The Mathias Jokela Mikkelsen Family in Norway

The Family of Mathias Jokela Mikkelsen and Emma Kristine Tiberg (the Editor's Mother's Birth Family), Vadsø, Finnmark County, Norway,
(1886 - 1900). After corresponding with her for over a year, Matti Jokela left Finland and went to Vadsø,

Norway, where he married Emma Tiberg; at that time he took Mikkelsen (son of Mikkel) as his Norwegian surname.

An entry in the Vadsø parish church register proclaims that Mathis [sic] Jokela (Mikkelsen) married Emma Kristine Tiberg on February 20, 1886, in Vadsø, Norway; that he was born in Kittilä, Finland, on 24 February 1860; and that she was born in Vadsø on 22 October 1859. Emma had celebrated her 26th birthday four months before the wedding, while Matti celebrated his 26th birthday four days after the wedding.

"Their home in Norway was a large frame house of fourteen spacious rooms and two large halls," Dona Renne Meland says in My Family History. "They owned the whole house, but occupied only the lower floor. The yard was very large, with a high wooden fence surrounding it, and a huge gate opening into the driveway."

The editor has, in his file, the above photograph of a house in Vadsø. He is uncertain, however, whether it is the house of which Dona speaks above.

Matti "was a tailor by trade... Emma, a dress- maker," Dona says. "My grandmother tells of the many nights during the summer, that the two of them would sew [by the light of the midnight sun] all through the night finishing garments that grandfather had promised for a certain time."

The Editor's Uncle Fred
"Isaac Magnus Jokela Mickelsen, now known as Fred I. Mickelsen... was born on November 30, 1886 [in Vadsø]," Emma Jokela Mickelsen Kumma said in an affidavit subscribed and sworn to in Minneapolis on January 22, 1941.

The Editor's Aunt Mary
The Vadsø church register for 1885-1895 states that Marie Elisabeth, a daughter, was born in Vadsø on April 16, 1888, to Mathias Mikkelsen and Emma Kristine Tiberg. Marie was baptized on August 26, 1888.

The Editor's Aunt Jo
"Johanna (or Hannah) Jokela Mickelsen Carley... was born on July 21, 1890 [in Vadsø]," her mother Emma said in an affidavit 51 years later in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Emma Kristine Jokela Mikkelsen gave birth to a son, Fredrick, who died soon thereafter, probably in 1892.

The Editor's Mother
"Magnhild Jokela Mickelsen Renne [a daughter]... was born November 19, 1895 [in Vadsø]," Emma swore in 1941. A copy of the Vadsø parish church register which was obtained nine years later, in 1950, revealed that Magnhild "Mikkelsen" was actually born on November 17, 1894, and she was baptized on 24 March 1895.

Emma's father Isak Pehrsen Tiberg died at age 67, in 1895, in Vadsø.

The Editor's Uncle Andy
"Andreas Jokela Mickelsen... was born August 4, 1897 [in Vadsø]," Emma stated in an affidavit prepared nearly 44 years later.

Emma holding Magnhild shortly after the birth of Andreas

Andreas (now called Andrew) returned in 1950 with his wife Mary to the scene of his birth. In her book The Northern Light, Mary reports, "Andreas and Fru Lilleng came out, and were overjoyed to see Emma Tiberg's son, the little two-year-old Andreas, now grown to manhood! The fru bustled about at once, making open-faced sandwiches and coffee, while her husband and we chatted in the parlor about Emma's childhood home, which was still standing, but Your home was bombed! Ach, I'll never forget those [World War II] days; it's a wonder we didn't blow up ourselves.

"Old Andreas Lilleng, dressed in knee-length boots and visored captain's cap, as all Norskies, offered to take us, while his wife was preparing lunch, to the Tiberg home and to the ruins of what was the Parson's home in infancy.

"Only a gaping hole and the twisted ornamental railing and broken front steps were left of the Parson's childhood home... Every second lot held a yawning chasm where once quiet homes had stood."

Mathias Jokela Mikkelsen marked his 40th birthday on January 22, 1900. "...[He] was a very religious man," Dona says, "and he loved to sing hymns. He had a good voice and my mother says she can still see him pacing back and forth in the rooms, with his hands behind his back, and singing old Lutheran hymns. On Sunday morning all the children were dressed up, and had to sit in the living room while their father read the Bible."

"In 1900," Dona says Matti and Emma Mickelsen, "... decided to migrate to America because they believed that it was a land of more opportunity for their children..."

"Matte left Norway because of the climate," Eila told Paul. "[The] family came from Vadsø to Rovaniemi by... reindeer sleighs... to stop at his brother's house... on the riverbank -- it is now a library..."

"...[Matti, Emma and their five children] traveled to the port of embarkation by river," Eila told Paul. "What caused them to go while others stayed?" Paul asked in his diary.

"[They] traveled to Trondheim, where they stayed for two weeks before boarding a boat for Liverpool." Dona says, "The route they took from Liverpool to Quebec was so far north that the boat was ice bound for eleven days on the Atlantic ocean. One night they encountered a very bad storm, and the next morning [Emma] found that she had lost one of the new shoes she had bought just before leaving. This was her only pair of shoes, and she never found it so she landed on new soil, at Quebec, in a pair of rubbers. The first thing she did was to purchase a pair of shoes in Quebec.

"They arrived in Franklin, Minnesota, on July 16, 1900, after having spent a long, weary month traveling." Dona says, "... They stayed in Franklin [on the farm of Mikko and Lotta Jokela] the rest of that summer..."