Contents
Dear reader,
If this is your first Internet visit to a SIEC newsletter,
we ask you to look at our Newsletter no.1 for an introduction.
Ahasverus de Créqui dit la Roche's years
in Stavanger 1660-1675
In this newsletter no. 2 we concentrate on Ahasverus during his
years in Norway and on his descendants. He started and ended his life
in Norway as an officer in war. The period 1660-75 in between was less
dramatic. In that period the new Norwegian army was established on a
permanent basis. After the two wars 1657-58 and 1658-60 many of the
mercenary officers were discharged and went home, while some probably
joined other armies. Ahasverus stayed in Norway, and we can guess two
reasons for that. His superiors were satisfied with his military service
so far, and he found Norway to be a suitable country to live in.
He was commissioned as a major in Vesterlenske Regiment
in SW Norway, which was a peaceful part far away from the Swedish border.
From he came to Norway in 1657 and until the second war ended in 1660,
we may presume that he had left his wife and three daughters in the
Netherlands, but now they came to live with him in Norway.
In the 17th century a regiment consisted of eight
companies, and Vesterlenske got its soldiers from today's provinces
Rogaland, Vest-Agder, Aust-Agder, Telemark and the SW part of Vestfold.
This was a large regiment district. The district had a long coastline
and consequently also had to deliver a lot of sailors to the navy in
addition to delivering soldiers to the army.
Ahasverus commanded Ryfylkeske company in the northern
part of Rogaland. His salary was partly money and partly the rent from
five state-owned farms allocated to him in the company district. It
was assumed that an officer should live locally on one of these farms.
This would facilitate the recruiting and the training of the soldiers.
However, Ahasverus seems to have chosen to live in Stavanger, and so
far we have not found any signs of critisism for that from his superiors
or elsewhere.
Just like many other government employees he participated
in private business ventures. We know that he was involved in shipping.
Why should he and his family live volontarily out in the dull company
district? At that time, just as today, the Netherlands was very active
in international trade, and we can guess that Ahasverus benefitted from
his former life as a Dutchman.
The regiment commanders were colonels, first Ditlef
Brocktorff from 1658 and then Fredrik Otto Budde 1660-76, both living
in the Eastern part of the district in Vestfold, thereby being close
to Sweden, which was the traditional enemy at that time. Vestfold was
far away from Stavanger, and therefore Ahasverus had status as the leading
local officer. As a major his status was probably much higher than it
had been in the Netherlands. In the army he belonged to the group of
successful officers in the wars 1657-60. We can guess that they felt
like belonging to a fraternity.
After the war 1643-45 the old Norwegian provinces
Jämtland and Härjedalen had to be given to Sweden. They were
reconquered in 1657, and Budde and Ahasverus participated in the conquest
as lieutenant colonel and captain in the same regiment. However, the
war was decided elsewhere, and in 1658 the provinces had once more to
be given to Sweden.
Ahasverus was an urban person coming from a thickly
populated country. He came to a thinly populated country, and his company
district was rural. Norwegians did not accept arbitrary leaders. One
interesting point of investigation may be to find out how well foreign
officers like himself succeeded in leading such unruly people.
After the births of two sons his Dutch wife died
in 1669/70. We don't know how well the immigrated family had been assimilated
until then, but there is a reason to believe that the assimilation accelerated
after he got his second wife, Mette Riisbrigh. She belonged to the leading
families in Bergen. In his second marriage Ahasverus got five more children,
one boy ("Ahasverus the younger") and four girls. All the
seven girls, the Dutchborn included, got husbands from the upper classes.
We know little of the two eldest sons, but much about Ahasverus Jr.,
who seems to have been a bit on the wild side. An officer himself, although
as a second lieutenant far from his father's rank, he was constantly
in conflict with people around him. To a high degree his descendants
were farmers and fishermen locally. This group contributed to the large
Norwegian emigration in the 19th century, and thus Ahasverus jr. has
numerous descendants in USA.
When Ahasverus died in Marstrand (Sweden) in 1678,
his three Dutchborn daughters were adults. All three got married in
Norway. Johanna wedded a rich parish priest (Jæger) in the south
part of Rogaland. We can guess that she met him during one of his visits
to the bishop in Stavanger. The two others (Alida and Catharina) got
wealthy husbands in Bergen: Garmann and Lem. Catharina's husband and
her stepmother were cousins.
The widow Mette married the sea captain Tønnesen.
