When last we left the Arentzes, Samuel Martzen and Anna Christina had died in 1801 and 1804, respectively, leaving behind sons Mads Arrens (age 16), Didrich Bay (age 12), Ludvig Holberg (age 5), and daughter Emmerentze (age 9).

But let’s rewind a little bit. When barber-surgeon Samuel Martzen Arentz died in December 1801, Anna Christina Alm and her children were basically homeless. Samuel Martzen had worked at (and the family had lived at) the Bergen City Hospital, and so without a head of household, they would have been out on the streets.

We’re not really sure how Anna Christina was able to get along without her husband for the next three years, but it must have been incredibly difficult. Not only did she have the four children listed above, but another small child – Jan Alm, who was born in 1799 and would die in 1804, the same year as Anna Christina.

But we do know Anna Christina tried to keep the little family going. We know from the school records that Didrich Bay (my fourth great-grandfather) and Ludvig Holberg were in school during this period – Ludvig Holberg in Catholic School while Didrich Bay attended what was known as Sunday School.

Our Bergen by Expert guide, Malfred, explained that Bergen Sunday School was established by citizens and civil servants in 1802 to provide a school for apprentice craftsmen. Since Sunday is the only day that apprentices had off from their work, the Sunday school provided free tuition in writing, arithmetic, drawing and German for a few hours every Sunday.

On his school records, Didrich Bay’s master is listed as “Grove,” who must have been a coppersmith, based on what we know of Didrich’s future career.

We know from her death record in the Parish register in 1804, that Anna Christina and the children were living in Rode 10 at house #65 in an area that looks like Nøstegaten and/or Nøstebod (most likely Nøstegaten since Nøstebod refers to a type of warehouse). But house number 65 goes from A to F, so we don’t know the exact house she lived in since there is no letter after the house number on the death record.

Anna Christina was buried in Saint Jacob’s churchyard on July 20,1804, leaving her children orphaned. There were no orphanages in the city at this time (the Bergen Children’s Asylum wouldn’t open until 1840), so it was a pretty dire situation.

Her oldest sons, Mads Arrens and Didrich Bay, were already living with their professional masters as apprentices – in Mads case, he was already an apprentice to the Regimental Surgeon Wilhelm Johannes Schwindt.

And it’s from a book about Wilhelm Schwindt that we find out what happened to the Arentz children.

 

(Malfred actually had a copy of this book, which was published in 2003 and showed it to me during our visit. When we got home, I found it online through a Norwegian bookstore and ordered it. I have been using Google Translate to translate the parts about the Arentzes from Norwegian to English. Thankfully, there’s an index, but it’s still been a lot of pages to translate.)

According to the author, Torstein Bertelsen:

“The fate of children who suddenly lost one or both parents depended largely on the family’s social position and the age of the children. In the worst-case scenario, they could end up living on the streets as haggard street children. If the children were old enough, they had to fend for themselves by applying for a job or learning a trade. This was the case with Emerentze’s brother Didrik Bay, who immediately after his parents’ death was taken on as an apprentice coppersmith. We know that he settled in Stavanger and that he later emigrated to the USA, where he died around 1860. He thus disappears from our story.

“The eldest of her brothers, the 15-year-old Mads (b. 1785) was also able to fend for himself. He was already “in Discipline” with Schwindt, and could call himself a company field scout. In this there was nothing unusual…..

“For the youngest children who could not fend for themselves, it was important that the parents had close relatives or good friends who could take care of them. Then the children were often distributed between these who then gave them a home and an upbringing in line with their own children, each according to their economic possibilities….

The Arentz family had good friends, such as city medic Lars Monrad and the regimental surgeon, Wilhem Schwindt and their wives. Having lost both his parents when he was a year old, Lars Monrad, like Mrs Schwindt, had grown up as a foster child with close relatives. The couple Monrad took in Emerentze, who was then 10-11 years old.”

The book goes on to explain that eventually, Emmerentze and her younger brother, Ludvig Holberg, would both be brought into the Schwindt household, where they had very different experiences. Ludvig was educated and trained to become a doctor while Emmerentze was treated more like a servant or lady’s maid to her foster mother, and was not educated, which is unfortunate.

