52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 12 "12" Who was Karen Dorthea?

52 Ancestors in 52 weeks – prompt is 12

For the prompt “12” I elected to use the 12^th person back in my Paternal line.

Karen Dorthea Cristiansen is today’s topic.

Karen was born 2 Jan1833 and christened on 24 March 1833 in Kristiana, Norway.[i] Her parents were Pedar Christiansen and Anne Margarethe Olsdatter. Two of her sponsors were Karen Dorthea Siversdatter and Ole Gregersen.

Karen married Daniel Danielsen on 8 Feb 1857[ii] in the same parish she was christened in. According to the church register Daniel’s father was Christen Danielsen. Other than on his marriage record Daniel used the last name of Christiansen.

Daniel and Karen began their family while still living in Oslo with the birth of their first child, daughter Dorette on 2 Nov 1856. She was christened on 27 Feb 1857 shortly after their marriage.[iii]

Looking at these dates and places, I believe Karen’s father and her husband were both in the military at the time of her birth and her marriage. This appears to be a common pattern of behavior for the soldiers of the time. After their military service they returned to their place of birth.

After Dorette’s birth, the family left Oslo and moved to the commune of Fet, where they lived and farmed. In the 1865 census they had added sons Olaf and Otto to the little family.

The 1875 census reveals that the family had added four additional children, Magne, Olga, Oscar, and Dagmar. Dorette would be the first to leave home when she married Johannes Adolf Hansen in Dec 1876. 

Karen Dorthea Christiansen died on 19 June 1884 at the age of 51. She was buried on 25 June at Trefold In Oslo Norway.[iv]

Oscar would be the first of Karen’s seven children to immigrate to the United States in 1885 at the age of 17. Several of Karen’s other children would also cross the seas to settle in America and four of Dorette’s oldest children would also travel to America after their mother’s death in 1887.

Unfortunately, Karen died before she would know the success her children would achieve in America.

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 [i] Church of Norway (Oslo, Oslo, Norway), Parish Register No 6, p 165, christening of Karen Dorthea Christiansen; digital image, Digitalarkivet (https://media.digitalarkivet.no/view/5786/29 : online 24 March 2019).

[ii] Garnisonmenigheten Parish Register (Oslo County, Oslo), Parish Register, p203 - Marriages 1842-1859, Marriage of Karen Dorthea and Daniel; FHL microfilm .

[iii] Garnisonmenigheten Parish Register (Oslo County, Oslo), Parish Register, book 9 page 77, Birth and Baptism of Dorette Christensen; FHL microfilm .

[iv] Ancestry.com. Norway, Select Burials, 1666-1927 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. FHL Film Number:1282523 Reference ID:              item 3 b IV p 151

Original data: Norway Burials, 1666-1927. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 11 Large Family

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This topic gives me a plethora of choices. There is my Norwegian great-grandfather who had ten surviving children with two wives, or there is my German 3^rd great-grandfather who had 13 children with two wives. More recently I could choose my own family since I am one of nine children or my paternal aunt Dorothy who has eight children. (I always kind of felt sorry for my dad’s parents who only had two children but wound up with seventeen grandchildren.) I could write about my mother and her siblings, numbering ten or either of my maternal grandparents who also came from large families. Did I say I had lots of choices?

Decision made: I will write about my Grandmother Alice Fleming and her siblings. My plan is to start at the top of the list and take them in order.

Mary Anne was the oldest and the first to marry and the first to immigrate. Mary Ann Fleming married Thomas Walsh on 24 Oct 1863 in Ballylanders, Limerick, Ireland. They immigrated to Detroit, Michigan in the 1about 1865, based on the age and birthplace of their oldest daughter, before settling in Port Huron, Michigan where they raised eleven children before Thomas’s death in 1896.

John H Fleming also initially immigrated to Detroit before settling in Eau Claire to establish an Undertaking business. He married Lavinia Flattery in Michigan about 1873 and after her untimely death in 1882, he married Ellen Waters in 1887 and was the father of six children.

Eliza Fleming was born in Limerick in 1850 and married John Hogan in Ireland. John died in Ireland and Eliza then immigrated to Chicago in 1884 with her four children.

Michael Joseph Fleming was born in 1852 and immigrated to the United States before 1880. In the 1880 census, Michael is living in the Port Huron home of his sister Mary Ann Walsh. Michael became a priest in the Archdiocese of Detroit. At one time he was the chaplain of St Joseph Academy in Adrian, Michigan. This is the school that several of his nieces and great-nieces attended. After originally being buried in Detroit, Fr Michael Fleming is now buried on the grounds of the Dominican Motherhouse in Adrian, MI.

Thomas, called “Poor Tom” because of a severe knee injury, came to the United States and worked as a bartender in Detroit. It is not known that he ever married and he died in Detroit, MI in 1891.

