I find myself of late in the enviable position of finding and receiving information about our family history faster than I can analyze it and write it up. Rather than sit on this information until I have a chance to write about it, I’ll share it with you now and then I’ll circle back at a later date to look into it in more detail.

For today’s post I’d like to share a document that my cousin Anne sent along last week. It’s a transcription of the diary of Sever Severson’s brother-in-law, Knudt Thompson (Knudt’s wife Anna and Sever’s [future] wife Martha were sisters). Among other things, the diary recounts the voyage of Sever, Knudt, Anna, Martha, and more than a dozen other members of their extended family from Sør-Aurdal, Norway, to America. I’ll be looking into their trip from Norway to Wisconsin in another post in the not-too-distant future.

I haven’t yet seen the original diary or images of the original diary, and have only the four-page typewritten transcription that Anne recently sent along to family members working together on the Syndé/Severson family history. What follows is a verbatim transcription of that document.

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