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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Timbottawa on Friday 16 September 05 02:08 BST (UK)
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My 2G-grandparents apparently spent a few years in Norway, probably around 1858-early 1860's. A son was born in Norway in 1859, and they appear to be missing from the 1861 census, but they returned to Yorkshire by the mid 1860's. I'm interested to locate a certificate for the birth of the son, Robert NOBLE.
I've fiddled around with Google and various Norwegian web-sites, and have had no luck, but I may have been hindered by my poor (= nil) knowledge of Norwegian!
Can anyone advise? Thanks!
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Perhaps the Norwegian Embassy might be able to help, at least in guiding you towards the right sources of information.
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Hiya
Not an expert either here ;D but Cyndi's List has a good list of sites which might help http://www.cyndislist.com/norway.htm
Regards
Jonathan
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Have you tried the overseas indexes? 1837online has them for consular bmds (those registered with the English authorities in the area) and births/deaths at sea. Not everyone registered, though. If there was a chance his father was in the army there's also military indexes.
Oslo consular births (http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=titledetails&titleno=456455&disp=Consulate+registers%2C+1850%2D1930%20%20&columns=*,0,0) are also available from the LDS. I suspect these are the same records as on the 1837online indexes, just in another form.
I don't think you'll find much in the Norwegian records themselves - there's the 1865 census, which they don't seem to be on, and church records (which he might appear on, but they might have waited until they got back and had him christened then.)
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Thanks very much, suttontrust, Jonathan, and jorose,
I'm going to seem a right idiot, but thanks to jorose's suggestion, I found not only Robert, but two highly likely sisters in the Consular records on 1837online. I'd like to emphasize that I had searched on 1837online previously, but either the Consular records are a recent addition, or I messed up my search! Previously I'd only found military overseas records.
Anyway, three Nobles were registered at the Christiania (Copenhagen) Consulate in about 1858-62 (the precise year is not specified). I guess that even though Norway had become independent several decades earlier, the UK was still handling Norwegian affairs from Denmark.
Thanks again for your help.
Tim
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Hello everyone,
After further review, the Consular records are a bit strange. There is one set of records up to 1859, and another set from 1860 onwards. I mentioned finding three Nobles, but it seems there were only two. Robert appears in the 1860 onwards records, with volume/page number 3/839. Mary Jane Noble is also there, with the same volume/page number. But Mary Jane also appears in the pre-1860 records with the same volume/page number.
So it seems that Mary Jane, at least, might have been born right at the end of 1859, and somehow got recorded on both sets of records (in the pre-1860 set she's squeezed in between two other rows, clearly as an afterthought).
BUT ..... in the 1871 census, there is a Mary J living with her parents, recorded as having been born in Leeds, with an implied birth year of 1857!!! Robert is also in the census, although living with a married older sister, recorded as having been born in Norway, with an implied birth year of 1859.
They would surely not have christened a girl with the same names as an older sister ... and there is no record of a death of the Norwegian Mary Jane either in the Consular or regular records.
Could Mary Jane have been born in Leeds immediately before the family set sail for Norway? Then, not having registered the birth in Leeds, they registered it on arrival? But why would she also appear in the Consular 1860-onwards records, if she was born around 1857?
I guess I'll just have to order both certificates to answer these questions!
Cheers
Tim
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I once traced someone by contacting the Norwegian National Library. I received an obituary from the librarian within 24 hours, even though, when I inquired, I didn't know if the person was living or dead!! Definitely worth a try; she was extremely helpful, and even helped me with my translation when I had a question about my effort to translate the obit from Norwegian to English, using an online dictionary.
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Thanks, loo,
I'm awaiting the birth certificates, which will take a few more weeks yet! I'm hoping that they will indicate where my g-g-grandfather was working in Norway. At that point, there may be a need to appeal to the National Library, so thanks for your suggestion.
All the best
Tim
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Yes, I am. I have lived in Norway for over 40 years and I am the English Editor for "Agder Kultur" - (Cultural Life in the twin Counties of Agder) at Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norway. How far have you got with your research and how can I help you?
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Hi Lindsell,
Thanks for your offer. I now have copies of the two birth certificates in question (actually, I don't have them, because at the time of the original query, I was in the process of moving from Canada to Thailand, and so had "no fixed address" - so I ordered the certificates to be sent to a cousin - he has them, and has reported the details!).
Anyway .... the girl, Mary Jane Noble, was born 16/1/1857, as her age in the 1871 census suggested she might be, but her birthplace is given as Christiania, not Leeds as per the census record. Her brother, Robert Noble, was born 16/1/1859, also in Christiania. Strangely, both were registered on the same day, 16/1/1860 (just a coincidence that this was Robert's 1st birthday, I wonder?). As I understand it, Christiania is a district of Copenhagen, from where the British Consulate covered British affairs in Norway. But Robert's birth in subsequent censuses is "Norway". It seems the listed birthplace must have just been some bureaucratically convenient fiction!
