RLP 202: Researching Scandinavian Immigrants with Jenny Hansen

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 202 Researching Scandinavian Immigrants with Jenny Hansen. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional.

Nicole (42s):
Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Hey everybody. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (45s):
Hi, Nicole. How are you today?

Nicole (47s):
I’m great. How are you doing? What have you been working on

Diana (50s):
Just finalizing plans for going to Sacramento for the national genealogical society conference? We’re so excited to be finally going to a conference in person. I can’t believe it’s been two years over two years since we’ve been able to do this.

Nicole (1m 5s):
I can’t wait. I’ve been working on my research plan and the DNA study group, just getting all my strategy figured out, and now I get to have the next little bit to work on that. So I’m excited.

Diana (1m 18s):
Yeah, it was a little bit more difficult making my research plan for this DNA project than I thought I had to really think clearly about my objective and what records would actually get me to the objective, because there were a lot of different paths I could take. It was an interesting experience to really think about what would be the best records.

Nicole (1m 38s):
So our announcements for today are just a reminder that our study group for the fall will begin registration this summer. So if you want to join us for research like a pro our study group, please check our website and we’re taking applications for peer group leaders. So we’d love to have you if you’re interested in helping in that capacity.

Diana (1m 56s):
Well, we’re excited today to have our friend and colleague Jenny Hansen back. Hi, Jenny .

Jenny Hansen (1m 59s):
Hi, you guys. It’s so fun to be here.

Diana (2m 5s):
Oh, we love talking to neology with you. So just a little background on Jenny. We laugh about how our paths have crossed and we didn’t really connect for a while. She was teaching a series of Scandinavian research classes at our local church, and I attended all of those and I thought she was amazing. She just made it so doable, but I didn’t really, you know, connect in a professional way or I think I probably would come up to you and said, oh, I really enjoyed that. But you know, when you’re teaching, how many people come up and talk to you? Like everybody says that, you know, yes. So I knew who she was. She really had no clue who I was, but at RootsTech, I believe 2018 or 2019, we were both speakers as well as Nicole.

Diana (2m 49s):
And we were all in line. I think to go into the special speaker event, they have a special dinner and I just turned to you. And I said, you don’t really know me, but you know, I know you. And that was, that was the beginning of our relationship. So it’s been so fun since then just to continue working together. I work with Jenny on the ICAPGen commission, that’s the, our accrediting body. And so it’s been super fun.

Jenny Hansen (3m 16s):
Yeah. I, I would just echo the same. I feel like I kind of knew who you were. And I think it was probably around 2019 that we got to be friends, friends. And by 2020, that last time the roots tech was in person. The three of us were like hanging out whenever we could. And it’s just fun to have friends who are genealogists. Like I don’t have a lot of my close friends that get this realm of my personality. So it’s, I just feel like it’s a huge treat.

Diana (3m 45s):
It is really fun. Being able to bounce ideas off each other, you know, the whole professional thing, as well as being speakers, you know, at conferences, you know, just have a lot in common. So it’s awesome.

Jenny Hansen (3m 58s):
Yeah. It’s super fun. Love these ladies. Okay.

Nicole (4m 1s):
Well, the reason we had you come back on the podcast, one is because we love talking to you, but another reason that we got a, we got a fun question from one of our listeners and it kind of had to do with Scandinavian research immigrants. So let me read that question. And then for this episode, we’ll just kind of talk about some strategies that can help with this type of research. So the question is I’m having a hard time going back further than my great-grandfather on my mother’s side, he’s Norwegian, but spelled O L S O N Olson, instead of Olsen with an E-N, like most from Norway, I found him in North Dakota in the 1880s.

Nicole (4m 43s):
I haven’t had any luck, unlike my Swedish ancestors, finding them in Norway. Do you have any advice? I can’t find Mary and Ol Olson in Norway and can’t find their travels across America and settling in North Dakota. I’m almost ready to hire an expert to help me. Your podcast is excellent and helped a lot with my, their ancestors. So thank you.

Diana (5m 3s):
Okay. So Jenny, what are the first steps to take when looking for an immigrant ancestor?

Jenny Hansen (5m 9s):
Well, I think that a lot of us tend to say, oh, they’re from Norway or they’re from England, or, you know, whatever country. And we want to jump immediately into those records, but I’m sure your audience is very educated. They know what they’re doing, but we have to remember to get complete us research before we make that jump across the ocean. So when we talk about everything we make want to make sure you have any vital records for any event that happened here in the United States or wherever you’re starting out, your research, all census records available, any immigration records that are available. So one thing that I learned a long time ago, like very long time ago from Elizabeth Mills was that we always start from the known to the unknown.