When he was commissioned as an officer in the navy, they moved in 1685
to Copenhagen to the naval base. They took many of Ahasverus' youngest
children with them, and we think that Karen and Antonette Augusta met
their future husbands during their stay in Denmark before they returned
to Stavanger in 1691. Karen was later married to the priest Jacobæus,
and Antonette Augusta's second husband was Voigt, the commandant of
Tranquebar, a Danish colony in India. Juditha was married to two Norwegian
priests. The youngest, Gjertrud, was married in 1693 to Kaas, a Danish
officer serving a short time in Norway before he and his family went
to Denmark in 1701 and never returned.
Although Ahasverus had 10 (5+5) children reaching
an adult age, we have only found descendants after five of them. It
is reason to believe that most of the other five had no children, and
perhaps all of them.
Johanna (Jæger), Ahasverus Jr., Karen (Jacobæus)
and Gjertrud (Kaas) have descendants living today, and SIEC has members
in all the four lines. Presently we have only found two generations
after Catharina (Lem). Nevertheless, SIEC has a Lem member, but he descends
from her husband's uncle. Thanks to him we have got new informations
to follow-up, and maybe we are going to find additional generations
before newsletter no.3.
Among the descendants of Ahasverus found until now
the author Karen Blixen (1885-1962) is by far the person best known
internationally. She belongs to the Gjertrud (Kaas) line.
Alida (Garmann) was childless. But when the Kaas
family went to Denmark, they left behind their six years old son no.2,
and he stayed as a foster son at the Garmanns. Hartvig Kaas ended his
life as an lieutenant colonel, just like his maternal grandfather did.
We think that Ahasverus was well off economically
when he died, but he was not very rich. Perhaps he and his family came
from the Netherlands with almost "empty hands", and we will
try to study how his assets increased. There were four sources:
- Salary in money
- The governmental farms
- Private business
- Mette's inheritance
It would be interesting to find the probate court
decision of his estate. At that time there were three jurisdictions:
- For most people
- Clergy
- Military
New SIEC-members
The summer and autumn has brought SIEC six new members
since our June issue, and we now count 17 members alltogether. We welcome
Audun Lem of Rome, Italy, Bettina Nittany Nürnberg
and her brother Achim Nürnberg , both from Germany, Michael
G. Landmark of Copenhagen, Denmark, Kjell Skeie, Kopervik,
Norway, Odd Håvik, Vedavågen, Norway, and Alf
Ronny Fagerland, Skudeneshavn, Norway. E-mail addresses etc. have
been provided to all SIEC members by e-mail or telefax, and can be obtained
from Carsten Berg Høgenhoff. See address via eMail in
left frame.
How did you find these pages - and do they appeal
to you?
There is a risk to "drown" on Internet.
We try to make it easy to find us during browsing, and when the reader
finds this newsletter, it must be tempting to read it. We like to get
your comments on whether we have succeeded or not.
As genealogists we are amateurs. We present Ahasverus
in detail as an example of the many immigrants who became the nucleus
of officers in the Norwegian army. Was he typical or atypical? Our methods
are open for critisism.
How original is a group like our SIEC group? We
would like to get in touch with similar groups. If somebody wants to
start such a group, we are willing to share our experiences, which are
mostly good, but some of them are also not so good.
The SIEC membership in "European Ancestors"
At its start in January 2000, SIEC joined the work-group
"Arbeidsgruppe for europeiske aner" (The Work Group for European
Ancestors), a work group organised within NSF - The Norwegian Genealogical
Society. On 5th February 2000, Carsten Berg and Erik Tøndevold
held a speech at the second meeting in the gruup, where we introduced
the "SIEC approach to genealogy".
The purpose of The Work Group for European
Ancestors is described as follows (translated from Norwegian by
the Editor):
- To broaden the knowledge about European countries'
archives, libraries, collections and genealogical societies
- To support the members in the planning and execution
of travels abroad (in this purpose)
- To spread the knowledge about how genealogy is
performed on the Continent through meetings, seminars, travels and
through e-mail
SIEC's hope is that we may both contribute to the
group's work through our own investigatons, and that we may perhaps
also take advantage of The Work Group for European Ancestors when and
if some of "our" questions should find their solution within
its sphere.
Chairman of The Work Group for European Ancestors
is Mr. Tore H. Vigerust.
You may read more about the group on NSF's web site:
http://www.genealogi.no/NSF/Eur_An/Arbeidsgruppe_europeiske_aner.htm
All material written in this newsletter has been
compiled by members of SIEC and is believed to be correct, but is not
guaranteed in any way. Use at own risk if copied or used for personal
research.
The SIEC newsletter No 2 - October 2000
Erik Tøndevold
