Reading birth records from Digital Archives 1725
Attached is a screen shot of a Toten Birth Registry for 1725. I am looking for a Berthe Jonasdotter Sivesind daughter of Jonas Ellingsen Sonsteby and possibly Berte Paulsdotter Sivesind. If I am reading through 1725 I am not sure what column to look at and what the information is that is given. What is the format they are using? Are the deaths in the far right, marriages far left and births to left with sponsors on the right page? Where in all this would the child's name be?
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First, let me make it clear that I am far from an expert in these older records and not that great with the handwriting. Secondly, I have no idea what your background is, although you must have a fair amount of experience in the Norwegian parish records or you wouldn’t even be looking at this, so I will probably be over explaining things. But let’s give this a try.
The best thing to do first when looking at this type of parish record is to understand that when the priest just had a blank book, he could do pretty much anything he wanted. You need to explore his style. Do this by looking at several pages. Look for any type of patterns that seem to be there. Pick out words you can recognized and see in what frequency they tend to occur.
A good place to start since you are looking for births is the word “Døpt.” That was used as far back as I have ever gone in parish records. Doing so shows:
So it does look like this priest organized the records in columns. Look at other columns to try to confirm this. Five of the columns appear to have headers:
Column 1: Trolof. - clearly Trolovelsen or engagements.
Column 2: no header, just a list of names. This must be the couple who got engaged and their witnesses.
Column 3: Wi… over a list of dates that are all a few weeks after the date of engagement. This must be Vielsen or marriage date with the old spelling using a W for the V.
Column 4: is where all the occurrences of Døpt are so these are the births.
Column 5: no header, but almost every paragraph starts with the word Intro, which must be Introduserte, If you are not familiar with this, you can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churching_of_women Rarely you can figure out the names of the mother’s of children here, but often they are just listed as “Lars Hansen’s wife.”
Column 6: Com - this is how many people went to the alter for communion
Column 7: Begr… - Begravede of burials - with dates, names and age. (I should point out here that in this record no birth or death dates are given, only christenings and burials.)
Column 8: Absol. Publ. - Public Absolution - a list of those who appeared before the congregation to be publicly absolved of the sins record here.
Now comes the hard part. Actually reading this.
It appears that most Sundays are listed, even if no one was christened that day. Days other than Sunday would also be listed. If the day is named, that is what is recorded:
This portion of the page has:
Nyt Aars Dag
Hellige Tre Kongens dag
(not sure about this one but it also has the date January 13)
Annen Søndag etter Hellige Tre Kongens dag
My favorite resource for translating these to dates is at:
https://dinslekt.no/helligdager.php
Put in the year and you get all the dates:
It also give the name for that January 13 date.
Now comes the hard part, reading what these entries actually say. This is where, if at all possible, we cheat. Click on the last button in the menu bar to open side window, choose the Links tab and click on the link for the transcribed records:
These transcriptions are done mainly by archive personnel and volunteer groups in Norway and usually are of very high quality and are usually full transcriptions, not just indexes
Let’s find the record for January 13:
You can search by baptismal date in the format YYYY-MM-DD:
Here is the result:
Click on any of these to come to the full transcription with Norwegian titles and headers:
or English:
You can compare the actual record and the transcription to get better at reading this priest's handwritting and the script used. This is a very nicely done transcription because it also included the page number (in the lower left of the result screen) where the record is found. I have seen, however, that the page number in the transcription is not always the same as the Scanned Page number. In this case the transcription says 141 while the box where you can enter a page to jump to in the scans shows 142.
(Looks like I can't post any more images here, so this will be continued.)
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Part 2 - continued from above
Since you have specific names you are searching for, you can use these to search in the record. It may take a variety of searches. Note that in these records, children are not listed with their patronymics, you can only search for one person in the record, most fathers are not listed with their patronymics, and spelling could vary widely.
