Birthplace has been recorded in Denmark census records since 1845, but enumerators were not asked to state the name of the parish in Copenhagen, leaving us with several possible parishes of birth. If the census record reveals the street where the family lived around the time of the birth of the children, you can use an online tool to determine which parish is the most likely birthplace of the children.
"Gade - sogn i København" (Steet to parish in Copenhagen)
The Danish family historian Lars Jørgen Helbo has created many tools for Denmark genealogy. One of them is a database of street names and parishes in Copenhagen to enable us to determine the parish when we know the street name.
The database is freely available at the Sall Data website: http://www.salldata.dk/gader
The website is not available in English, but it is easy to use.
Example: Which Parish was Nørreallee in 1870 and 1880?
The image above shows a snippet from the 1880 census of Copenhagen with the Sørensen family living at the address Nørreallee 19. The son Carl Christian Sørensen, age 4, and the daughter Ane Catrine Sørensen, age 1, were born in Copenhagen.1 Instead of going through all the parish registers from about 1875 to 1880, we can narrow down the list of likely parishes by using the database to look up the parish to which Nørrealle belonged in 1870 and 1880.
At the website with the database, we type the beginning of the place name in the search box, and then the list of street names to the left automatically narrows down as we type. The search box is highlighted in green in the image below.
By clicking a street name in the list, a list of parishes over the years is shown. For some years, more than one parish is listed if the street was divided among two parishes. In this case, where we are looking for Nørrealle in 1870 and 1880, the only option is Sankt Johannes Parish, as shown in the image below.
Research of the parish register for Sankt Johannes Parish in Copenhagen shows the birth records for the two mentioned children of Morten and Frederikke Vilhelmine Sørensen:
- Karl Kristian Sørensen, born 10 September 1875.2
- Anna Katrine Sørensen, born 2 August 1878.3
The family's residence was recorded as Nørre Allé 19 in both birth records, so the information correlates with that of the 1880 census.
The Database Only Covers Streets in Copenhagen City
This database covers streets in Copenhagen City. Copenhagen is divided into many parishes, so the database is a big help when researching ancestors from Copenhagen.
Feel free to share this blog post with others who do Denmark genealogy so they can learn about this database, too.
Source References
- 1880 Census of Denmark, Copenhagen City, Udenbys Klædebo Kvarter, folio 311 verso to 312 recto, Nørreallee 19; image copy, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS21-T7TY-N : accessed 19 December 2022).
- Sankt Johannes Parish (Copenhagen City, Denmark), Parish Register of Male Births 1874-78, page 82, 1875: no. 640; image copy, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G94H-C9S3-6 : accessed 19 December 2022).
- Sankt Johannes Parish (Copenhagen City, Denmark), Parish Register of Female Births 1874-79, page 336, 1878: no. 560; image copy, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-894C-4HBJ : accessed 19 December 2022).
- The image at the top of the post shows the interior of Sankt Johannes Kirke about 1862-94. Christian Rasmus Neuhaus, photo of "Sankt Johannes Kirke, Nørrebro," [1862-94]; image copy, Københavns Kommune, kbhbilleder.dk (https://kbhbilleder.dk/kbh-museum/65391 : accessed 19 December 2022). The image is in the public domain.
