Mightier Acorns

My wife’s paternal grandmother was June Margery (Shuffler) McCullough (1928-2010), and June’s mother was Esther Anna (Thompson) Shuffler (1908-1988). Esther was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, but her father was a Danish immigrant, and her mother was the daughter of Danish immigrants.

Tom and Lena are two of Her Sixteen – two of my wife’s 16 great-great-grandparents. We touched on parts of their story in Family Reunion: Thompson/Thomsen and Family Reunion: Jensen.

The Time Before Surnames

As we discussed in the Family Reunion post for the Thomsen family:

Thomas Christian (Thomsen) Thompson (1876 – 1951) was the son of Jens Laurits Thomsen (b. 1849) and Mette Marie Thomsdatter (b. 1849), born on 2 Oct 1876 in Gudum, a parish of Ålborg, Denmark.

You may have noticed that Thomas was given the surname “Thomsen” when he was born, instead of the traditional patronym of “Jensen” even though his father, Jens, seems to have been named “Jens Thomsen” after his father, Thomas Jensen. This Wikipedia article suggests that the 1856 naming act in Denmark could be the reason for this switch. Jens was born in 1849, so he took the traditional patronym. His son, born long after the naming act required children to inherit their father’s surname, then took “Thomsen” instead of “Jensen”.

If you’ve been accustomed to researching families that used surnames, you will need to be extra careful, because your eye will be conditioned to reject records with surnames that don’t match. I know I have to look carefully through Hints and Search results to make sure that I have “three matching points of data” before I consider accepting a record and adding it to my tree. With Tom Thomsen, I have been lucky enough to find records that consistently include both parents’ full names, full place names, and accurate (if not always precise¹) dates.

That challenge becomes less difficult with practice, especially if you are lucky enough to find your target family in church records. Likewise, learning how to recognize and navigate the place names in Denmark (or whatever country your ancestors hailed from) will become easier with familiarity. Don’t rush yourself. Take the time to make sure you have found the correct family, in the right place, at the right time before expanding to siblings and earlier generations.

Finding Your Place

I am no expert on European place names, and given the unpredictable number of variables that can affect what appears on a given record, you may struggle to interpret what you find. Not only can the names of various types of districts/counties/dioceses/parishes change over the lifetime of your ancestor, there may be two different and valid names for the same place (one municipal, one religious) for the same time period. And the person can move, of course.

On top of those factors, the records that get to you might be in the original language (in this case, Danish) or may be transcribed into English. “Gudum, Ålborg, Danmark” would be the same place as “Gudum, Aalborg, Denmark,” for example. Records might omit the type of jurisdiction (as the previous example did, leaving out the “Amt” in “Ålborg Amt”) or might list multiple jurisdictions, like this: “Hellevad Sogn (Hjørring Amt), Ålborg Amt; Hjørring Amt, Danmark” showing that the church parish (Sogn) of Hellevad was partly in Aalborg county (Amt) and partly in Hjorring county.

There are numerous resources online that can help you figure out where your ancestor’s records place them, but I recommend starting with the gazetteers² linked from the FamilySearch.org wiki – Denmark Gazetteers has links to several sites. You can also start on their Denmark Genealogy page and drill down to the Counties or Parishes you are interested in. That’s how I found my way to the page for Jens Laurits Thomsen’s birthplace, Hallund Sogn, Hjørring Amt, Danmark.

Again, take your time, learn how the gazetteers work, and make sure you are finding records for the right person before you add them to your tree. (And don’t be afraid to translate individual words – knowing that the “Relation to Head of House: Tjenestekarl” means “servant” can be key information!)

Tom Thomsen’s Parents

There were several online trees that confidently told me the names of Tom’s parents, but the sources that would usually confirm that information were not helpful. His Iowa death certificate from 1951 listed both parents as “Unknown” – meaning that the informant, his daughter Dagmar Ranum, did not know her grandparents. But, she did give a precise date of birth (2 October 1876) and multiple sources, including his obituary, gave Denmark as his birthplace.

Denmark, Church Records, 1812-1924 show Thomas Christian Thomsen born 2 Okt. 1876 in Gudum, Aalborg, Denmark, to parents “Indsidder” Jens Laurits Thomsen and wise (Hustra) Mette Marie Thomsen. From there, we can find the family in the 1880 Denmark Census, where we learn the name of Tom’s sister, Maren Cathrine Thomsen.

From there, the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place, but not without some difficulty. For example, you see that Mette Marie’s last name is give as “Thomsen,” which could simply mean that Tom’s birth record listed her married name. That would be unusual, though, and further digging to find Jens and Mette Marie’s marriage record shows her maiden name is “Thomsen” also.

It turns out that her father’s name was Thomas Christian Jespersen. She was born before the Naming Act of 1856 went into effect, and thus she was listed with the patronymic “Mette Marie Thomsdatter” on the 1850 and 1855 Denmark Census – but from 1860 onward, she appeared under the surname “Mette Marie Thomsen.”

Both Jens and Mette Marie grew up near what is now the Brønderslev Municipality, and their records show several of the placenames you can see on this map:

As you can see, there is a lot of information to assemble before we can put together a biography for either of Tom Thomsen’s parents. Challenges can vary, from the number of people with similar names from neighboring districts and counties, the confusing transitions from using patronyms to surnames, the use of abbreviations (“Thomsdr” for “Thomsdatter”) or simply working around clerical errors (Mette Marie’s mother’s name should have been “Cathrine Madsdatter” but was recorded as “Inger Madsdr” on a key baptismal record).

For now, our WikiTree entries stop with Tom Thompson of Iowa, but with some patience and care, the records that tell us the rest of the story about his parents and sister should come to light. And when they do, I’ll get to tell that story. We know Jens emigrated in 1888, but did Tom come with him? What about Mette Maria and Maren Cathrine?

Until then, back we go to mining the databases!

1. If you don’t remember, we talked about the difference between “accuracy” and “precision” in Good Enough. ↩︎
2. A gazetteer is a dictionary of place-names. ↩︎