Finding out where my paternal grandfather had emigrated from in Norway inevitably led to curiosity about my grandmother. What followed was certainly not as exciting as the trip to Melhus, but may be of interest.

I knew considerably less about my Grandma Andersen than I did my grandfather. She had come to Tacoma from a small place called Alpha which was further south in Washington State. Her maiden name was Mathison, she was born in North Dakota and the family was Norwegian. And she was deathly afraid of thunder! Not much to go on.

A search of the Alpha census records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. revealed the names of my great-grandparents, and the information that they were both born in Norway. Mathison is a patronymic, however, and merely means 'son of Mathias.' While in Norway, families might change surnames each generation so it virtually impossible to trace a family's history by following the surname. And I had no idea what area of Norway they had come from or what port they might have used to leave the country. But a chance question that I asked my Dad led to an enormous clue. "There was a family that lived on Sixth Avenue (in Tacoma) that I remember we visited a couple of times. Their last name was Renaamo and they had a grown son named Seymour. Who were they?" Dad replied that they were cousins of my grandmother.

The lack of -sen or -son on the end clearly meant the name was not a patronymic. Perhaps it was a farm name? If I could find out where the cousins came from it seemed reasonable to assume that my great-grandparents came from somewhere nearby. I knew of an Internet ListServ that was dedicated to Norwegian genealogy research, although I had never used it. It seemed like it might be worth a try, however, so I logged on and asked "Does anyone know of a farm in Norway with the name Renaamo?"

A day or so later Linda Bennett, an American woman now living in Tromsø, Norway, responded that there was a farm named Reinaamoen in an area called Hemnes and asking for more infomation about the family. I responded with the names and birthdates of my great-grandparents. Two or three days later there was another response, this one beginning "Hold onto your socks, we're related!!!"

As the story eventually unfolded, it turned out that Linda Bennett is a Mormon, and has been researching her Norwegian ancestors. By the time she read my query she had amassed a huge data base of information on hundreds of people, and recognized that the names I gave her seemed familiar. Sure enough, she checked her data and found that she is descended from my Renaamo cousins as well as from my great-grandparents, both of them! It seems that my great-grandparents were second cousins, once removed!

Soon I received volumes of information from her genealogy database, and that information has been incorporated into my database as well. Given the information she supplied, it was not too difficult to find the ship they traveled to America on, the location of the family farm in the Dakota Territory (it was not yet a state when they arrived) and all the rest of the information that makes up the Mathison story on this website. At right, for example, is a page from a search of the Digital Archive, in Norway, showing the family members in Richland County, Dakota Territory.

The website even turned out to help get additional information. A woman in the Midwest had been helping a man in Norway research his wife's ancestry! She saw this website and recognized the Mathison and Renaamo names as ones the man, Carl-Anders Olsson, was researching. She notified him, he contacted me, and eventually sent me several photographs, including the one on the Mathison page that shows my Dad, my grandfather, my great-grandfather and two of the Renaamo family.

Both Linda Bennett and Carl-Anders Olsson are heavily into Norwegian genealogy research and have interesting websites. Linda's first website is mostly a personal one, while she also has a site that highlights Tromsø, the city where she lives. Carl-Anders' website has a very complete history of the Reinåmoen farm, including all those who have lived there, as well as several pictures, including two of Seymour Renaamo!

The picture that Carl-Anders sent me, showing my great grandfather, was the first I had ever seen of him, and let me identify another in a batch of photos I had gotten from Mom and Dad. That, in turn, let me identify an old photo of my great grandmother. So, the question I asked my Dad, and that one query on an Internet ListServ, turned out to be the keys that opened up all the information I have found on the Mathison family.

- Jerry Andersen