You can use wildcards in these searches. the most useful are * and |. The * lets you truncate names and the | lets you search for more than one choice at a time. For example, since you are looking for a Berte, which could be spelled Berte, Berthe, Birte, Birthe and likely many other ways, I would do a search on first name only and use:
bi*|be*
This will give you all names starting with bi and with be. You can specify you just want children to narrow the results:
You can use wild cards to narrow the date range.
171* - only results with years starting with 171
1723*|1724*|1725* - results just for 1723, 1724, 1725
You can limit by residence, such as your Berte probably being from Sivesind. Not knowing all possible spelling variants, I would search for sa*|se*|si*|so*|su*sy*
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the 1st column is listing trolofelse (engagement), however in this case it is also listing a christening (at the bottom). The next column has dates in this case the date of a marriage. Next is a christinings and on the right page are the witnesses to the christenings. The last column is for burials.
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I checked the christening records for both Østre and Vestre Toten and could not find a Berte born to a Jonea from 1722 to 1725. You may want to check the year 1726 -1728 to see if she is listed there! She may be listed in a neighboring parish.
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Actually, she is there, and if Linda traces my steps then continues on, she will find her. I wanted her to take the final steps herself and have the fun of seeing it appear.
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Thank you Liv and Gordon. I loved all the specific instructions you have given me Gordon and I have printed them up for future reference. I have tried searching using the bi* and the be* separately since I got nothing using them together. Did you mean l (lower case L) or /? I have tried with both when I combined using the letters and year numbers. Every combination I use I get that there is nothing. I have tried this in the past and I always get nothing when I search from home although it seems when I did it in Salt Lake I have gotten results. What am I doing wrong?? It seems if I remember right that the church volume was not transcribed but you said you found her. This would make my searching so much easier if I could quickly verify family search extensions on my tree that others have added.
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I get nothing but "no results" no matter how many methods I try. I would say once out of every 30 tries, even doing the same thing as previously will anything but zero come up. It is so frustrating! Why, any ideas? Such a waste of my time to keep trying. The one time I did get her with the date of 17 June there were several items listed with different names. Are they siblings births? I could not get anymore information on it. I need someone to sit with me and explain obviously. I wrote the response below earlier.
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All right, here are the next few steps. First to clarify, the vertical bar is just that. A straight up and down line, not a letter. On the keyboard, it is the shift \ (backslash).
Second thing I should have mentioned, please accept my apology for forgetting to bring this up, is that the Digitalarkivet search engine is really glitchy some days. I think what happens is that the connection times out between here and there. In any event, I will often do a search and get no results but have learned that if I do not repeat the search but rather refresh the web page, the results will appear. Also, if the search engine is just completely down, I'll get nothing but no results for a couple of hours. Yes, this is a bit frustrating.
For example, I just repeated my search from earlier today and got this:
By clicking the refresh curled arrow (sometimes I have to click it more than once), I immediately got this:
the same results I did earlier. There are two Berte born at Sivesind, one of them in 1725.
Clicking on that entry comes here: https://www.digitalarkivet.no/view/255/pd00000008424289
This is for Berte, born in 1725 at Sivesind as it shows in the upper section. She was Ekte (parents married at time of birth).
The table shows everyone in the record. Berte, as the child, is listed first.
Line 2 has her father Jonas Sivesind.
Then come six godparents/witnesses who can be relatives, friends, or neighbors.
As you can see, these records don't have a lot of information.
In the lower section is the page number, 149, which again may not be accurate, the christening date of 17 June 1725 at the church H.K. which would mean Hoved Kirke or the main church for the parish. I'm not familiar enough with Toten to know if this is Balke, Hoff, Ås, or Kolbu church.
In the notes is the named Sunday: Dom. 3 p. Trin. or Dominica tredje post Trinitas or The Third Day of Our Lord after Trinity Sunday, who christened her, and then the information that on the 8th Sunday after Trinitas her mother was introduced in church but she is only named as Jonas Sivesind's woman.
