Case Study: Finding the Norwegian Ancestry of Myron Floren

Among the records played in our home during my childhood were those of Myron Floren playing polkas. My father told me he was of Norwegian descent. Since I knew nothing about his ancestry, I decided to use him as a case study to show how you can trace your own family’s Norwegian line. Treat Myron Floren as a stand-in for the father or grandfather whose ancestry you’re trying to find.

This is a tutorial, so we’ll skip a few details a full genealogical write-up would normally include. To keep things manageable, we’ll follow only Myron’s paternal line, the Florens. The same method applies just as well to his mother’s line, the Lensegravs — it’s simply left as an exercise here.

A short biography of Myron Floren

Myron Howard Floren (5 November 1919 – 23 July 2005) was an American accordionist and bandleader, best remembered as the featured accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, where he appeared regularly from 1950 to 1980 and became a familiar face to millions of television viewers. Born near Roslyn in Day County, South Dakota, Floren grew up in a Norwegian-American farm community; biographies commonly describe him as the eldest of seven children in the family of Ole Floren and Thilde (“Tillie”) Louise Lensegrav. On the program, Welk billed him as “the happy Norwegian.” He later lived in California and died in Rolling Hills Estates in 2005.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Myron Floren,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_Floren; Notable Biographies, notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Fl-Ka/Floren-Myron.html.

This tells us Myron’s parents were Ole Floren and Thilde (Tillie) Lensegrav — probably about what you’d already know about your own ancestor at the start of a search like this. Now we need to find out when and where Ole and Thilde were born.

Let’s get started: “A one and a two…”

Step 1: Confirm the parents in a census

Using FamilySearch, I looked for a census record showing Myron together with his parents. The 1920 census places the family in Raritan Township, Day County, South Dakota. Ole M. Floren is listed as 37 years old (so born around 1883), born in South Dakota, with both of his parents born in Norway. Tillie Floren is listed as 23 (born around 1897), also born in South Dakota, with both of her parents born in Norway.

Source: 1920 U.S. Census, Raritan Township, Day County, South Dakota; FamilySearch, familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6JX-LVK.

Step 2: Narrow down Ole M. Floren

Searching FamilySearch for Ole M. Floren in South Dakota turns up several men of that name, but only one born in 1883. A World War II draft registration card gives his birth date as March 25, 1882, and shows he was born in Minnehaha County, South Dakota, and was living in Dell Rapids at the time of registration.

A note on dates: the census gives an age-based estimate (“about 1883”), while the draft card gives an exact date the man supplied himself. Self-reported records like draft cards are generally more reliable than a census enumerator’s estimate, so from here on we’ll treat March 25, 1882 as Ole’s working birth date, while keeping the census figure in mind as a secondary data point. A year or two of drift between records like this is completely normal — it’s not a sign you have the wrong person.

Source: “United States, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942,” FamilySearch, familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKV3-XPFT.

A confirmation record from 1897, in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, adds further confirmation of the family’s presence there. I was not able to locate Ole’s baptism record on FamilySearch at this stage.

Source: “United States, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Records, ca. 1800–1900,” FamilySearch, familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVNG-7ZTP.

Step 3: Identify the grandparents

Turning to Find a Grave, I located Ole M. Floren’s grave (1882–1964).

A caveat: Find a Grave entries are user-submitted, so treat any family details there as a lead, not proof, until you’ve confirmed them in an original record. Here, someone had added quite detailed family information, which we’ll now go verify.

The memorial lists Ole M.’s parents as Mekkal Olsen Floren (1855–1935) and Marit Olsdatter Brende Floren (28 February 1853 – 1915).

Step 4: Corroborate with the 1880 census

FamilySearch had nothing on Mekkal beyond his burial record, so I turned to Ancestry.com and searched the 1880 U.S. census. There I found Mekkal and his wife, Marit O., registered in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, with a son and a daughter: Olaf O., age 4, and Beret M., age 1. Mekkal is listed as born in Norway — consistent with, and corroborating, the Find a Grave lead.

Source: 1880 U.S. Census, År: 1880; Folketellingssted: Dell Rapids, Minnehaha, Dakota Territory; Rull: 113; Side: 474a; Folketelling etter distrikt: 021.

Step 5: Find the farm name in Norway

With a Norwegian-sounding surname in hand, the next step is O. Rygh’s Norske Gaardnavne (“Norwegian Farm Names”). A search for Floren turns up a farm of that name in the parish of Hegra, in what is now Trøndelag county — giving us a specific place to search in Norwegian church and census records.

