Henrik Severin Riisnaes	b  25 Jul 1858   d  16 Sep 1909
	  m  14 Jun 1886
 Ollegaard Kahrs Froyseth	b  20 Aug 1861   d  30 Jan 1933

	  Erik	b  18 Oct 1886   d   7 Mar 1888
	  Erik	b  21 Mar 1888   d  27 Feb 1970
	  Oyvind	b  22 Dec 1889   d  15 Nov 1928
	  Magnus	b   5 Oct 1891   d  19 Sep 1965
	  Aslaug	b  27 May 1893   d     Aug 1990
	  Kristen	b  11 Jul 1895   d   2 Oct 1981
	  Solveig	b   2 Dec 1896   d  17 Aug 1973
	  Claus Daae	b  16 Oct 1898   d   4 May 1990
	  Karstain Kahrs	b  29 May 1900   d  28 Feb 1928


	HENRIK SEVERIN RIISNAES was born at Risnes farm. When he reached school age he was taught intermittently by a travelling teacher. Later a school was built in the area and he was able to attend regular lessons. As he grew older he helped his father on the farm and also learned to bind books.
	At the age of 16 he left home to take a job in Bergen as a carpenter, training under a master carpenter named Amundsen. On becoming qualified he went to Copenhagen in May 1878 and to Berlin in April 1879. He wanted to set up in business as a furniture and piano maker but his father tried to dissuade him on the grounds that he would find it difficult to make such a business pay. Nevertheless, after his father died and left him some money, Henrik decided to take up piano making, and in 1883, being already fluent in German, he went again to Berlin to learn the trade. In 1885 he returned to Norway and for three months worked at a piano factory in Kristiania (Oslo).

	OLLEGAARD KAHRS FROYSETH was born at Froyseth. At the age of 16 she left home to go to a cookery school. Two years later she became chief cook at Sandven Hotel, Nordheimsund in Hardanger Fjord.

	Henrik and Ollegaard were married soon after he returned from Germany, and lived at 7 Domkirkegaten, Bergen, near the cathedral. Henrik started a piano factory in a building behind the house. He imported the iron frames but built the rest himself with one or two men to help him. He charged about £25 for each piano but found them difficult to sell. Later he extended the business to include the manufacture of packing cases. He also tuned pianos at 2/- a time.
	In 1889 he applied for a travel grant to visit the Paris Exhibition to study progress in piano making, his application being supported by a letter from Edvard Greig the composer, whose aunt occupied a bed-sitting room at the top of Henrik's house for a while.
	In 1896 Henrik and Ollegaard, together with Ollegaard's sister Sara, went to Germany on a visit. Their ship, sailing from Bergen, met very rough seas and nearly sank.
	By this time Henrik's business appeared to be prospering enough for him to expand, and he built a large new block of shops and flats at 3 Domkirkegaten on the corner of Half Kierulfsgade. The centrepiece, with entrance diagonally across the corner, was a fine piano shop, and the rest was let out as flats and other shops. Behind the building was an enlarged factory for piano and box making, employing by now some 6 people. The new buildings were completed in 1899.
	Henrik sent a piano to be shown at the 1900 Paris Exhibition and it won a Silver Medal. At the height of his prosperity his telegraph address was simply RIISNAES BERGEN and he was affiliated with firms at Stavanger, Haugesund, Aalesund, Kristiansand, Trondheim and Tromso.
	In spite of this expansion trade did not build up and with a heavy mortgage on the premises Henrik found himself in increasing financial difficulties. He took to drinking with his friends. His son Claus vividly remembered how, despite the shortage of money, he would still treat himself to an excellent meal on a Saturday night, served by his two maids, while the rest of the family fed separately on porridge.
	Finally, in 1906, the business went bankrupt and was taken over by Fredrik Svendson (see 19), a cousin of Ollegaard. The new building at 3 Domkirkegaten was taken over by the bank. (7 Domkirkegaten, where the family lived, had been prudently put in the name of the two eldest sons Erik and Oyvind, though when it was later sold on behalf of the family by Fredrik Svendson he never passed the money on to them.)  Henrik had to sell many of his possessions including his boat which was bought by his eldest brother Arne.
	He left Bergen as soon as he could, and went to Copenhagen where he found work with Horning and Moller in their piano factory in Bredgade near the palace. By September 1907 he had found a flat, 7 Aggersborggade, and Ollegaard and the four youngest children joined him.
	Henrik's health started to deteriorate. He continued to drink heavily and sold or pawned most of the family possessions to make ends meet. He spent a lot of money on the national lottery but never won. However the number immediately after his won fairly frequently which encouraged him to continue.
	In September 1909 Ollegaard went to spend a few days holiday with a cousin and was beginning to feel refreshed when she had a telegram: "Riisnaes lung inflammation come immediately". He seemed a bit better when she arrived, but got worse again in the next few days. He continued to drink a lot until the very end. The entire last night he lay on the floor coughing and vomiting but was peaceful when he died of pneumonia early in the morning. He had wanted to have his shirt collar whitened before being laid out in his coffin so Karstain was sent out to buy a few ore's worth. He was buried in Bispebjerg Cemetery in Copenhagen.
	Henrik was a quiet man, of medium height and portly build. He enjoyed sailing and piano playing, and collected stamps. He was a Lutheran but did not attend church very often.

