Can anyone help?

[Jostein Stokke]

Understanding the Norwegian naming practice:

https://www.norwaydna.no/gedcoms-and-genealogy/norwegian-names-en/

[Robert Anderson]

Jostein, thank you! That will be a tremendous help!

[Jackie K Marler]

You can also help build the family tree at familysearch.org, since you have registered you can add sources, add details and the like.  You can sign up to collaborate with others as well, in case some of those who have contributed are actually relatives, that might be valuable.

[Robert Anderson]

I have started working on that family tree some. I have corrected a few mistakes from direct knowledge I have of later relatives that I knew in their life time. Also have added my information and that of my children. That family tree has allowed me to trace the paternal side of my family back much further than Ancestry. Funny how the free one is more useful than the one I pay for. 😂

 I have traced the paternal side back to 1537 and the maternal side back to 1620 France and England.

[Robert Anderson]

Jackie, or any one of the other amazing folks that have helped me so far. Been trying to find ship or any departure or arrival information about Hans or Eli and their children. Is it possible that there would be no official record of their departure from Norway, their journey/ship name or their arrival? 

[Jackie K Marler]

13 hours ago, Robert Anderson said:

Jackie, or any one of the other amazing folks that have helped me so far. Been trying to find ship or any departure or arrival information about Hans or Eli and their children. Is it possible that there would be no official record of their departure from Norway, their journey/ship name or their arrival? 

Well, yes it is entirely possible you will never find the passenger list of the ship they arrived on.  Here is the list of Norwegian departures from 1853.  http://www.norwayheritage.com/p_year.asp?ye=1853

At Norwayheritage you can manually go through each of the transcriptions marked with the sheet of paper emblem but the search engine for the transcribed lists is no longer functional.

 

Even by 1853 you can see the majority of the landings were in Quebec and most of the transcribed records are from New York landings.  There is even one to Hull England which shows the beginning of the eventual dominating-the-market feeder system of British shipping to North America passenger trade.  The US required passenger list filings beginning about 1820, Canada required them beginning about 1865, Norway required people to register with the police of the port city as they left Norway by 1866.  Generally people or companies don't do things unless they are required to do them. 

 

But there are always possibilities that someone who organized a voyage, kept records of the voyagers privately or that someone has recounted the voyage and names the people at a later date, say in a newspaper article. 

 

In your case, the declaration of intention first step in naturalization, might contain the basic information of which US port they came in on and an approximate date.  MIGHT.  When I visited the Michiganology website there was a discussion about how to index records.  Apparently, there is an ongoing project between the Michigan state archives and Familysearch indexing the naturalizations of Michigan.  You know of at least two Michigan counties where there might be records if Hans declared his intention or if one of the Norwegian born children declared their intentions.  Check the catalog at familysearch for both Sanilac and Lapeer counties to see if naturalizations have been filmed.  You can still rent the films at your local Family History Center I believe and possibly see at the catalog if the films have been mounted online without yet being indexed.

[Robert Anderson]

Thank you Jackie! I spent a day searching different immigration ports and such using different variations of names. I also realize that sometimes, people arranged passage privately. Now that I’ve been able to track my the lineage back to about 1500, I wanted to play around with smaller, less critical details.