I’ve been writing a lot about Johannes Jensen and my Danish family. I think I will do one more post after this one and then take a break from Scandinavia and return to some of my other brick wall breakthroughs. Rosenborg Castle, or Rosenborg Slot as it is called in Copenhagen, was originally a summer home for King Christian IV, started in 1606 and completed in 1624. It was used as a royal residence until about 1710, but even today houses the Crown Jewels and the Danish Crown Regalia. The now-museum covers 300 years of the lives of Danish kings. The barracks where Johannes lived were apparently built about the same time as the castle, likely to protect the royal family. The barracks are still inhabited by active duty soldiers.
Rosenborg Slot and King’s Garden
More of King’s Garden next to Army Barracks
Since Rosenborg Slot had long been a museum and home to many of the Danish royal possessions by the time that Johannes was stationed there and due to the fact that he was the company drummer/fiddler/musician, it seems reasonable to conclude that his main job was to accompany the Changing of the Guard, which marched from the barracks to the entrance to the vault containing the Crown Jewels and Regalia.
I haven’t mentioned arkivalieronline.dk in quite a while. When I first starting making progress in the Danish parish registers, familysearch.org was just beginning to index Danish baptisms. There are now thousands of Danish records listed on FamilySearch. I have found that I still need both sites. The FamilySearch site is a limited index to Danish records. It is a quick way to perhaps find a birth and/or baptismal record for a family member born, say, in the 1800’s or later. However, there is no indication whether the indexing has been completed for all Danish parishes or for the time period covered. One category of infants that I know are not included on familysearch.org are the stillborn children. Johannes and Johanne Elisabeth lost their second baby, a stillborn daughter, in 1842. I only found her by reading the parish register page by page. Another limitation of the FamilySearch records is that the name of the church is often not given in the indexed record. Even in the mid-1800’s, there were probably 25 parishes with extant records available today. That is a lot of searching, but it is manageable on arkivalieronline.dk when used in conjunction with FamilySearch. Both sites are free, so the price is definitely right. I highly recommend both sources as a way to trace your Danish roots.