Our Hadeland Ancestors- by Verlyn Anderson This was an article in a monthly column in the Hadeland lag’s newsletter.
Ole Olsen (b 24 June 1814 and Joran Oldsdatter Haugen (b 16 October 1810
Nearly all of my mother’s, Cora Hovland Anderson (1 January 1908 – 10 February 1992), ancestors immigrated from Hadeland. My great, great grandparents, Ole Olsen and Jøran Olsdatter Haugen and their six sons are the subject of this month’s “Our Hadeland Ancestors.” They all immigrated to America between 1867 and 1883. Ole and Jøran’s son Nils was my mother’s paternal grandfather.
Ole Olsen and Jøran Olsdatter were among Hadeland’s poorest of the poor. They were husmenn who moved from farm to farm as they were able to find employment in order to make a scant livelihood. Much about Ole’s birth, his parents and his youth remains shrouded in mystery. At the time of their marriage on 1 December 1835, the Gran parish records state that the marriage was between “unmarried man Ole Hansen from Harestuskogen, in Lunner, and from Falangs(eie),* in Gran, son of Hans Olsen of Falangs(eie)* and unmarried Jøran Olsdatter Haugen, daughter of Ola Tufto, born in ÅI, HOI parish, Hallingdal, age 25.” But research in both the Jevnaker/Lunner Parish records and in the Gran/ Brandbu parish records do not reveal an Ole Hansen, son of a Hans Olsen, born about 1814. According to both the census of 1865 and the census of 1875, Ole Hansen was born in the Jevnaker/Lunner parish. Therefore, as verified by Randi Bjørkvik, well-known Hadeland genealogist, Ole must be the illegitimate son of Ole Torsen Røsterud of Gjerdrum (in Romerike) and Guri Nilsdatter Kloppa, Lunner parish. There was an Ole Olsen born at Kloppa on 24 June 1814 to unmarried Guri Nilsdatter Kloppa. Kloppa is in Lunner, in or near Harestuskogen. 24 June 1814 is the date that Ole consistently gives as his birthday. Guri died when Ole was only six months old. I am confident that this is my great, great-grandfather Ole because of the exact date and the location of the birth.
Who raised Ole after his mother died? Most likely it was not his father who was probably a “hired man” or servant on the Kloppa or a neighboring farm. Did he leave and return to Romerike when he found out that Guri was pregnant? Maybe Hans Olsen Falangs(eie)* raised him. Ole uses the name Hansen at the time of his confirmation, his marriage and at his immigration. Probably Hans Olsen was the man who acted as Ole’s father, but was not his biological father. Ole must have lived somewhere after his mother died and maybe Hans was that man who provided him a home in which to grow up. More research is needed!
Jøran was apparently among the many young women who walked over the mountains from Hallingdal to Hadeland in search of work. Hadeland was a rich dairy-raising area so there were job opportunities for young women working as milk maidens on large Hadeland farms. She was working on the Falang farm when she married Ole. At that time, he was working on the Helmen farm, about a mile from the Falang farm.
Between 1835 and 1856, Ole and Jøran had nine children, eight sons and one daughter. Only six sons survived to adulthood. Their children were:
- Gudbrand (b. 1 July 1835, d. 28 March 1923)
2) Ole (b. 23 December 1837, d. 24 December 1915)
3) Hans (b. 27 August 1841, d. 7 February 1915)
4) Siri (b. 1844, d. 1847)
5) Lars (b. 1847, died at 2 months of age)
6) Lars (b. 1848, died when only 6 days old)
7) Syver (b. 1 October 1849, d. 1936)
8) Nils (b. 12 March 1852, d. 14 April 1939)
9) Otto (b. 2 April 1856, d. 18 September 1918)
Gudbrand was born on 1 July 1835 on the farm Falang where his mother was a servant. His birth took place exactly five months before Ole and Jøran were married on 1 December 1835. This was not unusual among poor people in Norway at this time. Often the couple did not marry until after the first child was born. This ensured both partners that they would be able to have children who could help care for them in their old age. In other words, it was the parents’ assurance of a kind of “social security.”
Ole and all of the rest of his siblings, except Otto, were born on the husmann’s place, Ulverud, which was owned by the farm Hvinden in Gran. Otto, their youngest son, was born at a husmann’s place on the Rud farm. At the time of the 1865 and the 1875 census, Ole and Jøran and their family were living on the husmanns place Vestbråten which was owned by the Hovland farm, located near Roa.
