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
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
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]
end
end