Mary Wilder (c.1623-1658) (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2020 Week 5) Theme: "So Far Away"

The distance was 3235 miles.

When young Mary Wilder left her home in Shiplake, Oxfordshire, England to migrate to America in 1638, it must have seemed to be "so far away"! Mary, my 8X great grandmother, is just one example of the dozens of my ancestors who crossed the Atlantic from Europe between 1620 and 1867. All no doubt shared a mixture of excitement and apprehension about what life would have in store for them so far away from their places of birth.

Mary was the daughter of Thomas and Martha Wilder of Shiplake, Oxfordshire. The Wilder family had owned Sulham House there for several generations ever since Nicholas Wilder had fought under the Earl of Richmond at the Battle of Bosworth during the War of the Roses; Nicholas was rewarded for his service with this property when the Earl became King Henry VII.

Wilder's Folly at Sulham
View from the south of Wilder's Folly (also known as Nunhide Tower), on Nunhide Hill, Sulham, Berkshire. Built by Henry Wilder in 1769. Sulham House is the white building in the exact centre of the arch.
Wikimedia Commons Photo by BabelStone under Creative Commons Licence. 

After Thomas died in the autumn of 1634, the remaining family made plans to move to America. No doubt they were Puritans who were being persecuted for their religious beliefs in England. Oldest son John who inherited the family estate remained in England, but sons Thomas and Edward and daughter Elizabeth made the journey to America in 1637 followed in 1638 by widow Martha and daughter Mary on the ship Confidence. 

Careful planning was required before making such a voyage. Mary no doubt helped her mother carefully assemble the goods that they packed with them aboard the Confidence.

"Before you come," wrote Rev. Francis Higginson, the first minister at Salem, "be careful to be strongly instructed what things are fittest to bring with you for your more comfortable passage at sea, as also for your husbandry occasions when you come to the land. For when you are once parted with England you shall meete neither markets nor fayres to buy what you want. Therefore be sure to furnish yourselves with things fitting to be had before you come: as meale for bread, malt for drinke, woolen and linnen cloath, and leather for shoes, and all manner of carpenters tools, and a great deale of iron and steele to make nails, and locks for houses, and furniture for ploughs and carts, and glasse for windows, and many other things which were better for you to think of there than to want them here." (Dow, below, p.3 quoting Rev. Francis Higginson, New-Englands Plantation, London, 1630.)

Even so, there were many ships going back and forth between Massachusetts Bay and England in the 1630s, enabling settlers like the Wilders to obtain necessary goods from Europe. 

Martha and Mary settled at Hingham near Edward who had already made his home there. Within a few years Mary married Joseph Underwood (who had arrived in Hingham, MA in 1637 as an indentured servant) and started a family with him in 1645. All of their children were born at Watertown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There were 4 daughters and 2 sons, the elder of whom is my 7X great grandfather Joseph Underwood.

Few records are available for female ancestors like Mary. Their lives centered on home, family and church. Homemaking skills were passed on from mothers to daughters. Gardening, food preparation and preservation, cleaning, spinning, weaving, knitting, quilting, sewing, and child rearing would have formed Mary's life in the same way as her peers. Producing a new baby almost predictably every two years meant that she spent much of her short adult life pregnant and breast-feeding her babies. Starting from her six children, the next generation included close to 20 grandchildren and would have expanded to many thousands of descendants over the years. She certainly did her part to populate the new settlement in New England so far from her old home.

Mary died shortly before Christmas in 1658. She was only 35 years of age.

Resources:

Cutter, William Richard, New England Families, General and Memorial, Volume I, Genealogical Publishing Co. 1996 accessed online at Google books.

Dow, George Francis, Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, First Published in Boston, 1935 Reissued in 1967, by Benjamin Blom, Inc. Reprint Edition 1977 by Arno Press Inc. LC# 77-82079 ISBN 0-405-09125-7 Manufactured in the United States of America; accessed online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43970/43970-h/4397.

Turner, Mary Rose (Wilder) comp., Extracts from the Book of Wilders by Which the Lineage of the R. I. Wilders is Traced to Nicholas Wilder of England, 1485; Springfield, Ohio, 1927. Portions accessed through Ancestry.com and also accessible online at https://archive.org/details/extractsfrombook00turn.

