This database is created from information extracted from the files of ”Den almindelige Enkekasse”, a pension fund for widows of royal appointed civil servants in the realms of the Danish crown between 1774 and 1844. In general, membership of the pension fund was compulsory on marriage for the officer corps and civil servants; from 1788 the clergy were also included. The database contains 16,003 marriages made by 14,936 men and 15,888 women with date of birth, place of birth, occupation and residence, date of admission to the pension fund and date of death.

The sources used reside in Rigsarkivet, the Danish National Archives and consist of:

                     “Reskripter og kongelige resolutioner 1741 – 1848”.

                      “Inskriptionsprotokoller 1774 – 1845”.

Enclosures in the files of the individual members of the pension fund (correspondence, payments, instruments of debt, health certificates, birth certificates etc.)

The birth certificate (the certificate of christening) is enclosed for 71 % of the husbands and 74 % of the wives.

For the Norwegians the following materials from Riksarkivet, the Norwegian National Archives, has also been used:

                      “Den norske Enkekasse (danske afdeling) 1775 – 1820:

                      Statistikk over oppnåed alder i ekteskabet 1775 – 1812 (issued 1845).”

As the database primarily was intended for a demographic research of the civil service during the de facto reign of Frederik VI (1784 – 1839), it has been attempted to rectify deficiencies in the files of the pension fund by using data from various biographical publications as well as the 1845 census. Every entry based on other sources than the pension fund is amended with a reference to the source used.

Deficiencies and limitations:

The death of 123 women was in 1813 registered as “died before 1813”. These women died between 1807 and 1812, but due to the war against Great Britain and consequently the limited traffic between the countries and provinces in the realm, the date of death was not properly registered.

The Norwegian civil servants were transferred to a Norwegian pension fund in 1820. The consequence was that some data is missing for this group.  Year of death and age by death are registered until 1845. After that year death data is only sporadically registered. Birth certificates for Norwegians alive in 1820 are missing.

A number of officers from the officer corps in Schleswig-Holstein were exiled after the civil war of 1848 – 1850.

Some of these officers have not been registered with a date of death.

Please note:

Names, places and occupation have been transcribed literally.

Date of birth is in most cases date of christening.

Date of death for the husbands in the database is generally – one day later – than the actual date of death, that is, the day where the pension was due. This is however not always the case.