Going to look at page 149, here is the actual record:
https://www.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070603720387
Here is her record:
Yes, this really says Døpt Jonas Sivesinds P.B. (pike barn) Berte. Even with the transcription I almost couldn't find it!
Now you know that Sivensind was spelled this way in the records, let's try another search with father's first name (jo*), roll of father, and residence (si*):
Searches usually work best when you know the format of the particular record set. Often times I'll do a very general search such as with just a first name of ol* to see how things look. For example, in these records, it looks like neither the children nor the fathers were entered with surnames. So putting anything in the Etternavn field will guarantee that you will never get any results.
Here is what happens with the above:
Seven Jonas at Sivensind and one Jon at Sivesindst. Since there is no differentiating between the seven Jonas, they are almost certain to be the same man and here you have all seven of his children recorded in this parish record.You are right that FamilySearch has not indexed these Toten records, as far as I can tell with a quick search, but Digitalarkivet has and they have an ongoing project to transcribe everything they have scanned. You can quickly see which records have been transcribed and which have not by checking that side panel.
Just for fun, let's try a marriage search using first name Jona* and roll of groom:
Jonas was a popular name, there are twelve men of that name being married in this book. The first on the list matches the information you have and the marriage is on an appropriate date compared to the birth of their first child.
https://www.digitalarkivet.no/view/327/pv00000000063251
Since there is no remarriage for this Jonas, you know that Berte Pauelsd. is the mother for all the children listed in the search above (as long as you check them all and see that they are all Ekte).
Don't give up on the search engine! It makes it so much easier to find these records. Just remember to refresh the screen if at first you don't get results, check which fields you are filling to make sure you are not trying to search on a field that is always blank, and try some search on information you already know is there to see if the site is working at all.
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Just to complete this whole process, I assume you are attaching all these parish records to the individuals in Family Tree so no one else has to go through this searching? Here is how I like to do this:
It goes pretty quickly copying and pasting each element, particularly since you do not have to click and drag on any of them to highlight for copying. A single click highlights any of the URLs and triple clicking on the record citation highlights all of it. I have SAH and similar notations set up as hotkeys so I just highlight SAH, type .sah, the code I have set up, to expand it out. I don't usually include the link to the transcription if the original record is easy to read. I have seen some people copy the entire transcription into the Notes or Reason to Attach section of the source. I include all the links in the hope that the Norwegian Archives will maintain at least some of them long term as truly permanent links, accepting the risk that any of them could vanish someday.
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Thank you again for your very thorough answer and I will print this up and study it. I concentrated so hard on this last night my brain did not want to shut off so sleeping was disturbed. I am excited to learn this and it could make research so much easier so thank you! It is good to know about the lost connection with Family Search causing my 0 matches. The reason I was trying to verify Berthe's birth and her parents marriage (that I found) was that her mother Berte Paulsdotter Sivesind had a death date of January 1713 that can't be correct or her daughter Berte born in 1725 must have been from a different mother. If you found all 7 children with the same mother the 1713 death date must be incorrect. I will try your method to see if I can find a death date to be sure. I will try attaching records as you suggested. Years ago while doing Swedish and German Research I copied records to my hard drive and printed them so I would like to add them to FS and clean up my files. I have become convinced Family Search is the place to put things and am having a few of my husbands family members over to show them and get them to put their information on it, saving me the work! My son was excited to see the app and what the photos and documents I have put on FS and has it on his phone. A great way to get the next generation interested. Hopefully I won't have any more questions for you but I can't promise. Thanks again!
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Just to be completely clear, it is your connection to Digitalarkivet the times out, not your connection to FamilySearch.
Also, if a Berte Paulsdatter Sivesind died in January 1713, that was certainly not the Berte Paulsdatter Sivesind who married Jonas Ellingsson Sønsteby on 25 January 1717!
Good luck on your further research!
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Yes, I misspoke, the connection with digital archives.
Thank you again.
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