Jenny Hansen (5m 55s):
And you have to remember that the past is a foreign country. So you can’t just assume that the way we live now and the customs and cultures that we have now always apply to our ancestor. We have to start out with what’s most available and most accessible and then make a trail going back from there. So I always tell people the first step is to make sure you’ve exhausted everything in the U S

Diana (6m 19s):
Yeah, that’s great advice. And you know, another place where I’ve seen some hints to the old country would be newspapers.

Jenny Hansen (6m 28s):
Yes.

Diana (6m 29s):
Trusting what you can find in newspapers, or even things like county histories or biographical sketches published in books. So I think once you have really exhausted the vital records since us immigration, and you still have no clues start looking outside the box.

Jenny Hansen (6m 47s):
Exactly. Make sure you have everything, not just the basics, right?

Diana (6m 52s):
Yeah.

Nicole (6m 53s):
Yeah. I like when you said all of the census records and that reminded me of one of the first projects I did for a client and, you know, she had all these sources attached to the family search tree and some of them were New York state census records, but only a couple of them. So the first thing I did was just get all of the census records and this person was an immigrant from England. And in one of the census records, it was every five years. Right. So New York was on the five and then on the 10 was the federal. So once all of those have been examined, one of them said the county in England, that she came from,

Jenny Hansen (7m 29s):
See, that’s the trick. You have to look for those little hints that come in unexpected places.

Nicole (7m 35s):
Right. And that she even had the record. She just hadn’t looked at it closely. Yeah. Or somebody had attached it to her person and family search. And she didn’t really, you know, cause you can attach those without looking at the originals. Yup. So, yeah.

Jenny Hansen (7m 51s):
So interesting.

Nicole (7m 53s):
Well, a lot of times ancestor’s names changed once they got to the United States. So how do you handle that situation when looking for immigrant ancestors?

Jenny Hansen (8m 1s):
Yeah. That’s a good one. And I thought of that, of course, looking at this question from your listener about the different spelling from Olsen to Olson. So my last name is Hansen, which is the very traditional Norwegian spelling S E N, but my maiden name was Peterson spelled the Swedish way, P E T E R S O N. But we are Danish descent. So it should have been P E D E R S E N. So I totally relate with this question. And I think that this is a really common circumstance, whether your ancestors have Scandinavian origins or just any European origins, we really see name changes happen a lot, usually around the time of immigration.

Jenny Hansen (8m 41s):
Sometimes we want to blame that on the ship passenger list or, you know, say, oh, the clerk wrote my name wrong. Or if do you guys remember that movie, the American tale about the little mouse family that immigrates as Jews. You remember that? And it, the scene that Feivel and his family are all getting on the boat and they list off their big Eastern European last name. And the clerk says, okay, Mr. Smith, you know, we want to think that that’s, that’s how our names got changed, but really it’s very seldom like, oh, hard, fast time that the ancestors switched to spelling or like, we like to say Americanized, the name that usually kind of happens as a process.

Jenny Hansen (9m 21s):
So for example, with my ancestors and the Peterson spellings being changed, I see them for like the first, probably 20 years that the families in the United States, sometimes it’s spelled the Danish way. Sometimes it’s spelled the Swedish way. And a lot of times it’s a mix of the two. So I think the thing to remember on this is that our ancestors were kind of figuring out the process and spelling wasn’t as standardized back then as it is now, we all like own our spelling. It’s a very personal part of what our name is, but even a hundred years ago, it wasn’t that personal. And as long as it was kind of writer, it sounded the same than it was considered.

Jenny Hansen (10m 5s):
Correct. So maybe the thing to remember on this situation with the name change of spelling with Olsen is just, you know, give it some grace in the records, look at what anybody might have heard. And don’t be too concerned if one time it’s spelled S O N when time is spelled S E N when you get back to those original records, you’ll start to see it more standardized for the country. But even then you’ll see maybe like O L E S E N rather than just OLSEN, you know, spelling rules just weren’t the same as they are today.

