Vennes-Nesset Genealogy

When I was a teenager and got into genealogy research as a result of a genetics project in biology in my sophomore year, Grandpa gave me the names of his parents and grandparents. That was all I had to go on for a clue about our Vennes and Nesset ancestors, along with the information that they had sailed from Trondheim. Had I known then what I know now, I'd have been more insistent about learning more Norwegian, and I would have asked a lot more questions!!!

Many years later, about the time Grandpa became senile and died, I took two years of non-accredited Norwegian through the local college where I lived at the time, and our classes were held at the Sons of Norway once a week. My ultimate goal was to eventually be able to at least read and translate Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish words in connection with genealogy research. The only sentence I can still say correctly (I can even trill the 'r' sound!) is "Min mors fars mor og far vær fra Norge." And, of course, I can say "Jeg elsker deg." Norwegian is a beautifully melodic language, and utterly practical with an economy of words.

When the Norwegian class was taking a break one night, I was looking at the floor-to-ceiling bas relief map of half of Norway - it was big enough to have the north and south halves of Norway side-by-side on the wall - which had all the towns noted on the map, even the small towns. Just north of Trondheim between the Beitstadfjord and the Trondheimsfjord, I found the town of Venneshamn, duly made a note of it, and tucked it in with my genealogy papers. I had never seen the name of the town on any travel map or atlas I had... but... It was near Trondheim, and it was a clue. I had known for a very long time that Vennes and Nesset were both location surnames, that our ancestors had patronymic names, too, and I understood how the patronymic naming system worked from reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset when I was a junior or senior in high school, but I didn't know what the patronymic names of our ancestors were.

In Norwegian class I learned that Nesset is two words reversed (in an American's mind) and put together how we would think of as backwards: "et nes" - it means "the peninsula" - are two words turned around to become Nesset, or Neset (there are alternate spellings in the records, as there are alternate spellings for Vennes). My Norwegian teacher also said Nesset is as common a name in Norway as Jones is in Wales. Vennes was more difficult to figure out, although I knew from classes that "venn" means "friend" and "nes" is a "peninsula," so figure at some point in the ancient past, someone combined the two words to roughly translate to something like "friendly peninsula." Adding "hamn" or "havn" (harbor, or port) to the name of the town near the Vennes farm made it mean "friendly harbor on the peninsula" in my mind (although that's probably not what it means in Norwegian). And Venneshamn was on a peninsula on the Skarnsundet between two fjords....

Fast forward eighteen years; the phone rang one night about two weeks after I'd taken out my genealogy papers that had been in a box for about fifteen years while I had moved back to Minnesota, gone to college, moved again, and my cousin Gary's voice on the other end said: "What was the name of the town in Norway our Vennes ancestors came from?" I said I didn't know the name of the town for sure, but I'd found a Venneshamn or Venneshavn on a map at the Sons of Norway (both spellings are correct at various times in history with the language and spelling transitions that my Norwegian teacher had explained, along with a brief history of how and why and when it all happened). Gary informed me he thought he had found a cousin through an Internet search, said the name of the town, and I shrieked for joy! The Vennes farms our ancestors lived on are very near the town of Venneshamn, and all the other farm names that are listed after the patronymic surnames are found around the Skarnsundet or the Verrasundet or the Beitstadfjord, mostly. (There are now two farms; Vennes South was sold to a non-relative in the late 19th century. Vennes North is currently owned by another cousin.)

The short story is that Gary found our distant cousin, Arve, who had contact with our distant cousin Mentz (we all have common ancestors about five generations back) who had already done the genealogy research on the Vennes line back to 1620!!! Mentz was looking for the descendants of the Norwegian immigrants; I was looking for the ancestors. I used the computers at the public library at the time, and we did a huge exchange of genealogy information. After I got my own computer (Microsoft Windows) a year and a half later (and a user-friendly genealogy program I like, along with my iBook another five months after that!), the intense search was on!!! I found additional data online in Norway's Digitalarkivet records that contain immigrationprotocol ('immigration records' - what I said: economy of words!), birth, baptism, marriage, death, census, and tax records, among others; additionally, the baptism and marriage records from many Norwegian churches have been microfilmed by the LDS church - the combination of which confirmed, and sometimes added to, the information Mentz had sent from his genealogy database. To my astonishment, Norman County, Minnesota, has a web site full of information - thus, I found the death dates and locations of our great-great-grandparents and Jørgen's siblings; then I found the marriage record for Jørgen and Ingeborg in Traill County, North Dakota Territory. (I got a certified copy of the marriage record, and made a .jpg of the image and put it on their pages.) Some of the additional data I found in Norwegian records I know is correct; some information I found in Norwegian records that may add to what Mentz sent I suspect might be correct, but needs to be verified by him. Mentz is currently recovering from a near-fatal stroke last fall, but I hope in time he will be able to help verify correct data, or let me know which data is incorrect, and then I can adjust my records accordingly.

Now you all know as much about our genealogy as I do.... I still have to add a few photos that I'm in the process of restoring; links are on many of the Notes pages so you can see where I got some of the information online, but short of correcting spelling and typos or doing edits, this is it for now. As usual, where names are edited out, the people are living, and you can email me for additional data. Any errors or typos are mine alone....

For all you map lovers: This is a GREAT web site (it's in Norwegian), and clickable (the more you click, the more it enlarges) down to the buildings, with names of all or most of the farms mentioned with our genealogy! You can move the map around with the hand symbol, too. I love this web site! Yes, you can download the images.... Click on 'kartsøk' button ("map search") to get the map page to come up on the screen.

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