The tailor

Hans Kristian Christoffersen

Hans Kristian Christoffersen was born September 3, 1844, in Andebu, Vestfold, Norway. Vestfold is a county in southern Norway, south of Oslo, and is one of the best agricultural areas of Norway.  Hans Kristian was the eldest of four sons born to Christoffer Hansen and Karen Sophie Christoffersdotter.  Norway had a patronymic naming system until 1923, whereby children took their father’s first name as their last, adding “sen” for son or “dotter” for daughter.

Hans Kristian became a “skrædder” (tailor) by the time he was twenty-one years of age. A tailor made custom clothing for men and women.  In Norway, as well as much of Europe, one’s occupation was a measurement of one’s social status.  Many trades, including tailors, were controlled by guilds.  The guilds regulated the training and practice of tailors, which included an apprenticeship.

The textile industry in Norway started in the 1840’s, around the time of Hans Kristian’s birth, when textile mills were established in the larger cities. An economic crisis along with a population increase shaped Norway in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Norwegians began to emigrate to the United States, and the rural population began to migrate to larger towns and cities. After 1860, the wave of emigration grew larger. The rapid increase in population in Norway meant that times were hard for many, and the appeal of cheap land and opportunity drove people to leave their country for the United States. These events shaped Hans Kristian’s world.

Hans Kristian was thirty-nine years old when he married Mina Martine Jensdatter on September 21, 1883, in Ramnes, Vestfold, Norway, a small village near Andebu, Hans Kristian’s birthplace. This was at a time when the average life expectancy in Norway was about fifty years.  Mina Martine was eighteen years younger than the groom.   The couple moved to the nearby city of Tønsberg, where Hans Kristian and his youngest brother, Anton, established a tailor shop. 

Tønsberg, generally regarded as the oldest town in Norway, was founded during the Viking Age. It is located on the western coast of the Oslofjørd.  Tønsberg is the capital of Vestfold County. In addition to being a commercial and shipping town since the Middle Ages, Tønsberg was a Hansa town. Hansa towns, part of the Hanseatic League, were a confederation of merchant guilds.  Tønsberg’s prosperity increased in the late 1800’s due to international shipping and the whaling industry, making it a good place to establish a tailor shop.

By 1885, Hans Kristian and his family lived on the first floor of a rented house in Tønsberg, and Anton and his family lived on the second floor.  Hans Kristian and Mina Martine had five children: Clara, Charlotte, Hanna, Jens Konrad, and Einar Charles.  Mina Martine was a seamstress, and likely worked along her husband and brother-in-law when she was not tending to the children.

The tailor shop thrived, and the brothers began to hire apprentices. Those apprentices were usually from nearby villages and farms, and lived with the brothers.  One of those apprentices, Nicolai August Andreasen Tangsrød, began to date Hans Kristian’s daughter, Charlotte.

Nicolai left Norway for America in 1905. After establishing himself in western North Dakota, the tailor’s apprentice sent for Charlotte, the tailor’s daughter, who arrived in America in 1907. She married Nicolai in March 1908. They became my grandparents. 

Hans Kristian Christoffersen, my great-grandfather, died on January 19, 1923, in Tønsberg at the age of seventy-eight.