That Girl Again – Her Tragic Background

Yes, my curiosity got the better of me. I just had to find out. I wanted to know why she went into foster care. What about the mother? I had to do some more digging, work my way back into more old archives. I was hooked!

To fill in the gap in her story I had to go back to the above page in the picture. As you can see, without reading any particular words, some text is in darker ink, fresher and younger if you like. At the bottom you can read “Dot. Maria”. That’s our girl. “Dot.” is short for daughter. Above her is another girl, born in 1878, three years later than the brother on the line above. Squeezed in a bit further up is a new entry, Maria’s mother, Kersti Persdotter.

The reason for Maria and her mother being added to this page, to this household, you find in the column on the right, with the heading “Död”, which means dead. Have you guessed it yet?

In February of 1879 the wife and mother of this household dies of consumption, and in June, four months later the daughter Anna, almost exactly Maria’s age, dies of diphtheria.

Maria and her mother move in, and the mother marries the farmer on 15 May 1880. So far so good. But the farmer had obviously lost both wife and a daughter, but rather quickly replaced them with a girl the same age and a new wife six years younger. Spookily enough, the deceased wife had exactly the same name as her replacement, Kersti(na) Persdotter. Kersti, Kjersti, Kerstina and Kjerstina were all the same name, nobody made any real difference between them.

So where is the problem then? Answer: nine months after the wedding. Yes, sadly I found the evidence in the “Death Book”. Nine months and one day after the wedding our Kersti, Maria’s mother (36), dies. No cause of death was recorded, but the assumption is of course that she died in childbirth. No child, stillborn or alive, was recorded on that day, or near that day, so Kersti presumably died with the child inside the womb more or less. Tragic. Her first child was born out of wedlock, which was noted in archives to follow her wherever she moved, and then she marries properly like a “good woman” and things go horribly wrong.

Not knowing who her real father is and having lost her mother, five weeks later Maria moves in with her aunt Anna, witness at her christening and her closest relative, at the age of eleven. Three and a half years later she appears in the household as a maid with my relatives, my grandfather being just a baby. My first great aunt was just seven days away, so Maria’s presence in the family was welcomed, I guess.

Like I wrote in my previous post, she moved to Denmark within a year, she was ready to fly at the age of sixteen. Perhaps she had children of her own to care for later, but that’s another story.

Who’s That Girl?

A young girl has intrigued me for a couple of weeks now. No no, it’s not what you might think. She lived over a century ago. You see, I am doing research into my family properly now. I have turned into an amateur genealogist by joining a website holding over 30 million photos of pages from Swedish archives. Before, I relied on handed-down documents and just copied other people’s work.

I started by trying to look into my paternal grandmother’s background, because nobody had done that to my knowledge. Since I knew some of her parents’ data I got going straight away. I ran into problems early on, finding some discrepancies to the little information I had previously. I thought I needed some guidance, but decided to practise on something easier first.

I chose to go for my paternal grandfather, and it was much easier. Most of the facts I had before, so this was a pure exercise in research strategy. When my grandfather was born in 1883 there were already two children in the family, but before he was six months old they died at the ages of four and two. The girl succumbed to bronchitis and the boy to diphtheria and paralysis. Later another girl was born, my great aunt.

But now there was a surprise. A fifteen-year-old girl was all of a sudden a member of the household. Where did she come from? Who was she? Could these poor people afford to have staff? Was she a maid or just a lodger? My guess is as good as yours. In this document I could see where and when she was born, where and when she had moved from, that she had moved in only seven days before my great aunt was born and that she within a year emigrated to Denmark, at the age of sixteen!

I was intrigued and puzzled. I needed to find out who she was, so I followed her trail back in time. First I tried the birth register where she claimed to be born, and could not find her. What? Then I suspected she might have lied about her age to get employment, which made me look up and down a great number of pages. Still could not find that entry anywhere, so I took another approach.

I found her in the parish she had moved from in the register (household by household), with data about family members and their literacy, “character” and their catechism knowledge. She was a foster daughter in a farming family far away from my grandfather’s family. She had officially moved from there 13 days before she registered in the town where I had first spotted her. That must be the time it took to move in 1884.

So now I had found her closer to where she claimed to be born at least. I followed the trail and found an entry stating a completely different birth place. Now things started to make sense. But why had she put down the wrong birth parish? Did she not know where she was born? According to this latest information her mother and she were born in the same place, twenty years apart. I had to dig deeper.

