Borgen & Padrnos

Ivan Maynard Borgen was born on 30 May 1923 at Crooks, in Minnehaha County, just north of Sioux Falls. He served in the Army in the Second World War and became a civil engineer. He worked as an aerospace engineer for NASA and lived in Slidell for 29 years. He died there on 17 February 1993.

Patricia Padrnos was born on 31 October 1931, the fifth of six children of George and Lillian Padrnos of Lake Andes. She died on 5 September 2016. Ivan and Pat are buried side by side at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Slidell. Their stone reads "Beloved wife and mother."

Two families from the Dakota prairie ended up on the Louisiana Gulf coast because of the space program. Ivan arrived in Slidell around 1964, at the height of the Apollo build-up:

• NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in eastern New Orleans was building the first stages of the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets.
• The Mississippi Test Facility, now Stennis Space Center, about 30 miles away, was being built to test-fire those stages.
• NASA's Slidell Computer Complex supported both.

Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain, became the engineers' town. The family remembers that Ivan had a Saturn or Apollo program patch, which fits work on the moon rockets. Which site he worked at is not yet known.

Verdal, Trøndelag · 1812–1886

Cottars at Borgen

Verdal is a valley running east from the Trondheimsfjord toward the Swedish border. Stiklestad, where King Olaf the Saint fell in battle in 1030, lies at its mouth. In the nineteenth century most of the valley's people were husmenn, cottars. A cottar rented a small plot on a large farm and paid for it with labour. He owned no land.

Olaus Olsen was born in 1839 at Vestgården in Sul, high in the valley. He was the son of Ole Torkildsen (1812–1879) and Ingeborg Olsdatter, who were not married. On 27 September 1859, at Vuku church, he married Ingeborg Gudmundsdatter. She was born in 1836, the daughter of Gudmund Pedersen of Fosnesset and Gjertrud Olsdatter, who were not married. Gudmund later married Sigrid Børresdatter, who raised her. Olaus and Ingeborg had six sons:

• Gustav (1860)
• Ole Martin (1862)
• John (1864)
• Johan Severin (1867)
• Ingvald Olaf (1869)
• Gustav Edvard (1872)

The baptisms trace the family's moves as cottars: first a sawmill croft at Ulvilden, where the 1865 census finds them, then Fæbyvald, and finally Borgenvald, a croft on the Borgen farm. Olaus was buried on 19 July 1873, aged 34, a few months after his last son was born.

Their son Johan Severin was born on 20 January 1867 and baptised at Vuku church on 17 March. After his father's death, the 1875 census finds him, aged eight, living at Kaarenget with his mother's parents, Gudmund Pedersen and Sigrid Børresdatter.

1886 · Emigration

From Trondheim to Sioux Falls

On 8 April 1886 the Trondheim police registered "Johan S. Borgen" of Værdalen, a 19-year-old single labourer, as an emigrant. He sailed on the steamer Hero with an Allan Line ticket. Emigrants on this route crossed the North Sea to Britain, then took an Allan Line ship across the Atlantic. His ticket was for Sioux Falls, Dakota. Like many emigrants he took the farm name of the place his family had last lived. Olaus Olsen's son became Johan Borgen.

His brother Olaf followed on the same steamer in 1888, also bound for Sioux Falls. Other brothers probably came too. Their mother Ingeborg was living on poor relief at Værdalsøren in the 1900 census, a widow of 64. On 9 March 1904 she left Trondheim for Sioux Falls with a ticket paid in Norway, travelling with "John O. Borgen", a farmer living in America. It looks as if Johan went home to fetch his mother. The youngest brother, Gustav Edvard Borgen (1872–1936), stayed in Norway. In 1900 he co-founded the newspaper Innherreds Folkeblad and edited it until 1903.

1886–1966 · Minnehaha County

West Nidaros

Johan settled in Benton and Mapleton townships, around Crooks and Renner, northwest of Sioux Falls. So many settlers there came from Trøndelag that they named their Lutheran church West Nidaros, after the old name of Trondheim. He married Ingeborg Anna Sorken (1870–1959). She was baptised on 26 December 1870 in Rendal parish, daughter of Anders Pedersen and Ingrid Olsdatter of the farm Sorken, on the mountain border between Røros and Rendal. Her whole family had already emigrated. On 24 May 1882 Anders, Ingrid and their seven children, Ingeborg among them aged 11, sailed from Trondheim on the same steamer Hero, bound for Sioux Falls on tickets paid in America. So Johan and Ingeborg probably met in the Norwegian settlement around Crooks. They had nine children: Olai, Andrew, Inga, John Emil, Emma, Sophie, Rueben, Walter and Allen. They named their first son Olai after Johan's father Olaus, and their second son Andrew after Ingeborg's father Anders, following the Norwegian custom. Johan died on 8 July 1927 and is buried at West Nidaros.

