Introduction

This book is about the family and ancestors of my wife Diane Jorgenson Gram.

In America my wife, Diane,  was born Diane Jorgenson. In Norway she is Diane Jorgenson Gram, where Gram is the farm name used by her family since about 1460 A.D.   Please note Gram is Diane’s paternal lineage. She has other lineages such as Heggelund, Lorch, Indahl, Figenschou, and Munk, just to name a few prominent lines.   This volume will be focused primarily on Gram.

It is unusual for Norwegians to carry a farm name over the centuries unless they live on the same farm the entire time.   Norwegians do migrate around the country, and usually they take the farm name of the place they live.   Therefore their farm name changes from time to time.  When Norwegians came to America their farm name was frozen and became their surname.  This is very confusing to many Americans.  Many American immigrants from Norway appear to Americans to have compound surnames.   For example, Gram Jorgenson or Jorgenson Gram look like a compound name, but they are really a surname combined with a farm name.   Most Norwegian immigrants Americanized their names one way or another.

Diane has ancestors who were the sons of Hans. So their surname was Hansen, which is a Danish form because “sen” is Danish.  They were the Hansen Gram family.   One of them had a son Jorgen Hansen Gram.  His sons  were thus of last  name Jorgensen Gram.   When some of these came to America they changed the “sen” to “son” to make it look more American and less Danish.   One person claimed he wanted to be more Norwegian and less Danish, so he used “son” for that reason.  But his brother kept “sen.”    How confusing is that?

Europeans sometimes write and complain our  family misspells the names.  They want to see “sen” instead of “son”.   So I send them  a picture of the gravestone and legal documents that prove  “son” was in use.   It has been a bit of a chore though to weasel the reasons for the changes in name spellings out of the American relatives.  However, some of them did discuss this with their elders when they were alive.

My wife had a first cousin by the name Hans G Jorgenson (Hans George Jorgenson)  who visited Norway in the 1950’s and wrote two books about his trip. One is a family book of 142 pages.  This book details several family lines.  The Jorgenson family is revealed to trace back to the year 1515 to a certain individual in Gudbrandsdal.   Hans G Jorgenson said the  name Gram is claimed to have originated in Gudbrandsdal.   Well, as it turns out there are a few mistakes in that research.   Queen Victoria’s envoy  to Norway and Sweden, Thomas Michell, wrote about the Gram family  in Gudbrandsdal  at the battle of Kringen which took place in 1612.  ^[1] Gram is said to be the magistrate, that is, the “bailie”, as Michell puts it,  who was in charge of the troops defending the valley in the battle of Kringen.  In reality Diane’s ancestor named by Hans G Jorgenson was a close relative of the magistrate.  The exact connection will be shown later in the family trees.  To tell the truth I am not sure how controversial the exact line may perhaps be.   Many Norwegian and Danish researchers have put a good deal of effort into documenting the line on various genealogical websites, and we all share the aggregate data. And my personal research is ongoing.  This is a living book, meaning it is a place to record  research results as they are discovered.   Thus the book is constantly updated.  What matters most  to genealogists and historians is the source documents.  I found one document  about Danish church history that shows the ordination of  Niels Simonsen Gram on April 1, 1529  by Christian, Duke Schleswig-Holstein.    This document was compiled study of parish priests in Denmark at the time of the reformation. My approach is to show photographic scans of source documents inline within the book.

In talking with Diane’s relatives I noted none of them seemed to know about Gudbrandsdal even though  Hans G had visited there.    Her relatives will tell you the family is from Karlsoy, north of Tromso.   This is because the Gram family, or our branch of it,  lived  north of Tromso for 200 years, since the year 1677, when a Gram  was “exiled”  there for a minor infraction.  He had been a state minister in Bergen and was punished for his infraction by being sent north.  More on that later.

Eventually  we somehow discovered the fellesraad   and joined the lag  (lodge in American)  which is an organization made up of of descendants of people who had lived in Gudbrandsdal.   This is the Gudbrandsdal Lag.   Seven years later we have now attended six annual conventions (stevne’s)  of the lag.

