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Jens Jensen 1814-1906
(Much of the text on this page has been copied from a page in The Jensen Clan Book, 1994, by Paul Jensen, with new notes added within parentheses [like these] by B. J. O'R. in 2009; also new pictures have been added, all captions to pictures are new; and the last paragraph has been mostly rewritten. Also, there are added links to other information and/or pictures on other pages. None of the other pages were copied from the Jensen Book.)
Jens and Bertha Strand Helland Jensen - She was our direct ancestor, and he was her second husband, but he married her when she was pregnant with our ancestor, Christina Helland, and he was like a father to Christina and a part of our family - in Norway, Illinois, and Iowa. Photo provided by Paul Jensen |
Jens Jensen, the progenitor of the Jensen Clan, was born July 30, 1814, on the farm Aas in Strand, near the city of Stavanger, southwest Norway, on Buknefjord. Stavanger was at that time a city of about twenty-four thousand population whose chief industries were lumbering and fishing and where there is a cathedral dating back into the eleventh century. Here he spent his youth and early manhood. At the age of 22 he married Mrs. Bertha Strand Helland [who is our direct ancestor], a widow with three small children [our direct ancestor, Christina Helland, and her brothers] whose husband [our direct ancestor, Paul Helland] had drowned while on a fishing expedition. [Jens was 22 years old and Bertha was 24 when they were married.]
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Area of southwest Norway. Strand is marked by blue "balloon" with black dot. You can see Stavanger to its southwest, across the bay. Satellite photo. |
After his marriage [to our dir.anc., Bertha], Mr. Jensen continued to live in Norway for about ten years, or until 1846 [Note: Unless they made the trip twice, they left Norway in 1850, not 1846, according to a ship passenger list, and this is what we believe], when he emigrated with his wife and young family consisting of five children to America, taking the canal route [i.e., beginning by taking the Erie Canal across New York state to Lake Erie] to . . . . .
Scene at Lockport, NY on the Erie Canal - 1838
Lockport is thirty miles east of Lake Erie.
Not quite, but almost, the same route as it ends in a different place but this is basically the "canal route" and it goes right by Milwaukee. Going from east to west, assuming you arrived in New York City, you took a boat up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, then the canal boat on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, NY/Lake Erie, then you took a steamship via Lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan, past Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Illinois (in the route followed on the map above). Jens and family got off at Milwaukee, very unfortunately for that family. It shows Madison, Wisconsin on this map. Madison is just to the west of Milwaukee. |
. . . . . Milwaukee, Wisconsin and arriving just at the time of the cholera plague. He lost his wife and three of the children (Jens, Lars and Peder), leaving him with two little ones to care for (Lewis and Bertha [these were Jens and Bertha's children]). The three children by his wife's former marriage (Henry Sr., Henry Jr., and Christena) had remained in the old country [and these three were our direct ancestor, Christina, and her two brothers who had the same parents she did; no doubt they were staying with family.]. |
The Ebenezer - The ship Jens and Bertha and their own five young children sailed in to America in 1850. They are noted on the ship list - Luckily this ship list survived; apparently the one from 1854 when Christina and her brothers sailed to America did not survive. |
Jens was almost penniless. He obtained work in Green Bay, Wisconsin and later Chicago where he worked at a lumberyard. He moved on to the Scandinavian settlements in the Fox River Valley near Mendota and Leland, Illinois where he got a job working on a farm. One afternoon the farmer's hired girl (wearing a blue dress) took lunch out to Grandpa Jensen. This was the meeting of Jens and Mary O. Hilskaar. They were married in 1850 ..... Jens and Mary had ten children, three dying in infancy.
Jens Jensen and his second wife, Mary, a few years before she died. Jens married Mary a short time after his wife Bertha died. They were Grandma and Grandma Jensen to their own descendants and to Martin and Christina Reagan's children. This photo was provided by Paul Jensen. |
They farmed near Indian Creek, Illinois. In 1859 they left Illinois and traveled to Rock Creek in Mitchell County, Iowa where they lived for twelve years. In 1871 they homesteaded a farm in Winnebago County, Iowa where Jens' wife died in 1895 and he himself died in 1906. A year after his wife died, still mourning her death, Jens decided to visit Norway. At 81 years of age, against the wishes of his children, he spent a few months in his homeland and safely returned to Iowa. On February 25, 1906, at the age of 92, Grandpa Jensen passed away at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Bertha (Jensen) Charlson, his oldest daughter by his second wife, Mary. Both Jens and his wife Mary were buried in the north Lutheran cemetery in Lake Mills, Iowa.
Bertha Jensen Johnson, the daughter of Jens Jensen and Bertha Strand
was born April 19, 1838 in Norway. She was Christina Helland's half-sister.
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