To accommodate their growing family of foster children, the Schwindts moved into a bigger house in a beautiful neighborhood, which we saw on our tour with Malfred. (The actual house was torn down in the 1950s, but other houses from the same period and style are still standing next door.)

Bertelsen describes the Schwindt’s house:

“Already in 1804, Schwindt had bought Kalfarveien 14, from the estate of merchant Hans Tank. Ever since it was built in 1788, the house had taken the name Tanks Minde. With a hipped roof and several arches, it had a stately feel where it stood, right outside the Stadsporten, but within the city limits. It was set back a little in relation to this town’s most elegant promenade street, and was bounded off from it by a low wall, which, like the house, was paved with red Dutch stone. Tanks Minde was originally built as a place of pleasure for the big merchant, and was less than twenty years old when the couple Schwindt bought it.”

And that’s where Emmerentze lived until she was around 27 years old. She married a master goldsmith, Michael Blytt in the Cathedral on April 16, 1819. The Blytt household and workshop was located the corner of Strandgaten and Cort Piilsmuget, which we also saw on our tour with Malfred.

Emmerentze had two children, Ludvig Holberg Arentz Blytt (named after his uncle the doctor, obviously) and Peter Michael Blytt, who would go on to become chairman of the Norwegian Theater in Bergen and write and self-publish his own memoir, “Fra min barndom og ungdom” or “From My Childhood and Youth” (which might be my next foreign book purchase/translation project).

Emmerentze’s oldest brother, Mads Arrens, became a military doctor, (a “company surgeon,” according to Bertelsen. He was then hired as chief medical officer aboard the ship taking the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Albertus Henricus Wiese (who had just retired from that position) back home to Holland. Mads Arrens Arentz later settled in Java (Dutch East Indies) and is said to have died there in the 1820s.

Emmerentze’s younger brother, Ludvig Holberg Arentz also became a company surgeon, before beginning his full university studies at the newly opened medical school in Christiania (Oslo) in 1818.

Bertelsen notes:

“When Ludvig Arentz took his exam in 1821, he was thus one of the first, perhaps the very first native Norwegian, to have completed his entire medical education domestically. The fact that he was able to pass the exam after only three years at the university speaks volumes for both his own skill and the good teaching he had received as an apprentice from his foster father and teaching master, the regimental surgeon in Bergen. Schwindt could boast of the fact that his foster son and student was among the first to pass the official medical exam at our national university.”

After passing his exams, Ludvig took a post as district surgeon in Senjen, an area in the northern part of Norway (near Halstad) for the next four years. In January 1828, Ludvig took over the position of “Private Physician at Modums Blaafarvevaerk” (translation: Modum Blue Dye Plant), where he was responsible for the daily health service for a workforce of almost 1,000 men and their families. The position included a new house for the doctor and his family built on the premises, which still stands today.

Ludvig and his wife, Johanne Margrethe Bernsdorff, had three children – Ludvig Holberg (b. 1823), Emerentze Kristine (b. 1826), and Josephine Johanne Margrethe (b. 1829).

Ludvig Holberg Arentz, who had been in poor health for a while and was taking heart medication, died in February 1836 at the age of 41.

Over the course of his career and life, Ludvig also contributed six articles to Norway’s first medical journal.

Bertelsen says:

“When the first purely Norwegian medical journal “Eyr” began publication in 1826, it already had an article in its first issue signed by Ludvig Arentz, District Physician in Senjen in Finnmarken. It was entitled “Practical Observations during Pregnancy and a Followed by Premature Twin Birth.” Thus, Ludvig Arentz also became a pioneer in another field, the first doctor with a medical degree from Christiania to write an original article based on his own observations in the new Norwegian medical journal.”

So that is the story of what happened to my fourth great grandfather, Didrich Bay, and his brothers and sister in Bergen. Next I’ll talk a little bit more about Didrich Bay Arentz and his wife, Anna Maria Fraas, including our visit to the Fraas family farm.