Nicole (10m 40s):
Absolutely. I think that’s a common question about spellings and just confusion about why that changed. So thanks for all the ideas and explanations that helps so much

Diana (10m 50s):
That really does. I’m sitting here chuckling, because I have people in my neighborhood that are named Robinson and another Hanson family. And I can never remember whether their names are them and half the time I spell it wrong because I can’t remember. So, you know, can you imagine people who really didn’t know language well, and I

Jenny Hansen (11m 8s):
Know

Diana (11m 10s):
It’s just tricky.

Jenny Hansen (11m 11s):
Yeah. And like I said, we take it as this big personal thing now, but I, you know, it’s really not, not as intimate as we want to make it be.

Diana (11m 19s):
Yeah. Well, to the name changes, my maiden name is Shults spelled S H U L T S. That name changed for our branch of the family occurred in Tennessee in the 1800s. And so the original ancestor came over in the 1700s and it was the, you know, SCHULTZ, but then it took a hundred years and then they Americanized it more. So, and then of course we still get the different spellings cause people don’t of course know how we’ve changed it. So very familiar with the name spelling change thing.

Jenny Hansen (11m 49s):
Yeah. I think the big tip for researchers is just don’t freak out about it.

Diana (11m 53s):
Yeah.

Jenny Hansen (11m 54s):
It’s okay.

Diana (11m 56s):
It is. Okay. All right. Well, let’s move on and talk a little bit more about those specific sources. We touched on this, but, you know, we were just talking earlier about research planning and I think that’s really good to start with those records that are most likely, most accessible. And you know, how, what would you do for a research plan? What would you do first?

Jenny Hansen (12m 17s):
So if I’m looking at a Scandinavian immigrant, I, of course the first thing I’m going to look at is the easy things like the census records, right? And like Nicole said, you might find some great clue in those that totally solves your problem, but then there’s other times that we get the great clue of your ancestors origins are pressure, right? Like that’s the worst thing to see because you’re thinking, oh man, what does that really mean? So, you know, cast that net broad, but then as Diana’s pointing to, you want to think of what’s most likely to give me the best results. So one of the great things with our Scandinavian ancestors is that the evangelical Lutheran church in Scandinavia is one of those cultural things that they brought with them.

Jenny Hansen (13m 3s):
And so when we have our ancestors who most of them would have settled in the Midwest area, they still had these evangelical Lutheran churches. And part of those church records, it talked about what parish were you most recently in before you came to this parish? So that can be a huge clue. And sometimes it would say Copenhagen, meaning, you know, the ancestor came from their hometown. They were in Copenhagen for a little bit while they were waiting for, to immigrate. But other times it might give you the actual parish, like where they grew up the hometown. That’s a really good indicator there. Those church records are great. Another one, Diana, you kind of mentioned this, these local newspapers.

Jenny Hansen (13m 46s):
A lot of times they would list, especially within these tight-knit ethnic communities, they would list people who were coming in and joining the community. So it could say, you know, Olson and his family from this place in Norway. That’s a really good one on that idea of newspapers. I had a huge success with a project like this just last month, where an obituary for this woman who immigrated from Denmark and ended up living in California for the rest of her life, in her obituary, it listed all of her living siblings with the residents in Denmark. So for me, that was a huge clue because I’m seeing the names of her brothers and sisters and the towns they’re living in.

Jenny Hansen (14m 30s):
So I had a great idea of what region this family was living in there in Denmark. And that was a really good spot to go and look at. Sometimes you’ll see social groups like fraternal societies that are big in these ethnic communities. And if you can get records to those groups, which, you know, it’s kind of hit and miss what you might find, but that’s another place to look that it can tell you, this whole group originated from this area in Norway. So there’s some of the more public broader records that you could find. If you’re really lucky your family’s going to have things like journals or diaries or maybe letters to, and from people back in their home country.

Jenny Hansen (15m 11s):
And that is like a gold mine of information. They’re kind of similar to that. My dad’s grandfather. So my great-grandfather was the immigrant ancestor on that side of my family. And he told everybody the name of the town he came from in Denmark. Everybody knew now the tricky part of that was figuring out what jurisdiction that little town was from. Because some of these towns, it’s like two or three farms and they call it a town. So having any kind of a location is going to be ideal. That’s something we really need to have when we’re jumping into research in a foreign country.

Diana (15m 50s):
Oh, those are such great ideas. And I love that you found in the obituary, the siblings,

Jenny Hansen (15m 56s):
Which is super cool.

Diana (15m 58s):
So that just made me think, do people come and join their community? So did we see chain migration where like a few people would come over and then some others would come from the same village and joined them in the same place in the United States. Did that happen with this group?

