core of the city before going home, and never returned to the area.

Though the city had voted only marginally in favor of Lincoln, when the South began to succeed from the Union, they were quick to rally to Lincoln's war efforts, though there were still some that opposed it. The Civil War was a boom time for Cleveland. Manufacture of railroad iron and gun-carriage axles brought in a great deal of money. By 1863, almost a quarter of all US Naval craft for use on the Great Lakes were built in Cleveland. In 1865, that number had increased to nearly half. The fact that all supplies from the South were cut off caused Cleveland to build its first tobacco factory. And its garment industry also began to flourish due to the German Woolen Factory, which was the first company in the area to manufacture the cloth.

At the end of the war, there was much rejoicing and celebrating, though even then, some still felt that the former slave population did not deserve citizenship, which had been granted to them by Lincoln. It took many more years for the black population of Cleveland to arrive. Most did not start arriving until after 1900. At that time, the Census Bureau estimated the Black population of Cleveland at just over 4000. By 1930, it had risen to over 70 thousand, most of whom had arrived during the twenties.

The May Day riots happened the year my grandmother was born. These were a series of violent demonstrations all over Cleveland on May first of that year. Eugene V Debs, a Union leader, was arrested for denouncing US participation in World War I. He was convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917, and served until his sentence was commuted in 1921. Charles Ruthenberg, head of the US Communist Party at that time, organized a series of protests that quickly broke into violent clashes with other groups. When things calmed, two people were dead, and forty injured. 116 people, including Ruthenberg, had been arrested. The city government quickly passed laws that restricted parades and specifically red flags, which had been one of the inciting points of the riots. It is seen as the most violent of the civil disorders that happened at the time, a result of the first Red Scare.

My great-grandmother, Oline, would have been about halfway through her pregnancy then. She and her husband, Holger were both Danish immigrants who had not yet even been naturalized. I can only imagine how they must have felt about all this. I'm sure they kept well away from the worst, but even living in the city would have made it quite alarming.

Margaret with her parents ca 1921

Oline and Holger immigrated to America in the early 1900s. He settled in New York, and she in Chicago. They met on a trip back to Denmark to visit family. They married a few years later, settling in Cleveland. By 1930, there were about seven hundred Danes in Cleveland. Margaret and her siblings grew up in a very strong Danish community; one which included many of their extended family members. Her father, Holger, built houses with the help of many of his Danish friends and family from the old country; many of which still exist today in Cleveland.

The family flourished in Cleveland, and in 1923, Margaret had a sister, and in 1925, a brother. Holger's homes sold well in the increasing population, and Oline sewed and cooked and took care of their family. Unfortunately, in early 1929, Oline fell ill, and soon died of pneumonia. Holger was devastated. He packed his kids off to live with his brother and sister-in-law, who lived nearby, then began to work on a new home for the family. He couldn't bear to live in the same house where she had died.

ca 1929 - back: Helga; middle: Margaret, Marilyn, Torben; front: Else

He soon remarried, and Maggie found she did not get along with her new stepmother. When the opportunity came to go to boarding school, she jumped at the chance, and never looked back. Andrews Academy (now Andrews Osborn Academy) was located just outside of Cleveland in a small town called Willoughby. She lived there during the school year, and only returned home on breaks and for the summer. The school taught her basic secretarial skills, and when she finished her schooling, it helped her find a secretarial job in Cleveland.

She remained in the Cleveland area until 1942, shortly after the US joined World War II. As soon as the call went out for women to be able to enlist, she joined up, as did both her sister and brother. She spent the years of the war in different locations in the US, eventually landing the rank of First Lieutenant, the highest rank a woman could get at that time. When the war is over, she and her sister signed up to help with the cleanup over in Europe. She was stationed in Frankfurt, where she met and married my grandfather. After the war, they had to choose where to settle their family. He was not particularly attached to Chicago, where his family had moved only a few years before he was drafted into the army. She did not particularly want to go back to Cleveland, either. After some debate, the couple settled on Seattle, and settled there happily, living there and raising four children. Maggie returned to Cleveland for visits, but she never lived there again.

Sources:

Teaching Cleveland: 12 Most Significant Events

Andrews Osborn Academy

C.E. Ruthenberg

Cleveland

Danish Ohioans

Eugene V Debs

Hillinger Family Tree

History of Cleveland

Margaret Hillinger Interview, 2001
May Day Riots of 1919

Timeline of Cleveland History

Saturday Night Genealogical Fun: My Paternal grandmother's Paternal Line

1) What was your father's mother's name?

2) What is your father's mother's patrilineal line? That is, her father's father's father's ... back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

3) Can you identify male sibling(s) of your father's mother, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that  patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

4)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, or in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or Google Plus post.

