My Big Fat Family Tree: A Genealogical Quest Through Europe: Skjold, Tveit and Tysvaer

Roadblocks in genealogy research are not uncommon and when you do hit one, it doesn't mean you should be discouraged. Instead, you find ways around it. On Friday we went to the Stavanger regional archives to look for church, land, tax records etc. Unfortunately, the archives were closed because of construction work. However, we were able to talk to someone who worked there and she kindly offered the archive email address and said since we (dad and I) are unable to do the research ourselves because of construction, they would try to help if we sent them all the information we had. She also said they have a digital archive that we can look at online which has some records. So all hope is not lost!

So....onto family sites! We drove to Mortavika (north of Stavanger) and took a ferry to Arsvagen. We went across an island, Bokn, connected by bridges. Bokn is the site of several burial mounds dating back to the early Bronze Age. Viking artifacts such as gold bracelets have been discovered there. Not far from Haugesund, we stumbled across a sign to Stakkestad. This got us very excited because my great great great grandparents, Maren and Sampson K. Sampson (Knute) had a farm called or in the area of Stakkestad. They even took Stakkestad as part of their last name. My great great grandmother, Elen Sampson, was born on that farm. So we followed the signs to Stakkestad and it was a very, very tiny community, consisting of just a few houses. We know the farm was supposed to be in this area somewhere since Skjold is not far away and was the "center" for this branch of the family. It is thus very likely that this little community called Stakkestad may very well have been where the Sampsons had their farm.

We drove onto Skjold, pronounced "Shold." Skjold is where my great great great great grandmother, Elen Guttormsdatter, was born on October 29, 1784. Elen was born on Musland Farm, which her mother had inherited. Keep in mind this is the 1700s, so it was a big deal for a woman to inherit her father's farm. It is possible she had no brothers. Elen married Erik Nelson and moved to Aursland Farm located on the northeast tip of the Grindefjord about a mile southwest of Tveit. Tveit is just a short distance from Skjold but it is very difficult to find. We literally stumbled across the sign for it while we were driving up north to the church in Mosterhamn. If we had not been on the road we were on, we NEVER would have found it. Anyway, Elen and Erik's daughter, Maren, my great great great grandmother was born here on December 24, 1818. Erik Nelson, a minister who came from a long line of ministers, died here and was taken by boat up the Grindefjord and into the Skjoldafjord and buried in Skjold cemetery. In Skjold we searched for the church and cemetery but had no luck finding either. We found a church that probably dated back to the 1980s and a cemetery but neither matched what the Erickson Family Book described or looked like the pictures from the book. We drove all around the Skjold area into Skjokdavik and Skjokdastraumen further south but came up with nothing. So we drove on and wound our way south, ending up in the Tysvaer area. This area is significant for several reasons. First, it is where Cleng Peerson lived. Cleng was a Quaker and led a group of Norwegians to America in the 1820s. The Sampsons were Quakers and although they did not leave until the 1850s, this is still an important connection. The Tysvaer area is also where Elen Guttormsdatter, my great great great great grandmother, and her family moved to sometime after her birth. They settled on a farm called Erland and took it as their last name.

Something I have noticed about this area is the land. It is harsh. The soil is very thin and rocks are everywhere. This means that farming choices were very limited. My ancestors farmed potatoes and had some animals. Living by the fjord also provided fish. They lived simply and lived to survive. It is not hard to understand why my ancestors chose to leave for America!