Jenny Hansen (16m 15s):
Yeah, I think it did happen a lot with this group. And I, I’m not going to say that that’s what everybody did because I can promise that’s not what everybody did, but a lot of people did that. You know, we see that throughout lots of different European communities, that one or two families would come and then it’s as if they were testing the waters for their friends, right. Or they kind of get situated and realize this is going to be a good place. And then you start seeing others come and join them. And that chain migration is a really good pointer back to a location within Europe.

Diana (16m 48s):
Yeah. Because if you can find, say someone with maybe a little bit more unusual name in the city, or the little, the little farm land in Europe, and then they’re in the same place in the United States, that can be really helpful, especially when you’re dealing with really similar names.

Jenny Hansen (17m 4s):
Yes, yes. Well, and that Scandinavia for you, like everybody has the same names,

Diana (17m 10s):
But so true

Nicole (17m 11s):
With Mary and Ol Olson center’s question, you know, it just makes me think when they, you know, were found in North Dakota and the 1880s, were there any other people around them that were from Norway or in our region and maybe following them back could give you some clues, right?

Jenny Hansen (17m 28s):
Yes. I totally agree with that. I think that we have to be willing to admit our ancestors are a piece of a community that it’s not just their story, but we’re looking at the story of the community that they immigrate into and where they left and how all of this fits together. And that’s one of the things that I love about family history and kind of how I got pulled into this. I love history. And I love that looking at family history gives us a personal view. You know, it just makes the stories of the world become very intimate for us and we can relate to them. And we know this is how this event impacted me today.

Nicole (18m 8s):
Love that let’s jump to talking about some immigration records. So I think a lot of the time we want to find that, you know, awesome record that tells everything about where they came from and it’s got a ship manifest and everything. So what can we in reality expect to find in different immigration records?

Jenny Hansen (18m 27s):
Well, I think, I mean, we just described the daydream right there, right? We all want to have this record. That’s got a picture of the boat and it tells everybody who was on the ship and how they knew each other and what happened. But you know, let’s face it. A lot of times immigration records can be really disappointing, especially if they’re from that like mid to late 1800s. Like, I don’t know. I remember so many times looking at passenger lists that just say these people all came from Germany and you’re like, really? I knew that. Or you think I’m going to find this naturalization record. This is going to give me all my answers. And it just says that they are breaking their ties with the king of England. You’re like, ah, this is not giving me anything that I want to know.

Jenny Hansen (19m 9s):
So I think the first thing, when we start looking at immigration records is we have to set an appropriate expectation and think, you know, this time period, I might not find what I want, but other types, you get really cool stuff. And it’s always great to see your ancestor’s name on something significant. So you always want to look for him, but I think we also need to realize there’s a big difference between a ship manifest and a naturalization packets. So those ship lists in the more recent ones, like in the 19 hundreds, that era when there was a lot of immigration, but sadly, a lot of our Scandinavian immigrants were before this time. Anyway, some of those ship lists are really great and you get relationship information and occupations and all that kind of stuff.

Jenny Hansen (19m 56s):
But like I had just mentioned a lot of times in the 1800s, it just is the name of the person and the country that they originated in. So the ship list while it’s cool, it’s not going to give you the meaty information that you’re really looking for. The naturalization records. Those are great. And we know there’s multiple parts to the naturalization process. So finding that certificate of naturalization is probably not going to be the one that gives you the most information. If you can find a petition for naturalization, that’s going to be great stuff. Naturalization petitions is where the subject of the record had to include a lot of personal information. Their place of birth, date of birth parentage information is given.

Jenny Hansen (20m 36s):
And that’s where you’ll find any relatives that they may be were traveling to, or with ties to people back home. And again, it depends on the time period that those petitions were being filed, but some of them are phenomenal. I recently was it’s this, that same project that I was telling you about the obituary that listed all the siblings, we had a naturalization petition and it had an actual photograph of the subject hooked onto that naturalization petition. It was so fun to see the cute young face of this young adult woman who was so excited to be starting out her new life.

Jenny Hansen (21m 15s):
And she’s telling us about the place that she was from and really great information like that. So, you know, like all records, you hope for the best, but you have to acknowledge that sometimes you might be disappointed in your record,

Nicole (21m 30s):
Right? I’ve seen some of those ship lists that are really helpful. And some that aren’t. And like you said, even though some, don’t say a lot about the origins of the immigrant, it’s still helpful to see when they arrived and to see their name on a piece of paper and the people they traveled with. So hopefully if it’s not a super exciting record with a lot of details, you can still glean some clues and some indirect evidence to use later.

