Before we left Norway, we took a drive to the Valdres Valley north and west of Oslo. It is from this region that my father's Norwegian ancestors hailed from. We visited the Valdres Folk Museum in Fagernes, where I spent some time looking up family records in some very old parish registries, before driving out to the municipality of Vestre Slidre. My great great grandfather left Vestre Slidre in 1866, sailing to Quebec City and then settling in Minnesota. I was trying to find the exact location of the farm that he had come from. I was unable to confirm this information in the museum's records but did find some other interesting information. For example, when he was born in 1835 his parents were unmarried and although he was his father's first son, he was his mother's second son. Interesting facts they liked to record. :-)
