The Kjems Family from Odder to Ashland

Authors

Magne Kjems

Keywords

family history, education, Odder Folk School, Solbakken

Abstract

My father, Simon Nielsen Kjems, was born on the farm of Kjemsgaard on 23 July 1849.2 At the age of twenty, he entered Askov Folk School and was educated to be a teacher in private and folk schools (friskolen og hajskolen). In 1874, father became a teacher in the private school on Odder Mark, a short distance from the village of Odder. The pupils were both farm children and the children of master artisans in Odder. I do not know . whether father built the school himself, but I know that he came to own it, and when he married and had to set up a household, he bought some land and farmed it like other rural teachers. We had a stall with cows, swine, and chickens. I can also remember a farmhand who threshed grain in the barn, but I do not remember how the fields were plowed and sown. When we moved to Odder Folk School, father sold the house and land to his sister, Ester, and her husband, who farmed it as a smallholding (husmandssted).

Recommended Citation

Kjems, Magne (2000) "The Kjems Family from Odder to Ashland," The Bridge: Vol. 23: No. 2, Article 7.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge/vol23/iss2/7