I’m still sad. Still mourning the election results, but coming to an angry, begrudging acceptance that this is just the way it’s going to be for the next four years.

So, on that note, back to a different saga: my Norwegian family ancestry project. When last I left off, I was exploring my Arentz family roots in Stavanger, specifically, my third great-grandfather, Samuel Christopher Arentz, who immigrated from Norway to Chicago around 1843.

But before they lived in Stavanger, the Arentz family lived in Bergen as far back as my Norwegian genealogist and friend, Egil J. and I could tell (we were only able to trace the Arentzes back to my sixth great-grandfather, Mads Arentsen.)

Naturally, our second stop on the family trail was Bergen, a 4.5-hour drive straight north from Stavanger. Bergen is a very old seaside town, founded as a trading hub in 1070, as part of the Hanseatic League, a collection of German trading towns focused on expanding commercial trade during the Middle Ages.

Today, Bergen is Norway’s second largest city (after Oslo) with a population of around 290,000 people. Its row of colorful, wooden warehouses along the wharf – Bryggen — is Instagram-famous and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

Since Bergen was the home of not only my fourth-great grandfather Didrich Bay Arentz, but also his father and mother, we knew we had a lot to tackle. Thanks to the work of Egil J., we had at least eight addresses scattered across the town that we wanted to get a glimpse of, so we hired Malfrid, a fantastic tour guide from Bergen by Experts to take us through our paces on a fast and furious trot through Bergen, including churches, residences and cemeteries.

Luckily, the city of Bergen has been very thoughtful about preserving many of its oldest buildings and neighborhoods, including Nøstegaten, which was saved from destruction at the last minute in 2008. In any case, even when we weren’t able to find the exact address an Arentz had lived at or the building was long gone, we could get a glimpse of what things looked like back in the late 1700s-early 1800s.

The first instance of an Arentz in Bergen that Egil and I could find would be Samuel Martzen Arentz, my fifth great-grandfather and son of Mads Arentsen. We only know about Mads Arentsen because he is mentioned as the father of Samuel Martzen.

We know two things about Mads: 1) he was married to Emmerentze Michelsdatter Steen Bøhle on September 29, 1745, and 2) his profession is listed as “bordarbejdsmand,” which depending on the website you use, can be translated to “table worker,” “shipwright,” or “bench laborer.”  We also found Mads very briefly mentioned in a memoir written by Daniel Thraps (Title: Daniel Thraps erindringer om handelsmænd i Bergen på 1800-tallet). Thraps merely says Mads Arentsen was a “labourer.”

We do know Mads and Emmerentze had two children – Michael Arentsen (who kept the original spelling of his last name and became a school teacher) and Samuel Martzen (who changed the spelling of his last name to Arentz and is who my family is descended from).

Samuel Martzen Arentsen (or Arentz) was born in Bergen in 1761 and baptized at the city cathedral (Bergen Domkirke). In November 1784, Samuel Martzen married Anna Christina Alm in Bergen’s new church (Nykirke), and their first son, Mads Arrens Arentz was born in January 1785 (a bit of a shotgun wedding there). Eight more children would follow, but only four would survive to adulthood.

Interestingly, Anna Christina Alm is from a well-known Norwegian family and is related to Ludvig Holberg through her mother’s side. Holberg was a famous philosopher, author, and playwright. He’s considered the father of Norwegian literature (even though he spent most of his life in Copenhagen) and there is a statue of him right in the Bergen city center.

We next found Samuel Martzen Arentz and his family in the 1801 Bergen Census, the first census for the city’s 24 rodes (or neighborhoods) and 16,884 inhabitants. Samuel and Anna, along with three of their children are living at 131 Stadens Syge Huus (City Hospital) in the 11^th Rode (the two older boys: Mads Arrens and Didrich Bay, were already professionally apprenticed and living with their “masters,” so they are not in the household at this time.)

According to the Census, Samuel Martzen Arentz was 40 years old at the time and his profession is “undersurgeon and inspector” at the City Hospital, which sounds like a pretty lucrative, respected profession, but a little perspective is needed here.

In Bergen at this time, if you were wealthy, you had a private doctor who came to your house to treat your ailments. If you were not wealthy, you relied on the City Hospital, which employed barber-surgeons to care for patients. Barber-surgeons were not university-trained doctors, per se, but were skilled craftsmen with access to sharp instruments. In addition to cutting hair and trimming beards, barber-surgeons could do minor procedures, including bloodletting, cupping, lancing and draining abscesses, pulling teeth, wound care, and minor amputations.

In fact, the red-and-white barber’s pole dates from this period and represents the blood and bandages associated with barber-surgeons.

In baptism records for several of his children, Samuel Martzen’s listed profession is “barber’s friend” and in the 1801 Census, he is working at the City Hospital, where the Arentz family were also living, alongside hospital orderly, Iver Peersen and his family, three maids, and around 50 or so patients.

I’m not sure exactly when the Census was taken but Samuel Martzen Arentz died in December of 1801, most likely from a disease he caught at the Hospital, perhaps smallpox or typhoid.

He left behind his wife Anna (age 37), sons Mads Arrens (age 16), Didrich Bay (age 12), Ludvig Holberg (age 5), Jan Alm (age 2), and daughter Emmerentze (age 9). Another son, Michael, was also born in 1801 but died that same year. Jan Alm, along with his mother Anna Christina, would die a few years later in July of 1804.

Since this is already a bit long, I’m going to leave the story there and next time I’ll go into more of our time in beautiful Bergen and what happened to the Arentz children after they were orphaned in 1804.