Rudolph Carlyle Anderson (1910-1993) (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Week 4) Theme: "Close to Home"

We've all tried to keep it a secret. However, after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex chose to spend their Christmas vacation in our area, the secret is out: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is a wonderful place to visit, and an even better place to call home.

Victoria is home to the British Columbia Legislature
Photograph December 2019

Following my aunt Helen, I thought I was just the second member of my extended Anderson family to make beautiful Victoria home. Turned out I was wrong!

While going through old newspaper clippings from my uncle Bob, I came upon a pair of obituaries for a couple who died in Victoria within days of each other in September of 1993: Rudolph ("Rudy") Carlyle Anderson and his wife Helen Bernice (Morrison) Anderson. Rudolph was my first cousin twice removed. (During the early 1900's the various branches of the Anderson family had dispersed by settling in three different Canadian provinces and several American states, making it less likely for cousins to know one another. Rudy and my grandfather Ingwald Anderson were both grandsons of our Swedish immigrant ancestor Israel Anderson).

Rudy and Helen's obituaries were a wealth of information, the sort genealogists love to encounter. Much of the information in this story comes from these obituaries written lovingly by one or both of their two daughters, Judy and Joan.

Rudy was born in Elm Creek, Manitoba on 4 May 1910 to Carl Gustav Anderson and Marion (Folson) Anderson. He received his M.D. at the University of Manitoba in the middle of the "Dirty Thirties" and began his solo medical practice at a town of some 400 people at God's Lake Gold Mine, Manitoba. He married Helen Bernice Morrison there in in 1937. (Probably they had met in Winnipeg, Manitoba while both were attending university there. She had received her BA in 1934, following a degree of ATCM Piano Teacher and Performer in 1932.) According to her obituary, the couple were "best friends for over 60 years and married 56 years".

Rudy must have enjoyed working and living in mining towns for he next established his solo medical practice at Beren's River Mines, Favourable Lake; then he was a general practitioner at Okiep Copper Ltd. in South Africa.

By 1943, wanting to join the Canadian Army Medical Corp in London, England, he signed up with the British Merchant Navy in Capetown. His surgical service in Europe landed him in England when he was discharged in 1948.

He took post graduate training in orthopedic surgery at Liverpool before returning to Canada. From 1949 to 1952, he was in orthopedic practice in Regina, Saskatchewan (close to home for my own branch of the Andersons).

In the mid 1950s Rudy and Helen made their final move: to Victoria, B.C. Their first listing in the Victoria City Directory is for 1955 where he is listed as an orthopedic surgeon at Suite #701 - 1029 Douglas Street (in the space now occupied by the far less attractive Royal Bank building - an area I walk past several times a week.)

His first Victoria home with wife Helen was at 3062 Oakdowne, but Greater Victoria has so many wonderful neighbourhoods and they made their home in several over the decades:

• 3020 Valdez Place in Oak Bay
• 1550 Shasta Place
• 4142 Tuxedo Drive
• 4401 Hannah Court
• Apt. 402 - 2930 Cook Street

Rudy took up the post of Chief of Staff at the beautiful St. Joseph's Hospital in the 1960's. His listings in the City Directories show that he shared an office with several other doctors. In 1968 his office space is at Suite #450 - 1105 Pandora Avenue.

In the early 1970s he was the President of the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons. Rudy retired from medical practice about 1980.

A love of gardening was shared with Helen. He enjoyed curling and history and his daughters in the obituary called him "an armchair politician". The couple were obviously very active in the community; Helen's obituary mentions her participation in the University of Victoria Women's Club Philosophy Group and her presidency of the Women's Auxiliary of the Victoria Art Gallery. Her hobbies included weaving, painting and music. The couple loved to entertain and I'm sure their family and friends were well entertained by them.

Rudy died 15 September 1993 of cancer. Four days later, Helen followed. She had suffered for years from a progressive muscle disease (IBM) and eye problems, but it appears that, in the end, she died of a broken heart after losing her husband and best friend. Their ashes were scattered at Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria.

Sadly, since I didn't move to Victoria until 2001, my path never had a chance to cross that of Rudy and Helen. So close and yet so far!

Resources: 

Victoria Times Colonist Newspaper, obituaries of Rudolph Carlyle Anderson and Helen (nee Morrison) Anderson, September 1993.