His son Olai Borgen (1890–1966) married Alma C. Bjorgan (1886–1948). She was a daughter of Ole Rollaugsen Bjorgan and Mali Jensdatter Brende of the same Norwegian community. Olai's brother Andrew married Alma's sister Gertie, so the two families were doubly linked. Olai and Alma had three sons: Jennings Olander (1914–2007), Ivan Maynard (1923–1993) and Harold (1925–2006).

1869–1900 · Bon Homme and Charles Mix counties

Tabor and the Missouri River Czechs

From 1869 a Czech farmers' society in Chicago sent families west to Dakota Territory. Most came from southern Bohemia. They settled along the Missouri in Bon Homme County and named their town Tabor, after the Hussite town in Bohemia. The first Mass there was in 1871. In 1874 the settlers built St. Wenceslaus church out of local chalkrock. Over the next generation the families spread west into Charles Mix County: Wagner, Geddes, Dante and Lake Andes.

Pat Padrnos's mother, Lillian Honner, had two Tabor families behind her. Both of Lillian's parents were born in Dakota Territory in the early 1870s. That makes the Honers and the Petriks part of the first wave of Czech settlement.

Honer

Linhard Honer and Teresie Kocer

Linhard Honer was born in Bohemia in 1825. He married Teresie (Teresle) Kocer, born in 1833. Their children were born from 1854 to 1874. The older ones were born in Bohemia. Their son John was born in Dakota in 1872, so the family came over about 1869–72. They are buried at St. Wenceslaus, Tabor. Their grandchildren spelled the name Honner. The spelling "Honer" could be German-Bohemian or Czech. Kocer is a Czech name, and the family belonged to the Czech parish. Their home village in Bohemia has not been found.

Padrnos

A Moravian name

Padrnos is a rare name. Fewer than 90 people in the Czech Republic carry it today (Padrnos and Padrnosová). Nearly all of them live around Třebíč, Telč and Jihlava in the Vysočina highlands of western Moravia. In 1920 about three-quarters of all Padrnoses in the United States lived in South Dakota.

George James Padrnos, called "Judge", was born on 24 April 1894 in Nebraska and died on 12 October 1974. In April 1921 the Tabor Independent reported that "Miss Lillian Honner and George Padrnos were married in Omaha April 5th," and added that the groom was understood to be "a lawyer with office in Omaha" who planned to move to Yankton. That may explain his nickname. By 1950 the census shows him at Lake Andes, aged 55, working as a rural mail carrier. He married Lillian Honner (1901–1990). They raised six children around Lake Andes: Betty, George, Elaine, Richard, Patricia and Dennis. George and Lillian are buried at St. Mark's Catholic Cemetery, Lake Andes.

Matěj Petrik was born in Bohemia on 6 July 1838. He married Marie Kase, born on 27 January 1841 at Březí, near Písek in South Bohemia, a daughter of Matěj Kase and Kateřina Pletka. The couple emigrated with Matěj's elderly parents, František Petrik (1810–1896) and Kateřina Lid (1804–1891). They settled first at Spillville, Iowa, the Czech town where Antonín Dvořák later spent the summer of 1893. In 1872 they moved on to Tabor.

Matt played fiddle and clarinet and wrote polkas. In 1890 he organized the Tabor Band, which became the best-known Czech band in the region for fifty years. His music manuscripts are held by the National Music Museum at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. Tabor's annual Czech Days festival still honours him.

Matt and Marie had eleven children: Frank, Rose Ann, Joseph, Katherine, Matěj, Mary, Václav, Peter Cyril, Paul Methody, Cecelia and Anna. The names Cyril and Methody honour Saints Cyril and Methodius, the apostles to the Slavs. Matt died at Wagner on 25 October 1927, aged 89, and is buried at St. Wenceslaus, Tabor. Marie died in 1930.

Their daughter Katherine (1873–1945) married John F. Honner in 1893. Katherine's daughter Lillian was Pat Borgen's mother. That makes Matt Petrik Mary Borgen's great-great-grandfather.