Case Study: Ole Evinrude — Following an Immigrant Back to His Norwegian Roots

Sometimes it helps to practice the method on someone well-known. The records are easier to find, the story’s outline is already public, and we can focus on how we work rather than guessing in the dark. In this article, we’ll be following an immigrant back to his Norwegian roots to illustrate the process in detail.

So let’s take a familiar name: Ole Evinrude.

The tidy summary goes like this: he was born on 19 April 1877 in Hunndalen in Vardal — today part of Gjøvik — and emigrated with his family as a child to Wisconsin, where he became known as a pioneer of the outboard motor industry. He died in Milwaukee in 1934.

We’re not content with summaries. We want to see how this is properly traced — from America back to the parish where he was baptized.

Step 1: Start in America — and prove what we think we know

Even when someone is famous, we begin the same way we would with a farmer or a laborer:

• Confirm the birth date.
• Confirm the place of birth.
• Confirm immigration details.
• Identify the parents.

In U.S. census records (1900, 1910, 1920, 1930), we look closely at year of immigration, naturalization status, and birthplace — both for Ole and, where recorded, for his parents.

On Ancestry.com, the 1900 census shows Andreas and Beata living in Christiana, Dane County, Wisconsin. Beata is listed there as born in 1840. Misprints happen, but it’s the kind of detail that leaves you a little apprehensive rather than fully at ease.

Year: 1900; Census district: Christiana, Dane, Wisconsin; Roll: 1782; Page: 6; Enumeration district: 0037

The 1900 census is useful precisely because it includes month and year of birth — so if we see April 1877 for Ole, that strengthens our confidence. After checking the family’s birthdates against it, everything checks out except Beate’s birth year.

At FamilySearch, the 1910 census gives a different figure again: it records Ole as born in Norway in 1878.

This is the moment to sit with a plain fact of the trade: census data is never enough on its own. Immigration years drift. Ages shift with the memory of whoever answered the door for the enumerator. We hold both figures — 1877 and 1878 — loosely for now, and keep going.

So next, we look for a death certificate, an obituary, and burial information. We find an obituary in the Milwaukee News, Saturday, 14 July 1934, page 6, which tells us Ole died on 12 July 1934 at Columbia Hospital. His residence at the time was the Cudahy Tower apartments.

Parents’ names are gold in an obituary like this. A record that names father and mother gives us the bridge back to Norway.

Step 2: The name problem (and why it matters)

In Norway, he was not born “Ole Evinrude.”

His birth name appears as Ole Andreassen Aaslundeie (often spelled Åslundeie). That tells us three things immediately:

• Ole — his given name
• Andreassen — a patronymic, meaning “son of Andreas”
• Aaslundeie — a place name, likely a cotter’s place (husmannsplass) under a farm

In nineteenth-century Norway, this was completely normal. The patronymic identified the father; the farm or place name identified where the family lived. Neither functioned quite like a fixed American surname.

When Ole arrived in the United States, he adopted Evinrude as a permanent family name — a choice that makes sense in America, but wouldn’t help at all in a Norwegian parish register.

This is one of the most important lessons in Norwegian-American research: if we search for American surnames in Norwegian records, we may miss our people entirely.

Step 3: Now we cross the Atlantic — carefully

A check in O. Rygh’s Norske Gaardnavne (Norwegian Farm Names) tells us the farm Aaslund/Åslund lies in the Hunn local parish, within Vardal parish, Oppland county.

Once we feel confident about:

• Birth date: 19 April 1877
• Birthplace: Hunndalen, Vardal
• Father likely named Andreas (from the patronymic Andreassen)

we turn to the Norwegian sources.

We go to the parish registers for Vardal and open the baptism records for 1877, working spring — April, May, perhaps June. We’re not guessing wildly; we’re working within a narrow window.

A typical Norwegian baptism entry from this period gives us the child’s full name, birth date, baptism date, father and mother, residence, and witnesses.

We find an entry for Ole, born 19 April 1877, son of Andreas, living at Åslundeie or similar. The baptism record — recorded at the time, rather than reconstructed decades later for a census taker — confirms the date the family history has always claimed: 19 April 1877, not 1878. That’s the figure we carry forward.

That is the moment the story becomes solid: we have anchored the American inventor to a specific Norwegian parish record.

Vardal prestekontor, AV/SAH-PREST-100/H/Ha/Haa/L0007: Kirkebok for Vardal, 1867–1878, s. 136 Digitalarkivet: https://goto.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070116640666

From there, the baptism record’s naming of the parents gives us the next thread to pull. Ole’s parents are listed as Andreas Olsen and Beate Olsdatter, married in 1873, living at Åslundeie. Their own baptism records tie off the loose ends the census records left open:

Andreas was born 5 December and baptized 17 December 1843 — not 1844, as some later records suggest.