Greater Victoria City Directories 1955-1993: For the year 1955 on the Vancouver Public Library website and for subsequent years in the Local History Room at the Greater Victoria Public Library

McCalls Funeral Home, Victoria BC (email to the author dated 6 January 2020)

Sigurd Bjørnsen Bonde Gulsvik (1412-1482) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 3) Theme: "Long Line"

It remains a mystery how my father was able to connect with someone in Norway in the area where his mother's ancestral line originated. In the spring of 1997, Dad received a package of information from a man named Tom Larsen in Oslo, Norway. Dad was delighted to see the long line of his maternal ancestors going all the way back 16 generations from his mother. I still chuckle over his comment at the time that he never knew he had ancestors that far back; I know what he meant though - if you can't name them, they don't really seem to have existed.

Long line of Norwegian Ancestors provided by Tom Larsen

The person on the long list with the earliest birth year is my 14X great grandfather Sigurd Bjørnsen Bonde Gulsvik born at  Flå, Buskerud, Norway about 1412 and died before the 7th of February 1482. (Sigurd is his given name. Bjornsen indicates that his father's given name was Bjørn. Bonde was an honorary name indicating he was highly respected or wealthy and Gulsvik was the farm name.)

Although the church records from Norway are excellent, they do not extend back this far, making it difficult to find sources for accurate information. One is forced to rely on the farm books and other histories. (Unfortunately, I have not yet had access to the actual farm book for Flå in Hallingdal; if anyone reading this story has it and would be willing to send me copies of the relevant pages, I would be very grateful!)

From the available sources posted online by several other generous distant cousins, it seems likely that Sigurd was married three times. It is thought that one wife (possibly Eli Guttormsdatter) was a daughter of Guttorm Rolvsen, a nobleman from Telemark, and that it was through this marriage that Sigurd acquired his significant property at Gulsvik.  He was also married to Unna Vebjørnsdatter who was left widowed by his death. We know that Sigurd had an older brother named Halvard Bjørnsen Ringnes since it was Halvard's sons who eventually inherited the property.

Our family descends through Sigurd's son Gottorm Sigurdson Bonde Gulsvik and then Guttorm's son Helge Guttormson Gulsvik (1484-bef.1569), a lagrettemann (lawyer) in Flå - and so on down the long line to my grandmother Louise Nelson and my father Kenneth Bardahl. (I must admit that I could have saved myself a lot of time and energy had I known earlier how Tom's ahnentafel charting system works for identifying both gender and parentage in long generational lists of names of people such as this one!)

Unfortunately, Dad died unexpectedly very shortly after receiving all this information on his long line of Norwegian ancestors. He never got a chance to write back to Tom Larsen in Norway to thank him and to exchange family history information. At the time, the keen genealogist in the family had definitely been my father Ken, not me. Not knowing the Norwegian language, I put away my copy of the long list for several years until my developing interest in genealogy overcame my trepidation. When it finally occurred to me in the early 2000s to write to Tom at his Oslo address stamped on the material, my letter was returned to me. He was, not surprisingly, no longer at this address.

I noticed immediately that my 2015 DNA test results included a match to a Tom Larsen in Norway. When I wrote and asked if he had once lived at a specific address in Oslo and had sent genealogy information to my father in Canada in 1997, he confirmed that he was indeed the same man. (We are 9th cousins once removed making it a bit of a miracle that we share much common DNA at all!) At that time, Tom provided me with more material on our common Lunde ancestors from Aadalen, Akershus for me to try to translate for use in my database.

Sadly, when I wrote to him again this week to ask if he would mind being named in this story, I learned from his relative that Tom had died of a heart attack at the age of 58. I write this story in his honour with great appreciation for the long line of ancestors he identified for our family. 

Sources:

Tom's Sources

Østro, Terje, Gards-og Slektshistorie For Flå i Hallingdal, Gulsvikvaldet av Gulsvikfjerdingen (til 1970) II, , 2003, v. II, p. 91, Søgarden/Nedregarden Gulsvik

Glimpses into the Families of Ole Sanderson Oyo, Gro Olsdatter, Rreide Hagen, Svein Olson Shruttegarden posted on Ancestry.com website by northshoregirl72 on 23 August 2016

Hallingdal to Amerika selection posted on Ancestry.com website on 17 January 2013

Kenneth Bardahl (1926-1997) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 2) Theme: "Favourite Photo"

John Bardahl (left) and son Kenneth (right) c.1942-44

For both subject matter and composition, I never tire of this photograph taken in the 1940's of my father and his father.

