Bergit Knudsdatter

Bergit Knudsdatter was born on May 25, 1887, at Møgstu in Veggli, in the NumedalNumedal A long valley in southern Norway, running north-west from Kongsberg, where Flesberg, Rollag and Veggli lie. Numedal and its farms → valley, and baptized at Veggli church on June 12. The church book names her mother, Ragnild Tostensdatter, and her father, Knud Ingemundsen Helle, a bachelor “in America.” He had left ChristianiaChristiania Norway's capital, spelled Kristiania from the late 1800s and renamed Oslo in 1925. Emigrants from eastern Norway sailed from its harbor, and the city's police kept a register of them as they left. All the words on April 29 and was a week off the boat at Quebec when she was born. He became Knute Stenerson, the lumberman of Pelican Rapids and Moorhead.

Her mother married Ole Gjermundsen at Veggli in 1894, and half-brothers and half-sisters followed. The censuses of 1891 and 1900 have Bergit at Møgstu.

She left at eighteen. The Christiania police register of emigrants has her on August 18, 1905, as “Bergit Knudsen Myklestu,” living at home, bound for North Dakota, her passage prepaid and a hundred kroner with her. On August 25 she sailed for HullHull A port on England's east coast, on the Humber estuary in Yorkshire. Norwegian emigrants crossed the North Sea to it and went on by train to Liverpool for the Atlantic. All the words on the Wilson Line’s Montebello, the way her father had gone on the Rollo in 1887.

On September 1 she left Liverpool in the steeragesteerage The cheapest passage on an ocean ship, in shared quarters below decks. Most emigrants crossed this way. By the early 1900s the lines also called it third class. All the words of the White Star Line’s Cedric, which steamed into New York on September 9, every cabin full after pleasant weather, the Times reported the next morning; its passenger notes ran to an archbishop and an Irish judge and said nothing of the steerage. The ship’s lists carry both the 9th and the 10th, and Ellis Island’s forms the 10th. She is the first name on steerage sheet 11: “Knudsen, Bergit Myklestu,” eighteen, a maid, who could read and write, last residence Veggli. A cousin had paid her fare, and she was going to “cousin Herbrand Kravig, Fairmount, N.D.” The lists of passengers held at Ellis Island don’t have her. Fairmount is in Richland County, in the state’s far southeast corner, forty-three miles from Pelican Rapids. Who the cousin was is under research.

Her father was on the same ship. The second-cabinsecond cabin Second class on an ocean liner, between first cabin and steerage: a stateroom shared or to oneself, and meals in a dining saloon. All the words sheet has “Stenersen, Knud,” 43, lumberman, and Lina, his wife, going home to Pelican Rapids from their visit to Norway. Father and daughter crossed on one ship, on different decks, to different towns, and the cousin paid her fare. No record found yet says whether she saw him aboard.

Eight months later, on May 17, 1906, she married Tollef Kjemhus at Grand Forks. It was Syttende Mai, Norway’s constitution day, the first since the union with Sweden ended. The county license has “Tollef Kjemhus, 35” and “Berget Knutson, 19,” both of Walhalla, up by the Canadian line, and the church register names the witnesses, Rikka and Axel Jorgenson. Tollef was from Kjemhus, half a kilometer south of Møgstu, and had left the valley the week she was born, a boy of sixteen. She had stayed at Fairmount a few months, her obituary says, before going on to Walhalla.

Clara was born on January 20, 1907. Bergit and Tollef farmed in Fremont Township, Cavalier County, where he had taken a homestead in 1899, and the censuses from 1910 to 1940 find them there. The photographs below, from about 1937, have them with Clara’s husband, Chris Amoth, and the children.

She was in the Nore Lutheran Ladies AidLadies Aid A congregation’s women’s society (in Norwegian Lutheran churches, the kvindeforening). Its sales, suppers and bazaars raised money for the church, its building and its missions. All the words for many years, its treasurer for twelve and later its president. In the fall of 1961 she and Tollef moved to Langdon. She had a stroke at home there on April 8, 1962, and died in the Langdon hospital two days later, on April 10, at seventy-four. Three brothers and two sisters survived her in Norway. She is buried at Lebanon Cemetery in Langdon under one stone with Tollef, who followed her the next February. KJEMHUS runs across the face of it, and her panel reads “Mother, Bergit, 1887–1962.” The church book called her Knudsdatter, the license Knutson, the stone Kjemhus.

Her crossing, from the records

The Montebello and the Cedric, her father’s cabin on the same ship, the cousin at Fairmount, and what the records don’t say.

The Kjemhus Story

Tollef’s family, the three homesteads in Fremont Township, and the marriage as the license wrote it.

How we know

• Her baptism, Veggli, Rollag parish, 1887 (Veggli ministerialbok II 1, p. 24 ↗, Digitalarkivet).
• Ragnild and Ole Gjermundsen’s marriage, Veggli, 1894 (Veggli ministerialbok II 1, p. 80 ↗, Digitalarkivet).
• The Norwegian censuses of 1891 and 1900, Rollag, Møgstu (Digitalarkivet), as the tree records them.
• The emigrant register, Christiania police, protocol 23, p. 265, first entry: registered August 18, 1905, sailing August 25 on the Montebello (National Archives of Norway ↗).
• The Cedric’s passenger lists, Liverpool to New York, September 1905, U.S. National Archives T715, roll 618: Bergit on steerage list 11, row 1 (Ancestry ↗), Knud and Lina on second-cabin list 1, rows 17–18 (Ancestry ↗), account needed. The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation’s index has her as Borgil Myklentu Kundsen, record JFWJ-HTR. The voyage’s records of detained passengers and of aliens held for special inquiry, images NYT715_618-0222 to 0224, have no entry for her.
• The marriage, Grand Forks County license, May 17, 1906, Book 9 (Ancestry ↗), and the Norwegian Lutheran marriage register, Grand Forks, 1906, p. 9, entry 4, with the witnesses (Ancestry ↗), account needed.
• The United States censuses of 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940, Fremont Township, Cavalier County, North Dakota (National Archives, through Ancestry, account needed).
• The arrival, The New York Times, September 10, 1905, p. 7, “Three Liners Arrive Loaded with Americans” (the Times’s archive ↗).
• Her obituary, Cavalier County Republican, Langdon, April 1962, “Services Held Saturday for Mrs. Kjemhus,” from the family’s clipping: the months at Fairmount, the Ladies Aid, the move to Langdon, the stroke and the brothers and sisters in Norway. It sends her first to “Fairmont, Minn.”; the Cedric’s list says Fairmount, N.D.
• The grave, Lebanon Cemetery, Langdon: Find a Grave memorial 99471874 ↗, with a photograph of the stone.
• The family tree, for the rest.