Hendricks Family Tree Project
Newsletter: Volume 5, February 2005
Author: Jim Winsness, 323 Broadwater Circle, Anderson, SC 29626
Phone: 864-261-7139 Email: winsness@charter.net
website: http://www.LRWMA.com/hendricks
So much has happened on the project over the past month! I am sure I will miss many things, but I really wanted
to let you know how much was going on. The last week of January, the Hendricks Pioneer included an
article on the project and already I have a new friend and cousin, Barb Engesmoe who sent me an email because of the newspaper article. Her children are my 6th cousins! AND, like so many others,
she is descended from Jens Vinsnes of the late 1500's!
What is the Hendricks Project: It is presently a puzzle with 4,388 people making up the parts. There are 1,106 surnames and 1,577 marriages and the earliest birth date of 1578. The following tries to describe the last few weeks activity!
Lien Family: I received email and files from Ken Lien with a wealth of information that I really have to take time and digest. I have to find a Hendricks link in that line to be able to make it a part
of the Hendricks Project but I do see that Hans Lien purchased a farm from Hans Digre who is "a distant relative on Hans' wife Gertrud" so that is where I'll have to work. The Lien family seems to have originated in Roros Norway
Digre Family: It is hard to even know where to start in order to tell you what has been going on with the Digre family. This is the most confusing family I have yet encountered with all the name changes and duplication of names. I think I have now identified 3 Christi Digre's! So I get an email that tells me about Christie, and I first have to figure out if it's the one born 1876, or the one born 1878, or a grandmother of an early settler!
I have had great help from James Seligman who sent me information in March of 2004. Ken Lien has jumped in with more information from the cemetery listings for the Singsaas Church and other genealogy information. And a most unusual source has come from Carol Fetzer!
Carol Fetzer and I are related through a Richardson family line that came to the US in 1630, however, she found our website and was shocked to see that I was the organizer behind the Hendricks Project. She had relatives in Hendricks! Her line was tied to Per Pederson Digre's child Christi (yup - one of the 3 Christi Digre's). She just sent me a lot of information that I have entered that let me add many people, and
to have more complete information on some that I already had. But to receive information from someone who is really tied to me on my Richardson line is simply staggering to me! Her information supplements that which I received from Neal Nelson so now I am getting some really good information on the descendants of Per Pederson and Hans Pederson Digre. That's a whole other story - there are these 2 Digre's in Hendricks at the same time having children and giving them names that match those that are in the other family. How did they keep track of who was who at school? I can see the teacher asking someone by name to stand and having several get to their feet! It's now 120 years later and we are having a neat time trying to keep the kids straight. Somewhere in heaven they are getting a lot of
amusement out of my confusion!
It is as if all these people were part of what we would now call a "Witness Protection Program!" The names change, duplicate names exist, and I feel like an investigator that keeps going to the wrong residence to arrest someone!
Surname Changes: Ken Lien sent me an email which I will place here. Every time I read this I laugh harder! It sure illustrates how confusing these name changes are!
"In 1880, the Imigrants Trek lists Peter Digrehagen as bringing his family to America. This was my mother's grandfather. He was married to Luci Hugaas. He was a brother to Ole Fjeseth who came on the settlement wagon train and a sister to Anne Digrehagen who married Ole Refset.
When you came thru American Immigration, they gave you a choice for a surname of either putting son on the end of your father's name or using the farm name of the last farm you were on. In my wife's family Jacob Torkelson came thru with his family. Because his father was Torkel, he became a Torkelson but since his name was Jacob, his kids became Jacobson's. This also happened in the Lien family where Gertrude Lien's father became an Olson but she became a Burreson because her father was Burre. In the case of farm names, because Ole Fjeseth lived on his wife's family farm before he came to America, he became a Fjeseth but his brother became a Digrehagen.
Both Peter Digrehagen and his stepfather Erik Digrehagen were in America for a while before Erik returned to Norway. This left someone else named Peter on the farm in Norway who in turn came to America when Erik returned to Norway. This resulted in two Peter Digrehagen's in the Hendricks area. The post office kept confusing their mail, so they had a meeting and agreed to split the name. The one man became Peter Digre and my wife's grandfather or perhaps her father (I am not sure which generation this happened in) became Peter Hagen. Peter Hagen was married to Kari Hexum. I don't know of any relatives in North Dakota.
Surname change also happened in the Lien family in 1870. There were Johnson's from 1854 to 1870 but in 1870, they went back to their farm name of Lien because there were too many Johnson's and the post office kept sending their mail to the wrong Johnson.
My mother did not use her given first name. She insisted on being called Alpha.
Ken Lien - January 2005"
Singsaas Lutheran Church Cemetery: Trevor Reitan, on 27 Jan, 2005, provided me with a COMPLETE listing of all burials in the Singsaas Cemetery through 1995! I have always wanted such a document and zing - here it comes in an email. It is on the website now complete with a plot showing the organization of the cemetery! When I was in Norway, I promised that I would go look for the cemetery in Hendricks and try to find out who's buried there and
Trevor made that happen! Thanks Trevor - now I have to find out more about who you are also!
Knutson - John: You can read the Immigrants Trek and see that John and his wife were in the first settler group and their daughter Gulag was the first born child of the settlers only 4 days after camp was made. Incidentally, her birthday and mine are the same! But I have absolutely no information on what happened to their family past the first generation of 9 children born to John and Guru. Where have all the Knutson's gone!
The Knutson's came from Storen Norway and I am incredibly lucky to have a great source of information there by the name of Torill Johnsen! Torill made the mistake of her life one day when she found our website and sent me an email. Now I think she may wish she was given a new identity and placed in the "Witness Protection Program" so I could not find her! All I had on the file was the name of John Knutson, his wife, and one child - THAT WAS ALL! Torill Johnsen stepped in and she sent me the lineage of them back in Norway and now, on the Hendricks Family Tree, there exists 9 generations of ancestry for Gulag!
So now we know a total of 10 generations of Knutson's but only the last one of them was "Born in America". Calling all Knutsons - where the heck are you? There must be one in there that is a genealogist who can get us the lineage of the US side of the family! The Norwegians are embarrassing us with their information and we have so little.
Norwegian Assistance: The next article I send the Hendricks Pioneer has to be about the help we are receiving from Norway on this project. I have 5 major sources of input from Norway. First, Dag Einar Winsnes who actually has never been on the Winsnes land in Norway and who is not blood related to me (step-uncle relation way back) has been the keystone of my support for Singsaas information. He lives in Sandness Norway and has 2 young children and a beautiful wife. Torill Johnsen has all the information we seem to ask for about anyone with a Storen connection and she lives in Oslo.
Ingebrigt Digre gave me the Digre lineage in Norway which has been so helpful in the whole Digre research.
Per Moen has provided me with files that contain lineage of lines from Haltdalen. Then just this week we also 'used' Jens Winsnes, a young relative of mine who lives in Trondheim, to even translate some information from the Singsaasboka. Annbjorg Winsnes provided me much of my lineage while I was in Norway in 2001 which merged with that provided by Dag Einar. Without these people, this project would simply never have even started and I only can hope that they do not feel that it was a bad day when they first contacted me as I have never let loose of them since!
But now it is time for me to take a short break from the Hendricks Project. We have company coming tomorrow from upstate NY and we are going to build closet organizers for their son's wife in Georgia. I'm going to just make a folder for incoming Hendricks mail and store it there for about 2 weeks and then I'll try to catch up!
For the assistance of all the Americans and Norwegians, te tusen tak
Hilsen
Jim