My father’s cousin, Erling Boe has become a major contributor of historical information to several of my webpages. Thanks to Erling, and Christie Livingston, I have been able to add the names, and some personal information, pertaining to the Boe family tree. Coupled with Alfhild’s thesis entitled “My Heritage”( http://www.petesmemories.com/hist.html  ), we have preserved information which would have been lost forever.

 

This page is dedicated to Erling. I am grateful for your contributions. Thank you!

 

I will begin with the latest contribution.

On February 1, 2020 at 9:00 AM Ed Boe wrote:

Hi Pete,

Quickly because I need to rush out to an appointment. Great to receive your letter and link to the website /Erling. One thing is that I had the name of my grandfather wrong. It was Engebret Engebretson Boe whereas Vigleik was the name of the son of his first wife who came to American and became the Lutheran minister in Finley, ND.

Rita, my wife, just published a book about my life called Erling’s Journey etc. that includes a chapter on Engebret and one on Anna, the parents of Martha, Christie, and Emmads.

More later; keep up the good work.

Erling

This was meant to correct an earlier contribution. It was a history of Erlings grandparents. Since then, Erling’s biography has been written, and some corrections have been made. I have made the corrections, and as an added bonus, I am able to add excerpts from the book (rough drafts) with the permission of the author. The book is very well written, and is available through Amazon books. The title is “Erling's Journey and Other Sagas: A Norwegian-American's Search for His Viking Roots”. Please see http://www.petesmemories.com/erlingsjourny.html

 

 

The earlier contributions (corrected);

From: Terry Peterson

Sent: Friday, February 02, 2018 11:49 PM
To: Erling

 Subject: Re: Thanks for messages

 

It has been such a long time, would love to hear from you.

Website url changed  http://www.petesmemories.com/boe.html and                http://www.petesmemories.com/ (index)

RE: Thanks for messages

Ed Boe<email omitted for privacy >

2/11/2018 8:35 PM

To  Terry Peterson  

Great to hear from you, Terry. I know I have dropped from sight but your former emails from two or more years ago are frozen in the inbox of an obsolete email app that I was forced to abandon and start anew with MS Outlook. If any question remain unanswered from that time that I might help with, please send again.

 

I spend a lot of pleasant hours going through your new website of family photos and Alfhild’s reminiscences, and found a lot directly relevant to my own background. For example, the photo of grandpops and grandma Viglic and Anna with Emmads and your grandma Martha as children was one I had not seen before.

 

As to the new photo with the casket, I have a vague recollection that this might be the front of Martha and Halvar’s house in Oakland. I was there but once at age 14 (1947), or maybe their Grand Forks house that we visited several times during WWII. The man in the center back could be my dad, but if this was Oakland, then he would not have been there.

Do you have any description about the background of the people in the photos on your website, especially the ones on the Boe side? If so, I will be very interested.

 

My wife Rita is in the process of putting together information about my background, including as deep a history as possible about both my dad and mom. However, in the past year my background has expanded enormously. As you may know, I was adopted as an infant and grew up not being told about this. But dad finally told me at age 19 and by then I had figured it out. No problem. About a year ago, I decided to see what I could learn about my birth parents and have succeeded in finding out a great deal, including finding and meeting a sister on my birth father’s side and three siblings on my birth mother’s side. Rita is trying to trace four lineages.

 

I attach a writing that I drafted recently (and polished a little today) about the Boe side of my background. Much of the information about Viglic’s and Anna’s life was told to me by Aunt Christie when she was very old, and some of it comes from my recollections of my  Dad’s recollections from his youth. I would love for your and anyone you know, with relevant background, to review what I have written for accuracy and to seek more pertinent  information that I can include in this draft.

 

Keep pressing ahead, Terry. This is interesting.

 

All the best,

 

Erling

 

Erling’s draft;

This is Erling’s writing about grandparents.

 

 

 ARS\EB\Erling’s Grandparents Boe EB-5.docx             February 8, 2018 (should be February 10, 2020)

ERLING’S GRANDPARENTS Engebret Engebretson AND ANNA BOE

 

Erling’s grandparents, Engebret (b.1840) and Anna (b.1861) Boe, from his adoptive dad’s side, lived in the hamlet of Skanevik, Norway, a location specifically on the edge of Akrafjorden and part of the larger municipality of Skanevik. From Erling’s personal observation in 1957, the population of the hamlet must have been less than 100.

 

By means unknown, Engebret became an itinerant Lutheran Minister. Centuries ago Norway adopted Lutheranism as the State Church. Since the State Church could not afford to place a church and pastor at every mountain hamlet, the way was clear for itinerant pastors to fill a gap, and so did Engebret.

 

Engebret first married about 1862 (should be 1861) at age 22 (should be 21) [should be (to Kristie) not wife’s name unknown). He established a route though (should be through) the mountains, traveling by foot from remote hamlet to remote hamlet, receiving room and board in someone’s housebarn for a week or so, preaching up a storm, collecting a few Krone (should be Speciedolar), and moving on to the next hamlet for a like-engagement. Engebret would depart on his annual tour in early September and return home in late May. This pattern would repeat year after year.

