Tosten Mikkelsen Lillehaugen (1847–1934)

Tosten and his twin sister Sissel were born on June 21 on the Lillehaugen farm in Leveld, Al, Hallingdal to Mikkel Sevatsen and Sissell Tostendatter. On April 25, 1878, he married Sigrid Larsdatter Gjeldaker. “Seeing that was taken care of, it was to settle down for good.”

Sigrid mentions Tosten in her letters, but we don’t get a lot of detail. (My husband pointed this out.) We could speculate on family dynamics, but I prefer a simple theory: paper and time were scarce, and Sigrid’s top priority in her letters was to describe her children and their lives in the U.S.

Fortunately, we have a wealth of information about Tosten’s life from an even better source: Tosten himself. In 1917, he wrote a short account of his life in Norway and the U.S. We’re going to spend the next few posts filling in the background and details of his life.

Gudmundsrud and Gjeldaker farms

In Norway, families took the name of their farms as their surnames. Gudmundsrud (pictured at left) was the name of the farm that Nils Knudsen Gudmundsrud purchased in 1833 and sold to his son Nils in 1868.


Gjeldaker (or Gjeldokk) is the name of the farm that Nils K. Gudmundsrud bought in 1857 and sold to his son, Lars Gjeldaker, in 1869.

The farms were near Ål, Hallingdal, high in the mountains of central Norway.