|
|
|
Home Page
| The Fadnes Farm In recorded history, the Fadnes farm goes back at least to the year 1317, when probate of the estate of Sigurd Tanne, and his first wife Gudrid, was settled for 8 månadsmatobol ( an old taxation unit equal to three pounds of butter per unit of land). The estate was left to their children Bjarne and Gunnhild, and Bjarne became the owner of the farm. At that time the farm was known as Faranes (Fadnes), and has undergone various name changes through the centuries: Fonnenes 1563, Fandenes 1610, Fannenes 1611, Fanness 1630, Fandnes 1695, and Fannes in 1723. The Norwegian 1801 census gives it as Fannæs. In 1865 it was Fadnæs, the name Ole Hendrickson used when he emigrated in 1846,which, in pronunciation, sounds like Fadnes. Today, it is called Fadnes. The origin of the name is uncertain, although one thought is that it derives from the combination of the old Gothic word fada, meaning enclosure, and the Norwegian word nes, meaning headland, or cape, i.e., an "enclosed headland". Right or wrong, it's an apt name for a farm situated in a valley at the end of a lake, with mountains rising all around it. In June 2001 Audrey and I visited the farm, and took a picture of it from across the lake. There are three family residences at the old homestead area, although most of them are of modern construction, and all buildings on the site where Ole had once lived have been razed. The farm had been divided into three sub-farms (bruk) and Ole had owned bruk 3. The present owner of farm 1 is, of course, a Fadnes; Jarle Fadnes. The others are Brunborgs, the farm to which Knut Hendrickson Fadnes moved when he married. We visited with Laila Brunborg, who spoke quite good English, and she showed us a large picture of an aerial view of the farm taken around 1950, which I photographed. The buildings in the triangular section, between the road and the driveway, were part of Farm three, and are no longer there. The earliest direct ancestor, of whom I have record, was Rasmus Nilsson, born 1629, of the Tyssen farm. In 1709 his son Ole Rasmussen Tyssen (b 1684) married Marita Askjelsdatter, whose father, Askjel Arneson Fadnes, owned the Fadnes farm. That farm (gaard) was divided into three sub-farms (bruk) and in 1710, Ole Rasmussen Fadnes, and his wife Marita, got bruk number (bnr) 3. Bruk 3 was passed from Ole to his son Askjel Olson in 1742. Askjel died in 1748 and the farm passed to his brother Henrik Olson. Henrik deeded the farm to his son Ola Henrikson in 1770. It then passed to his son Henrik Olson in 1801, and thence, in 1842, to his son Ole Henrikson, my gr-gr-grandfather. Ole sold the farm in 1846 when he emigrated to America. So, my paternal ancestors owned the farm, by direct descendency, from 1710 to 1846. I am a Fadness by association with a farm by that name (and its variants), but my male ancestors have been Nilsson, Rasmussen, Olson and Hendrickson.
|