Jon Gudbrandsen Haugerud (1690-1773) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 28) Theme: "Multiple"

When I first encountered the 1773 burial record for my 6X great grandfather Jon Gudbrandsen Haugerud, I was struck by the multiple deaths on his record page in the Norderhov, Buskerud, Norway kirkebok. During the month of June alone, there were some 40 people buried in this small rural area. (To demonstrate the significance, it seems just 4 births/baptisms were recorded during the same period.) These multiple deaths were a mystery that called out for further investigation.

Burial of Jon Haugerud 6 June 1773 Buskerud, Norway (orange highlight)
(Other burials during the same month period in yellow)

The kirkebøker (church books) provided the official state record of vital statistics. The one for this parish lists things chronologically for the year 1773. These 2 pages record everything that was going on in the church for approximately the one-month period of June 1773. The number of deaths and burials indicated in yellow is substantially greater than any births/baptisms, marriages or other events. (The previous page was just as dismal with some 50 deaths recorded and just 4 births and a couple of marriages. I cannot help but wonder how many of the June deaths might be attributable to being infected while attending one of those burials the previous month.) An examination of the ages of the dead indicates that folks were dying in all age groups from infants through the elderly. Jon, who died at age 84, would seem to be about the oldest and could well have died of natural causes. But what was going on to cause such widespread death across all ages?

Being in the middle of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic immediately brings to mind the possibility of some sort of epidemic sweeping through my Norwegian ancestors' community. And that is, in fact, exactly what was going on.

Those of us alive in 2020 feel we are going through unprecedented times and, certainly, we are the first to encounter COVID-19 and for most of us, this is an entirely new experience in seeing much of the world shut down in an attempt to curb the death toll and keep our health care systems from being overwhelmed. However, our ancestors also lived or died in many earlier plagues and epidemics over the centuries. The one sweeping through much of Europe in the early 1770s was the one evidenced on the page in the above church book. My 6X great grandfather Jon may or may not have died as a result. 

Norway was mandating that the state Lutheran Church keep parish records starting in 1688.  Jon was born in Ådal, Buskerud, Norway in 1690 but the church records there do not begin until 1704 . He married Gjertrud Olsdatter on 27 October 1715. 

Marriage of Jon and Gjertrud, p. 124 of 1715 Norderhov Kirkebok
(In a page for a more typical year full of births and marriages and few, if any, burials)

 

Not much is known of their lives outside the few church records.Their son Jon Jonsen Haugerud born 1724 was my 5X great grandfather. Gjertrud died at age 70 and was buried 11 October 1766, perhaps fortunately being spared witnessing the widespread death that would decimate her community just a few years later.

An excellent article by John D. Post in the Summer 1990 edition of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History delves into the epidemic sweeping Europe at the time. It makes for fascinating and enlightening reading when viewed through 2020 eyes. 

An extended period of unfavourable weather with heavy and untimely precipitation had resulted in crop failures throughout much of Europe in the early 1770s. Food was in short supply and prices spiked. The countries with the largest increase in food prices suffered the most deaths. Many people became malnourished; some died of starvation. This coincided with a wave of disease that struck particularly hard in the German-language and Scandinavian countries. The diseases that were prevalent were typhus, typhoid fevers, dysentery and smallpox. We cannot know which of these contributed to the deaths shown for Norderhov in June of 1773.

To make matters worse, the Norwegian militia were mobilized for an impending war in Sweden, but then demobilized when things were resolved, resulting in many men returning home with disease to be spread in their local communities.

The data showed a significant increase (+111%) in the death rate in Norway in 1773 and a corresponding decrease in birth rate (-23.7%). This is consistent with what we see in the Norderhov church book record in June of 1773.

A few of Post's observations from his study of the European data from the 1770s are notable. Denmark fared better than its Scandinavian neighbours, perhaps because of the measures they adopted:  public granaries to cope with the food shortages, controlled movement of rural populations, price controls on food and compelling the more affluent to contribute to the support of the destitute. Post's conclusion was that the epidemic level in a country was associated most with the scale of social disarray caused by migration for work, vagrancy, poverty, crime and public disturbances even more than by lowered resistance to disease resulting from nutritional deficiencies. 

As the coronovirus pandemic of 2020 continues to unfold, the death toll is rising while more is being learned all the time about the effectiveness of various responses by health officials and governments around the world. We can only hope that we learn both from history and from our own unfolding experience. 

 Some Resources:

• Norderhov, Buskerud kirkebøker F/Fa/L0004: Parish Register (official) no. 4, 1758-1774, pages 249-252, available online through the Norwegian digital archives
• Post, John D., "The Mortality Crises of the Early 1770s and European Demographic Trends", The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol.21, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp.29-62; Published by the MIT Press and available online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/204917