Is it possible to follow the travels of the fisherman and soldier Zakarias Simonsen of Vardø, Finnmark to various countries such as England and Denmark during the 1800 to 1845 time frame?
I know there is a section of Digitalarkivet called Sjømannsruller but I have never managed to figure out how to use it. Would it cover a fisherman and his travels or just workers on large ships.
Well, my usual first step would be to check out the newspaper databases in case Zakarius was notorious, too. But so far, in the ones I've searched I haven't found anything. Denmark has a digitized newspaper database and England as well.
Regards the sailor's records in the searchable database, the only ones which popped up for me (no mention of Zakarius) were from Bergen. In times gone by, mostly they were from Stavanager It might be that all the record centers for sailor's record have not yet been put online in this way.
Sj¸historie.no used to be a reliable source for southern or Agder area sailors, not sure who might have the far north sailors, the archives?
Thanks for the reply Jackie. My post came from a post on Digitalarkivet Users Forum. An English lady posted searching for a connection to her from hits in a Autosomal DNA. she had undergone,. Here are some links to the two discussions. One posted by her and one I posted to narrow the search. It seems to me to be very difficult from the little I know to find connection when the matches are slight and back as fas as great grandparents. Take a look at these links, I would like to discuss what options there are in cases like this. I made very little headway in answering the ladies question.
Help Tracing Norwegian Ancestor(s) + Immigration/Travel to United Kingdom
I recently added some further information to the search on the Digitalarkivet site. Finding the family in Geni.com Tree allowed me to use the Descendants button to look at the family descendants from around the time that a member of this family would have to have been able to get together with a member of The English ladies ancestors. No such connection could be found. No evidence of any of the many descendants in the Geni.com site showed any connection with the UK. Some connection with America yes and I checked one of them out and it was a good match. A little off on birth year but very close.
Finding some connection to explain why the English lady has some small amount other DNA that connects her to similar DNA found in descendants of the Geni..com family lis not going to be easily solved.
Taking a long look at the wealth of data on this family in the Geni.com Family Tree, I wonder if you should take a look at the brother of Zacharias Simonsen. He is Berteus Simonsen born in 1781. What little there is of him is that he can be found in the 1801 Census and listed as the father of a child Tobia in 1806. Mother of the child is Anne Margrethe Bersvendsdatter and the Geni.com Tree has the mother's death as 1824, He would have been 44 at the birth of William Higgs Eborn.
Travels of Zakarias Simonsen, Vardø, Finnmark
Posted - 15/08/2026 : 17:45:32
