Robert Christian Mortensen Heggelund - The real Selnes?

I took a look today at Your ancestrytree of Your wife. Several profiles made of you lacks names where the People lived etc. I also see that you spell the names different from the right names in a tree where you has merged Your wifes tree into. Jørgen is "Jorgen" etc.

Please don't remove the names from the original profiles. Because the genealogists who made these profiles has spent several times to this work.

Selnes is a small Place in Karlsøy parish near the city Tromsø in North Norway. And is the Place where Heggelund lived.

Arnfred Nilsen

Hello Arnfred, I am glad to meet you.

I did not merge my wife's tree with other tree. Someone else did that.
The tree I entered is from a family book of over 200 pages complete with immigrant stories. I have barely begun to enter the data, and was planning to back-fill some details later on when I get time. Plus, the book is also incomplete in many details.

Many of the names have been Americanized. For example, Hansen changed to Hanson, Jorgensen changed to Jorgenson. This happened partly because of the immigration officials making errors. But it also happened because of something else I have been learning about. The grandson of Ole Rolvaag(sp?), author of Giants in the Earth, gave a talk touching on this. It turns out the early American pioneers here in Minnesota (the immigrants) were Baptists fleeing a hostile country and bad times. The pioneers suffered great deprivation. But even so, they felt it was a better life than what they left. So they changed their names and tried to forget. Later generations want to discover their roots. But the family records are not in very good shape. The previous generation or two before my wife quite deliberately have totally forgotten details of where they came from.

On the person's I entered, I may also have made transcription errors from the Hans G. Jorgenson book.

More about the merger:
On Geni I am used to receiving merge requests. In the case of my immediota efamily I have actually turned down one or two requests because records were in error with what I personally know of my grandparents. But in this case of my wife's distant ancestors the merge was done without a merge request. The result is I have no idea of the actual outcome - it is surprising at every step.

I am ambivalent about almost being in favor of "unmerging". But there are also many advantages to having a merger.

I do not have the original research of Hans G. Jorgenson. I do not know if it is available. I was hoping an American cousin would see the tree and contact me. Meanwhile, it looks like there were pre-existing parallel trees.

One other mystery looms: why did a family keep the same farm name for 400 years even though they were long since moved elsewhere in the world? This seems true of the Heggelund's and also of the Gram's. I have been told this is rather unusual. Typically one takes the name of the new place one moves to, so names change every few generations. My theory (just speculation) is the ancestors were of aristocratic class. I do not know the original life of the Gram ancestor from Denmark. But the family apparently had royal appointments as magistrates and obviously were educated. This may be because the original Gram entered seminary to become one of the frontier ministers at the time the crown was asking for that. And Gram farm was a royal farm at one time. So it all goes together, but needs some research. Just understanding the legal and social system in the 1500's is a research project.

My brother-in-law told me this week the family deliberately chose to drop the farm name in order to follow the American pattern. The last usage was 1897 here in Minnesota in Big Stone County. So, in some cases I have entered data into Geni as a guess as to what the proper form is because the book does not have the same conventions as Geni.

In American english we do not have an o with a slash. I certainly don't mind changing to other (perhaps original) spelling on any person I entered but I would ask that a note be left to indicate the correction (so American relatives can follow Hans's book).

This collaboration with strangers on another continent is new to me. I do not expect to be able to do everything correctly. Thanks for your help.

Well then I want to help you merge the rest of the profiles to the original tree at Geni.com . And also correct the names. If you let me.

So far I don't know if the Gram or Heggelund were of aristocratic origin. I reckon it is not so.

Thomas Michel's book on the battle at Kringen in 1612 talks about Lars Laurits(z?) Gram as baili of Gudbrandsdal, in command of the lendsmenn in the defense of the region. Tax collector. Census taker. This is the function of the foged (referred to as a baili or bailiff by the British). Gram lived at Steig Farm in hundorp. That was the capitol of Gudbrandsdal.

An example fo a bailiff today would be found on the Island of Jersey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bailiffs_of_Jersey). This seems roughly the equivalent of the foged in the medieval Danish legal system.

Family documents say Peder Madsen Gram was the first Lutheran minister (chronologically speaking) in Sor Fron. What year? When did the Counts War take place? When did the country convert from Catholic to Lutheran?

This is an area of research.

And fa,ily tradition says Lars's grandson was state minister in Bergen prior to being exiled to Karlsoy. This may merely mean the grandson was a prest of some sort. We do not know.

You are right: It is Laurits Madssøn Gran born ca 1570 Fron and dead 1645 bailiff i Gudbrandsdalen who were one of the leaders for the Norwegians in Battle of Kringen 1612. If you understand Norwegian one find this in a article about him https://snl.no/Gram_-_slekt_etter_Mads_Nielsen_Gram

I also add the wikipedia article about Battle of Kringen 1612 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kringen

Some of these peoples names are added to the tree at Geni.com .

It shall be GRAM

Mads Nielsen Gram Mads Nielsen Gram

"Bailiff" or fogd (In Norway) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogt