Anders Ellingsen Aspeholt
Anders Ellingsen was baptised at Hedalen on 25 June 1815. Hedalen is a side valley of Sør-Aurdal parish in Valdres, Norway. His father, Elling Andersen, owned the whole of the farm Aspeholt, and his mother was Ingri Iversdatter of the farm Nordbye. The clerks wrote his father's name Ellen, so Anders is Ellensen in the church books. Ellingsen is a patronymic: it says his father was called Elling. Aspeholt is the farm, and in the Norwegian way a man was known by the farm he lived on.
He was the second son of that name. An elder brother Anders had been baptised in February 1814 and buried that June. His father died in March 1825, when Anders was ten, and that October his mother married Ole Gundersen, who took over the farm. Anders grew up at Aspeholt with his sisters Karen and Sigri.
On 16 October 1837, at twenty-two, he married Anne Torkelsdatter of Landsenden, who was also twenty-two. Their daughter Ingri was born on 11 November 1838. At her baptism on 1 January 1839 her father is "gårdmann" at Aspegaard. A gårdmann held his own farm, unlike a cotter, who worked a plot on someone else's land. A second daughter, Anne, was born on 5 September 1840 and baptised on 11 October. Beside that entry the priest wrote "Moderen døde i barselseng": the mother died in childbed.
He was a widower of twenty-five with two small daughters. By the family memorials he married Marit Johnsdatter in 1841. Their son Elling, named for Anders's father, was born on 6 January 1842. More children followed, all baptised at Hedalen: John in June 1845, Anne in July 1849, Marit in June 1854, Kari in June 1856 and Sigrid, baptised at home in July 1860.
In 1861 the whole family left Hedalen. The parish's list of those who moved away that year enters them together, one after another: Anders of Aspeholt, forty-six; his wife Marit Johnsdatter; and the children Ingri, Anne, Ellen (Elling), John, Anne, Marit and Kari. The two eldest girls were Anne Torkelsdatter's daughters, now grown, and they went too. Sigrid, born the year before, is not on the list.
They came to Iowa County, Wisconsin, to the lead and farming country around Highland and Dodgeville, where Norwegians were taking up land. His son Elling was married and farming there by the early 1870s. Marit died near Highland in 1892 and Anders in 1900, at about eighty-five. Neither grave has a stone. Their memorials at Otter Creek Cemetery say only that "the church records indicate he is buried here".
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Cite: Heirology, "Anders Ellingsen Aspeholt (1815-1900)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/anders-ellingsen-aspeholt-1815-1900-2a0c9e.