♂Jens Petersen

Jens Petersen (about 1736 – buried 2 December 1798) was the village smith of Fidde, a pair of hamlets in Henne parish on the west coast of Jutland, and the father of ten children, among them a son baptised Bakken, a rare man’s name of the neighbouring coastal parishes. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Laust Jensen (1783–1868).

Life

The Danish records of his own parish call him Jens Pedersen; the German-language registers of Schleswig, where his son later settled, spell it Petersen. Either way the surname is a patronymic, marking him as a son of Peder. His parents and birthplace are not known. He was 50 at the census of 1787 and 62 at his burial, so he was born about 1736. The parish clerk seldom troubled with his surname at all: in the baptisms of his children he is simply “Jens Smed”, Jens the smith.

He was betrothed to Mette Maria Andersdatter on 4 October 1764, the betrothal being held at Kløvgaard, a farm in the parish, and they married at Henne on 6 November. Their first child, Else Maria, was baptized in October 1766, followed by Peder in November 1768 and Marine in June 1772. Marine died at seven months and was buried in January 1773. That year the parish buried seventy-two people, where a usual year saw ten to twenty, and most of those who died in its first weeks were small children; the register does not say what killed them. The name was given again to a daughter born in 1777. In the baptisms of 1766 to 1772 the family is entered at Over-Fidde, and in the census of 1787 at Neder-Fidde, the neighboring hamlet; the records do not show whether they moved or whether the clerk used the names loosely.

In 1787 he was living at Nederfidde as a Boelsmand og Smed, the holder of a small farm (a bol) and the smith, with his wife and six children, the eldest 13. The youngest, baptized in March 1787, was named Bakken. Bakken was a man’s name of the coast just north of Henne, around Billum, Janderup and Ho, and the same name was given to two sons of Laust Jensen and Marine Andersdatter of Kløvgaard in 1778 and 1779; Marine Andersdatter carried the new Bakken to his baptism, as she had carried Else Maria in 1766. A last child, Laust, was baptized at Henne on 25 April 1790, with his father entered as “Jens Pedersen Smed”. The family lost a daughter, Kirsten Marie, in July 1791; the register calls her “Jens Smed’s daughter” and gives her age as seven and a half.

He was buried at Henne on the first Sunday in Advent, 2 December 1798, recorded as Jens Pedersen of Nederfidde, aged 62. His widow stayed on at Nederfidde until her death in 1821. When their son Laust married in Schleswig in 1815, the register named his parents as Jens Petersen and Metta née Andresen; his burial in 1868 described them both as “long deceased”.