 

About every other year, when Engebret returned home to Skanevik, his wife would present him with a new offspring (survival rate not known, but many did). The family grew to about 8 when his wife died (one can imagine of fatigue) in 1878 (should be 1882).

 

We do not know what child care arrangements he made when he departed in September 1778 (should be 1882) for another tour of itinerant perching in the mountain hamlets. We do know that he (then age 39 [should be age 42]) returned from this tour with Anna Graua, his new 18-year (should be 23-year) old bride that he found along the way. He placed Anna in charge of most of his children (a few may have been old enough to be sent out on their own), and proceeded with the same pattern of nine-month tours of preaching in the mountain hamlets and returning home in late May (should be: and presented with another off spring about every other year.) every other year to be presented with another offspring.

 

Erling’s dad, Emmads E. Boe (b.1889), was about the 4th (should be 3rd ) child of Engebret and Anna. Eleven (should be thirteen) years later, Engebret died at age 71 (should be 62), leaving Emmads and young siblings in the care of their destitute mother (by then, the youngest child of Engebret’s first marriage were adults). Anna’s solution to her plight was to move her brood of at least four children back to her parental family in a mountain hamlet about 12 miles east of Voss, Norway. This is where Erling’s dad grew up from age 11 (should be 13), as a goat herder in high pastures during the summers where he lived in a makeshift shelter. One or the other of his sisters would regularly trudge up the mountain to bring him food. At age 15 (should be 17) in 1904 (should be 2006), he and his older sister, Christie (age 16) [should be (age 19)], departed on a rainy spring morning for the steamer for America departing from Bergan, Norway.

 

Life was extremely frugal for Erling’s dad and siblings during his childhood years in Norway. For example, the family raised chickens and harvested eggs. But eggs were their only cash crop and had to be sold. The children were allocated one egg per year to be served at Easter. Winter meals were often very meager with a bowl of flour, mixed with water, placed on the middle of the dining table for all the children and their mother, to dip into until it was consumed. Another basic food was flatbrod, eaten plain (Wikipedia: Flatbrød (literally "flat-bread"),a traditional Norwegian unleavened bread, which is currently usually eaten with fish, salted meats and soups. Originally it was the staple food of Norwegian shepherds, peasants, and Vikings.) Flatbrod was stored up and kept outside in shelters for consumption especially during winters.

 

Vigleik was the name of the son of his first wife who came to American and became the Lutheran minister in Finley, ND.

Late in life at age 73 (should be 70) in 1934 (should be 1930), Anna’s children in America brought her to live with them. She lived for several years with Emmads’ family in Finley, ND, and with Christie’s family 18 miles away in Cooperstown, ND. During the following three years, she taught Erling to speak the rudiments of Norwegian. Anna died in 1936, and was buried in the Cooperstown Cemetery.

 

************************

 

Skånevik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the former municipality in Norway. For the village in Sunnhordland, Norway, see Skånevik (village).

Skånevik commune

Former municipality

View of the Åkrafjorden and the Langfossen waterfall

View of the Åkrafjorden and the Langfossen waterfall

Skånevik commune

Location in Hordaland county

Coordinates: 59°43′58″N 05°56′15″E

Country                  Norway

Region                    Western Norway

County                    Hordaland

District                    Sunnhordland

Municipality ID        NO-1212

Adm. Center            Skånevik

Population (1964)

 • Total                     2,705

Time zone                CET (UTC+01:00)

 • Summer (DST)      CEST (UTC+02:00)

Created as               Formannskapsdistrikt in 1838

Merged into             Kvinnherad

                                     and Etne in 1965

Skånevik is a former municipality in Hordaland county, Norway. The municipality existed from 1838 until 1965 and it included the land surrounding both sides of the Skånevikfjorden and its smaller branches: the Åkrafjorden and Matersfjorden. It also included the eastern part of the island of Halsnøya and stretched quite a ways inland all the way to the Folgefonna glacier on the border with Odda. The administrative centre of the municipality was the village of Skånevik where Skånevik Church is located.[1]

History

The parish of Skonevig was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The spelling of the name was changed in the early 20th century to its present spelling of Skånevik. On 1 January 1965, the municipality of Skånevik was dissolved due to the recommendations of the Schei Committee during a period of many municipal mergers across Norway. The area of Skånevik situated south of the Skånevikfjord and Åkrafjorden, as well as the parts of Skånevik located north of the fjord and east of the village of Åkra (population: 1,493) were consolidated with the neighboring municipality of Etne to the south. The rest of Skånevik lying north of the fjord and west of Åkra (population: 1,189), became a part of the neighbouring municipality of Kvinnherad to the north.[2]

On 7 February 1978 a record-breaking dive occurred at 320 meters depth in the fjord, Skåneviksfjorden; one of the divers died during a break from welding metal pipes; the government had given the dive a dispensation from part of the regulations for occupational safety.[3]

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