Bjørn is the sixth generation after Peder and Gjertrud Madsvågen. For many years, he has wondered what became of those who traveled to America, where they live, how many there are, and what they look like.
-I think I have spent 14 years creating this book, working diligently on weekends, evenings, and holidays. The family tree consists of 380 pages and contains about 570 photos of family members, listing over 2,600 names, of which 1,937 are people living in the United States.
Gjertrud and Peder were married in Sletta Church in northern Frøya, where all of their children were also baptized and confirmed. The eldest of the children, Anne Martha Nesset returned to Norway after a few years, leaving behind a large family, most of whom lived in Orkdal and Trondheim. Their second child, Jensine, married Ole Hellesvig. They remained in America and left behind a large number of descendants, all of whom live in the US and still go by the name Hellesvig. Torger Waagen died young, leaving behind a small family, all of whom live in the US. Lina, or Petrolina as she was christened, married Johan ”Snekkern” Andersen from Hemne. They lived at Valen on Norddyrøy on Frøya. He was a carpenter and was involved in building Sletta Church, among other things. Since they were newlyweds and Johan had a good job, they chose to stay on Frøya. They had six children. Five of them, including Johan, died in the Spanish flu epidemic in the mid-1920s. Gusta Olsen, Bjørn's great-grandmother, was the only one of the siblings to survive. The youngest, Johan Jørgen Waagen, left behind a large family, all of whom live in in the United States. They still call themselves Waagen, after Madsvågen.
”I started working on this book in the early 1990s, after spending a lot of time translating letters to and from relatives in America for my grandmother, Ingrid Langø, on Frøya. I gradually took over many of her ”friends,' and new people kept joining. I quickly discovered that the Americans were proud of their Norwegian roots and were more than willing to send me family trees and photos of their relatives, says Boge.
– Gradually, the job was to put this together, systematize text and images, and constantly obtain confirmation that the various family compositions were correct. Everything changed after the advent of the Internet, and especially Facebook. On one occasion, I received a reply to an email I sent to Seattle, WA, after only 16 seconds. Previously, such a response could take over a month.
The entire book is set in World, and images are pasted in one by one where they belong.
I need to have total control and cannot rely on a genealogy program when I am doing this. There are still some gaps where I know little about certain individuals, but for the most part this is a complete overview of a strong-willed mother who took four of her four children, some in-laws, and grandchildren and moved to America in an attempt to secure a better life for herself and her family.
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