Step 6: Find the family in the Norwegian church records

Using the “Find source” feature in Digitalarkivet, I located the parish register Ministerialbok for Øvre Stjørdal (Hegra) prestegjeld, Hegra sokn, 1850–1862. The register is indexed, and a search for Mikal returns a hit: Michel Olsen, born February 28, 1855, to parents Ole Larsen and Berit Mikkelsdatter Storflorengjerdet — likely a husmannsplass (cotter’s place) under the farm Storfloren.

A note on spelling: this one man is now on record as Mekkal (Find a Grave), Mikal (later American records), and Michel (the Norwegian parish register). That isn’t a red flag — it’s completely normal for the period. Norwegian given names weren’t spelled consistently before civil registration, and clerks on both sides of the Atlantic wrote down what they heard. Match people on birth date, family, and place, not on spelling, and expect a name to shift shape as it crosses the ocean.

Source: Ministerialprotokoller, klokkerbøker og fødselsregistre – Nord-Trøndelag, AV/SAT-A-1458/703/L0028: Ministerialprotokoll, Øvre Stjørdal (Hegra), 1850–1862, s. 31. Digitalarkivet, goto.digitalarkivet.no/kb20050511010766.

The family appears in the 1865 census for Øvre Stjørdal at the cotter’s place Hægsettrøen, also under the farm Storfloren.

Source: RA, Folketelling 1865 for 1711P Øvre Stjørdal prestegjeld, 1865, s. 129. Digitalarkivet, digitalarkivet.no/ft20090804380437.

What is very likely the same family turns up again in the 1875 census for Hegra, now living at a farm named Flåum — another cotter’s place, and not far from where they lived in 1865.

Source: SAT, 1875 census for 1711P Øvre Stjørdal, 1875, p. 2167. Digitalarkivet, digitalarkivet.no/ft20110216280393.

Step 7: The trail across the Atlantic

The 1900 U.S. census shows Mikal reporting that he immigrated in 1875. I was not able to find a record of him receiving migration papers from the minister in Hegra at this point in the research — a reasonable place to pause for this tutorial, though it’s exactly where a real search would continue.

The line established so far

Myron Howard Floren (1919–2005)

son of Ole M. Floren (b. 25 March 1882, Minnehaha County, SD; d. 1964) & Thilde “Tillie” Lensegrav

son of Mekkal / Michel Olsen Floren (b. 28 February 1855, Hegra, Nord-Trøndelag, Norway; emigrated 1875; d. 1935) & Marit Olsdatter Brende (b. 28 February 1853; d. 1915)

son of Ole Larsen & Berit Mikkelsdatter, of the cotter’s place Storflorengjerdet under the farm Storfloren, Hegra parish, Norway

Where the trail goes next

A real search wouldn’t stop here. The natural next steps would be to: search Norwegian emigration protocols (such as the Trondheim police emigration records) for a 1875 departure matching Mikal/Michel; look for a Hegra bygdebok (local history book) covering the Storfloren farm, which may already trace the family further back; search for Marit Olsdatter Brende’s own baptism to extend her line; and — since this case study only followed the paternal line — apply the same method to trace Tillie Lensegrav’s Norwegian ancestry.

That’s the shape of the method: start with what family memory or a biography tells you, work backward through American records — census, draft cards, church records, cemetery databases — until you can identify a Norwegian farm name, then cross into Digitalarkivet and Norwegian parish and census records to follow the family at home. Expect birth years to wobble by a year, names to be spelled three different ways, and the trail to occasionally go cold. None of that means you’ve done something wrong — it means you’re doing genealogy.

Got a case for me?

Myron Floren was an easy one to write about — famous people leave a paper trail of biographies and Wikipedia pages before you ever open a census record. Most of us aren’t researching famous people, though. We’re researching a great-grandfather nobody wrote a biography of, whose only trace might be a single line in a ship’s passenger manifest or a name half-remembered by an aunt. Those are the cases that actually teach you something, because they’re the cases you’re likely to face yourself.

So here’s an invitation: if you have an ancestor whose Norwegian roots you’ve never been able to trace — someone ordinary, someone stuck, someone you’ve hit a wall on — I’d like to hear about it. I can’t promise to solve every case, but I’m looking for a handful of real, unresolved ones to work through here on the blog, the same way we just worked through Myron’s. Head over to the Contact page and send me a note about who you’re looking for and what you already know.