My Dad Kenneth Bardahl (1926-1997) quit school at 16 to start farming in rural Saskatchewan, but he might have been born to strike a pose for Gentlemen's Quarterly.

Both men are very dapper in their suits, overcoats and hats - and both have cigarettes dangling  from their mouths! Although it was definitely John's car, it looks as if Ken would be doing the driving this day.

The simple two bedroom homestead house in the background was home to father John Bardahl and mother Louise Nelson as well as six daughters and two sons. Ken was the youngest. I spent the first ten years of my life in this house along with my parents and two siblings - and I know it was full enough with the five of us. It never ceases to amaze me how all ten of them managed to fit into this little house with no running water or electricity, let alone come out of there dressed elegantly for a trip to town (probably Swift Current, Saskatchewan, the closest city). Much credit must go to my grandmother Louise.

Try as I might, I cannot make out a date on the license plate. Although Ken is obscuring the identification of the vehicle, I believe it was a Ford as can barely be seen in the summertime photo of my Dad's sister Marvel posing on what appears (at least for the most part) to have been the same car.

Marvel (Bardahl) Barton

There is another vehicle parked in the distance (on the left) in my favourite photo; perhaps this was the earlier vehicle that appears in other family photographs, such as the one below of my Dad's brother James Bardahl taken in 1939.

James Bardahl

Now for a bit of a juxtaposition from the dapper young man my father appeared in my favourite photo compared to the far less glamorous life he was actually living at the time. The following description is from Ken Bardahl's memoir written in 1991:

I was asked to do some gardening (weeding) for an elderly couple, wages $45.00 per month, room and board supplied.  This sounded great and of course I had visions in my mind that I would soon be a man of many means!  Was I in for a surprise?  No one told me of the love that the mosquitoes would have for such a young lad.  I was forced into wearing a complete headdress of cheesecloth to keep the varmints off.  The days seemed endless, alone, pulling weeds.  I was expected to put in a day from daylight until dark. I was more than happy when my first and last month was completed and I again returned to the comforts and love of home.  In the fall of 1942, I went out on a threshing rig locally.  Combines were beginning to come into this area but some people still wanted to save their straw for fodder.  There was a fair bit of moving from farm to farm as no one had a great deal to do in this manner. I would be 16 years of age at the time. Wages for this were $5.00 a day for the men and $2.00 a day for the team of horses which pulled my wagon and rack.  After harvest was completed and wages paid to me, I was able to buy a second hand bicycle!!  A far cry from the Dodge convertible I had had my eye on for the previous months.  

Ken still didn't have a car of his own when he started dating my mother Elinor Anderson, a local schoolteacher, in 1946. Again, from Ken's memoir:

Later on when I started courting Elinor, I found myself many times without a vehicle.  Clarence (Hjermanrud) had told me before, that, when this happened, I could get his car.  Imagine!! I would phone him and ask if his car was available for me on a certain date.  If yes, I would then make a date with Elinor for a dance, evening out or whatever.  I would then walk up to their place (app. 1 mile) , get their car and then pick up Elinor.  At the end of the evening, I would take Elinor back to her boarding place (she was school teaching then), then take their car home and again walk the lonely road back home.  Never once did they inquire about where we had been.  All of this, and I only had to supply the gasoline that we used.  I still have great memories of the “29” Pontiac and will never forget their kindness and generosity shown me.

Although he had a truck required for his farming operations, his first car was not the Dodge convertible he had been eyeing in the 1940's but a beautiful, albeit sensible, two-toned white and pale green 1953 (or possibly 1954?) Chevy Bel Air, bought second-hand in about 1956. Practicality prevailed: by this time 30 year-old Ken and wife Elinor had been joined by three of their four children. 

James Bardahl (left) and Ken Bardahl (right) with Ken's Chevy in 1957

Samuel Morse (1576 or 1585-1654) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 1) Theme: "Fresh Start"

Five years have passed since I last took part in Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. Time for a fresh start!

First up: taking a fresh look at one of the first New England ancestors who started my genealogy obsession over 20 years ago, my 9X great grandfather Samuel Morse. One side benefit of writing these stories is focusing on revisiting the available records for an individual and his family.

