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Mary (Maria Berthea) Knutson

A couple of weeks ago I was attempting to find some documentation to verify the Finnestad family tree going back to 1390. Until I have located records to confirm our lineage back to 1390, such as parish documents, etc, I'm skeptical as to whether I was on the right track.

In any event, I stumbled upon a Norwegian website that mentioned Ove Olson, who would have been Ole Olson Finnestad's great grandfather. Ove would be my great great great great great great grandfather.

I contacted the owner of the website about a couple of things and also to see if they could assist me in finding information about Ole and Mari Finnestad's eldest daughter, Elizabeth. Incredibly, what I received in response was a PDF file that mentioned the parish where Elizabeth and husband Ole Andreas Knutson had moved sometime prior to the birth of their daughter, Mary in 1867.

I have posted previously about Mary, who had married Stephen Olson and a few postings about their descendants, but I did not know where Mary was born, nor had I located the parish records. So with this new information, I scanned the parish records and was able to find 2 more of Elizabeth and Ole Andreas Knutson's children. As of this writing, I've located the names of 9 of their 10 children.

Here is the official parish record from the St Petri church of Stavanger, Norway for the christening (entry #180) of Mary (Maria) Berthea Knutson. Maria Berthea Knutson was born May 17, 1867 and baptized June 10, 1867.




Here is the copy of the parish record from Stavanger, Norway for her (entry #172) christening.



The great thing about having both an official and a copy of the Norwegian parish records is to confirm not only illegible handwriting, but that you have the right person. One version may seem possible, but the other helps nail it.

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