Tag: Johnson
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Notes from the heartland (Part 4: Nebraska)
Starting out from Fort Worth yesterday, my canine companion and I traced the Chisholm Trail up to where it peters out near Salina, Kansas. From there we headed due north on a lonely stretch of US 81 into the endless plains of southern Nebraska. Between the Platte and Elkhorn rivers, the terrain changes to gently…
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Notes from the heartland (Part 3: Texas)
Happy Rudesgiving! I can’t remember when Rudesgiving originated, but with such a geographically dispersed family — and with each of my brothers having their own families and in-laws — we needed to come up with our own convenient time to gather. So, for several years we’ve been finding an off-peak weekend to meet up. This…
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The cup that launched a ship
The year is 1850, and in a small village perched at the end of a fjord in Western Norway, a young servant hurries through her tasks. Malene has no education and very little savings, but for the first time in her life she is hopeful. Earlier that year a young man named Ole had come…
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A history of the Hauge farms of the Arna Valley, by Ole Johan Hauge
When I was preparing for this trip to Norway, I posted on a Facebook page for the community of Arna that I was seeking some local history expertise. I had discovered that my great-great-great grandfather, Ole Jensen Hauge, emigrated from Arna, but I didn’t know anything about the area. Local volunteers kindly came to my…
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Oh, those Johnsons
My grandmother’s Aunt Glenrose – my great-great aunt – was a beloved character, full of stories, jokes and poems. A spinster for life, she was always taking care of others in the family: nursing parents and siblings through sickness and old age, looking after one and then the next generation of children. My parents sometimes…
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The Torblå farm
(This post is a continuation from yesterday’s post about Anders Andersen Torblaa and Anna Nilsdatter Skeie of Ulvik) The Torblå farm (also spelled Torblao or Torblaa) is – like many Norwegian farms – actually a collection of several farmsteads rather than a single entity. The breaking up of farms into smaller and smaller parcels occurred…
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Trading fjords for prairies: the Torblå-Skeie family of Ulvik
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…
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Norway’s Wild West – the origins of the Johnson-Hauge family
When you fly into Bergen, you are treated to glimpses through the clouds of an almost surreal landscape. Mountains rise straight up from the fjords with brightly colored buildings perched at intervals. Here and there a waterfall gushes down the steep slopes. One branch of my mom’s family, the branch we call “the Johnsons”, hails…
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The greats
During my formative years (i.e., the early 1980s), I recall a flurry of genealogical interest on multiple sides of the family. My paternal grandpa’s sister Carol (Rude) Luiso had been interviewing her father John Rude and other older relatives about the family’s early years in the US. She and her cousin Judi collected a wealth…
Deep Roots 