Ancestor of the Day for 11 July: very fittingly, it’s 2nd great grandmother Berit Jonsdatter Lommen, b 01 Mar 1816 in Vestre Slidre, Valders Norway and d 11 Jul 1894 in rural Barrett, MN and is buried at the cemetery at Immanuel Lutheran Church. She married Knud Knudsen Lee (yesterday’s AotD) on 08 Dec 1844 in Norway, and emigrated with him and their children in 1857.
According to a bio written for the Lommen Family History in the early/mid 1960s, the voyage took 13 weeks on a sailing ship, they landed in Quebec and made their way to Spring Grove, Minnesota where some of her brothers had emitrated earlier. In 1870, after Knud’s death, she moved with her daughters, son, and stepson to Grant County where homestead land was available and experienced “the joys and hardhips of pioneer life”.
Berit’s signature and writing in a book she brought from Norway.
The Lee Homestead from 1870. Approx .75 mi west of the Blixrud homestead.
She died at her home, age 78. But where was home? Was it the farmstead west of her daughter and son-in-law Jøren and Jens Blixrud, listed on the 1890 Lien Township plat map as belonging to her son John K Lee, and next to land owned by her stepson Ole K Alvstad? It was referred to as “the Lee place” when I was growing up but the home was abandoned by the time I came along so I never associated it with family. It also never dawned on me that all those farms were homesteaded by siblings.
Berit Jonsdatter Lommen Lee