Olai 1866-1930: Our father's father
We brothers never met our paternal grandfather who died eight years before the eldest of us was born. Most of our information came from our father, Rolf, and he did not speak much about his Dad. What we did know was that his name was Olai and he came from Flekkefjord, close to the southern tip of Norway. He started life as a printer, emigrated to Cape Town, had a fondness for drink, moved to Johannesburg in the early 1920s (leaving his wife in Cape Town) and died in Johannesburg in 1930. Alan dug out a few additional facts and dates but family memories of him did not seem good and he was seldom mentioned. I'd always felt he was considered a bit of a skeleton in the family cupboard.
Finding the facts
It was not till 2008 that a series of happy accidents provided a fuller picture. Our cousin on our mother's side, Paddy, and his wife Jo stumbled upon Olai's grave while visiting a cemetery in Johannesburg. We didn't know it still existed. When we showed interest, they asked Per, a distant Norwegian relative of theirs (not ours), to try to trace Olai. He could find nothing at the official public archive, and so contacted the editor of the local newspaper in Flekkefjord, Agder Flekkefjords Tidende (reported circulation 8,479 in 2008). And, lo and behold, it emerged that Olai himself had once been editor of the very same newspaper when it was known simply as "Agder" at the turn of the 20th century...
We are greatly beholden to Per for all his help, and to "Agder Flekkefjords Tidende"'s editor Mr. Kristen Munksgaard for most of the historical information and the photos on this page. Kristen had also visited Cape Town in 2007 to see whether he could find out more about his predecessor as editor, but apparently to no avail. He did, however, turn up an obituary of Olai in a 1930 issue of Dagspressen, an industry journal for Norwegian newspapers. The obituarist relied heavily on a book by Ludv. Saxe which must have been published around 1920 in which Olai's work in Capetown was described. So there has been a record of Olai in a Norwegian publication all along - and nobody of his family knew about it. Probably he didn't know either. Links to this obituary will be found lower down this page.
The fuller picture
Olai was born in Flekkefjord in 1866. He was the son of Paul Christian Andresen. We had been told that Olai had changed his name to Hartmann later in life for some unspecified reason. It now seems from Per's evidence that Olai was Andresen's step-son - apparently by an earlier marriage of his mother, Severini (maiden name unknown). Andresen was a printer. When Olai was 6 years old the family moved to the Levanger area roughly 50km beyond Trondheim in the North (see map above). According to Per our great grandfather Paul owned a newspaper there called "Intrønderen" published in Steinkjer at the head of the fjord north of Levanger. Olai himself returned to Flekkefjord in 1889 at the age of 21 having been trained in the printing trade and became the owner and editor of "Agder" (mentioned above, which had been in existence since 1877). The picture of Olai shown here hangs on the editor's wall in Flekkefjord to this day.
(The key evidence on Olai's early life dug up by Per come from an on-line "lexicon" or record of people and events in the Steinkjer area, Steinkjer Leksikonet. To see the entries on Olai and his father click here.)
Olai married Theodora Jansen, daughter of captain Fredrik Jansen from Rasvaag on the island of Hidra which lies very close to Flekkefjord, at the mouth of the fjord. We do not have a marriage date, but apparently Olai announced his engagement to Theodora in the December 12, 1890 issue of Agder. It must have been around this time that he was active in the temperance movement and in the Methodist Church.
In 1891, he went east to a small town called Lillesand (on the opposite coast about 120km east of Flekkefjord), where he became editor of a weekly newspaper, Lillesand-Grimstadpost, which he printed at his own printing works in nearby Grimstad. The paper grew out of an earlier paper first published in 1870. It still exists as a bi-weekly under the name Lillesandposten. Olai is mentioned as an early editor and printer in the history section of the paper's website.
By 1896 the couple had produced four children. In that year Olai left for South Africa and set up a printing business in Cape Town. 
The family followed about a year later. The last two children, Hilda and Rolf, our Dad, were born in Capetown in 1902 and 1904. (I had thought only Rolf was born there but if so, other facts don't fit.) The picture showing him outside his printing works in Cape Town around 1920 is from the Dagspressen obituary and presumably comes from Saxe's book referred to above.
In addition to his other work Olai found time to produce a newspaper for Norwegians in Cape Town called "Skandinaven" which appeared in 1898. He edited, printed and distributed it himself, unloading railway wagons at night to finance it. The outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 forced its closure, but he started it up again at the end of the war in 1902. It finally closed for good in 1904 because of financial losses. (hr. Saxe thought that the paper would have been viable had it been published in Durban, which had quite a large Norwegian community in the vicinity, rather than in Cape Town). In addition he published an illustrated magazine "Skandinaver i Sydafrika" but this suffered the same fate. He appears to have been quite a go-getter, but things did not always go right for him. It seems he abandonned his journalistic ambitions at this point and devoted himself to general printing work - of what, we don't know.