Vardal prestekontor, AV/SAH-PREST-100/H/Ha/Haa/L0005: Kirkebok for Vardal, 1831–1853, s. 54 Digitalarkivet: https://goto.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070201650469

Beate was born 18 July and baptized 4 August 1850 — resolving the 1840 the 1900 census had suggested.

Vardal prestekontor, AV/SAH-PREST-100/H/Ha/Haa/L0005: Kirkebok for Vardal, 1831–1853, s. 99 Digitalarkivet: https://goto.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070201650514

We also find Andreas and Beate’s wedding record, dated 27 December 1873. Andreas was born at Bruhoug; Beate at Aaslundeie — the same place-name the family carried into Ole’s baptism record two years later.

Vardal prestekontor, AV/SAH-PREST-100/H/Ha/Hab/L0006: Klokkerbok for Vardal, 1869–1881, s. 254 Digitalarkivet: https://goto.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070202620111

Three records, three generations of dates, and the pattern is consistent: wherever a census figure and a parish figure disagree, the parish figure — recorded close to the event, by the person who performed it — is the one to trust.

Optional: the emigration records

If we want to add another layer, we can search the Norwegian emigration protocols (police lists). These often include name, age, residence, and destination — but even here, we stay cautious. Not everyone registered. Years can be slightly off. Spellings vary.

The parish baptism remains the foundation regardless of what we find next. In this case, I couldn’t find any of the family listed in the “Utflyttede — Out-migrated” list in the Vardal church records.

Considering the possibility that the family didn’t emigrate together, I looked for a married Andreas Olsen traveling alone, and found one promising lead on FamilySearch:

“New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1920,” FamilySearch, entry for Andreas Olsen, 1882.

It looked like a plausible match — right name, right profile — but it’s exactly the kind of lead that needs a second source before we trust it. And a second source told a different story. Oudenstad’s Utvandringen til Amerika: fra Biri/Snertingdal/Vardal/Gjøvik 1846–1915 (Gjøvik: Gjøvik historielag, 1982), held at the National Library of Norway, records that Andreas Olsen left Vardal in 1881, a year earlier than the passenger list entry suggested. The 1900 census, cross-checked separately, agrees with the book: 1881.

That’s enough to set the FamilySearch entry aside as a probable mismatch — likely a different Andreas Olsen, a common enough name in this period to produce false leads — rather than force it to fit. The book also tells us that Beate followed in 1882, traveling with the children Minna, Ole, and Klara, a year after Andreas.

Interestingly, the book lists her not as Beate Olsdatter, or even Beate Andreasdatter, but as Beate O. Evensrud — a name already partway along the road to “Evinrude,” years before Ole would settle on the family’s final Americanized spelling. It’s a small but telling reminder that surnames in transit were rarely fixed overnight; they drifted through several spellings as a family tried on different versions of a name that would eventually stick.

It’s worth flagging for readers outside Norway: the National Library’s digital collection is restricted to Norwegian IP addresses under the terms of its agreements with Norwegian rights holders, so this particular source isn’t something you can pull up yourself from abroad. If you hit a source like this, your best options are asking a contact or researcher in Norway to look it up on your behalf, checking whether a Norwegian public library can access and email you the relevant pages, or checking whether the same book exists in a library catalog outside Norway (WorldCat is a good place to start).

It’s a good reminder that when a passenger-list match looks a little too easy, and when the standard emigration records go quiet, a local history or bygdebok can do double duty — confirming what’s true and correcting what only looked true.

What this case really teaches us

It would be easy to think this was simple because Ole Evinrude became famous.

It wasn’t simple because he was famous. It was simple because we had two crucial anchors: a precise birth date, and a specific birthplace.

The method is steady and almost old-fashioned:

1. Prove the person in America.
2. Extract the exact place and date.
3. Go to the parish book.

Norwegian church records are remarkably consistent. When we arrive there with the right place and the right time, they usually do exactly what they’ve always done: name the child, name the parents, and place the family on the ground.

And that is how we move from Ole Evinrude of Wisconsin back to Ole Andreassen of Vardal — a child baptized in a parish book in 1877, long before anyone imagined outboard motors.

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I’m always looking for good candidates for this series — cases with an interesting wrinkle, a stubborn brick wall, or a name that turned out to be more complicated than it first appeared. If you’ve got an ancestor whose story might make a good case study, I’d love to hear about it. Drop me a note, and it might be the next one featured here.