Jenny Hansen (21m 56s):
Yes,

Diana (21m 57s):
I am just curious and I’m sure other people are wondering too, where did you get that great petition with a photo attached? Was that a court record or would you track that down?

Jenny Hansen (22m 8s):
Yep. Court record.

Diana (22m 10s):
Nice. And that can be tricky because they could have naturalized in so many different courts to have to really cover all your basis there. Okay. So we’ve talked a lot about what to search for in the United States. So how much do you need, what is essential before you actually start looking for the ancestor and Scandinavia?

Jenny Hansen (22m 30s):
So I feel like there’s two pieces of information you really need to have. One is easier than the other, of course, but finding your ancestor’s original name is a huge one. And like, I know we just had this big conversation about spelling changes and all of that. But if you know that Martin could be Martinez that, you know, you know, all of these potential name changes so that you’re not so stuck to the Americanized version, that’s the first one. But the second one, which I think is even bigger. And this one is of course, much harder to find you need a specific place of origin. If you have somebody that’s from Denmark.

Jenny Hansen (23m 11s):
Well, Denmark is a kind of big place. If you say my ancestors from Norway, Norway is huge. So we’ve got to narrow that down. And if you can get clear down to the parish level, that’s going to be the very best because that’s the jurisdiction that most records are going to be organized under. I recently was working on a project where they said that their ancestor was from Copenhagen. And I always panic. When they say they’re from one of the big cities you think really? Or was it an area near there? And these records are huge, but I just did a census index search for Copenhagen. And sure enough, I found this man who had a very interesting name right there, living in Copenhagen. So sometimes the big cities and the kind of broad ideas are correct.

Jenny Hansen (23m 55s):
But if you can use these sources, like we’ve been talking about to whittle that down and find the lowest jurisdiction possible, your odds of having success in finding that person are much, much greater

Diana (24m 8s):
Knowing that you don’t have to know every single thing, you just get those clues

Jenny Hansen (24m 12s):
Name and a place. Yeah. A name and a place, and you can move from there.

Diana (24m 16s):
Well, and you can estimate birth dates and you can estimate dates of parents. We talk a lot, a lot about creating hypothesis when we do our research plan. And you have to estimate because you obviously don’t know, or that’s why you’re looking for them, but you can figure out some stuff, you know, they’re 20 years, at least older than your research subject. Those parents and siblings could be around the same age within, you know, 10 to 20 years. So you can do some good assessing of the situation and put on your thinking cap and see what you can find.

Jenny Hansen (24m 50s):
I agree. And that’s just such a good rule of thumb for genealogy. In general, we use our brains. This is a mental sport that we have to think what makes sense. If I sketch out a timeline of this family, does it all link together in a way that is logical,

Diana (25m 6s):
Right? And when you come across people with the same name, can you get rid of them, get them out of the hypothesis because they stayed right there and they did not disappear.

Jenny Hansen (25m 16s):
Exactly. You know,

Diana (25m 17s):
We can eliminate candidates by researching them a little bit more people, the same name that we find when we do this jump across the pond.

Jenny Hansen (25m 24s):
For sure. And I think, again, we talked about these areas where there’s a lot of repeated names. We have to do a lot of eliminating candidates there. Like that’s, to me the most interesting, exciting, challenging part of the work, because if it’s so easy, you’re like, well, that was kind of boring, but you know, if you have three potential family groups that you’re trying to decide, which one really fits here, it’s awesome. That’s fun. And that’s satisfying.

Diana (25m 51s):
That’s great.

Nicole (25m 53s):
Like a good challenge.

Jenny Hansen (25m 54s):
I do. Like,

Nicole (25m 56s):
It reminds me of when I first started researching and I would find a person who had a similar name and I, I could tell they weren’t the right person. I would just be so annoyed. Like, oh, this isn’t, I’m not even gonna look at this person, but now it’s like, oh, like put them in my log and yeah, they are. So I can, you know, group all the records that belong to them and move those away from my person. Yeah.

Jenny Hansen (26m 16s):
I totally do the same thing. You know, build out that family group for every single hands Jensen and then try to decide which one is the right one. Right.

Nicole (26m 25s):
I love it. Alright. So we’ve got a pretty good background in what we need to have before we start looking for an ancestor in Scandinavia. So what do you consult first when you’re making that jump across the pond?