By Rolf's account the family functioned happily enough back in Norway (though that was before his time), but when Theodora brought the children to join him she found that he had taken to the bottle in a big way. My impression is that things went steadily downhill from there.
I suspect that Olai may have knocked his wife and children about at times. I can remember Rolf saying something to Sylvia about his being frightened as a child by Olai throwing the milk can across the room. It didn't sound like a one-off occurrence. He forced Rolf into an apprenticeship he hated. That and the way he treated his wife appear to have been at the root of Rolf's resentment of his father. Some of his financial difficulties are alluded to in our sources. It seems possible that his printing business may eventually have failed.
Finally in 1923, according to hr. Saxe, he left the family and went to Johannesburg. 
The obiturary tells us that he continued to work as a printer there. He died in 1930, of what, apart from alcoholism,we also don't know. From an overheard converstion between our Dad and Sylvia I gather that when he himself moved to Jo'burg in the 1930s he once went to check that Olai's grave was in respectable condition. It is grave No. 8428 in Brixton Cemetery, near Braamfontein, but Dad never told us about this, or ever visited it again as far as I know.
On the left is a thumbnail image of the obituary from Dagspressen No.11, 1930 upon which the above account has depended for much of its detail.
To see an English translation of the 1930 obituary click here. The document is worth reading in full. Three further documents also obtained with the invaluable help of Jo Ohlson de Fine are a death notice, a will, and the final account of the winding up of Olai's estate. These have helped clarify some of the mystery surrounding the last seven years of Olai's life spent in Johannesburg. The main points are summarised below. Click here to see the documents in a seperate window for reference while reading what follows.
From the death notice we learn that Olai's mother's first name was Severini, and also that he continued to work as a printer rather than a journalist in his Johannesburg years. According to the will his business was called O.Hartman & Co. We had wondered whether his departure for Johannesburg leaving his wife and family behind had anything to do with a woman. The documents tell us that there was a woman but not in the way that one might have guessed. It turns out that he had a half-sister in Johannesburg, one Ingeborg Thomine Jentoft, of whom we had not previously heard. She it was who signed the death notice. The hand-writing beneath the signature (overlapping the fine print on the form, making it difficult to distinguish) reads "Sister of the deceased. Present at death. Saw the body". It is probable that she arranged his funeral and the tombstone. From the will we learn that he made her executor of his will and sole heir, thereby disinheriting the Capetown family.
The final settlement of his estate shows the parlous condition of his finances when he died: less than £20 in the bank, plant and machinery valued at £115, and liabilities far in excess of assets. Chief among the liabilities was an outstanding loan from sister Ingeborg of £1000 made in December 1927. It is tempting to suggest that making her his heir could have been a condition of the loan, a means of securing her outlay. But since the will was made eight months before the loan (April 1927), this may not have been the case. In the event she only got £127 back, nearly three years later. Could it be that she was the "& Co" of O.Hartman & Co.? It seems possible, but without further evidence it is probably safer to assume it was a personal loan to an elder brother fallen on hard times.
Loose Ends
Lots of unanswered questions remain. Why did Olai go to South Africa in the first place? Ambition? Adventure? Running away or towards something? His time in Johannesburg is particularly obscure. Did he set up O.Hartman & Co. upon his arrival in 1923 or only in 1927 when his sister lent him the £1000? And was Ingeborg still married to Mr. Jentoft, or perhaps his widow? At all events she appears to have been at least moderately wealthy. She must have been the main contact with what family remained in Norway and the ultimate source of the news that led to the Dagspressen obituary (see above). And what happened to her? Rolf's sister Sylvia once did some sniffing around trying to trace relatives in Norway, but whatever she might have found has died with her. And we still know nothing about Olai's biological father, the original Hartmann.
(There was also the case of Sylvia being contacted by some lawyers executing the will of a relative in Australia, in the 1950s, I think. Everyone suddenly had Great Expectations of a fortune from a successful sheep farmer. But nothing came of it. By the time the lawyers had taken their cut there was nothing left.)
How did Olai become such a heavy drinker, especially since he had a track record as an anti-drink campaigner? Maybe he found business was much tougher in South Africa than he expected. Perhaps more permissive attitudes to alcohol there than in Norway made the difference. Can the boozy history of us brothers have anything to do with him? It would be nice to have someone to blame for that. (Click here for more on this.)
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This page was last revised in June 2009