Ingebrigt Olsen Skarheim and Ingeleiv Johannesdatter, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 45 theme: "Multiple"

My 7th great grandparents Ingebright and Ingeleiv lived out their lives in Borgund parish in Lærdal, Sogn og Fjordane County in Norway in the late 17th-early 18th centuries.

22 August 2006 Flickr: Borgund Stavekirk, Norway; author zoetnet 

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Borgund Stavekirk, built in the year 1200, was already many centuries old at the time Ingebrigt and Ingeleiv were parishioners there. 

Ingebrigt Olsen Skarheim was born c.1652 to Ola Anfinnson Skarheim and his wife Guri Bjornsdatter. Ingeleiv Johannesdatter was born c. 1665 to Johannes Erikson Tonjum and his wife Brita Alvesdatter.

In Norway, the church books (kirkebøker) record the vital statistics for the country. Unfortunately, the church books for Borgund are not available for the time prior to 1711 when one would expect to locate the birth, baptism or confirmation records for Ingebrigt and Ingeleiv. Nor have details been found for their marriage that would seem to have occurred about 1680-85.

The couple had multiple children (9), including my 6th great grandmother Rannveig Ingebritsdatter Skarheim born in 1693.

Fortunately, census records are available for at least the male half of the population in the Manntall in 1701. This census was conducted for military purposes. For Skarheim (Skaarem) farm, Ingebrigt  is listed at age 47 (making his birth year about 1654). His sons Ola 15, Erik 13, Bard 4 and Alf 2 are also listed, along with a couple of 20 year-old male servants. 

1701 Manntall for Skarheim, Lærdal for Ingebrigt Olsen

Sadly, the next record that can be found relates to the deaths of Ingebrigt and Ingeleiv. They died together and were buried  on the same day as multiple neighbours. 

Borgund kirkebøker chronological list 1732, page 54

 

On the second Sunday after Pentecost (15 June in 1732) multiple  burials occurred. Ingebright Olsson 82, and Ingeleif Johannesdatter, 67 were in good company. Nine others were also buried from the beautiful Borgund stave church that same day -- 5 men and 4 women ranging in ages from 20 to 62. No children were listed among the dead. Ingebright and Ingeleif were the oldest. 

An examination of the entire chronological list for the prior year 1731 had a total of 10 deaths plus 6 still births; my understanding is that still births included babies born alive who died within the first 24 hours. In 1732, the total was 37 plus 26 still births. There seemed to be groupings of burials every month or two, rather than on a weekly basis. In both years, the number of deaths exceeded the number of live births.

What was going on in the Borgund community to cause these multiple deaths? Disease? Famine? Accident? Or just a sad coincidence? No explanation has been found for the  loss of nearly a dozen men and women in this relatively small community in June of 1732.

Some Resources:

• The National Archives of Norway, Arkivverket, Parish Register 1732 for Lærdal sokneprestembete, AV/SAB-A-81201: Ministerialbok nr. A 1, 1711-1752, s. 54
• The National Arcives of Norway, Arkivverket, Manntall 1701, Sogn og Fjordane County, Outer Parish Bailiff and Inner Parish Bailiff, p 117.

Rural Life on the Bardahl Farm (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 44 theme "Rural")

When not "doing genealogy" I am often engrossed in another of my passions: creating original quilted fabric wall hangings. My most recently completed one inspired this week's "rural" post. 

John Deere "D" Tractor Quilted Wall Hanging (40 X 31 inches) - Joanne Barnard 2025

I like to tell the story of my entire 15 minute farming career occurring on this tractor when I was 8 or 9 years old. My Dad put me in charge of  driving the tractor so that he could pick up hay bales and load them onto a stone boat attached behind. When he told me to "go", I did it with such enthusiasm that I separated the tractor from the stone boat. The word "clevis" comes to mind -- that was what I broke before being summarily dispatched to the house to "help" my mother. 

The wall hanging was based on a photograph I had taken in the 1980s. Even then, the old tractor was being subsumed into the environment. It somehow seems fair that a machine intended to conquer the prairie was itself being overtaken by nature.

This got me thinking about how farm machinery had changed rural life from when my paternal grandfather John Bardahl homesteaded his Saskatchewan farm in 1910 until his death in 1945. Old family photos document some of those changes. 

When my grandparents started to farm in Saskatchewan, the land was virgin prairie. Horses provided the energy for breaking sod and seeding crops. The horses themselves required food, water and shelter. 

According to my Dad Ken in his memoir written in 1991:

It must have been a dream come true when in 1917 they were able to build a 32’ X 60’ hip roof barn with a hay loft to hold the winter’s supply of hay. . . . This barn was ample storage for up to 6 head of horses, which were his pride and joy.  . . .  He was able to finance the whole building with the proceeds off one flax crop.  