Jenny Hansen (26m 38s):
Well, the first thing I think we all love our census records, right? We want to cast that broad net and we can see what possibilities are even there. Like I mentioned, I had this guy that I’m like, well, it’s supposedly he’s from Copenhagen. We’ll just see what happens and sure enough, it was correct. And I found that by using a census index, so Denmark and Denmark has great census records. They’re very regular. Norway only has them for some years. And in Sweden, we don’t even get census records. And those are our three main Scandinavian countries. We can start pulling in places like Finland and Iceland to make up that whole Nordic area. But if we’re just talking Scandinavia, those are our big three, but in Sweden they have different types of records that kind of substitute for a census, these clerical surveys that were part of the church records.

Jenny Hansen (27m 26s):
And that’s like another topic for another day, I guess, but, you know, cast that net broad on what kind of records exist that are a survey of the community. That’s where I always want to start. And similar to that, I love the compile databases. I used to drag my feet so bad about indexes for Scandinavia, because it’s really easy to get a lot of false negatives. Like we were just talking or false positives, you know, either way that if the spelling’s not just right or, you know, the birth years are off by a little bit, you’re going to see so many people with the same name that are not your ancestor. It’s just easy to miss people. So for a long time, I would just say, oh, I browse records.

Jenny Hansen (28m 6s):
I’ll only browse records, but now these indexes have gotten really good. They’re improving with time and getting smarter. And the search engines are getting better too. So I’ll get onto the different websites, like family search and ancestry and my heritage and use those indexes. They have there to see what comes up, just what do they have, what might match my ancestor. And a lot of times I find a great stuff these days. And again, it doesn’t just pop up and say, this is your ancestor with flashing green lights, right. But it gives me enough clues that I can use my brain. And deduce is this the right person? Is this not?

Jenny Hansen (28m 46s):
And kind of keep track of all those records and create the picture of the correct person. So I love those. I love using the user submitted trees as well. I had a huge breakthrough with one of those recently where I had this great case of a family in the U S and we knew they immigrated, but didn’t know exactly where to make the connection. And I thought, I’m just going to try the family search tree database and see, and sure enough, I’m looking at it going, huh? I think that this tree on family search ends with the records in Denmark. And then we had built up the other half of the story and the United States was able to link those two together and then get some great clues on how to progress into earlier generations by looking at a user submitted tree.

Jenny Hansen (29m 35s):
So that was a really fun validating experience to go. Yeah, sometimes I can do half and the half is already out there. Gosh, if I were to think of another one, another one that people will really recommend are like the immigrant police records that have been created in the country of origin. I don’t use those a lot because I find they’re kind of centered in these big port cities where people left. And it’s hard for me to know, like how long was the person living in Oslo or in Gotham Borg, or, you know, these places, these bigger cities where our ancestors shipped out from. And it’s not that I neglect those records. I just haven’t had much luck using them, but I know other people who swear by him and say, oh, this police records are so great.

Jenny Hansen (30m 21s):
So that’s another one where it’s kind of a hit or miss, but if the records are there and now we can search for so many of these things just with online indexes. So, I mean, it’s always worth giving it a shot. You, you know, five, 10 minutes of trying, and if you’re not finding anything quick, then move on to something else. Or maybe you’re getting some great hits and you want to dig a little deeper. So some ideas,

Nicole (30m 46s):
Those are all great ideas. And it’s a beautiful thing to be able to quickly search an index, to see if you get any hits. And then it

Jenny Hansen (30m 53s):
Is,

Nicole (30m 53s):
Don’t have to spend too much time on it. Right.

Jenny Hansen (30m 55s):
And sometimes I wonder, am I, are these indexes going to put me out of a job? But then I remind myself, no, because I know what to do with them.

Nicole (31m 5s):
Right. So true.

Diana (31m 7s):
Yes. We have to use our brains and logic. It is like putting together a puzzle. You have all the pieces, the indexes throw out the pieces of the puzzle, but man, I’m fitting those together to make something. It makes sense, really takes a human being. So you’ll never be out of a job.

Jenny Hansen (31m 23s):
I know I’m like, there’s a reason they’re not paying monkeys to do this.

Diana (31m 27s):
Yeah. Well, we have talked about a lot of fun things, but to kind of finish up what are some specific resources for those looking for Scandinavian ancestors?