In 2015, I wrote about Samuel's father, Reverend Thomas Morse whose story gives a good indication of the sort of unsettled childhood Samuel and his siblings would have had. Their father Thomas was a Puritan religious dissident whose beliefs were constantly undermining his position as a minister in the Church of England.

Parish Church of St. Peter, Boxted

Conflicting dates, almost a decade apart, are given for Samuel's birth (12 June 1576 or 1585). No primary sources can be located, but considering that his marriage to Elizabeth Jasper occurred on 29 June 1602, I believe the earlier date to be the more likely (Samuel would have been 26 rather than barely 17 marrying the 23 year-old Elizabeth). He is said to have been born at Boxted, Suffolk, England while his father was rector there.  He would have been about seven when his family moved to Hinderclay, Suffolk.

St. Mary Church at Hinderclay, Suffolk

Porch at the Hinderclay Church

View from inside Hinderclay Church

List of Rectors of Hinderclay Church
Samuel's father Thomas Morse 1583, deprived 1595 (third from bottom)

It isn't clear whether Samuel moved with the family to Foxearth when his father became rector there in 1595 (after being "deprived" of his benefice at Hinderclay that same year, as shown above). At that time, Samuel would have been nearly 20. 

Location of Hinderclay and Redgrave, Suffolk
Google Earth Image

On 29 June 1602, Samuel married Elizabeth Jasper of nearby Redgrave.  The couple had several children born in Redgrave starting in 1603 and ending in 1620 with the birth of their youngest daughter Mary (my 8X great grandmother). Their children grew up and eldest daughter Elizabeth married in 1629 and started a family of her own. Things were not as settled as they might seem, however. The family's Puritan leanings would have been an ongoing source of concern.

St. Mary's Church at Redgrave, Suffolk

Now for Samuel's "fresh start". He embarked 15 April 1635 on the ship Increase  bound from London to New England, together with wife, son Joseph and granddaughter Elizabeth Daniel.  (Other family members also ended up in America, but it isn't clear whether they were on this or some other ship.) The passenger list for the Increase has husbandman (farmer) Samuel at age 50, Elizabeth 48, Joseph 20 and granddaughter Elizabeth Daniel just 2. (At 50 Samuel was fairly old for such a fresh start, but he may actually have been almost a decade older at 59 and wife Elizabeth possibly about 56.)

According to May Phillips Train in  Samuel Bullen and some of His Descendants, p. 52, Morse's emigration to America was to effect "separation from the corruption of the English Church." Clearly Samuel was in agreement with his father's non-conforming ways, putting our Morse family among the many religious dissidents who moved to America in search of religious freedom.

The Morses came first to Watertown (near Boston), part of the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, where they were accepted as members of the first church.

The following year they were part of the new Utopian Christian settlement at Dedham. On 15 August 1636 Samuel was among the first signatories of the covenant (constitution) for the new settlement.  Sons Daniel, John and Joseph also signed the covenant.  Samuel became a freeman of the town 8 October 1640 and a member of newly organized Dedham church 30 May 1641.  As the son of an English minister, he was probably fairly well educated and a respected man in his community. He frequently served in public office, including as selectman (one of the council of  "seven men" of Dedham) and as surveyor.

Location of Dedham, MA southwest of Boston
Google Earth Image

By 1641, a new town called Medfield was set off from Dedham. Samuel was present at the formation meeting in Medfield in 1644 of the first free school in Massachusetts supported by town tax.

Medfield's Vine Lake Cemetery

When he died in 1654, his will left everything to widow Elizabeth for her lifetime and then equally to his children or their survivors. His earthly estate was valued at just over 124 pounds.

Morse Memorial at Medfield, MA

Samuel died in the absolute belief that he would have one final fresh start with his Father in Heaven.

Portion of the will of Samuel Morse

Resources

Ancestry.com, New England, The Great Migration and The Great Migration Begins, 1620-1635.

Ancestry.com. U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010.

Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991, Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Probate Records, 1636-1899; Author: Massachusetts. Probate Court (Suffolk County); Probate Place: Suffolk, Massachusetts accessed through Ancestry.ca

Roberts, Gary Boyd, English Origins of New England Families, Genealogical Pub. Co, 1984.

Tilden, William S., History of  the Town of Medfield, Massachusetts 1650-1886, Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Publisher, 1887.