1)      My Father's mother was Margaret Hansen, later Margaret Hansen Hillinger. She was born in 1919 to Holger and Oline Hansen in Cleveland, Ohio.

2)      Holger's line:

* Holger was born 1891 and died in 1977.

* His father was Jens Christian Hansen (1858-1919), who married Else Katrine Larsen (1865-1934).

* Jen's father was Hans Knudsen (1824-1902), who married Christine Jensdatter (1834-1918).

* Hans Knudsen was born to Knud Knudsen (1794-1866) and Ane Marie Hansdatter (1797-1876).

* Knud Knudsen was born to Knud Madsen (born about 1730, died unknown) and Karen Pedersdatter (born about 1752, died unknown)

* Knud Madsen's father was likely Mads something, but we have no actual information about him or his wife, so Knud Madsen is the end of the information I have on this line.

3)      Nana (my grandmother) had one brother, who is now deceased. He did, however have two sons, both of whom are still alive, or were last I heard.

I have to say, I haven't considered the DNA testing yet because I still have so much to go through with all the papers that I do have. Moreover, I probably wouldn't test this line as this one goes pretty far back (18^th century is better than several lines I have…) The one I am interested for Nana is her mother's line, so I'd have to go one generation back on her mother's side. I do think there are some there, but I don't have any contact with them at this time, so that would take a little doing. Still, it could be interesting.

Surname Saturday 2.0: The Hansens, part 1

The Hansen Family; Jutland, Denmark

I have several branches of my family tree that are patronymic in origin. Hansen is the most prominent, if not most prevalent (Jensen and Christiansen and variants take that honor) of my family.

My grandmother's parents were both born with the surname Hansen because of the old Danish naming traditions. This week, I'm going to cover his family, which has only been Hansen since his father's generation.

The furthest back in this line I've managed to get was a man named Knud Madsen, though I presume his father's name was Mads, I have no other information about him, and little about his son. Knud was my great-grandfather's great-great grandfather, who was born in the Jutland area of Denmark sometime in the mid 1700s. The line continued there as farmers until the early 1900s, when my great-grandfather made enough money to travel to America.

This line is as Danish as my family gets. It's possible they have origins elsewhere, but for at least 5, probably 6 or more generations, all of the family was born in Jutland, and probably never traveled much further than the nearest town until my great-grandfather.

He made a fairly good living as a bricklayer in New York, and might have settled there permanently but for a return trip to Denmark in about 1916 that changed things again. It was on that trip that he met my great-grandmother, who was living in Chicago at the time. When all ships back to the US were cancelled due to a blockade because of World War I shortly after their arrival in Denmark, he took the chance and traveled to her home on the island of Sealand to court her. After returning to America, the two moved to Cleveland, neutral ground and a fresh start for both, with a small Danish community already in place. They married there and had three kids together before her death in 1929.

The Hansen line is as follows, for those interested:

* Knud Madsen, son of Mads ? was born in about 1730. We know nothing about his wife, or how many children he might have had, but we do know of one son.

* Knud Knudsen was born in Denmark in 1794, and married Ane Marie Hansdatter in 1822. the two had five sons and two daughters.

* His second son, Hans Knudsen, was born in the same place in Denmark in 1824. He married Christine Jensdatter in 1854, and the couple had 4 sons and 4 daughters.

* Their eldest son, Jens Christian Hansen, was also born in the family's long-time community in 1858. He married Else Katrine Larsen in 1885, and the two had 6 sons and 2 daughters. He made much of his living as a bricklayer, and when his second son (my great-grandfather) was old enough, he taught him the skill as well.

* My great grandfather, Holger Skov Hansen, was their second son and third child. He was born in the same small town in 1891, and lived there until about 1910 or so.

+ In 1909, he helped his father build Thyregod station (site is in Danish, though easily translated with Google translate), which still stands today, and made enough money to travel to the US.

+ He married my great-grandmother Oline Hansen in 1918, and the two had two daughters and one son before her death in 1929.

+ Their children had 8 children between them, and those children had 12 children between them. Of us great-grandchildren, there are even 5 great-great grandchildren born, with one more on the way. All of us still reside in the US.

What I don't know:

* Though I know of Knud Knudsen, I know almost nothing about him. I'd love to know his mother's name, as well as any siblings he might have had, and exactly where and when he was born.

* I'd also love to know the same of Knud Madsen, his father, as I have even less about him. I assume his father's first name is Mads, but that is all that I can guess at this time, aside from his likely being born in Denmark.

Other information about this branch of the family:

Old Surname Posts –
* Hansen part 1
Where We're From Posts –
* Where We're From – United States
* Where We're From – Denmark
Other -
* Four Generations
* New Discoveries
* Holger Hansen
* Finding Oline Correspondance .5
* World War II Draft Cards