Joren’s Journey

What do we know about these earliest grandmothers? This is my attempt to tell Joren’s story. Joren, sometimes known as Jaron, Jorund, Hjoren and Jorun, has a story that is both more desperate and more dramatic than most of my stories. In the appendix, at the end of this book, you may also read, “Next to the Sweetest Name ,” her story as told by Halvor Hovland. It is a folk love story with some fact and some fiction.

It seems that she had to leave her mother’s home in Hallingdal to find work so she could eat. Other young people were making this same trip to Hadeland where the farms were bigger and more help was needed. The author and her husband Stanford drove this harsh valley in 1988 and sensed its desperation.

Her mother’s family were farm owners and so were her unmarried father’s family. Her mother Sigrid Sjugurdsdotter never married and had four other children so her circumstances must have been difficult. Joren was about 17 years old when she made the journey to Hadeland from Hol, Hallingdal, the valley where she had grown up.

There Joren met and later married Ole Oleson (later called Hovland) from the Gran, Hadeland area. She was a servant at farm Faland and he was a servant at farm Helmen. He was 21 and she was 25. Ole was perhaps himself the illegitimate son of Ole Toreson Rosterud and his mother Guri Nilsdotter Kloppa of Lunner. Guri died when Ole was 6 months old and Ole was probably adopted by Hans Olson from Harestuskogen.

Judging from their son Gulbrand’s baptismal record from 1835, Ole and Jaron were able to marry and live together on the same farm Hvindeneie. There was little opportunity for young people to have a place of their own to make a home together. Part of the name of the farm comes from a little waterfall and a little river called Tangen that goes on to a fjord called Randsfjorden. The farm lies high above and a very long way from the fjord and its name in the record is the clue that they were husmann folks, hired workers.

Besides Gulbrand, they had five other sons who reached adulthood, as well as a daughter and two sons who died young. The last place they lived in Gran was a husmann’s place called Vestbraten under the farm Hovland in Lunnar. In Halvor’s story they lived on the farm of Hovland and had a good life, but this probably is not quite accurate. The census records show that they lived on a different cotter’s place each time a child was born, which made them the poorest of the poor in the overpopulated Gran area.

The records show that their first sons to emigrate were Hans, who was single, and Ole, who left with his wife and two children in 1867. Gulbrand, Berte, and their four children, Julia, 7, Milla, 6, Halvor, 4, and Olava, 1, left Norway September 17, 1869 on the ship “ODER” with tickets prepaid to Lansing, Iowa.

Joren’s six sons and their wives: left to right, Otto and Thea, Nels and Marie, Syver and Guri, Ole and Anna, Gulbrand and Gura; top,

Immigration must have been difficult for the old but when the last son left, Otto, who was a widower, Joren and Ole had no choice but to travel with him to the available lands in Minnesota. If our records are correct, Joren was 73 and Ole 69 when they made that difficult voyage and long trip.

They spent their last years in the beautiful Red River Valley near Rothsay, Minnesota. They lived long enough to see each of their six sons prosper, own land, and build comfortable buildings, schools, and churches for their very large families.

They are buried in the rural Friborg Church cemetery at Rothsay, alongside many of their descendants. Their tombstones give witness to their deep faith to those of us who view them 100 years later. “Here lies the dust of Ole and Jaron. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses from all sin.”

Joren may have been influenced by the teachings of Hans Nilson Hauge, the revival preacher, as her cousin was later married to Elling Eielson, one of the most outstanding Haugean evangelists in America. This woman of small stature showed strong evidence of deep piety as she raised her

Hovland family at Joren’s Death 1893?? This date and occasion is a guess, but the photo/portrait is an important clue. It seems to show the half of the picture that is Joren, and then curiously, half of the picture is covered over, Ole’s side. Ole died 3 years earlier, so here, he is out of the picture. Ruth Holtan has written a note on the back. “Hovland’s family, white hair, also showing picture of wife- did she just die?” But, Ole died earlier, so it couldn’t be his white hair here. The front of the photo is written, “oivem” by Bev Olson. The photographers embossed trademark says H or, or is it J Olson, Lake Mills, making it unlikely it’s in Rothsay, where both Ole and Joren died. .

family of six boys.

Joren and Ole’s story illustrates the pain of leaving all they knew in Norway for the unknown, but promised world in America, for “the children’s sake”. We honor their memory, their faithfulness and godliness, their hardiness and their prolific genes.