Jensen's, Helvig & Jensen

JENSEN, JENSON, HELVIG, WIGGINS

Posted By: Patricia Bjorling (email)
Date: 10/4/2005 at 15:53:26

I am seeking information about a drugstore located in Roland, IA in 1887-89. The name of the firm was: Helvig & Jensen. The store may have been in business longer than two years. The Jensen is probably my great-grandfather, Peder Jensen, who came to the US in 1887 and evidently already had made arrangements to go into business with Helvig. I believe my great-grandfather was already a pharmacist at the time he arrived in the US (at age 24). He married Agnes Anderson, a Norwegian girl he met on the boat coming over, in Story County in December of 1887. My grandfather, Herbert J. Jensen was born a year later in Story City. The Peder Jensen family moved to Tacoma sometime shortly after my grandfather's birth.

What I don't know is how Peder knew this Helvig, what Helvig's first name was, whether Helvig was also a druggist, if there were relatives of the Jensen clan in Story City before 1887. (Peder's father, Hans Jensen, didn't come over from Denmark until the early 1890's. There were other Jensen children who also came from Denmark. Fred Jensen came to Story County and married Ellen Johnson. They had a number of children, but we think they moved to California eventually. Viggo Jensen lived in Story County for a number of years, and was a younger brother of Fred and Peder. Valdemar (Walter) Jensen was also in Story County for awhile--he was quite a bit younger than Peder and Fred. Hans Jensen--close in age to Fred and Peder also reportedly started his life in the US in Story County, but soon moved on. The youngest child was a boy, Eigild (or Eigel), who was just 11 years old in 1895.

There were Jensen girls, too. A Rebekka, who was only in Story County a short while. She went back to Denmark. There was Dagmar, the oldest of the children, who married a James A. Wiggins. They are both buried in the Story City cemetery. Rosalia reportedly lived in Story City and took care of her father, Hans, until he died in 1921. Then she moved to Oregon.

Does anyone doing Story County research have any connections with Helvigs who might have been in the drugstore business in Roland in 1887?

Hans Jensen (the father of the clan) was married to a woman named Maren Sorensen (or Sorensdatter). She died around 1890-92 of TB in Denmark.

The family was from Copenhagen, but the generation prior they were from Holbaek.

Thanks!