You said that you thought it would be impossible to trace Danish lines. I've found that it is very possible and doing the research makes you a better genealogist. REMEMBER that there are four ways you can uniquely identify someone. Their NAME is only one. They can live in one PLACE at a certain DATE. RELATIVES can also help differentiate one person from another. It was the Christian Christensen that was married to Maren Jensen rather than the Christian Christensen married to Anne Larsen. You just have to keep track of the wrong families as well as the right ones to get it right when they live close to one another. Censuses and probates list families as groups tying people together. The probates are often indexed by the father's first name in Scandanavian records to make it easier to handle patronymics. Lutheran Scandinavians list the people attending the baby's christening which helps you find potential relatives - usually the ones who travelled furthest. Handcart Scandinavians have the best records. The most valuable piece of information is the town or farm where they were born and their birthdate which is given in LDS Church records. The older records show what ward or branch someone came from and where they went and when. The trick is tracking them through the records into Europe. Many of the earliest Scandinavian LDS records still exist on microfilm at the Family History Centers. Jaussi and Chaston produced a guide to LDS ward and branch records with film numbers that not only lists them alphabetically, but lists them in geographic groups so that if you only have a general area you can find them in the LDS records in their country of origin. The towns and farm names are spelled better in the country of origin and make it more likely you can find them. There are good LDS immigration records from Scandinavia to England and from England to US and more records as they crossed the plains. I've had good luck with PEF records where they borrowed money from the Church to cross the plains promising to pay it back when they got to Salt Lake. I also have a Danish postal guide if you have a town or farm name you cannot find on the map and would be willing to help anyone. Sometimes they kept journals and diaries as they crossed the plains. This has been a frustration to many descendants because the handwriting is very different from what we were taught in school and because their spelling was often creative even in their mother tongue. I have seen some records that had a strange combination of misspelled Danish and English conglomeration. I have a feeling that many of the best pioneer stories have yet to be told because the records were not easy to read. If someone out there has such a record make copies and let someone translate it. Charla Jensen > -----Original Message----- > From: Durfee_Lynda@tmac.com [SMTP:Durfee_Lynda@tmac.com] > Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 1998 9:25 AM > To: HANDCART-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: [HANDCART-L] Problems with Ancestral File > > We should always be cognizant of the AF disclaimer. With millions of > submissions, it would be impossible to check the records for accuracy. > In using > AF, be aware that the information is only as reliable as the person > who > submitted it. Some people are very conscientious, some are sloppy, > some just > don't know any better are have submitted work done by other family > members. > Unfortunately, AF records don't have notes (I thought the update was > supposed to > allow it, but I haven't seen any). My note records take up about 2/3 > of the > space on the disks when I do a backup, so I can understand why AF > doesn't show > any notes submitted on GEDCOMs. > > AF should be regarded as a start. When I first got PAF 4 1/2 years > ago and > started downloading from AF, I was extremely frustrated at errors and > omissions. > I spent so much time correcting files (especially duplicate spouses) > that I > wondered whether it was worth it and if I should have simply entered > the date > from my own family group records and pedigree charts. I wasn't a > member of the > church then, either, so the ordinance dates weren't important. > Surprise, > surprise, the missionaries came to my door about 10 months later. > Now, having > the ordinance dates has saved my time in checking against the IGI > (though I > still do that anyway for missing links). One of my pet peeves is > people who > don't show all the children in a family, but only their direct line. > AARGH!! > > When downloading a GEDCOM from AF (or the IGI), I create a new PAF > file on a > floppy and add the GEDCOM to that file. Then I run the checks for > duplicates, > errors, etc. and fix records. Sometimes there are formatting errors > (records in > GEDCOM too long for field, for example) which show up as notes and > also in the > listing file. I create a new GEDCOM from the corrected file and add > that to my > main file. It's a lot easier than trying to fix your main file and > having to > resort to a backup when you find lots of errors in the added records. > > But I am sure glad I don't have Scandinavian ancestors. The > patronymic system > drives me bonkers. In doing my handcart research, I found at least 10 > "Christian Christensen" or variants in the 1870 census alone, all born > within > five years. How on earth am I ever supposed to figure out which one > was with > the 9th HC company? There was also one with the 10th HC in the same > year. I > read recently that the government (or some group) in Denmark is trying > to > encourage people to adopt new surnames. Seems that about 75% of the > population > has one of about six surnames. > > ______________________________