The lag has a genealogy lab at every stevne and I have searched for Diane’s ancestors in the materials. Many of these are bygdeboks  (family books of the people)  which chronicle various farm families in the valley.  Diane’s Gram ancestors do not appear in the bygdeboks.   The reason is  the Gram family was actually Danish.  Internet researchers have now contributed enough resources on the family tree that explains this Danish connection.  I used to wonder if Gram was the only family that came from Danmark.  At the 2021 Stevne near Madison Wisconsin I met  a lag member whose ancestor came from Ribe, Danmark.  That ancestor was a priest trained in Ribe and assigned  a mission in Gudbrandsdal.  Apparently the priests were the educated class who were sent north to minister to the Norwegian parishes, but also sometimes to serve as  administrators for the crown, which was in Denmark.   Niels Simonsen Gram was one such person.  Again, more on that later.

Periods of History.

When it comes to the Gram family  we shall attempt to break the  history of our viking roots  into the following several periods which apply to the migrations of the  family.   These are as follows:

These Gram family time periods are very amorphous and roughly defined, and are derived from a combination of geography, historical events, and events in the lives of individual ancestors.

Ancient Period.   In the above table why include the ancient period?   Surely genealogy will not reach back that far.  No family history does.  It is the time of legends and myths.  Well,  there are two reasons.  First,  Viking history is said to begin around 900 BC.  Secondly,  our Y-DNA will definitely probe back at least that far.  The ancient period was of course mostly pagan  but it overlaps  Norway becoming a Christian country.  There was a power shift, and this affected Gudbrandsdal.    At  the end of the ancient period was the Christianization of Norway by Olaf the Great, and Olaf had a direct impact  to the Gram family, at least in terms of politics and geography.    You see, at the end of the pagan period Dale Gudbrand was in power in Gudbrandsdal. Olaf changed this, and moved the center of power a short distance down the road  to Steig farm where he invested power in his follower. And there power stayed in the Christian era.  In 1300’s king Hakon was educated and raised at Steig farm.  As an adult King Hakon built a hall at Steig, and also repaired the church. ^[3]  Hundred’s of years later  Niel Simonsen Gram lived at Steig farm because was the king’s foged, or magistrate, and Steig farm is the place where the magistrate lived.

Medieval Period. The medieval period covers the period of time of the expansion of  the catholic church into Scandinavia.

Reformation Period.  In this period the early Lutheran church appeared as a result of the protestant reformation and  the politics of counts  and Christian kings who fought over the reformation.  This was the very reason the Gram family was in Norway.   The Scottish invasion and battle of Kringen took place in this era.  Gram descendants also appeared first in Trondheim then later in Bergen.

Troms Period.  A Gram state minister in bergen was re-assigned to Karlsoy, which was the edge of the world at the  far northern reaches of the country.  His father moved north with him and together they began the family’s sojourn in the north.   This period lasted for two hundred years and the Gram family intermarried with other families, such as the Heggelund, the Indahl, and the Lorch  families.  Please note only one branch of the Gram family migrated north. Another branch moved south and went on to become famous in modern times.  That branch will also be described in the book because those folks share Y-DNA.

Modern Period.   The Troms Period led to  the migration to America.   Migration to America had started after 1825 when the Erie canal was completed.  Migration eventually became attractive to the Gram family in Troms  around 1880.

Where to Begin?  

Where to begin the story?  This is always a dilemma.  We could start at the end (with Diane herself) and work backwards in time , showing generation, each parent and their children, thus building a tree backwards into the past.  We could start  by rewinding  into history all the way to the oldest known ancestor and then working  our way forwards,  building a tree, and a story,  of each succeeding generation down to the present day.    Or we could pick an interesting juncture in the middle and work in both directions.

In order to have a quick start, in Part One we are first going to  show graphs, actually pedigree charts starting with Diane.   This will show  the  known paternal line all the way back to  the oldest ancestor we could find, but not fill in very much detail.  We may actually do several related family lines this way because they  lead to notable ancestors into whose lines the Gram family married.  This will give  40,000 foot view and will fill in some background and whet the appetite for more detail.  Then in Part Two, we shall  pick an ancestor and fill in everything we can find out about that person.  Therefore  each person will make an entire chapter.

Lets get going ….