Peter Christian Christoffersen Bolkan
Peter Christian Christoffersen was born on 10 June 1825 at Bolkangjerdet, a cottar's place under the farm Bolkan in Skatval, the northern parish of Stjørdal, about twenty miles east of Trondheim. He was baptised in the Stjørdal church on 7 August 1825. His father, Christoffer Olsen, was the husmann at Bolkangjerdet. A husmann was a cottar: a man who held a small plot on a farmer's land in return for labour days, with no title to the ground. His mother was Mali Nilsdatter. He had an elder brother, Ole, born at Bolkangjerdet about 1822, and a younger sister, Gurina, baptised in June 1831. His father died at Bolkan on 23 November 1837, when Peter Christian was twelve.
He was confirmed at Skatval on 4 October 1840, aged fifteen and a quarter. On 16 November 1848, in Værnes church at Stjørdal, Peter Christian Christophersen, a bachelor of Bolkgjerdet aged 23, married Anne Olsdatter, a girl of Myhr aged 26. Her father was Ole Andersen. The couple stayed on the Bolkan ground, and the parish clerk wrote their address a little differently each time a child came to the font: Bolkgjerdet in 1849, Bolkanmark in 1850, Bolkanplads in 1854 and 1857, Bolkaunet in 1860. Peter was a husmann at each baptism except the last, when he was written as an inderst, a lodger with no land at all.
Their children were Ole, born 19 January 1849; Christoffer, baptised on Christmas Day 1850, who did not live; Kristoffer, born 28 September 1854; Johan Martin, born 5 August 1857; Gustaf, born 25 April 1860; and Anne Petrine, born about 1863. By the census of 31 December 1865 the family had moved to Hvidhammermyren, a cottar's place on the Kvithammer farm in Skatval. Peter, 41, was a husmann with land. Anne was 43. The five surviving children were at home, and a servant girl, Helena Pedersdatter, 22, lived with them.
On 7 April 1866 the parish out-migration register recorded the whole family leaving for America: Peter Kristoffersen Hvidhammerplads, husmann, 41; his wife Ane Olsdatter, 43; Ole 17, Kristoffer 12, Johan Martin 9, Gustaf 6 and Anne Petrina 2. They were part of a stream. The same page lists a dozen other Stjørdal people bound for America that spring.
In America the family took the name of the place they had left, Bolkan, and Peter became Petter or Peter Bolkan. They settled first in Rock County, Wisconsin, near Orfordville, about twenty-five miles south of Madison, where they farmed. Within a few years they moved on to Brookfield Township in Worth County, Iowa, near Kensett, and the household of five grown children was counted there in 1880. The eldest son Ole married Mary E. Evarts at Scott County, Iowa, on 1 January 1881.
Peter died in Worth County on 12 August 1881, according to the Lutheran congregation's register, and was buried that year at the Elk Creek Lutheran church near Kensett. His stone gives 29 October 1881. He was 56. After his death his sons Ole, Christopher and Martin went on to the Dakota Territory, where each took land in Griggs and Traill Counties, and his widow Anne followed them to Griggs County, where she died in 1911.
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Cite: Heirology, "Peter Christian Christoffersen Bolkan (1825-1881)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/peter-christian-christoffersen-bolkan-1825-1881-02ffa7.