Not all of the children were easy to find and/or research. We knew from Grandma's scrapbook that Grandpa had a sister, Nora (Leanora) and two brothers, Ivan and Hjalmar. Some family members knew about Peder, but the other children were unknown to us.
Also included in the scrapbook of Grandma's concerning Grandpa's family were two women - Eugenie and Astrid. We had no idea where they fit in. More on that later, along with a few pics that surprised me when they were finally identified and placed into the family tree.
I remember starting my research on familysearch for the children. I found Grandpa easily.....and Nora. The revelation came when I discovered that Andreas and Gustava were married under the surnames of Olsen and Olofsdotter. This fact led to the surprise of two children no one knew about - Karl and Olga, the eldest of the Bjerkmann children.
Karl was the oldest child of Andreas and Gustava, born about a year before they married and Olga was born about a year later. The other surprise was Bredine Olivia. I had already added Bredine Ottila as Eugenie when I ran across her in the birth records, as at that time I thought Eugenie was a sister of Hilmar's. I knew that when you get two children in the same family with the same first name, it usually means that the first same-named child had died, so searching the death records I had discovered not only had Bredine Olivia died almost 10 months after she was born. of bronchitis, but I also found that Bredine Ottila died a little over a year after she was born, too. So, now it was back to finding out who Eugenie was and where she fit into the family. As I mentioned previously, more on Eugenie later.
I eventually traced nine children to Andreas and Gustava and found all of their birth records. The challenge that now laid ahead was finding out what happened to all except the two Bredines, Grandpa and Aunt Nora.
