Part 5
Continuing on with the search for Eric’s baptism would reveal another fascinating and surprising bit of family history. I was searching the baptism entries in the very early 1700s looking for the birth of a boy named Eric, whose father’s name was Ingebright. My expectation was that the farm would be the Ryg farm, but I was ready to consider any instance of the name Eric Ingebrigtsen. Finally, after hours and hours of tedious scanning, I got a match in 1713. Here's the birth/baptism record I found (it's the last entry on the right page). The names Eric and Ingebricht aren’t especially common, but common enough that while any right combinations deserved investigation, I couldn’t be certain merely on the basis of that match alone. And this was certainly a curious match. The father’s name was Ingebrigt Anderssen Møchelbust (sometimes Myklebust). I was already faced with a degree of doubt because if this is the father of my ancestor Eric, then it would mean the end of the Eric – Ingebricht combination that I had come to expect, since this man’s father was Anders. Secondly, I was not particularly aware of the Møchelbust farm. After checking, I found that it is a Breim farm – one of the larger ones, too. It is located on the far eastern side of the Breim parish. But if this were the father of my ancestor Eric, then why was Eric identified with the Ryg farm when he was married instead of the Møchelbust farm? So I made a note of this finding and continued, hoping to find something that seemed to look like a better match.
But after hours of more looking, I hadn’t found a better match. And frankly, the scanning was becoming tiring, so I decided to dig into this Ingebrigt Anderssen Møchelbust character to see what I could find out. I found what looked like the record of his betrothal in 1703 (last entry on the left page) and also the record of his wedding entry in 1704 (top entry on the right page). I should mention that in the early 1700s, the parish registers were much simpler, with far less available information. Mothers weren’t usually identified in the baptism entries, except in special situations. I had difficulty reading Ingebricht’s wife’s name in the betrothal and wedding entries, and since she would not be listed in any of the upcoming baptism entries, I would have difficulty identifying her if I couldn’t decipher these entries. Eventually, I would identify her as Anna Christophersdatter Fossheim. Naturally, Fossheim is a farm in Breim.
But there was one other significant detail about the wedding entries – at the time of the betrothal and wedding, Ingebricht was listed as Ingebricht Anderssen Ryg – the same farm name I had expected to find when I was first looking for Eric’s father. Like Eric, Ingebricht was identified as a Ryg when he was married, but by the time he is recorded in the parish registers as a father in a baptism entry, he has taken up residence at a different farm – in his case, the new farm is the Møchelbust farm.
Ingebricht and Anna started having children right away. And immediately, Ingebricht is identified as a Møchelbust. Between 1704 and 1710, they would have 3 daughters – Siri, Bornie, and Aagaathe. They would have their first son, Rasmus, in 1712. I don’t know the significance of why their first son was not named Anders. Then comes the birth of Erich in 1713. But revisiting the entry of Erich’s birth would reveal something I had not noticed before. I noticed that the entry for Erich’s baptism did something that most other baptism entries in the early 1700s did not do – it listed the name of the mother. And Erich’s mother was not Anna – the mother’s name, according to the entry, was Kari Joensdatter Møchelbust. I first wondered if Anna had died. But I then found Ingebricht and Kari listed in 1713 in a section of the register called “Publice Absolverede.” The records are records of offences – in this case, adultery. I have read that guilty couples must stand in church and publicly confess their sin. Likely, the reason the sin is discovered is pregnancy. There is also a fine to be paid, and, of course, the sin is recorded in the register so that it can be read, even in 2012. There are two entries in 1713 for this offence between Ingebricht and Kari – once in July, the other in September. In the first entry, Ingebricht is named first, but Kari is listed first in the other – I don’t know the significance of the order. Perhaps it is significant that Erich was born in September.
In 1716, Ingebricht is identified as the father of a boy named Anders. Again, why they named their second son (second legitimate son, anyways) Anders is not clear to me. Apparently, it wasn’t an option to name the illegitimate son Anders.
