Not to much time to do genealogy or blogging these days, but I need some rest, and what is more relaxing than doing some research!

I have decided to give Karen as many norwegian relatives as possible, and then let her do more research on them herself later when I get to Florida, and will be able to show her how fantastic our churchrecords and other resources on our digitalarkivet.no are.

Often when doing research in Oslo, I use Familysearch.org – lots of birth/christenings and marriage records are indexed, and give me a hint on where I should look for a marriage, for children of a couple, and – most important, which church they attended at the time. In Norway we had, and still have, the system of State church, and for a genealogist, that makes it easier in a way.

At first I did not find Karens great great grandmother Elisabeth Helberg in the 1801 census. But, after finding her mothers maiden name, and playing around for a while, I found them, in Vognmandsgaden in Kristiania. (click on the image to read)

Then I did a parent search on Familysearch:

To do a simple parent search, with no other information, I got all the indexes where parents with these names are mentioned, and – look what I got:

The girl no. 2 in the list above, Elisabeth, is Karens gr.gr.grandmother. She was born in december 1799, and christened in Oslo Domkirke. When I found the indexed record, it took me about 1 minute to find the original record in the churchrecords.

The naming rules in Norway at the time was «patronymic», and the indexer who did this index for Oslo Domkirke did it right for the traditions, but, in the cities, they often used a family name. This family used the name Helberg. No wonder it was a bit hard to find this family in the 1801 census.

So, Karen, I have now 23 persons in my database on your family, looking forward to send it all, but you have to wait some more days before I can do that!