My gr. gr. grandparents immigrated to the U.S. in 1881. Actually, in total three generations immigrated at roughly the same time. My specific questions pertain to my x2 gr. parents: Rasmus Christian Rasmussen 1854-1921, and Hansine Jakobine Christensen 1861-1932 They had married in Copenhagen in 1876. Prior to immigrating, they had two Danish born daughters.
Almost immediately upon arrival in the U.S., my grandfather adopted the name: Chris Robertson. He was rather inconsistent in the early years in terms of always documenting the same name. In some places it would be Rasmus Rasmussen, or Christian Robertson, or Chris Robertson. It has made tracking his progress across the nation, rather interesting to say the least! Was this practice of 're'naming a fairly common feature in the Americanization and assimilation of immigrant experience?
Although there is no evidence the name was of legal process, by no later than 1888, he had fully embraced the new name. Also in 1888 Chris and Hansine were 're' married in Iowa and on the state and county marriage records details, the name Chris Robertson is used in place of Rasmus Rasmussen. My grandmother did not formally change her surname however, nor did she take 'Robertson' as her own. But each one of their children subsequently born in the U.S. in fact were all given the surname Robertson....with the exception that is, for the two eldest daughters born in Denmark. Their maiden names remained Rasmussen. That is my next question: was there some reason you know of as to why they would not simply adopt the new American'ized' family name? They would have been pretty young to have exercised the kind of autonomy required to choose to remain separate from the rest of the family by the name they identified by.
While it has been difficult at times identifying my grandfather as he transitioned from the name of his birth to the name of his choosing, it is my grandmother Hansine who has proven the most problematic in terms of identifying her in Directories, Census', Voter's registration and other historical documents. The reason, is because while she may not have formally adopted a single name, she nonetheless used several variations of Hansine Jakobine Christensen over the years. Only in one instance that I can recall did she ever list herself as 'Robertson' and that was on the U.S. marriage record of 1888. Likewise, her only use of Rasmussen was on her immigration documents.
Beyond that, I have encountered a rather bewildering array of names that i must wonder... if such dexterity in name uses was a Danish cultural tradition, or was my grandmother simply a colorful woman? Among the names I have seen her record for herself are:
Hanseena Christensen, Sena Sine or 'Sine' Christensen, and Hansine Nielsen. The only reason I was able to identify this last example, is because her father's name was Kristen Nilsen and there appears to have been a period of time in which she attempted following our U.S. custom of a child inheriting the father's surname, rather than the Danish tradition of her surname being derived from her father's given name. Whatever the incentive, it did not endure. Following Kristen's death, she never again referred herself as a 'Nielsen'. But the maddening instances of the variations I mentioned continued throughout her life - thus making it at times virtually maddening to successfully identify her at a given point in time. Is this a Danish cultural practice, or is it peculiar to Hansine? Are there any additional names I should have on my radar when researching her? Thank you, in advance. Joachim Hawn
