Typographer J.P. Christensen and Else were married and are buried at Skive Cemetery.
He is known from Skive Folkeblad, while she was perhaps the world’s first female museum director?
Typographer and business manager
Joseph Peder Christensen (March 29, 1868 – May 1, 1947) was born in Legind-Lødderup parish on Mors. He was employed at Skive Folkeblad from 1889 to 1938. He was employed by printer Mar. Jensen in 1889 as a typographer, but soon came to solve a number of other tasks. He helped write bills for advertisements in the evenings, and for many years he was Folkeblad’s reporter for city council meetings, county council meetings and voter meetings, and he wrote reports, for example on the so-called Hvidbjerg murder in 1906.
In 1906, Mar. Jensen sold Folkebladet to Garantselskabet Skive Folkeblad. On the recommendation of Mar. Jensen, J.P. Christensen was hired as the newspaper’s business manager, a position he held until 1938, when he chose to retire. After his retirement, he continued to appear almost daily at Folkebladet, and he wrote a number of memoirs in Skive Folkeblad about life in Skive “in the old days”.
Who was Else?
“and Else ” – behind the modest inscription is perhaps the world’s first female museum director, Else Christensen (September 15, 1870 – March 23, 1954).
She was born in Dommerby parish, but grew up in Sønderbyen in Skive as the daughter of Laust Vistisen, a fireman at S. Nielsen & Søn, and at the age of 24, she married typographer J.P. Christensen on May 25, 1894. Christensen
On the board of the Historical Collection
An eventful start
Else Christensen was very interested in local history – and she was the first (and until 1968 the only!) woman to be elected to the board of the Historical Society for Skive and the surrounding area. This happened in 1917, but by then she had already been active for some time in the work to establish a museum in Skive. The Historical Society started a “Historical Collection” in 1910 with wood merchant Niels Sørensen as leader. The collection was housed at Skive Folkeblad on the first floor of Torvegade 7, and by 1911 it had grown so much that it had to move to two rooms on the ground floor.
The collection for sale?
In 1913, the premises were to be used for other purposes and the collection had to be packed up. It was stored in the attic of Skive City Hall. It remained there for three years, and then Skive Municipality demanded that it be removed. By this time, Else Christensen had started helping Niels Sørensen, who was ill, and they sent for her. She says: “… one day the warden Markussen was told that the room we had at the town hall had to be cleared! He carried our things out to the square and called me. I sat down among all the old things up there on the square. It was a market day, and next to me was a man selling fish… Someone came and asked what I had to sell! It wasn’t funny”.
The world’s first female museum director?
Song from Else – later honorary member
The collection was once again given a couple of rooms in an attic apartment in the Folkebladet building, and after Niels Sørensen’s death in 1919, Else Christensen took over the management of the collection. Here in the apartment, Else Christensen looked after the collection while she noted that, despite many suggestions, nothing was happening in the museum area.
In 1933, she resigned from the board of the Historical Society with a warning: “I will not conceal my disappointment at the slowness that characterizes the work on the museum issue. The press has been favorable to us, but the city of Skive and the region must be ashamed!” It wasn’t until 1935 that work began on building a museum in Skive, and in July 1941 Else Christensen and the museum’s new director, teacher Bøgelev, were finally able to pack up the collection and move it to the new museum in Skive Anlæg. On September 9, 1941, Skive Museumsforening was founded to run the museum, and on the same occasion Else Christensen was made an honorary member of the new association. At Skive Museum’s 50th anniversary on March 9, 1960, a plaque for Else Christensen was unveiled at the museum.
Else looks after grave sites
Else Christensen’s historical interest was also reflected in the fact that she looked after several graves at Skive Cemetery. In 1922, she made sure that city bailiff Selmer’s memorial was restored. She paid a couple of boys two cents per letter to clean the letters in the long inscription on the memorial. For a number of years, she kept the graves of the English engineer’s wives, and she also looked after a small stone mound erected over the three Prussian and Austrian soldiers who died in a hospital in Skive during the war in 1864.
Sources:
- Elin Hansen: Skive Folkeblad. Mar. Jensen’s magazine. 1955
- Jens Ole Lefévre: Skive Museum. In: Skivebogen 1992, p. 55-83.
- E.H.: Mrs. Else Christensen died this morning. Skive Folkeblad March 23, 1954.