Vang/Wang and von Koschembahr

[June Pelo]

I have a letter from a 95-year old cousin Harold who's curious to know more about his parent's ancestry. His father was born in Sondre Fron, Norway in 1883: Peter Gilbert Gilbertson/Gulbrandson Vang. He was a shoemaker in Norway. Family tradition said he was "forced" to go to America because of his blood lines. His mother met a royal person who was vacationing near her home in Norway and the moonlight had the expected result. When Peter was a young man someone paid for his passage to America. Harold wonders if this story could be true.

Peter settled in Wisconsin and met a young woman named Gisela von Koschembahr who was born 1914 in Berlin, Germany. Her mother Hilda von Koschembahr was the daughter of a German baron who was the son of Count von Koschembahr. She lost her entitlement when she married a commoner named Gerhardt Brueck. I can find the von Koschembahr name through google, but everything is in German. Harold said that the German baron married a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt.

Is there any way to verify any of this?

June

[June Pelo]

Oops. I mixed up the story a bit: Peter Gilbert Wang emigrated to Wisconsin and met Selma Finell, b. in Ludington MI. Their son Harold was b. 1911 in Rhinelander, WI and met and married Gisela Cornelia von Koschembahr in 1946. She died 1999.

June

[Kaj Granlund]

True or not - who was with in that moonlight?
Well, I have run into these stories consering swedish kings or nowegian kings, so I think it was just some joke the immigrants put up. And until 1905 Norway was in a union with Sweden so it should have been a swedish royal person then... and hmmm... some of them were known for this kind of "play", official secrets. So maybe there the stories got started and others used them.
Of course you can never be sure, but I doubt.

That Finell -woman do you know if her parents were from Esse? There are Finells here

[June Pelo]

Kaj,

Selma Finell's family was in Karleby - Matts Alexander Mattsson Kåla-Finell.

June

[Kaj Granlund]

Thanks!