♂Niels Jensen

Niels Jensen (dates unknown) is named in family trees as the father of Christine Marie Bossen (1829–1911), who was born at Aventoft in the Duchy of Slesvig^W, then under the Danish crown and since 1920 in Germany. He was the third great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Christine Marie Bossen (1829–1911).

What is known

Family trees give his birth as 6 April 1801 at Aventoft, and his wife as Anne Jensdr (1806–1892), also of Aventoft. The index of Danish baptisms holds only one Niels Jensen baptized on 6 April 1801, at Nørholm near Aalborg in North Jutland, the son of Jens Laursen and Kiersten Nielsdr. That parish lies some 250 kilometres north of Aventoft, and nothing connects that child to Aventoft, so the date is unproven. His parents are not known, and no date of death is recorded for him.

Notes

The question of the parentage

No record of his own has been found, and his fatherhood rests on compiled material rather than on a parish register. The sources attached to it are American publications and another family tree, none of which cites a Danish record. The daughter’s surname is itself a question. Under the Danish naming custom a daughter of Niels Jensen would ordinarily have been called Nielsdatter, not Bossen. Fixed family names were also in use in Slesvig by then, however, and Bossen households are found in Aventoft in the census of 1803. The 1840 census of Aventoft and a transcription of the 1845 census record a fisherman, Boh Christian Bossen, and his wife Christina Andresen, with a daughter Christina Bossen aged 10 and 15, the age Christine Marie would have been. That household offers a second possible parentage, and neither is confirmed by a record. The Aventoft parish registers, which would hold that baptism and name her father, passed into German custody with the 1920 border change. They are not among the Danish national archive’s online holdings.