The second and third sons, Ole and Hans, were the first to immigrate to America. Ole and his wife, Anna Arnesdatter Blekene(ier) and their two daughters, and his brother, Hans, left for America about 15 April 1867. Syver was next to leave for America. He left on 24 April 1868 on the ship “Oder,” giving information that he was going to Lansing, Iowa. Gudbrand, his wife, Berte Halvorsdatter Prestbråten from the Jevnaker parish, and their four children left for America on 17 September 1869, also on the ship “Oder.” Their tickets were also paid to Lansing, Iowa.
Nils, my great-grandfather, did not wait long before also deciding to migrate to America. Eight months later, in May, 1870, having just turned 18 years of age, Nils left on the ship “Hero,” bound for New York, with one spesidaler (worth about one dollar or a month’s salary) in his pocket. His ticket, including the food on the ship, had been paid for and sent from America.
The youngest son, Otto, was only 14 years old when his last brother left for America. He remained in Norway with his parents. In 1881 he married Margrete Hansdatter Bråstad(eie).* They had a son, Hans Martin, born on 6 September 1881. Margrete died in 1882.
On 12 October 1883, Otto, together with his parents, Ole and Jøran, emigrated to Northwood, Iowa, on the ship “Rollo.” Otto left his 2-year-old son, Martin, with his in-laws in Hadeland. The boy died at his grandparents’ home in 1892 at the age of 11. He never saw his father again.
Hovland was the family name that the first immigrants from this family apparently adopted when they arrived in the United States in 1867. As the rest of the family arrived, they apparently all accepted Hovland (sometimes spelled Haavland) as their family name in America. Where did they get this name? We can only guess. Most likely it was because the parents, Ole and Jøran, were living on a husmann place called Vestbråten when their first two sons, Ole and Hans went to America in 1867. They did not own Vestbråten. They were husmenn (cotters, in English) living on this small plot. They paid their “rent” on this cottage and an acre or two of land by working for the farmer who owned Vestbråten. Vestbråten was owned by the Hovland farm which is located nearby. Another reason for choosing Hovland might be that Ole or Hans may have worked on the Hovland farm before they emigrated and thus decided to adopt the name when they got to America. It is not unusual that they did not select Vestbråten as their name. Vestbråten was surely just a couple of acres and a tiny, poor cottage in a small grove of trees. It did not have the prestige of the Hovland name. Also, Vestbråten is quite difficult to pronounce correctly and cannot be properly written in English because of the Norwegian vowel å. Nonetheless, Hovland was the name they took when they got to America and it has stuck now for over 130 years.
During the first several years in America, Ole and his family, Hans, and later Gudbrand and his family settled in Fillmore County, Minnesota, but about 1870 Gudbrand and Hans moved south and west to Winnebago County, Iowa, in the rural area between Fertile, Lake Mills and Forest City.
Many of their descendants still live there. Ruth Tweeten Holtan, a great-granddaughter of Gudbrand, is a member of our Hadeland Lag. She and her husband, Stanford, live in rural Forest City, Iowa. She is an excellent genealogist and has been of great assistance in my research of the Hovlands. Sometime after arriving in America, Gudbrand changed the spelling of his first name to Gulbrand.
When Gulbrand and Hans moved to Iowa, the remaining three, now Hovland, brothers moved north to Otter Tail County where they took homesteads in Trondheim Township in rural Rothsay, Minnesota. When Otto and his parents arrived in Minnesota in 1883 they also settled in Otter Tail County with Ole, Syver and Nils. A small second house was built on Syver’s farm. This became his parents’ new home where 73-year-old Jøran and 69-year-old Ole lived with Otto. Ole died in 1890; Jøran lived another three years, dying at the age of 83.
My great-grandfather, Nils (or Nels as it became spelled in America), married Marie Brørby in 1880. She had immigrated from Jevnaker in 1867 with her parents when she was five years old. Her parents were Anders Jorgenson Brørby and Anna Hansdatter. My grandfather, also named Ole (28 August 1880 – 23 September 1980), was their oldest son. O
Ole Olsen (Hovland) and Jøran Olsdatter Haugen have many descendants in America. Their six sons had a total of 61 surviving children at their deaths. Our grandchildren are members of the seventh generation of Hovland descendants in America. No one has yet taken a census of Ole and Jøran’s descendants, but I can confidently estimate that there are now more than 2,000 who can claim them as their HADELAND ANCESTORS.
— Verlyn D. Anderson
*(ier) or (eie) at the end of a farm name means that the person lived on the farm, but was not a member of the owner’s family. The suffix -eie or -ier means possession or owned.