Unfortunately, these overseas certificates provide no address for the parents, so I have no way of knowing where the family was actually living, though seemingly, in Norway.
Also strange is the fact that in the 1851 and 1871 censuses, the father, William Noble, was a manager of a mill. I had gathered from some internet research that in the mid-19th century there were efforts to develop a textile industry in Norway, so I'd assumed that he had been "posted" overseas to help set up a mill. However, on the birth certificates his occupation is "ropemaker"!! ???
So, as far as I can see, I'm at a dead-end, because there seems to be little hope of finding where they were actually living in the late 1850's/early 1860's - unless there was a Norwegian census in which they might appear - but it would need to be indexed by name!
Thanks again for your kind offer, but unless you can discenr something I've overlooked or misinterpreted, I don't think I can take this further.
Cheers
Tim
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You've made me ponder some more over the strange entries on the birth certificates. What I suspect may have happened, is that the parents, living somewhere in Norway, realised that their two young children needed to be registered (perhaps they were "encouraged" by the Norwegian authorities to confirm that the children were not Norwegian citizens). To avoid having to actually travel to Denmark for what I'm sure they viewed as a troublesome bureaucratic necessity, I hypothesize that they sent what they thought was the necessary information.
That information may have omitted their address, place of birth of the children, and father's occupation, and rather than going to the bother of requesting clarification, the registrar in Christiana may have made up convenient entries for birthplace and father's occupation.
Just trying to visualize the process in the mid 19th century!
Tim
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I can vouch for Christiania being a district of Copenhagen, as it's still there, and I was there once.
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Christiania was the old term for Oslo and was used until the 1920s.
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So the children were born in Oslo, then Christiania and there is no question of them being registered in Denmark. They might well have been baptised in the Anglican church in Christiania/Oslo, St. Edmund's Church - address Møllergate 30, Oslo. Norway
website: www.osloanglicans.net
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Well, thanks Lindsell for clearing up a major misunderstanding on my part. I'll certainly try to pursue the baptism information, as I'm sure they would have used the Anglican church. I see there is an email address for the church - but would they likely still hold the old parish records, and do you think they would entertain such a query?
Thanks
Tim
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I should imagine the best thing to do would be to send an e-mail and ask the incumbent where the registers for the relevant period are. If there is then an offer to search so much the better, if not then let me know and I will see what I can do through the National Archives.
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Great - thanks, will do!
Tim
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Christiania was the old term for Oslo and was used until the 1920s.
Fascinating. So there are, in effect, 2 Christianias!
If you can't find the records easily, the librarians at the National Library speak English.
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Thanks, loo,
I've sent an email to St. Edmund's - let's see what happens!
It also occurred to me that an explanation for the registration of two births, that actually took place 18 months apart, on the same day could be that the British Consulate was either understaffed, or didn't take their civil registration duties very seriously, and some lowly clerk was eventually obliged to sit down and spend a day dealing with a large backlog of registrations.
By the way, in case anyone is scrutinizing this thread, the births were 18 months apart, not 2 years as implied in an earlier message, where I was guilty of a typo!
Cheers
Tim
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I don't think we can blame the delay in civil registration on a lowly clerk at the consulate. The father was obviously unaware of the system of registration in Norway at the time. According to routine the births should have been registered at the church office of the parish where the children were born, no matter whether the children were to be actually baptised in the parish or not. The registration at the consulate was to give confirmation of citizenship for the children before returning to England. It is not a question of using the National Library but the National Archives to find the Norwegian registration and here there should be no language problem as I use Norwegian in every day life.
Keep in touch and best wishes from Kristiansand in the very south of Norway
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I received an amazingly quick response from St. Edmind's Oslo, as follows:
"Thank you for your enquiry.
"St. Edmund's Church was founded in 1883.
"According to 'A history of St. Edmund's Church, Oslo 1884-1974', there were private worships in English in Norway before that time, but the first Clergy arrived in 1856. I have not checked the archives to see if we have records that far back, but will try to check it.
"The old archives have been removed from the British consulate in Oslo to the crypt of St. Edmund's church
"Sigrid I. Kvaal"
I'm surprised that British Consulate records would have been transferred to St. Edmund's, rather than to the UK, but it promises some easier research than if the records were buried somewhere in the National Archives!! ;)
Cheers
Tim
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Christiania was the old term for Oslo and was used until the 1920s.
Thanks Lindsell,
I'm looking at the threads relating to Norway as my maternal great grandmother was Norwegian. Christiania was mentioned as the birth place of one of her three lodgers on the 1865 Norwegian Census. I've posted an explanation about why I'm now having a look at this ancestor as well as the Census details about her family and lodgers on the Anyone speak Norwegian? (http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=192345.msg1481256#msg1481256) thread.
Christopher
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Perhaps you could contact me at:
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Derek
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