Jenny Hansen (31m 39s):
Oh, that’s a great question. And actually a good one to kind of wrap up with too. So I think that when we talk about our Scandinavian ancestors immigrating to the U S chain migration is huge. Like we talked about, and there were kind of two big groups of Scandinavians who left and resettled here in the United States. So the biggest of course, all through the Midwest, we see, you know, even up into the Canadian Prairie and down through the great Plains area of the United States, we see a lot, a lot of Norwegian and Swedish and Danish immigrants settling in these towns all through there. But another big wave of Scandinavian immigration happened with those who joined the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Jenny Hansen (32m 25s):
So in the mid 1800s, there was a big wave of generally poor farming families from Scandinavia who came and settled in the Rocky mountains. And so we need to be able to identify, are we looking at this Midwest pioneer group or are we looking at the Rocky Mountain LDS group? So within those two different groups of immigrants, we’re going to find some different resources for looking at our ancestors. Of course, those in the Rocky mountains, you’re going to find a lot more in terms of things on family search and LDS records that have been created to support those groups.

Jenny Hansen (33m 4s):
A lot of community histories for these farming towns that were settled by Scandinavian settlers. But when we look at the Midwest groups, we’ve got some really great resources there too. There’s now some different heritage centers that are set up to help research and understand the experience of these Scandinavians who settled in the United States Midwest area. So one of the big ones like for Denmark, there’s the Danish immigration center or Danish immigration museum, I think is actually what it’s called. And that’s in Elkhorn, Iowa. And they just have access to so many great resources and researchers there who can help you because they specialize in doing this cool thing.

Jenny Hansen (33m 47s):
There’s another group called the forest fins. They were an early, early immigrant group to the U S that were ethnically Finnish, had a lot of ties to Sweden and then set up these colonies like in Delaware, which I know that seems weird. And you think what a niche-y group, but there are a lot of people who can trace their ancestors back to the forest fins. So you might want to look for different resources that affiliate with a specific ethnicity that you’re researching. I hope that that makes sense. Just realize that there’s a lot of groups here in the United States that specialize in immigrant ancestor origins for that ethnicity.

Jenny Hansen (34m 29s):
Another thing that I just, I will shout this from the rooftops to everyone. I talk to those family search wikis. I think they get overlooked by so many people, but the family search wikis have pages all about immigration from different regions. You can find them for Norway, for Sweden, for Denmark, for Spain, for Italy, all of these different areas that our ancestors came from. The family search Wiki has pages telling us, look at this kind of record check with this group. Look at these newspapers. Like there are just fantastic advice and research tips on those family search wikis.

Jenny Hansen (35m 9s):
So hopefully that gives people some ideas of places that they can look when they’re really getting going.

Diana (35m 14s):
Oh yeah. I recommend those all the time. Yeah. And I think sometimes we just forget about them. We

Jenny Hansen (35m 20s):
Do,

Diana (35m 22s):
But those wikis, I mean, you are really good friends with the people that write,

Jenny Hansen (35m 26s):
Okay, I have, I have some ties, plus I love the Wiki myself before I even knew that these friends of mine were running the Wiki. I thought this is a great resource. So yeah.

Diana (35m 38s):
Yeah. It’s great. And it is exciting. It’s such a fun time to be researching.

Jenny Hansen (35m 44s):
I agree.

Diana (35m 44s):
I am really quite blown away by the resources that just keep coming for us to use. Yeah. There’s never been a better time to research than right now. And I know we did a project for a Swedish ancestor for a client and there was a great Swedish center that we wrote to for records. And they did a lot of work for us. I mean, it was amazing to see what is out there.

Jenny Hansen (36m 11s):
Yeah. And you know, we can’t just limit ourselves to what’s available to us on our home computer. I mean, we’re lucky that there is so much available there, but looking at some of these outside resources can really point us in helpful directions to,

Diana (36m 25s):
Yeah. I think it really speaks to using the power of the internet to connect with people who can help us. Yeah. I mean, that is another thing we need to think of besides ancestry and family search and our big databases, how can we use the internet to find that local researcher or to find this repository? You know, what else can we find? And it’s never been easier. My mom would write letters and letters in the 1970s and have to wait for a response to get somebody to go look at a cemetery for her. And now it’s so much easier to find people to help.

Jenny Hansen (36m 60s):
I remember writing letters in the nineties when I was doing this. So that Sonic not been that long ago, that was the way of the Dodo, right. That we had to find somebody and hopefully grease the wheels enough that they’re willing to look at things for us. And now there’s just so much connectivity going on with the great communities that we have available online.

