Ancestors

Jens Krast Simonsen

Jens Kraft Simonsen was baptized at Risør on 11 August 1784. The town church book of those years names only fathers, and his entry reads: "d. 11 Augusti døbt Jens Kraft. Faderen Sr. Niels Simonsøn." His father was Niels Simonsen, a merchant of Havnegaden, the harbour street of Østre Risør. His godparents were people with titles, a Madame, a Herr and a Jomfru among them.

His mother is not named. In 1801 he was seventeen and already at sea, and he was entered in his father's house as the householder's child, not as the child of Niels's wife at the time, Christine Kraft, who was in her first marriage. Yet the boy carried the name Kraft. A Johan Kraft stood godfather at a Risør baptism in November 1783, so Krafts were in the town. Only Niels Simonsen's marriage entries would settle who his mother was.

He married Petrea Halvordine Tønder, the Kragerø magistrate's daughter, at Kragerø on 20 October 1809. The register calls him a Maanedslieutenant, a monthly lieutenant, from Østre Risør. Their son Niels Hendrich was baptized in Risør church in January 1813, and the scanned page writes the father as Jens Krast Simonsen. He appears again as father of the groom on his son's 1844 marriage record in Idd.

After the war he commanded ships, and in 1817 he came home from Dublin. He ended as lodsoldermand of Risør, the chief of the town's pilots, and died in office between Christmas 1839 and March 1840.

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Cite: Heirology, "Jens Krast Simonsen (b. 1784)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jens-krast-simonsen-1784-df5897.