The dot is the farm’s probable place; the map register names more than one spot that could be it.
Lillehøiset is in Veggli, about two kilometers south of Kjemhus. Today's maps call it Vesle Høgset, little Høgset. The census wrote Høiseth, and the church books Hoiset Lille.
Ingemund Stenersen, the clockmaker's son from Helle, married Ragnild Svensdatter in 1855, and this is where they started. Svend was born here in 1859, and Knud on February 19, 1862. In America Knud went by Knute Stenerson.
The farm in 1865
The census at the end of 1865 finds the whole household:
- Ingemund Stenersen, 36, farmer and owner
- Ragnild Svensdatter, 38, his wife
- Sønnef, 11; Stener, 9; Svend, 7; Knud, 4; and Gunder, 2, their children
- Marte Svendsdatter, 26, a servant
Marte shares Ragnild's patronymicpatronymic A second name made from the father's first name: -sen for a son, -datter for a daughter. Tollef Halvorsen was Tollef, son of Halvor; Karen Torkildsdatter was Karen, daughter of Torkild. It changed every generation, which is why Norwegian lines are traced by farm as much as by name. All the words, which proves only that both their fathers were named Svend.
The census also counted the animals and the seed. Four cattle, five sheep, four goats and a pig, and no horse. That year they sowed half a barrel of barley, three-quarters of a barrel of oats and three barrels of potatoes. That's seed going into the ground, not the crop coming out. Ingemund owned the place. Small as it was, it was theirs, not a cotter's plot on someone else's farm.
For comparison, the same census gave Ragnild Tostensdatter's father at Møgstu a horse, seven cattle and seven sheep.
After
In 1867 the family moved up to Helle, and Ingemund took over his father's farm. Sønnef died on Lillehøiset in 1890, at about thirty-five. Svend and Gunder left for America in 1886, and Knud the next spring. By 1889 the three of them were selling lumber in Minnesota, and they kept at it across the Red River Valley. Not bad for a farm with four cattle and no horse.
Who had Lillehøiset before Ingemund, and who after, hasn't been traced.
Who lived here
born or died at Lillehøiset · a pale bar is a life whose start isn’t recorded
Show them as a list, with what puts each of them here
- Sønnef Ingemundsdatter 1855–1890 · died here
- Svend Ingemundsen 1859–1936 · born here
- Knud Ingemundsen 1862–1925 · born here
The records
- 1864. Gunder, son of Ingemund Stenersen and Ragnild Svensdatter, baptized. The minister's register and the clerk's: one, the other. They give his birthday as August 1 and August 12.
- 1865. The census, Høiseth, Veggli, household 28: the transcription, the original (page 50 in the census's own hand).
- 1926. Knute's memorial in the Aarbok for Numedalslaget, no. 12, for his birth here and the move to Helle in 1867: at the National Library.