So if Erich was born as the illegitimate son of Ingebricht and Kari, both of the Møchelbust farm, where was Erich raised? And how did he end up on the Ryg farm? I did manage to find one more entry that suggests he was raised on the Møchelbust farm, and the record is another interesting piece of family history. This was a more recent discovery, and so I need to do some more searching to get some questions answered, but I’ll just throw this out for now. Recall my curiosity about an inhabitant in the 1801 household – Brithe Ericsdatter, who was 62 years old at the time, living with Ingebrigt Ericssen, who was only 50 at the time. For some reason, I had difficulty figuring out how Brithe fit into the household, although in retrospect, it should have been obvious that Ingebrigt and Brithe were likely siblings. In 1740 there is a baptism entry for Brithe, and the father is Eric Ingebrichtsen Møchelbust. The mother’s name is Marthe Olsdatter Møchelbust. So this suggests that Eric was identified with the Møchelbust farm until this point, which is also where he was likely raised, and that he possibly moved soon after the birth of Brithe to the Ryg farm. Recall that Eric married Anne Jacobsdatter just 3 years after this birth of Brithe. What I don’t know is if this is an instance of a birth out of wedlock, or if Marthe died soon after giving birth. Details to follow.
Despite his illegitimate birth, Eric seems to honor both his biological parents in the naming of his children. He names his first son Ingebrigt, and after Ingebright’s death in1750, Eric names his next son Ingebrigt. The same can be said with regard to his mother, Kari. He named his first daughter Kari, and following her death in 1750, they named their next daughter Kari.
The earliest parish registers in Gloppen begin in 1686. It appears that we just miss the ability to find a baptism entry for Ingebright Anderssen Ryg. He would have been born right around this time, but I was unable to find any entry for him. So with regard to tracing my ancestry in Breim, I have been able to exhaust the available parish registers. However, there are two more census records to examine, one for 1701, the other for 1664-66. The previous census records were transcribed into “searchable” database formats – but these last two census records are digitized using a scanner – like most of the parish registers. Since it appears that Eric Ingebrichtsen was the first of my ancestors to move to the Froystad farm around 1743, my attention in reading these final censuses was directed to the Ryg farm, not the Froystad farm. Since Ingebricht’s marriage record in 1704 associates him with the Ryg farm, it seems most likely that this is where he was born and raised. I couldn’t help but look, but the names included on the Froystad farm entries for both the 1701 and the 1664-66 censuses don’t appear particularly familiar (no Erics or Ingebrichts). But while the 1701 census is difficult to read because of the handwriting, it appears to show, on the Ryg farm (toward the top of the right side page), a 15 year old Ingebricht (abbreviated to Ingrb), and also lists a 57 year old Anders Olefsen, who is likely Ingebricht’s father.
The 1666 Census lists, on the Ryg farm, a 26 year old Anders, and appears to list also a 50 year old Oluf, likely the father of Anders. The handwriting of this census is remarkable. Note that this page of the census also includes the Froystad farm. So Oluf Ryg, likely born around 1615, represents the earliest ancestor I am able to identify using all available parish registers and census records. An ancestry.com member tree appears to be able to make one more step backward (with information on two more generations, given the patronym), identifying Oluf’s father as Anders Olson Ryg, born in Breim, on the Ryg farm, in 1580. But I don’t have any way of verifying this information.
As a P.S. to this site, a final story: Shortly after completing the text of the story above, I was in contact with a bookseller in Gloppen working on buying volume 5 of Soga om Gloppen og Breim (Story of Gloppen and Breim), which is a published book that contains deatils on the farms and families in Breim. I was purchasing the book in order to be able to look further into the family history. Eventually, the bookseller put me in touch with Åse Ryssdal Sæther, a woman who identified herself as the "local Gloppen family finder." She helped me get in touch with my third cousin, who grew up at Frøystad. Within a few hours of my first contacting this helpful family finder, I asked her a couple questions about farm life in Breim, and she sent me an email saying simply, "Take a look at this one." Attached to the email was an ancestry document that begins with Iver's father Erik, and goes back as far as 15 generations. It's like she just had this lying around the house . . . and I had spent hours and hours over a period of months getting this information the hard way! But truthfully, I wouldn't have it any other way. Finding the information the long & hard way made it more of an adventure. Other branches of my family history are full of names and dates and places that someone else more or less handed to me - and in some ways, those lists are just that; lists of names and dates and places that don't mean very much to me. I feel like my seach for Froystad has been much more rewarding, and that's very much why I wanted to tell the story of my search, not to just publish another mere list.
Here's a copy of the genealogy that Åse R. Sæther sent to me. One really great thing about it is that it confirms many of the conclusions I had drawn. There are a number of instances where I thought the evidence led me in one direction, but I still had a nagging feeling that I may have overlooked something, or may have drawn an unjustifed conclusion. But it pretty much confirms the entire genealogy I had discovered.