The Holm WEB-site      

Author: Leif Holm, NO-7520 Hegra

The day my uncle Trygve celebrated his 90th birthday, I became a genealogist. On a hobby level, I should haste to add. What happened was that during his birthday party some old pictures and albums were taken out from cupboards and drawers. Among these were some old photos of Trygve's uncle Karl Oskar Petersen Holm, who in 1903 left poverty and need in Levanger with his wife and two young sons and set out for America. During the years after they settled in North Dakota, Karl Oskar and his wife Martine had 4 more children. There was regular contact by letters between Karl Oskar and his siblings in Norway, particularly with his brother (my grandfather) August Martin, and many photos were exchanged. But then Karl Oskar died suddenly towards the end of 1937, and the contact with Norway was after that more or less cut off. Long and difficult years of the second world war came, with an almost total blockade and a continuous struggle to survive. After peace was establish in 1945 there was probably put more priority on re-establishing a living here at home instead of searching for relatives in America, who at the time had become very distant. August Martin - who was the one who had taken care of most of the correspondence with the family in America - died shortly before the war came to an end, and with him gone there were actually no one to follow up.

Anyway, there was one particular picture of the American Holm family that Trygve was studying for a long while, and it was at this moment I overheard the following statement: "I wish I had known what happened to my cousins in America, but I guess it is impossible to trace them now such a long time after we lost contact with them". I didn't say anything there and then, but made up my mind to at least make an attempt at tracing the descendants of Karl Oskar and Martine. This turned quickly into quite a comprehensive job, but without going into the details of my research: it was with great satisfaction I could exclaim "Bingo"! some 9 months later. On Dec. 30, 1999 I had managed to locate the first 3 of my second cousins, all living in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. During the next couple of weeks more of the American Holms popped up, and learning that two of Trygve's cousins, 88 years old Myrtle and 96 years old Emma were still living, was a very emotional experience.

There is one person in America to whom I owe a lot of thanks for making my research come to a successful conclusion: Julia Embree, Library Director of Nora Sparks Warren Library, Pauls Valley. She was the one who responded to my request on http://cgi.rootsweb.com, and it was her alertness that finally made a reunion of the Norwegian and American Holms possible.

In the process of tracing the American Holms I also caught an interest for our common ancestors, and my relatives generally, for the people I never met and hardly ever heard of. And before I knew it I was busy putting in place the bits of a puzzle that got more exciting every day. I had got myself involved in another absorbing hobby!

I have currently more than 1000 names in my genealogy database, ant it is still growing. The Holm name is, however, a small a mystery. It is possible to trace it back to my GGG-grandfather Bertel Hansen Holm, born abt. 1788, but so far I haven't been able to identify any of his ancestors. But other lines of my ancestry are equally exciting. With invaluable help from other an more professional genealogists than myself I have been able to follow my mother's ancestors a long way back. A lot of drama has occurred there!