My great-grandma Jessie Johnson Reiner’s mother was Julia Torbleau Johnson (1855-1940). Like her husband Albert Jens Johnson (1853-1934), Julia was born soon after her parents arrived in Wisconsin from Norway.

Julia (who was called Guri in Norwegian) was the third of seven children born to Anna Nilsdatter Skeie (1824-1891) and Anders Andersen Torblaa (1826-1902). It’s their story that I’m exploring today.

Anna and Anders met, married and had their first child, Anna, in Ulvik – a picturesque community tucked within an inlet of the Hardangerfjord.

In 1849, about a year after marrying, they decided to trade fjords for prairies. On June 9th of that year, they took an arduous two-month voyage from Bergen to New York aboard a ship called the Juno, and afterwards made the long trek to Wisconsin.*

Thanks to the research of prior generations and relatives’ trips to Norway, we’re fortunate to have a wealth of information on Anna and Anders’ origins in Ulvik. 

The Skeie farm (sometimes also spelled Skjeie) is where Anna’s family lived and worked. It was located on the west side of town, just a couple hundred meters from the Ulvik Church.

Anna’s father Nils Mikkelsen (1792-1878) grew up on a section of the Hydlæ farm, but in 1821 he inherited Bruk 2 of the Skeie farm from his father-in-law, Endre Aslaksen (1763-?)^[1]. Bruk 2 was the childhood home of Anna’s mother, Anna Endresdatter (1791-1867). [Note a “bruk” is a subdivision of a larger farm. Due to population increases and resulting land shortages, most large farms in Norway were broken up into smaller farmsteads in the 17th-19th centuries.]

By chance, the AirBnB where I’m staying is an old farmhouse on the Hydle property — quite possibly the location of the childhood home of my 4x great-grandfather Nils Mikkelsen.

Another amazing coincidence: my AirBnB hostess, Berit, and I discovered that we are 4th cousins once removed. Her great-great grandpa Endre Nilsen Skeie and my great-great-great grandma Anna Nildatter Skeie were siblings.

Five of our family members visited Ulvik in 1979: Phyllis Reiner Smith and Eugene Smith (my maternal grandparents), Phyllis’s sister Alice Reiner Quam and her husband Claire Quam, and Phyllis and Alice’s Aunt Glenrose. While in Ulvik, the group met a man named Sigurd Undeland who was not only a relative (a second cousin to great-grandma Jessie and Aunt Glenrose) but also a local history buff and artist.

In the letter my grandma wrote to her sister and brother-in-law, Helen and Bob Reed, she describes her stroke of good fortune in meeting Sigurd (then 76 years old) and how he took the group to meet other relatives and visit the Ulvik Church. In the Ulvik Church, they got to see the family portrait of Tomas Samuelsen Uro (1606-1687) and Anna Rasmusdatter (1617-1696) – my 9x great-grandparents. Uro was from Copenhagen and served as the minister in Ulvik in those years. Our family is descended from Uro’s son Daniel, who appears directly under Uro’s hands in the portrait.

(I arranged to meet the verger of the Ulvik Church — a delightful woman named Wilma van Manen who has lived in Ulvik for many years. Wilma gave me a thorough tour of the church and provided details about its colorful history. To learn more about my visit to the Ulvik Church, see this post.)

Sigurd said that his mother had expressed remorse about losing contact with our branch of the family. I wish Sigurd were still around; he died in the 1980s. I’d love to tell him that our branch of the family still feels a connection to Ulvik, despite having left 173 years ago. I’ve been hearing about Ulvik all my life and can’t believe it has taken me 47 years to get here.

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* Fascinating details of this taxing journey to New York can be found on this website: http://www.norwayheritage.com/p_ship.asp?sh=junoa

According to a letter written by one of Anders and Anna’s fellow passengers, the Juno was delayed leaving Bergen by three weeks due to unfavorable winds. Two days after setting sail, the ship hit rough seas when passing Great Britain, making most of passengers seasick. The writer of the letter traveled to Wisconsin by means of a series of ships from New York to Milwaukee which traversed the Hudson River, the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes. It seems likely that Anders and Anna would have taken the same route since Wisconsin was not yet linked by rail. In total, the journey from Ulvik to their final destination in Dane County, Wisconsin may have taken them around four months. This puts some of our modern “travel nightmares” into perspective!

^[1] Kolltveit, Kvestad and Dyrvik. (1987) Ulvik: Gards- og Ættesoga Vol. 2, p. 351.