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SOME BACKGROUND I am a descendent of Norwegian immigrants. My mother’s parents both emigrated from Norway. My father’s mother was born in Norway and his grandfather emigrated from Norway at the age of thirteen. Both my parents spoke Norwegian, and did so often, when I was a child. Mainly, when they didn’t want the children to understand what they were saying! My mother prepared many traditional Norwegian dishes and practiced other Norwegian traditions, especially during holidays. Our parents taught us some Norwegian words, primarily “table talk”, but we were never fluent in the language. I knew all but one of my grandparents, and loved their Norwegian brogue. Consequently, I was very much aware of my Norwegian heritage. When
I was young, I was often asked, “What kind of a name is Fadness?”
When I answered, “Norwegian”, the most frequent reply was, “It
doesn’t sound Norwegian.” I suppose that was because it doesn't end with “son”.
My mother was a Halverson. No
question about that one. The
Norwegian minister of our church always pronounced it as “Fahdness.”
That, at least sounded more Norwegian.
But, I never
had a better
explanation, and I often wondered about it myself. A couple of years ago, I decided to research my ancestry and try to discover the origin of the name Fadness. By that time all but two of my preceding generation were deceased, and those remaining were Halversons; sisters of my mother. So, I contacted my Fadness cousins to see what they had in the way of pictures, documents, stories, memories, or any other clue as to family history. Remarkably, there was very little available, and no one even knew where, in Norway, our grandparents had lived. One cousin, Glenn Fadness of Loves Park, IL had attended a Fadness family reunion in Iowa, and heard there was a place in Norway, called “Fadness Gardens”, from which, it is possible, that our emigrant ancestors had taken their name. Though not entirely correct, there was a lot of truth in the statement, and it was a fortuitous clue. Glenn also had a copy of an interview, recorded in the 1890’s by the Norwegian Pioneer Association of Deerfield, Wisconsin, of the emigration of John Hendriksen Fadness, and his brother Ole, to the Koshkonong Prairie region of Dane County, Wisconsin. At the time I received this paper from Glenn, I had no idea whether these people were relatives of ours or not, but it was a starting point. In
January of 2001, I was discussing my genealogy interests with a friend, and he
gave me a web site address for the Norwegian Digital Archives, which is a
veritable gold mine of information for researching Norwegian ancestry. They have
data for several censuses, passport records, parish records for emigration,
births, deaths, marriages, etc. Knowing that my Dad’s grandfather emigrated at
the age of thirteen, I assumed that he would have traveled as a child, or ward,
of an adult emigrant. So I
initiated my search with the passport records from Bergen, starting with the
aforementioned brothers, John and Ole Hendrickson Fadness.
Through the Bergen passport records, I discovered that John and Ole had
emigrated from Voss, Norway in 1846, with a third brother, Knut Henriksen
Brunborg. (More on that later.)
All three were married. John
had no children, Ole had two, and Knut had four.
I then went to the emigration records for the Parish of Voss, and found
that John and Ole had come from the Fadnes farm, and one of Ole’s two
children was a thirteen year old son named Henrik.
These, then, were my direct ancestors, and so begins the story given in
this web site.
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