Family Reunion: Jensen
Going four generations back to find another line
This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first Jensen - the maternal grandmother of my wife’s maternal grandmother.
Lena Marie Dagmar Jensen - 10 Sep 1874 - 04 Jan 1952
Lena was born in Chicago to Danish immigrants, Hans Jensen (1846–1909) and Anna Nielsen (1846–1935). Lena’s generation was the first to use “Jensen” as a surname; Hans was named using the traditional patronymic, so his father was Jens Hansen, son of Hans Pedersen… and so on.
It is interesting to note that Lena’s mother, Anna, was recorded as “Anna Neilsen” - and that her father was Niels Nielsen, born in 1814. This suggests that her father had decided to use “Nielsen” as a surname, rather than continue the traditional use of a patronymic; otherwise, Anna would have been recorded as “Anna Neilsdotter”.
Lena’s parents were born in two villages on the island of Funen, about 15 miles north of the city of Odense. Anna was from Uggerslev (shown on the map) and Hans was from Nørup, about a mile east of Uggerslev. They were married about 1870, and emigrated to the United States at about the same time - I don’t have the marriage or immigration records to clarify whether they were married in Denmark or the U.S.
Hans and Anna both left family behind in Denmark, though I have not been able to determine how many Danish cousins Lean might have known. Anna’s brother, Niels Christian Nielsen, died in Odense in 1915; he was married, and had at least five children, all born after Anna and Hans emigrated. Hans had a sister and two brothers, also.
Lena was born in Chicago, but it’s not clear whether her parents lived there or if they had already settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Either way, Lena’s brother, August, was born in Council Bluffs on 18 Aug 1876 - and her sisters were all born there, as well. Hans supported his family by working as a sign painter. He and Anna had four more daughters and raised them in Council Bluffs.
As you may recall from our earlier post, Family Reunion: Thompson/Thomsen, Lena married another Danish immigrant, Thomas Christian (Thomsen) Thompson (1876 - 1951). Their three daughters only had one male cousin with the surname Jensen - the son of Lena’s brother, Folmer August Jensen (1909–1994). Folmer had three daughters and one son, and he took his family to Missouri at some point.
Two of Lena’s sisters - Julia and Constance - never married or had children. Another sister, Monica, married Morris (or Maurice) Peterson and had two sons and five daughters. Their sister Laura married a man named Henry Jessen - which looks a lot like Jensen if you’re not careful - and they had two sons.
This means that while there are a fair number of people who belong to Lena’s family, very few of them used the surname “Jensen.” That means that if you want to track down cousins related through Lena, you can’t search by surname - and if you’re looking for DNA results, you will have to do a lot of paper research to figure out who is who.
This family needs a lot of attention on WikiTree, so hopefully by the time you read this, I will have had a chance to add some of the research I have done to Lena’s profile and to her immediate family. As always, if you recognize any of these folks, drop a note or leave a comment.
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