Diana (37m 24s):
Yeah. Facebook groups or something we haven’t talked about, but there are Facebook groups I’m sure for every one of these countries.

Jenny Hansen (37m 31s):
Yeah.

Diana (37m 32s):
So fun to think about this. As we’ve been talking, I looked at my Danish ancestor. I have a second great-grandfather who was part of that Rocky mountain group that joined the LDS church and you know, so many great sources on family search have been put up by his really close descendants. I’m just kind of blown away with how much is there, you know, it’s always great. When you find a line that you don’t personally have to research because someone else has done a lot.

Jenny Hansen (38m 0s):
I know

Diana (38m 1s):
That’s why I haven’t done a lot of my Danish side because I know there have been other people that have worked really hard on it.

Jenny Hansen (38m 6s):
Yeah. Some of those lines that are very prolific that you just, I know somebody else has got this one covered.

Diana (38m 12s):
Yeah. Come work on my dad’s Southern linse. Yes. So many holes.

Jenny Hansen (38m 17s):
Well that Southern stuff is so hard too,

Diana (38m 20s):
But we love it. That’s why we love it. Cause it’s hard.

Jenny Hansen (38m 23s):
Yes. I know the challenge is great making organization out of chaos. That’s what I love about this.

Nicole (38m 30s):
Absolutely. I pulled up the Norway, immigration and immigration article on the family search Wiki. It’s

Jenny Hansen (38m 35s):
Awesome. Huh?

Nicole (38m 36s):
Wow. It’s fabulous. And I’ll link to it in the show notes, but there are all kinds of lists of different online databases, resources, resources, by place, within Norway finding like ideas for records to look at, to find the town of origin and all kinds of things. So this is a good resource.

Jenny Hansen (38m 56s):
Yeah. There’s great stuff. I know that the folks who run those Scandinavian pages, they know their stuff. They’re dynamite researchers. So I’ll always give it a plug. I mean these free resources, we don’t have to pay a dime and that’s just so much good information. Okay.

Nicole (39m 12s):
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on to help us answer our listener’s question. And I hope this

Jenny Hansen (39m 16s):
For having me,

Nicole (39m 18s):
I hope that, you know, everyone listening, who was doing research in Scandinavia, got some great takeaways to go try and it makes me want to get into our Scandinavian research on mom’s side. So maybe I’ll do that sometime. I kind of want to look at our DNA matches and see, you know, if some of those provide clues to towns of origin, of course, we already kind of have it traced back to their town of origin. But I’m just curious, like if I didn’t know, would those matches give me clues to where to look? You know what I mean?

Jenny Hansen (39m 45s):
Yeah.

Nicole (39m 46s):
So,

Diana (39m 47s):
Oh yeah. It would be fun to add some DNA to that and see what could be discovered. That’s a great idea.

Nicole (39m 53s):
Of course it’s always fun to emerge. Right.

Diana (39m 56s):
That’s what we like to do.

Jenny Hansen (39m 57s):
I know you’re like, I’m going to geek out over this line going to be the best I’m throwing DNA. I’m getting used all my charts.

Diana (40m 7s):
Well, and I’m looking at my big pedigree chart here and we do have, we do have back on the sixth grade grandparents, a big link. So there’s something that could be done. And these names are different. Like, I don’t know. Maybe their comment, Jenny, Kusk K U S K.

Jenny Hansen (40m 21s):
Oh no. That’s not normal.

Diana (40m 24s):
L a D E F G E D.

Jenny Hansen (40m 27s):
That’s more normal.

Diana (40m 29s):
You can see, I have no idea.

Jenny Hansen (40m 31s):
It’s not the patronage or names, but yeah, that works. I’m like, that sounds,

Nicole (40m 35s):
I think the cus go to the coast name was added to the Sorenson. So it was like a Peterson.

Jenny Hansen (40m 41s):
Okay. So then that could

Nicole (40m 42s):
Where his farm was or something.

Jenny Hansen (40m 43s):
I was just going to say that it could be a farm name.

Diana (40m 46s):
Oh, cool. Okay. Well obviously we have some things to learn about our Danish line.

Nicole (40m 52s):
Well, thanks Jenny for coming. And we hope all our listeners had a great time and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Diana (40m 57s):
All right. Bye. Bye everyone.

Jenny Hansen (40m 59s):
Thank you.

Nicole (40m 60s):
Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.