Mightier Acorns

On 17 April 1888, a Danish miller named Jens L. Thomsen, age 38, disembarked in New York City from the S/S Hekla, a ship of the Thingvalla line, with his wife, Mette (also 38) and son, Thomas, age 11.¹ These are the folks we discussed in Danish Root: The Thompson Family in Iowa. They came from Gudumland, and on 29 March had sailed from Christiania², Norway, bound for New York.

On the following page, three more Thomsen children were recorded as passengers, but without any indication they were part of the Thomsen family: Maren (age 9), Christian (age 6), and Jens (11 months) – all with the surname Thomsen, originating in Gudumland.

Jens may have made the decision to emigrate after seeing a Thingvalla Line promotional pamphlet, like this one published in 1887. The pamphlet (which you should read!) paints an enticing picture of spacious accommodations and good food, even in steerage (there’s a picture!) but they did leave out some details. The S/S Hekla (2) was the second Thingvalla ship of that name; the first S/S Hekla sank in February 1883. This second Hekla had “[l]ost her rudder during a storm 500 miles off the Irish coast” in 1886, after having suffered $5,000 worth of damage from a fire which “broke out in the hold and it was a case of spontaneous combustion” in October 1885.

Fortunately, the Thomsens had an uneventful voyage. Jens, Mette, and their four children probably didn’t spend much time in New York City. The Thingvalla pamphlet recommended that immigrants should order train tickets to an inland destination when booking passage on a ship in order to avoid an expensive and lengthy stay in New York.

But that raises the question: Where did they go? The Denmark Emigration index only has records for Jens and Maren, and the record for Jens gives his destination as New York City. But Maren’s says her destination is Lamberton, Minnesota.

Kin in the American Midwest

As we discussed in the last post about Tom and Lena Thompson, they married in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1899. In 1895, Jens L. Thomsen lived in Westbrook, Cottonwood County, Minnesota. Lamberton is in Redwood County, about twenty miles north and east of Westbrook, so I am comfortable assuming this is the same Jens L. Thomsen.

In 1895, Jens lived in Westbrook with two young people:

I almost missed the fact that Jens was not alone in this household because the database didn’t link household members together, but here we have “Katrine,” age 17, and “Marinus,” age 10. It seems odd to record them by their middle names, but “Katrine” seems like a reasonable spelling for “Cathrine” given the way the name was most likely pronounced in Denmark. I assume Mette Marie died between 1888 and 1895, though this record does not explicitly state that Jens L. is widowed.

Looking for them in 1900, I find a Census record for a widowed “Joseph Thomsen” (which is almost certainly mistranscribed – I think it says “Jens L.” under the enumeration note) and a son, Jens M. in Westbrook.

What I have not told you, though, is that when I was first researching this family, I didn’t know about the two younger sons until I looked at this 1895 Census record. Remember how Maren, Christian, and Jens M. were listed on a different page in the ship’s passenger record? I didn’t find that information until after I found Jens Marinus in these two records and went back to answer the question, “When did the younger children come over, and where did they live?”

And that led me to look at all of Jens Laurits and Mette Marie’s siblings!

MORE Kin in the American Midwest

This is the part of the research project that becomes grueling: building a biography for every one of Jens and Mette’s siblings. I’m a methodical person, so I started with the oldest of Jens’s four sisters.

I only needed to determine whether they emigrated from Denmark, and if so, when. The three eldest sisters were Dorthe, Lovise, and Ida Marie: they all married in Denmark, and either died there or (in Ida Marie’s case) at least stayed in Hjorring Amt (county) until 1890. The youngest, Ane Marie, was born on 19 Feb 1852, and the latest record I could find showed her confirmation in 1866 – after that, I can’t find any records that conclusively belong to her.

Mette Marie had two younger sisters: Ane Margrethe and Martine. Their parents were Thomas Christian Jespersen and Cathrine “Trine” Madsdatter. Before the 1856 naming act in Denmark changed how surnames were passed down, the three sisters appeared with the last name “Thomsdatter,” but after 1856, they became “Thomsen” and their mother appeared as “Madsen” in the Denmark Census and church records. That also means that if they came to the United States, Trine and her daughters could also appear under the surname “Jespersen.”

And, Behold!

Thomas Jespersen, his wife, Kathrine, and an 11-year-old girl “Christine” who is listed as “daughter,” departed from Copenhagen aboard the S/S Island, another Thingvalla ship, on 3 April 1884, arriving in New York on 21 Apr 1884. According to the Denmark, Emigration Index, 1868-1908, their destination was Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The more I look, the more evidence I find that Mette Marie’s family preceded her and her husband to the United States. There are still many important gaps and inconsistencies in the records to figure out, but here is a rough timeline of events:

• 1878: Ane Margrethe Thomsen (at about age 24) marries Jens Nelson in Racine, Wisconsin, and they settle in Westbrook, Cottonwood County, Minnesota.
• 1882: Martine Thomsen (age 23) of Dronninglund, Hjørring, travels from Denmark to Omaha, Nebraska. I presume this is a visit to the family of her intended husband, Jens Pedersen, who had also emigrated from Hjørring a few years prior.
• 1884: Thomas Jespersen, his wife Katherine Jespersen, and 11-year-old Christine Jespersen immigrate to the U.S. in April 1884 and settle in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Martine marries Jens Peterson in May.
• 1888: Jens Thomsen, Mette, and their four children arrive in the U.S., probably settling in Minnesota.

This shows a pattern of immigration that unfolded over ten years, with neighbors from Aalborg and Hjørring crossing the ocean to join communities in Minnesota and Iowa, and Mette Marie’s entire family eventually joining them.

Conclusion? Not Quite…

I still have a lot of questions. When did Mette Marie die, and where was she buried? What happened to Christian Peter Thomsen after the family arrived in the U.S.? What happened to Maren and Jens Marinus after we see them in 1895 and 1900? Who was Christine Jespersen?

But for now, I need to take some satisfaction in the progress we have made, and acknowledge that this story won’t be told all at once. I’ve been working on the text of the post as the picture evolved, adding children, revisiting siblings, moving between databases and adjusting assumptions as new evidence arises. For now, we can assert with more confidence:

On 17 April 1888, a Danish miller named Jens L. Thomsen, age 38, disembarked in New York City from the S/S Hekla, a ship of the Thingvalla line, with his family…

…and know that “with his family” means a lot more than we thought it did!

1. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: M237; RG Title: Records of the U.S. Customs Service; RG: 36; Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. ↩︎
2. Christiania regained its original name, Oslo, in 1925. ↩︎