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Jensen Homestead, west of Lake Mills, Iowa (Winnebago County), where the family settled in the spring of 1871, coming here from Mitchell County. .L. A. Jensen is standing at the gate. His wife, Mary, is holding their son Jens near the buggy. - Photo provided by Paul Jensen |
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Some of what we know about these families is from pages of information that Lorraine (Regan) Hall gave us copies of several years ago, gathered by members of our own branch of the family. Much more about them has been provided by Paul Jensen (whose family is related to the Reagan family) who has discovered a great deal of information and gathered up many interesting photos, by way of many interviews with members of the family who still live in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, where the family settled when they left Illinois in the 1800s (note that much of the family stayed in Illinois and have descendants living there now). The Helland/Holland Family is very closely related to the Reagan family, by "blood," as we all share the same ancestors: Bertha Strand and Paul Helland. A lot of the Jensen family is related to us as a "step-family," as Jens Jensen, the patriarch of the family, married Bertha (Strand) Helland after her husband was killed, and raised her children as his own. Bertha was pregnant with one of those children, Christina Helland (our ancestor), when her husband died, so Jens Jensen was Christina's stepfather since she was born. Besides the blood relations and the step-relations, there are the descendants of Bertha Jensen, the only daughter of Jens and Bertha. Her descendants are what you might call "half" step-family. Although they do not descend from Paul Henriksen Helland, as we do, they do descend from Bertha Strand. Jens Jensen and Paul's widow, Bertha (Helland), had four other children together besides "little Bertha," all sons, but they all died young and had no descendants. Bertha (Jens' first wife - our ancestor - not his daughter "little Bertha") herself died in 1850 just after she and Jens and their young children arrived in this country (three of her children died at the same time, from cholera). There is more on this sad story on other pages in this section. Their mother's and brothers' sudden deaths left, alone with Jens Jensen, his daughter Bertha Jensen (mentioned at the beginning of the above paragraph), Christina's half-sister, who was approximately eight years old when her mother and three of her brothers died, and one remaining half-brother, five-year-old Lewis. Jens Jensen took young Bertha and Lewis with him to an area settled by Norwegians in Illinois where Jens met the young woman (also from Norway) who would be his second wife. Jens married her in 1850, and Martin Reagan married Jens' stepdaughter Christina Helland in 1856. Both couples were married in La Salle County, Illinois. The Jensens first (in 1859, and then Reagans (between 1862 and 1865), moved to Rock Creek in Mitchell County in northern Iowa from Illinois. There is more on this on the pages devoted to Martin and to Christina. They all settled near each other. It became a very large family, and it was "our" family. Jens and his second wife Mary were thought of as "Grandma and Grandpa" by Christina and Martin Reagan's children. So this is how the "Irish" (though we believe they are Irish and German and/or Swiss, not just Irish) Reagans - got so mixed up with all those Norwegians. In fact, all of us who are descended from Martin and Christina Reagan are part Norwegian. (It all began there in northeastern Illinois, where the Reagans were living when the our Norwegian family came over in the mid-1800s. They may have worked together, and the families were joined by marriage, and so the Reagans moved out to the same place in the northern Iowa-southern Minnesota area to farm and raise their families where the Norwegians were settling.)
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