Who were their travel companions?
Knowing who the travel companions were, can sometimes help if you “lose” your ancestor(s) on the dock.
Sometimes it can be hard to follow your ancestors as they made the journey over the Atlantic ocean. There is a feature in the Digitalarkivet that helps you see who they travelled together with.
Some very anonymous links up in the left corner of the result page helps you do this.
Here is a closer look
By using the links “Previous” and “Next” you can see who are listed next to your subject in the emigration journal. I advice against using the “First” or “Last” links as these will bring you to the beginning or to the end of that particular emigration journal. As some of the journals have a time span of several decades, it can be easy to get lost.
In my experience, families are listed together as you can see in this link:
- Johannes O Nebben – husband
- Anne Nebben – wife
- Sigrid Johannes(datter) – daughter
- Marie Johannes(datter) – daughter
If you try out the “Previous” and “Next” links you will see that, in this record, the daughters are listed before their father and Anne is listed after her husband Johannes. This may vary from record to record.
Here we saw a family of four, but also people travelling alone, “might not be travelling alone.”
If we look at this emigrant record from May 15th 1885
we see Ingeborg Sørendtr Kjersem depart Bergen. Looking at the “Birth place” and “Residence” we see that she came from Vestnæs (today Vestnes).
Using the “Previous/Next” links we see that on the same boat (of the “State Line”) there were others with connection to Vestnæs:
- Anne H Sylte
- Synneve L Uri
- Erik Hannibalsen Sylte (born in Vestnæs. Recidence: Bergen)
Ingeborg, Anne and Erik is connected to the village Tresfjord in Vestnes. They surly must have known each other before departure. Synneve’s last name Uri does originate in Norddal parish, but as she is listed as born in Vestnæs it is likely that she was also part of a possible travel party.
Ingeborg is a possible hit for a lady in the US looking for her ancestors in Norway. She have very little information about her Great-Grandmother. It is likely that Ingeborg changed both her first name and patronym when she arrived in the US, as she “disappear” from the records. There are however, several clues that points to Ingeborg.
Often young people travelled together in groups. If you “lose” your possible candidate, it can be an idea to try to look for the people they travelled with and see if it is possible to track them in the US.
Another great idea! One can also use Norway Heritage Hands Across The Sea. Passenger lists with age and gender noted. Then one can use the five volume set compiled by Dr. G. Naeseth and Blaine Hedburg (sp?). Norwegian Immigrants To The United States 1825-1850.
Carolyn, you are right about the sources you mention. However, in the case of Ingeborg she changed her names after she arrived on US soil and disappeared from all the sources.
Ah, one of those! Tusen takk for your message! In our Sons of Norway lodge, we have a group of six that I mentored in genealogy. We had many times when we groaned but eventually all six earned all three levels for the cultural skill of genealogy and some continue their research.
As their mentor, I am very proud of their work! We will have another class and I will give them this website address as I feel it is an excellent! Takk for all your work!!!
This is so very true! After learning about this in another forum, I went back to some of my Norwegian family and found siblings and children who were on the same ship. It was very helpful. The same applied to my Swedish side. I often wondered why my great-grandfather traveled back to Sweden several times so I went back to the original documents and saw that he had been escorting family members (with different last names) to the U.S. Now I always look!