Within a few years, other options started to become available. The number of horses required decreased accordingly. By the 1950s, we had just two horses on the farm, used most often in the winter to pull a wagon or sleigh to visit neighbours.

1911 early tractor - John Bardahl on the left

According to Dad, this tractor purchased in the spring of 1911 was one of the first in the district.

Grandpa's Truck purchased in 1928

The purchase of this truck enabled my Grandfather to do some custom work hauling grain, cattle and gravel. 

 Dad described some of the developments in farm machinery: 

A machine called the one-way disc came into being, replacing the plow.  This machine left much of the stubble, anchoring the straw, which helped greatly in wind erosion of the soils.  A seeder box could be mounted on this machine so a person could till your soil as well as seed your grain in one operation.  About this time tractors came into more practical use.  Prior to this there were steam engines, used mainly for breaking the sod or as a power unit for threshing the crops. They were big and awkward and would not have been very practical for general farm use.  Tractors of 15-30 H.P. seemed to be the best size for farming in this area.  The early models had all steel wheels (rough to ride and dirty also).  Hand crank to start, no cabs and no power steering.  Several years later, rubber tires became a reality for tractors.  These were much easier to ride.  Later advancements were power steering units, wheel brakes (used individually for turning corners), lights and P.T.O. (Power Take Off) which could power a machine being pulled, combine, swather, etc. One of the later gadgets was the hydraulic lift system.  With this the operator could control the depth of the machine being pulled, a truly wonderful creation.  Its use even now is limitless, including of course, hoists for unloading a load of grain.  People in general were quite content with machinery of this size.  I can recall brother Jim and I seeding a field of 145 acres in 3 days by going night and day.  This would be with a 9’ one way disc and a sturdy John Deere “D” tractor.  

John Bardahl and some of his children and grandchildren at stooking time, unknown year c.1938

 

 Once again quoting my Dad:   

Another venture that Dad had was his threshing machine for harvesting purposes. . . . When the grain was not quite ripe a machine called a binder was put into use.  This machine was pulled with 4 horses and the binder would cut and bind into sheaves in one operation.  A unit called the bundle carrier would allow the operator to carry about 6 sheaves when they could be released with a simple fast manipulation.  This procedure was very slow, only cutting an 8 foot swath, 12 to 15 acres per day limit.  After this being completed, these bundles had to be put up in stooks, grain end up for drying, about 6 or 8 bundles to a stook.  People became adept at this and it was a beautiful sight on completion.  It was hard manual work with the old water jug not too far away at any given time.  The next operation was when the threshing machine pulled into this field.  The machine was set on level property, with wind on your back.  Next, the 6 or 8 teams of horses and hayracks would load up their bundles.  Each man went in rotation taking turns into the machine for the threshing.  Each unit was proud of their big and well built loads and if you went in early with a small load, you found out quickly that this wasn’t’ a very popular thing to do.

Threshing 1943

John Bardahl seeding spring 1941 with John Deere "D" model tractor; although this model was produced by John Deere from 1928 until 1953, the fenders weren't added until 1939 so Grandpa's tractor was quite new at this time 

As for the John Deere "D" workhorse of my "farming career", although I wasn't driving it long enough to warrant a photograph,  it had often served as the backdrop for many family photos over the years. 

John's daughter Inez Bardahl

John Bardahl's grandchildren Roger, Audrey and Harry Gordon

John's granddaughter Louise Barton

Some Resources:

• Bardahl, Kenneth, personal memoir written 1991 for his grandson Grant McClure, copy in possession of author
• "John Deere D", Machine Finder blog accessed online 2 October 2025 at https://blog.machinefinder.com/39268/the-john-deere-model-d-a-classic-tractor-spotlight

Job Judkins of Boston (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 43 theme: "Urban")

As unlikely as it seems, my 10th great grandfather Job Judkins is said to have been a Scot who migrated to New England during the Great Migration of 1620-1640. (Since the Scots did not tend to join the Puritan settlers, perhaps it is more likely that he originated from Warwickshire as others have suggested.) Wherever he came from, he was found in Boston by 1637, just seven years after the English started to settle the area naming it after Boston in Lincolnshire, England.

Certainly Boston was not then the large urban center that it has since become. As of the 2020 US Census, the population was 675, 647 -- several hundred thousand more than in Job's time.

