This will be the last of the Arentz family genealogy project posts for the time being. Thanks so much for bearing with me on all this family history stuff.

Because of our trip to Norway this past fall, phase one of my project was primarily focused on tracing my Norwegian roots and feel pretty happy that I’ve done that (the frustratingly elusive Madz Arentsen notwithstanding).

My next efforts will probably be focused on tracing the U.S. side, specifically Samuel Christopher after he arrived in Chicago and some of the subsequent generations from there. But that’s a project for 2025.

But before I put this phase to bed, I’d like to take a slight detour and talk about Didrich Bay Arentz’s sister, my fourth great aunt, Emmerentze Arentz Blytt. Because, surprisingly, she is the Arentz who we have the most documentation on. We have found some pretty detailed information about Emmerentze in at least three books, in addition to the usual genealogy-related publications where she was merely listed.

Let’s remember, Emmerentze lost her father when she was 9 years old, her mother when she was 12. She then ended up in Regimental Surgeon Wilhelm Schwindt’s household where she was basically treated like a house maid and not given any education. She stayed on in the Schwindt household after Madam Schwindt died in 1814 and took care of her not-very-nice foster father for five years, until finally, she made a good marriage match with goldsmith Michael Blytt when she was the ripe old age of 27 (gasp!).

We find Emmerentze mentioned in a memoir written by Daniel Thraps. Thraps served as a teacher, bell ringer and chaplain in Bergen from 1857-1876. He wrote a book about his work and the people he met, including Emmerentze, who he initially thought was Schwindt’s housekeeper:

“Peter Michael Blytt was born in 1823, son of Goldsmith Michael Blytt. His mother Emmerentze Arentz can hardly have belonged to the Bishop family, as she is not found in [Wilhelm] Lassen’s Pedigree [I, 1868].

Her father Samuel Arentz was a journeyman barber and a kind of Underwriter [Under Surgeon?] at Bergen Hospital († 1801). His father was Mads Arnesen [Arentsen] and was a labourer.”

She was the housekeeper of Brigadier Schwindt’ and was the innocent cause of the overthrow of his will. * 

Thraps then amends this section of his memoir with this footnote:

* “According to P. Blytts Memoirs, which I read on 26 December 1907, this is incorrect. She was as a child in Schwindt’s house and suffered greatly.”

Emmerentze’s childhood is also mentioned in the self-published memoirs of her son, Peter Michael Blytt. My genealogist Egil was able to read an online version of the memoir from the Norway library system, but he only translated a page for me. I suspect there is more and might have to buy a copy for myself.

On page 7 and 8, Blytt writes:

“Their eldest son Michael is my father. He was born on the 26th of November 1795, also learned the goldsmith’s trade and established himself as a master on the 1st of September 1818. He was married on the 26th of April 1819 to my mother Emmerentze Arentz, daughter of Samuel Arentz, assistant physician at Bergen Hospital, and wife Anna Christine Alm…

Before I go on to recount my memories of my own childhood, I must mention something about my parents, especially my mother’s childhood and youth.

When I was growing up and later she told me many times about it, and these stories were generally not very cheerful. From her childhood until well into her fifties, her life was an almost uninterrupted series of sad and sorrowful days, with only a few bright spots.

Here it is 

My Mother’s Story. 

My mother had been orphaned at the age of 9 years. She and her three brothers were placed with acquaintances of their deceased parents. Where the boys ended up, I do not remember with certainty, only that, according to my mother’s story, her brother, Didrik Bay Arentz, was apprenticed as a coppersmith. Mum herself went to the house of Doctor Monrad, owner of the Lion Pharmacy, who had been a friendly acquaintance of my grandfather. With Monrad, Mum was very well and was treated with love.”

Obviously, there is more to the story, but at the time, I was more interested in figuring out Didrich’s story, so I didn’t press for more on Emmerentze.

However, our tour with Bergen by Expert’s guide, Malfred, got me more interested in this extraordinary woman and her sad story. The biography I bought about Schwindt provided a lot more detail. As mentioned in her son’s memoirs, Emmerentze originally went to live with city medic and pharmacist Lars Monrad.

Bertelsen writes about the Monrads:

“They had several children of their own, including two daughters who were roughly the same age as her. It was a good home where you didn’t need to lack anything, she told her son, Peter Blytt, who includes the account in his memoirs. “She always referred to Monrads with a smile on her face,” he says.”

However, the Schwindts soon suggested that she come to live with them and her little brother.

“Monrad found it right to fulfill Schwindt’s wish; he believed that he could secure her future in a more comprehensive way than he himself could,” says the son in his memoirs. With their own children in the house, it was lively enough at Monrad’s even without foster children. “For her upbringing and future, Schwindt promised to care for her and to consider her as his own child.”

For Emerentze, the exchange still turned out to be a great disappointment, he says.”