	Almost immediately after the funeral Ollegaard and the children moved back to Bergen. Their good furniture, made by Henrik, and other possessions such as paintings, had to be sold. They lived in a flat at Nykirke Almenning 4 for about a year; then at a house, Klosteret 14, for another year; then in another flat, Claus Friemansgate 4, for a short while; then they moved to Claus Friemansgate 2 where they lived from 1914 to 1920. By then most of the family had left home and Ollegaard bought part of a house in Ibsengate. It turned out too expensive to stay there for long and Ollegaard finally moved to Damsgaardgate 4 in Laxevaag on the outskirts of Bergen where she lived for the rest of her life. Her mother lived with her until she died in 1926.
	In 1929 Ollegaard, with her sister Sara and son Magnus, visited her son Kristen and his family in England.
	Ollegaard died in Laxevaag and was buried on 3 February out on the point beyond Laxevaag. She had had a hard life but remained cheerful and kind throughout. She attended the Lutheran church more regularly than Henrik.



	ERIK attended school and the College of Trades in Bergen. On 26 September 1906 he left Bergen to emigrate to the United States. He worked for a time in the National Bank in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1909 he moved to Creighton, Nebraska, where he became assistant cashier at Creighton Security Bank and then (1911) cashier at the Creighton National Bank. He married (12 Nov 1910) Bernice Luella Kruse and from 1918 became manager of Kruse Farms, with business interests also in insurance and real estate. After his father's death he regularly sent money back to help support his mother and the rest of the family in Norway, and made his first visit back in 1920.
	He became a US citizen on 25 November 1913. In due course he became a member of the Creighton School Board and of the City Council. In 1938 he was elected to the County Board of Supervisors and in 1957 became chairman. In June 1963 he was forced to resign from these responsibilities owing to ill-health.
	Erik and Bernice had 7 children; Doris Harriett (b 2 Mar 1912) who married (1939) Rufus Lyman, a professor at Pocatello, Idaho, and had 3 children; Margaret Laura (b 1 Jul 1913) who married (1938) Howard Eicher, a Baptist minister, and had 2 children; James Henry (b 3 Aug 1915) who married (1944) Geraldine Sleasman and had 2 children; Edith Bernice (b 24 March 1917) who married (1942) Marion Petersen and had 4 children (Edith died of cancer in Oct 1963); Eric Kruse (b 31 Aug 1918) who married (1943) Catherine Ferouson and had 4 children (Eric died of a heart attack in Jan 1976); and Ruth Ollegaard (b 14 May 1920) who married (1947) Melvin Hilderbrand and had 4 children.
	In 1948, and again in 1953, Erik and Bernice visited their relatives in Norway and England. These were Bernice's first visits after nearly 40 years of marriage.
	Erik had a cheerful extroverted character. In later years he grew very fat and had difficulty in walking. After Bernice died (1965) he lived on in his house, a lonely man, until he died. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

	OYVIND emigrated to the USA in 1905 and became a farmer in Nebraska. He remained unmarried. He died at Kearney of tuberculosis caught from his brother Karstain, and was buried in Nebraska.

	MAGNUS lived in Bergen throughout his life and had various office jobs, ending up with A/S Bergen Nordhordland Traffikklag. Soon after his brother Kristen married, he visited him in England and wanted to court Ethel's sister Peg, but nothing came of it in the end. Instead he married (28 Aug 1934) Astrid Bull Lundgren (b 1891) niece of Ole Bull the violinist and composer. They had no children, and lived in an appartment in Laxevaag on the outskirts of Bergen. They were both very fond of music. Magnus was tall and thin, with a somewhat severe look; Astrid was shorter. They died in the same year (1965).

