The Ofstedahls were in Norway’s Eskingadalen Valley for generations - and lived at the Ovstedal farm shown here before they came to America in the 1870’s. There are many hundreds of descendants across the United States and Canada.
The story of the Ofstedahls spans centuries - and two continents.
Eksingadalen Valley.
In a valley between the Sognfjord and Voss - north east of Bergen in Norway - our family lived on the farms of Lavik, Flateval, Vetleford and others for centuries. The “Mo Bygdebok”, a local history of these farms, traces some ancestors back into the 1600’s. The photo above is of a celebration for the completion of the first half of the road through the valley, held in Flatekval ca 1890. While our family had left a few years earlier, we are probably related to many people in this photo.
Photo Credit: Fylkesarkivet i Vestland.
The Ovstedal Farm.
Anders and Agate moved to the Ovstedal farm months before my great-grandfather John Ofstedahl was born in 1857. We imagine a long history of the Ofstedahls - but this was the family name for just twenty years before they immigrated to America. The Norwegian naming system always attached the name of the farm where the family resided as the surname. Anders was born and raised on the Flatekval farm, married Agate from the adoining Lavik farm, bought a farm at Meland after his marriage, and then bought a farm at Ovstedal - where they lived until they immigrated to America. He used each farm name as his surname when living at that farm.
Life in America.
In the 1870’s, one by one and two by two the Ofstedahls and some of their Lavik relatives emigrated by ship from Norway to North America. Seven Ofstedahl siblings arrived as well as their parents - using different spellings of the family name, Ofstedal, Oefstedal and Ofstedahl. They settled in Norwegian settlements in Goodhue County, Minnesota. In the 1880’s the parents and each child moved to the Red River Valley in Minnesota and to parts of the Dakota Territory. I have written a history of each sibling, which will have its own page. The links above and below can get you directly to each family member. Above is Simon Ofstedal and his family ca 1897, taken in Fertile, Minnesota.
This page is the introduction to different website pages that tell the Ofstedahl part of the story of our Norwegian Ancestry . . .
Below, I explain how I divided the information in the Ofstedahl section. But first, here are the links to the pages to go immediately to each subject:
The stories of each of Anders and Agate’s seven children, starting with my own ancestor John Ofstedahl:
The Rev. John Ofstedahl and Anna Markuson, Part One - through 1908
The Rev. John Ofstedahl and Anna Markuson Part Two - through Anna’s death in 1948
The Ofstedahl Brothers - Carl, Gerhard, and Elmer - in World War I
Bernice Ofstedahl Connolly Oral History, with images added
Ofstedahl family postcards - postcards from the Carl Ofstedahl family
Andrew (Anders) Ofstedahl and Maria Johnson Ofstedahl
The Rev. Nils Ofstedahl and Mathilda Lunde - Part One
The Rev. Andreas Oefstedal and Matilda Dinah Bronson and Matilda Markuson
Dorothy Ofstedal and Gullik Moen, with sections of each of their children
Anna Ofstedal and Mathias Gronvold - Part One - through the lives of Anna and Mathias
Anna Ofstedal and Marthia Gronvold - Part Two - the lives of their children
My grandfather Carl Ofstedahl was entirely of Norwegian ancestry. His father’s mother was a Lavik, his mother was a Markuson, and his grandmother was a Reppen. The Ofstedahls and the Laviks were from the Eksingadalen Valley, and the Markusons and the Reppens were from the Sognfjord area near Balestrand - not all that far north from Eksingadalen. There is a separate section on this website for the Lavik family, which is fairly complete at the time of the website launch. It is hoped that someday there will be sections for the Markusons and the Reppens.
The Ofstedal ancestry is divided into a number of pages on this site, and can be accessed below the Ofstedahl heading at the top of each page - by clicking on Ofstedahl and selecting one of the pages shown below. It can also be accessed by clicking on the links just above - where each page on the Ofstedahls is listed.
Trying to decide how to present the Ofstedal story was a challenge, and I decided to have a section for each member of the immigrant Ofstedal family - Anders and Agate, and the seven of their children who lived to adulthood and all immigrated to America. The opening page for Anders and Agate begins with a history of the Ofstedal ancestry in Norway.
There is a page for each of their seven children - Simon, Anders (Andrew), Nils, Andreas, John, Dorothy and Anna - which has the details about their families and pictures and records about their lives. There was so much information about John, Nils, and Anna and their families, that I had to add a second page on each to make the page size manageable.
I have photos of all of the Ofstedahl siblings but Dorothy and Anna, and I expanded on those sections with details on the lives of their children. It is the culmination of many years of personal research and work with other family members. I am always interested in additions and corrections. I am particularly interested in any old family photographs that are not already posted on this site. If descendants will grant permission, I would post additional photos.
I have also posted a few additional pages on my grandfather’s family - a page on Elmer, Carl, and Gerhard’s service in World War I; a page with the oral history recording I did with Bernice Ofstedahl Connolly (John’s granddaughter) with a few images that speak to what she was talking about, and a fun page of “Ofstedahl postcards”, old postcards sent by the family - and hopefully it will spur other post cards to emerge! I hope to do a few additional pages - at least on the Carl Ofstedahl family in South Dakota and California - but I have not gotten to them yet. I am interested in your feedback and any additions or corrections you might help with. I hope you enjoy this immigrant family’s history.