Present Day Boston MA Google Earth map showing approximate location of Job Judkins' home facing Washington Street near Summer Street

The extent of this part of Boston shown on present day Google Earth map is very misleading to the uninformed. Settlement by the English in the 1630s was on the hilly Shawmut Peninsula in the center of this map. It was only about 738 acres (smaller than my Dad's Saskatchewan farm where I grew up) and was almost completely surrounded by water at the time. The original peninsula was connected to mainland Roxbury to the south by a narrow neck of land along present-day Washington Street. Mud flats and marshes to the west were known as the Back Bay. The Charles River flowed through the Back Bay to Boston Harbor, separating the peninsula from the mainland to the north and west.  On the east side Town Cove divided the city into the North and South Ends. 

The additional lands around the outside were all added by reclamation done to roll back the waterfront in the 19th century. This expanded the land area to 48.4 square miles (an incredible 40X larger than it was during Job's time). 

The center of the original town was at the Old State House (built 1711-47 long after Job Judkins' time). When we visited Boston in 1999 we visited the Old State House and nearby Old South Meeting House, among many other historic sites. We had no idea at the time that we were treading on land so near the home of our ancestor Job Judkins near Washington and Summer Streets!

Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, Boston - photo by author 1999

Job was a sawyer. He married Sarah Dudley and had four sons, then finally one daughter who was my 9th great grandmother Sarah Judkins Pratt (1645-1726). Both Job and his wife are believed to have died and been buried in Boston in 1657.

The only cemetery in Boston until 1660 was the King's Chapel Burying Ground. Perhaps this was their burial location.

King's Chapel Burying Ground  - background is City Hall and King's Chapel Church photo taken 12 September 1929 by Leon H. Abdalian, author Boston Public Library on Wikimedia Commons This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Some Resources:

• "Boston by the Numbers, Land Area and Use", City of Boston accessed online 14 September 2025 at https://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/86dd4b02-a7f3-499e-874e-53b7e8be4770
• Britannica website accessed 11 September 2025  at www.Britannica.com/place/Boston
• Judkins, Elizabeth Littlefield, Job Judkins of Boston and his descendants, Larchmont, N.Y., 1962 accessed 11 September 2025 on Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/jobjudkinsofbost00judk_0/page/n5/mode/2up
• US Census Bureau information for Boston, Massachusetts accessed 14 September 2025 at https://data.census.gov/profile/Boston_city,_Massachusetts?g=160XX00US2507000

John Firman (1588-c1642) (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 42 theme: "Fire")

Having already written about a relative who died in one of America's worst fire disasters -- Chicago's Iroquois Theater Tragedy of 1903 -- I wanted to find a less horrific fire story to feature this week.

While searching my database for any ancestors with surnames including "Fire" or "Burn", the closest name was missing an "e": my 11th  great  grandfather John Firman (Firmin, Fyrmin or Furman). Fortunately for my purposes (but unfortunately for his!), there was indeed a fire (with an "e") in John's story. Thankfully, no one died in this fire. 

John Firman was born in Nayland, Suffolk in 1588. He married his first wife Judith Bridge at St. Nicholas Church, Ipswich, Suffolk on 23 June 1614. 

St. Nicholas Church, Ipswich - The copyright on this image is owned by Geographer  and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Their first child was a daughter Elizabeth (my 10th great grandmother) born at Nayland 27 April 1615.  Twins were born to the couple on 10 February 1617/18 but Judith died as a result and was buried at Nayland 24 February. After the death of his first wife, John married a widow named Susan Bush Warren and had more children with her. 

In 1630, John, Susan and 7 children were part of the Winthrop Fleet of mass migration to New England. A vast number of the emigrants were, like the Firmans, from Suffolk. Most were religious dissidents; John Firman was among a group of men who had been censured in Suffolk for not kneeling during prayer as required. 

The Firmans settled at Watertown where John is listed as among its founders. His name is included in the list at the Watertown Memorial erected in 1930 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its founding. 

Watertown Memorial photo by J Furman on 15 March 2015 from Findagrave.com

Just months after their June arrival, on 10 November 1630,  it was reported that "Firmin of Watertown had his wigwam burnt." No additional information has been located, but it does sound as if this was a temporary shelter that burned. No doubt he soon built a permanent structure to house his growing family.

We often forget that the first immigrants to America did not move into existing houses. They eventually built their own, but that would have taken time. As a quick temporary solution, they did the obvious: built simple dwellings using whatever materials were at hand. This often meant digging a cellar or making tent-like structures by piling up branches or logs and covering that with cloth or branches woven into mats and covered with mud or sod. They may well have taken a lead from the local indigenous people who knew how to build with local materials for the local circumstances. This probably explains the reference to his "wigwam" having been burned.

John was made a Freeman of Watertown on 18 May 1631 and was chosen a Selectman in 1637.  He made a return visit to England in late 1633 but boarded the ship Elizabeth at Ipswich, Suffolk for return to America on 30 April 1634. 

We know John died before 10 May 1642 when his heirs were granted significant amounts of land at Watertown; no burial location has been located.