	ASLAUG was nearly christened Ollegaard but her father changed his mind without warning at the baptism. She went to U. Piehl's school in Bergen. While the family were in Copenhagen she stayed in Bergen lodging with her PE instructor and his widowed mother. After leaving school with good grades she worked as a cashier at Bayers, Bergen's largest bookshop. She found the hours long and the pay low so she decided to emigrate. She borrowed the fare from her mother's mother and left for Chicago in April 1911 to stay with her aunt Kristina Wang (see 9). She started work as a housemaid for $2 per week gradually moving on to better jobs. Having paid the debt for the boat ticket she saved enough to take a course in office skills (shorthand, etc) at the Metropolitan Business College in Chicago.
	When war broke out in 1914 she had the offer of a free return to Norway and decided to go back. She got a good job with Greig, a firm of shipping brokers, and in 1919 the firm opened a branch in Oslo and she was sent there. She had a lot of fun living in a hostel with about 20 other young people. One day she met Eilif Serck-Hanssen and they fell in love at first sight. Eilif was based in Bergen, establishing a new aluminium factory, so they were mostly apart, writing "passionate" (according to Aslaug) letters to each other.
	Aslaug had a good friend Molly with a similar job,  and  one day, feeling the cold, they agreed that if either got a job in a warm country such as Italy she would try to get the other one a job there too. Aslaug nearly got a job in Marseilles but at the last minute the employer found out she wasn't a boy. Molly then got a job in Genoa and managed to arrange for Aslaug to become secretary to the head of Standard Oil in Genoa. They had two wonderful years there, seeing a lot of Italy. Then Eilif finally proposed marriage and she returned to Norway, but not before spending an interesting two months in Paris on the way.
	After their marriage (10 Apr 1924), Eilif and Aslaug lived in Bergen. As well as being quite successful in business, Eilif was active in local politics, being a member of Bergen City Council for a time, and of the local Electricity Board. The family stayed in Bergen during the war, but in September 1944 Eilif was arrested together with a large number of others, apparently as hostages against Norwegian resistance activity, and was imprisoned in a concentration camp near Oslo until the end of the war. Unlike those prisoners who had been arrested for specific acts like trying to escape to England, he was not badly treated, but got very little food.
	Eilif and Aslaug had 2 children; Eilif (b 15 Jan 1925) and Knut (b 9 May 1931). After her husband died (26 Jun 1962) Aslaug lived on her own, in later years in an old people's home. She kept her vitality to the last, and remained physically active despite very bad eyesight.

	SOLVEIG emigrated to the United States in 1914, first finding work in Chicago. She went to a College in Minnesota to study English. Later she joined her eldest brother Erik in Nebraska. She married (16 Mar 1920) Ole Fagerli (b 26 Apr 1894) who was also of Norwegian descent and farmed with his father in  Nebraska. Ole had joined the US Army in World War I and been slightly wounded in France. After the marriage the couple con- tinued to live on the farm. Ole bought a burial plot in Niobara, Nebraska in Feb 1930, and it is probable that his brother-in-law Oyvind was buried there. In the 1930's he suffered a succession of crop failures, and in 1940 they leased the farm to one of Ole's nieces and moved to Washington DC, living at 2908 23rd St N, Arlington, for the rest of their lives. Ole worked as a building guard in the Civil Service and Solveig got a job as a comptometer operator, a job she had previously experienced in Chicago. In the summer of 1961 they visited Norway and England, Solveig's first visit back since she left 47 years before. Ole died 25 Feb 1966.
	They had two children; Judith Opel (b 15 Jul 1921) who married (14 Aug 1942) Rudolf Marhula of the US Navy,  in civil life a carpenter, and had no children (Judith died of cancer on 7 Sep 1960); and Olaf Harry (b 11 Sep 1926), who became a Certified Public Accountant in 1951, married (15 June 1957) Rose Marie Carey and had 3 children.

	CLAUS DAAE worked in the Bergen Customs Office, eventually becoming deputy to the head. He was strongly opposed to communism, and when the Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939 he volunteered to fight in support of Finland. However before his unit left for the front the fighting stopped. After the Germans invaded Norway he volunteered again to fight against the Soviet Union and was sent as a member of a Norwegian volunteer unit to the siege of Leningrad. When the Germans started to retreat his unit was returned to Norway. During his service he witnessed German atrocities against the Russians and began to realise that he had made a big mistake in siding with them. After the war he was tried as a collaborator and sentenced to 4 years imprisonment, but because of good behaviour he got the maximum remission. In due course he got his job back at the Customs Office, and was asked by the Head of Customs in Oslo to propose new customs regulations for the whole country.
	After retiring he lived in an old people's home on Nordness where he spent most of his time helping other people. Throughout his life he was regarded by all as a perfect gentleman.

	KARSTAIN KAHRS became a sailor. He contracted tuberculosis at sea. While ill he stayed with his brother Oyvind in the USA, sharing the same bed and infecting him too. He returned to Norway and died there.