Hannah Fleming, born in 1856, was also living in the Port Huron home of Mary Ann Walsh and in 1882 became a Sister of Providence. She joined the order in Terre Haute, Indiana and became Sister Mary Regina, She died in 1933 and is buried in St Mary of the Woods, Vigo County, Indiana.

James Fleming was born in 1858 and immigrated in 1879 at twenty years of age. In the 1900 census, he is living in Biwabik, St Louis, Minnesota with his wife Mary Brennan and three daughters. His occupation was a tailor. During his lifetime, James held several occupations and was said to be something of an artist and a poet. He and his wife had nine children and left the Midwest for Texas before his death in 1958.

Patt S Fleming was born 12 Jan 1860 and is the only family member to immigrate but decide to return to Ireland. It is said that he believed you had to work too hard in America. I don’t have dates for his immigration and return but by 1893 he had opened a “Fine Groceries, Wine and Spirits” shop at One Sandymount in Dublin. He married Kathleen English and they had four children. Patt died in Dublin in 1933.

Ed Fleming was born 12 Jan 1862 and died in Sept 1865.

William Fleming was born 8 Jan 1864 and died 8 Sep 1865.

Edward Edmund (or EE) was born 7 Mar 1866 in Ballylanders, Limerick, Ireland and arrived in the United States about 1885. He may have gone to stay with his brother John since all records indicate that was his only place of residence. He did journey to Chicago in 1890 where he married Hannah G Griffin. EE was in the jewelry business although records show he was also an undertaker with John and had some kind of store selling pianos with John and James. EE had three children and died in Eau Claire, Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He and my Grandmother Alice were the closest of her siblings and there were many visits between them.

Alice was born on 1 Jan 1872 in Ballylanders and owing to the advanced ages of her parents was allowed to do pretty much as she willed. Perhaps that is why word was sent to Michigan that she was “running wild” and should be taken to America to be married. Fr Michael Fleming was delegated to return to Ireland to bring his sister to the Michigan home of Mary Walsh. Alice had already set her heart on marrying Michael Connery to whom she was introduced by her friend Ellen Connery. Michael was home to visit and impress his family with how well he had done for himself in America. After Alice moved to Michigan she made several trips to Wisconsin to visit her brothers and may have been able to meet Michael while traveling between Michigan and Wisconsin. In any event, she and Michael were married by Fr Michael Fleming at the Port Huron home of her sister Mary Ann Walsh on 28 June 1893 and moved to Chicago. There they raised their family of ten children. Alice died in 1962 in Chicago.

I said it was a large family and I can’t begin to count the descendants but I’m trying to keep the record straight!

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 9 at the Courthouse

In September 2003, my husband and I took a trip to Illinois. Part of our itinerary was a planned visit to the small town in Southern Illinois where his mother’s family had lived since the 1850s. Both of his maternal grandparents had grown up in the same area along with their siblings.  We planned to spend two days in the area.

Our first stop was the cemetery that had been used by both families. The Mound Cemetery is located in a very rural area of Jasper County, Illinois. The only thing other than corn fields in the area is a old wooden church building adjacent to the cemetery. As you drive into the cemetery there is a large gate proclaiming “The Mound Cemetery” in iron letters arching across the driveway.

Jassper County, Illinois
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As we walked the cemetery we saw the graves of my husband’s grandparents and great-grandparents. His mother’s only sister is also buried there. Many of the families represented on the tombstones have been associated with the families since the Civil War. We took pictures of the tombstones after cleaning them with some water and a soft cloth. Eventually the heat and mosquitoes prompted us to end our visit.

The second day of our stay in Jasper County we went to Newton, the county seat. The courthouse in Newton is in the middle of the town and sits on an entire city block. The town latterly surrounds the courthouse with businesses on all four sides of the massive old building.

Jasper County Courthouse
Newton, Jasper, Illinois

When I entered the building I was ushered into a back room filled with large old ledgers. These ledgers held the vital records of the people of Jasper County. They held wills and probate records in addition to the land records of the county. There I found some wonderful records. I found a will from 1860 naming my husband’s 2^nd great-grandfather as an executor. It was later amended several times removing him and re-adding him. I wonder what caused the changes.

 It was almost by accident that I found the death record for my husband’s 2^nd great-grandfather Frederick Albert Sempsrott. As I was looking at the index cards I spotted one for “Fredia” and I remember thinking how unusual the name was. Then I looked again. It was actually the death record of Frederick A Sempsrott but the record listed “Fredia Simperott” just one of the many spellings I have encountered for this surname. He is recorded as a white male , age 79, born in Germany, a farmer who had lived in Illinois for about 45 years. He was a widower who died on 28 Nov 1907 of senile pneumonia in Willow Hill Township, Jasper County, Illinois and was buried on 30 November 1907 in the Mound Cemetery. I was truly lucky to have found this record since the name was so far from what is should have been.