Some Resources: 

• Anderson, Robert Charles, Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volume 1, New England Historic Genealogical Society 2012, pages 675-678, accessed online 9 October 2022 at https://archive.org/details/greatmigrationbe0001robe
• Banks, Charles Edward, The Winthrop Fleet of 1630, an account of the vessels, the voyage, the passengers and their English homes from original authorities, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company 1930 accessed on Internet Archive 10 Sept 2025 at https://archive.org/details/winthropfleetof100bank/page/n9/mode/2up
• Polino, Valerie Ann, "The Architecture of New England and the Southern Colonies as it Reflects Changes in Colonial Life", part of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute Curriculum Resources, accessed online 21 September at https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1978/4/78.04.03.x.html

Samuel Hartwell of Bridgewater (1693-1760), 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 41 Theme: "Water"

With so many possibilities to write about water, the obvious choice would be the Atlantic Ocean crossed by my ancestors to get our family to North America from Europe. Certainly there were many ocean adventures that could be shared. Also dozens of rivers, streams and lakes feature in the lives of family members. I have chosen instead to write about a place with "water" as part of its name: Bridgewater, Massachusetts. 

Bridgewater, Massachusetts, is situated within a triangle formed by Boston, Providence and Plymouth.

Location of Bridgewater, MA
Google Earth image

Like so many other New England settlements, Bridgewater may have been named for the English ancestral home of some of its early residents -- in this case Bridgwater, Somerset. Although no record has been located to link the name of the town of Bridgewater to the significance of its bridges, it does not seem an inapt name for the new settlement. Nahum Mitchel's history of the town includes a listing of some of the local waterways: Nuncketest River (formerly Mill River, Town River), Cowesit and West Meadow Brook, South Brook, Salisbury River, Beaver Brook, Matfield River, Byram's Brook, Spring Brook, John's River, Poor Meadow River, Middle River, Great River, Satcuket River, Black Brook, Titicut River, Taunton Great River and Hullet's Brook. So much water to get across!

Perhaps not surprisingly, earliest records for the town of Bridgewater, Massachusetts (established in the middle of the seventeenth century) indicate the significance of bridges to deal with all that water in the construction of the original roads connecting local residents to each other and to the broader world beyond. 

Bridge construction and maintenance was included in the town records over the years. Sometimes the bridges were described as horse bridges. In 1680, John Washburn Jr. (my 8th great granduncle) was one of those tasked with maintaining a bridge and causey (presumably a short form of "causeway") toward Thomas Snell's house. The specification was that it be fit for cart, horse and foot traffic.

Included in the list of surnames of original and early settlers in Bridgewater are a whole slew of ancestors: Alden, Carver, Hartwell, Johnson, Latham, Mitchell, Perkins, Pratt, Simmons, Snow and Washburn. These families often intermarried over the years.

At the time of our genealogical journey to New England in 1999, we knew of just one Bridgewater family, that of my 7th great grandfather Samuel Hartwell. Samuel was born 12 November 1693 in Concord, MA to Samuel Hartwell Sr. and his wife Abigail Stearns.

He married Hannah Billings in about 1717 and had a family of 8 children with her before her death in 1736. The couple had moved about 45 miles from Concord to Bridgewater shortly after their marriage. 

Samuel outlived Hannah by many years before succumbing to smallpox in 1760. 

In May of 1999, we visited Samuel's gravesite at the Jerusalem Graveyard in West Bridgewater.  He is buried in plot 34 and his inscription (very difficult to see) reads: "Here lies buried Mr. Samuel Hartwell, who dec'd December y 25, 1760, in the 67th year of his age."  Buried with him were son and granddaughter: "Here lies buried Mr. Jonathan Hartwell, who died Feb. 8, 1761, in the 40th year of his age.  And Hannah, his daughter, dec'd Jan'y 30th, 1761 in y 3d year of her age."  In the book detailing the graveyards of Bridgewater found in the Bridgewater library, on page 48, it indicates parenthetically that these persons died with small-pox

Jerusalem Graveyard from Google Earth

Some Sources:

• Hartwell, John F., The Hartwells of America A Genealogy, Higginson Book Company 1956/58, based largely on Handbook of Hartwell Genealogy 1887 by Lyman Willard Densmore, Accessed 21 September 2024 on Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/hartwellsofameri00dens/page/n7/mode/2up
• Mitchell, Nahum, 1769-1853. History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater, In Plymouth County, Massachusetts: Including an Extensive Family Register. Facsimile ed. with a new name index. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1983.  Also accessed online at Internet Archive on 22 September 2025 at https://archive.org/details/historyofearlyset00mitcch/page/124/mode/2up?view=theater