Ancestry Magazine

Børge helped me by re-searching a few of my elusive ancestors with, unfortunately, little more success than I’d had. Then, almost as an aside, Børge asked me if I knew about Kure’s farm index. I told him I’d never heard of it.

I knew that farms were traditionally handed down through generations of the same family in Denmark, but what I didn’t know was that a man named Kure made it his life’s work to index all of the farms on Bornholm. Included in Kure’s index were the names of people, parishes, farms, and how and when farms changed hands over the years, as well as vital dates, places, and relationships associated with the families who lived on the farms.

Børge scanned and sent me pages from the farm index of the farms I was interested in—about 110 in all. Each page either listed my own ancestors or showed that the people on that farm weren’t members of my family. Occasionally the list has also provided me with two or four more generations on some of my other lines.

Kure’s farm index hasn’t been microfilmed or added to any other collection; in fact, there are only two existing copies of the record—one in Copenhagen and one on Born-holm. And it’s nothing to look at, just a typed manuscript, albeit a very large one, with one carbon copy. It’s something I may have never known about had Børge not told me, but it has turned into an invaluable resource in my family history research ever since.

In the past ten years, I’ve made a number of inquiries on bulletin boards, via e-mails, and on websites. Because of these, I’ve found an index of rural probate records and extracts from those probates, listings of farm names and numbers by parish, a large database based on one of my surnames, other databases containing information about my ancestors (from no fewer than four prolific researchers), and English translations from Danish family histories.

Each of these records has something in common: they are small collections compiled by individuals. While the composite of these secondary
sources may look like a little shack compared to a large repository, to me, they comprise a mansion that, ten years later, I am still exploring with delight.

My experience with neighborly family historians has taught me the importance of keeping in touch with other genealogists whose interests connect to mine. Today I have a list of about twenty Danish hobbyists I’ve yet to meet face-to-face. Some of them have volunteered to translate Danish to English, others to perform searches. And they’ve all helped me in any number of unique ways, just because we share the same genealogical neighborhood.

None of us is in this alone. For every ancestor we seek, someone else somewhere else has probably already been down that road, taken an alternate route, or even looked at the house next door. Just because you’re given advice, that doesn’t mean you have to take it. But it never hurts to go down that road, open the door, and have a look around. Especially if you like the location.