Many people preserve their genealogy through family trees, mapping the branches and roots out on paper.
Heewone Lim brings us the story of a unique genealogical work of art: a Norwegian genealogical plaque. It’s part of the Wisconsin 101 project, which tells the history of the state through objects.
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In 1879, Hans Gunther Magelssen of Norway commissioned a jeweler in Oslo to create a gift for his granddaughter-in-law, Sara Magelssen. The gift was a round wooden plaque inset with a 5 Øre coin, the equivalent of a nickel. Surrounding the coin are 18 circles of names and important dates chronicling the Magelssen family genealogy. The dates note births, marriages and when people immigrated to the United States.
According to “Wisconsin 101,” the plaque includes Sara Magelssen’s, and her husband Kristian Magelssen’s, immigration journey to Wisconsin in the 1860s. It’s written on the 12th and 13th lines of the object.
Dana Kelly is the Executive Director at the Norwegian American Genealogical Center & Naeseth Library. She said this plate is a one-of-a-kind genealogical artifact.
“The things that they brought with them were pretty utilitarian. But to have just an artistic object like this was pretty unusual.”
The front of the Norwegian genealogical plate. It was a wedding gift commissioned in 1879 by Hans Gunther Magelssen of Norway for his granddaughter-in-law, Sara Magelssen. (Heewone Lim/WPR)
Kelly said the Center sees other genealogical objects, such as trunks with names painted inside the lid. They also see family Bibles, where a family has several generations of baptisms and marriages recorded.
“But obviously a Bible is not created just for genealogy. It’s meant to be a book,” said Kelly. “So this [plaque] is unique in that respect, that it was created specifically for genealogy to tell the family’s history.”
Certain names on the plate are underlined, which was a practice used in church records back in Norway. The Magelssens had ministers in the family tree, so they likely carried on this practice for generations.
“You know, I baptized so-and-so’s daughter. He would underline Kari’s name because that was the important part. That was the child being baptized,” said Kelly. “It does kind of look like they’re doing that here, underlining the person’s name to accentuate who’s the important person on this line. So they’re keeping with that custom.”
On the back of the Norwegian genealogical plaque are 18 circles filled with the Magelssen family’s history in Norway and Germany. It includes names, births, deaths and marriages. At the center is a 5 Øre coin. (Heewone Lim/WPR)
The plate begins with a different Hans Gunther Magelssen, who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1734 and immigrated to Norway in 1756. Magelssen’s German roots explain why the family has the same last name throughout the plate. Kelly said the practice of using a permanent family name was uncommon in Norway at the time.
“Their social custom was not to give children the same last name as their father. If their father’s name was Lars, the children would be Larsdatter or Larson” said Kelly. “So seeing that they referred to themselves as the family Magelssen would indicate to me that they have a cultural outlook that isn’t typically Norwegian. Perhaps they had had more experience with other cultures in Europe that have that permanent family last name.”
Dana Kelly is the Executive Director at the Norwegian American Genealogical Center & Naeseth Library. (Courtesy of Dane Kelly)
However, the family still kept some Scandinavian naming traditions. The plate features a few names multiple times: Hans Gunther Magelssen, Sara Magelssen and Kristian Magelssen.
“Names got used over and over and over again in Norwegian families. It was very common to name a child after their grandparents. It wasn’t unusual to have more than one child in a family that had the same name. You would get a certain name [that] would be very, very common in a family because they would just be honoring their ancestors and everybody would use it,” said Kelly.
The value of this plaque, both a carefully crafted artisanal object and a sentimental record keeper, speaks of the dedication the Magelssens had to keeping Norwegian culture and their family history alive in the Upper Midwest. Sending a family heirloom to America, a far away country, with no practical purpose reflects the journey of the Magelssen family.
“Something like this would have been something that they could display freely without having to worry about discrimination and or what it might mean to cling to the old country. For them, that was okay. Up until World War I, there was no problem with having roots in another country. They were fortunate. They were fortunate to be able to cling to that.”
By 1870, almost 60,000 Norwegians had settled in Wisconsin — that included members of the Magelssen family. The United States became known as “Vesterheim,” or the “western home.”