About her education in the Schwindt household, Bertelsen writes:

“Just as diligently as Schwindt was in promoting schooling and education for some male foster children and students, he also seems to have neglected ensuring that Emerentze learned something that could be of future benefit to her, not to mention a livelihood. To learn to read and write, she had to manage on her own by practicing in her spare time, and by her little brother Ludvig Holberg giving her instructions that she could practice with. She never received a proper education, says the son.”

Bertelsen also relays Emmerentze’s impression of her days with Schwindt:

“Emerentze’s days were marked by “strict work and much coercion.” She was afraid of Schwindt, at least in the first few years. He could be irritable and quick-tempered. In the 1815 census, we also find that she is listed as “Girl,” not as daughter or foster daughter. Emerentze’s story to her son undeniably gives us the impression that, at least in the first years, she was more regarded and used as a maid and nurse than as the beloved daughter of the family that she had hoped to become.

She got out of bed already at three o’clock in the morning to have breakfast ready for Schwindt, who an hour later was to start his rounds to the patients in the city. According to Emerentze’s son, when Schwindt and his household moved to Kalfarveien 14, Emerentze got a bedroom in a drafty attic room where she wasn’t even allowed to use a light, and where Schwindt even had a skeleton hanging on one wall.”

Bertelsen goes on to cast some doubt on this story. Nevertheless, it does seem that she did not feel very loved in the Schwindt household, which she may have relayed to her son.

“However, there were some bright spots: Since Schwindt was a member of the Dramatic Society, Emerentze got to enjoy the occasional free theater performance. Otherwise, dance school was the only education Schwindt found reason to indulge her with, and it was also the only pleasure she had during her early youth. However, she doesn’t seem to have enjoyed it much either, except for the fact that it was perhaps where she met Michael Blytt, whom she later married.”

About that marriage. For a wedding gift, her foster father Schwindt gave Emmerentze 300 speciedalers to help her set up her new house, which was a very generous gift equivalent to around 71,533 kroner in today’s currency. The new couple settled in a house with a workshop at the corner of Strandgaten and Cort Piilsmuget in Bergen and had sons Peter Michael (b. 1823) and Ludvig Holberg (b. 1827).

When Schwindt died in December 1826, he left his entire estate to what Bertelsen calls “a universal heir.” He left nothing to any of his foster children, instead appointing Lars Paasche Holm as his “universal heir.”

Bertelsen writes about Emmerentze’s wedding gift:

“But the person who had been appointed as his universal heir just a few days before Schwindt’s death had found the amount as an entry in one of his accounting books and then considered it an unpaid loan. This led to the ruin of the small Blytt family. They had to abandon their house and home, and even their silversmith’s tools went with them. Law prevailed over morality.”

So basically, this Holm guy came after the Blytts, insisting that the gift had been a loan and sued them for repayment, basically bankrupting them. Holm took everything of value, including Blytt’s smithing tools. In response to the public shame and financial ruin, Emmerentze and Michael packed up and moved away from Bergen. Thraps notes that Blytt worked in Alta, Trondheim, Gothenburg and Kristiania [Oslo], where he died in 1839, at only 44 years old.

Meanwhile, poor Emmerentze would go on to live another 35 years longer than her husband, raising her two sons on her own and dying in 1874 at the age of 82. She also outlived her brothers, Mads (d. 1820s), Ludvig (d. 1836) and Didrich (d. 1857).

She did return to Bergen at some point (probably to live with her son, Peter Michael) and Thraps gives us a short note on how she supported herself after her husband died:

“Lived through financial hardship after 1829 and supported herself by working in private homes as a substitute housekeeper and waitressing at private parties, also worked as a matron at the hospital at Engen from 1839.”

Thraps, who was a chaplain, attended Emmerentze on her death bed, and wrote about the experience:

“Strangely enough, she was the only one who caused me to have to get up in the middle of the night – at 11 o’clock – but she was dead when I arrived. She was dead at once, but her son sent word to me with the hope that she might still be alive.”

The final note on this whole sad wedding gift/loan affair comes from Bertelsen:

“The 300 speciedalers were not a great blessing for the universal heir either. A few years later, on November 14, 1833, he drowned in the frog pond at Lille Kalfaret. It was said that it was a suicide. A nemesis goes through life, some would say.”

Malfred described it better: “Karma is a bitch.”

(Lille Kalfaret, by the way, was the name of Schwindt’s last house, which Lars Paasche Holm also inherited and moved into immediately.)

Bertelsen includes some additional insights from her son, who said about Emmerentze:

“It was a topic that mother [Emmerentze] would never get involved in. She always got nervous and hysterical when something like that was brought up. So deeply had the events of the past gripped her to her very core and so great was her loathing to think of the loss she had suffered… Upon Schwindt’s death, mother had asked for one of the several pictures there, which she believed, due to her relationship with the house, to be fully entitled to receive. But precisely because of this intimate relationship, the reported Holm had always said no to everything she could wish for in memory of Dr. Schwindt.”

So that is what we know of Emmerentze Arentz Blytt as of today. Not only was she treated poorly by her foster family — who didn’t educate her or arrange a marriage for her — but also by the heir to the estate. The only good thing her foster father Schwindt ever did for her turned into a curse.