But what about the father? My suspicions were soon confirmed. She was born out of wedlock, father unknown, by a twenty-year-old maid in a big household, on a big farm. Since the father was unknown, she was given the Christian name of the master to add to “daughter”. Like so many other girls born out of wedlock she was christened Maria, perhaps to appease the Church, God and whoever. In the registers it was noted that the young mother had “given birth out of wedlock” and the date for when she was given absolution. And I can read about it still after 142 years!

Since the registers and archives I now have access to are photographs, it is not possible to search on the computer in the modern way, but I sometimes have to flip page after page on my screen in my search for a certain entry. In one of them I had to start on the first page until I found her on page 331! But it was worth it.

So now I know that Maria Jakobsdotter was born outside wedlock, father unknown, by a twenty-year-old maid, went into (correction: was in) foster care at the age of ten, moved to my grandfather’s family at fifteen and then emigrated to Denmark at sixteen. The “misinformation”, discrepancies, call them what you like, might have been an attempt to cover up her origin, so that she could start an adult life without prejudice. Did my relatives know her true background? We’ll never know. I only hope that she managed to get a decent life for herself, because I think it takes some guts to move away from what you know when you are fifteen.

Outstanding questions: Who was the father? Why and when did she go into foster care? What happened to her mother?

I think I will have to give up here and go back to my own family history. But I am sure she sang lovely lullabies to my grandfather and his baby sister.

How Many Times Removed?

Not long ago I had an email from a stranger. No, not the usual spam, but an email with serious and personal content. He claimed to be my relative, but I had no idea of his existence.

When I had read the whole message I concluded that he was indeed right. We were related.

It turned out that this man was researching his ancestry, digging into data archives. I have my family tree on a website called Geni, where you easily can build your family tree and get a good overview, so it took me only minutes to confirm this man’s claim.

He comes from the same part of Sweden as I do, and just like me he had moved abroad, so he was researching mostly on the internet. Long gone are the days when you needed to find old dusty documents in parish archives and physically hold them in your hands. Nowadays your computer mouse is your best friend.

Not only was this distant relative of mine doing research, he was also writing a book about some aspects of his findings. He does his work like a proper genealogist, and the reason he had contacted me was to possibly get some input, data and perhaps even photographs. As it happened, I did have on my PC some photos of interest, including a wedding photograph from 1878.

So, what about how we are related? First of all you could say that all humans are related, going all the way back to our earliest ancestors in Africa, or to Adam and Eve, if you believe in that sort of thing. But that would be to stretch the concept somewhat. We had to go back only seven (7) generations to find where our family trees interconnected, 309 years ago! A man who was born in 1702 was our joint ancestor, my great great great great great grandfather.

So, what does that make him, my newly-found relative? Not my cousin exactly, and how many times removed? My mind boggles!

Who Are These People?

I have been deep down in family history again, nostalgia. I am continuing to scan and organise my mother’s and father’s old photo albums. I have taken it upon myself to document and safeguard information which otherwise might get lost before long. There are quite a few albums, but I am nearing the end now.

Most people I recognise and identify, either through my own experience or logical thinking, deduction and a lot of staring at the same images over and over again. I look for hair styles, wedding rings and other clear indicators, who else is in the picture, which location, time of year, items in the background, notes on the back, anything printed in a corner by a professional photographer and so on. It is pure detective work most of the time.

It does not take long before you get to know somebody’s facial features, so you can recognise this person in another photo, which might be out of focus or damaged. You compare noses, eyebrows and mouths to determine relationships. Also somebody’s position in a group photo at a wedding in 1918, can determine the identity after having ticked off everybody you are sure of. Conclusion, this must be my grandmother’s only brother, for instance.

After a while I feel like I know some of these people who lived long before my time, but of course I don’t really. However, if I then come across some old letter written by one of them, suddenly this person takes on another dimension. I have found copies of letters, one of them 125 years old, regarding the death of my great great grandmother in 1885, and another from my grandparents to my grandfather's mother describing in detail what my toddler father had been up to in 1923. Quite sensational. Here he is that year on his mother’s knee.

Obviously there are many anonymous people who not even my old mother is sure of any more, some of them before her time, some before she knew my father. Then there is this very old photograph.

Who are these people? Well, they must be my relatives. My next assumption is that they most likely are in direct line, because why else would someone treasure an old photograph like that for so long? So they would then be my great great grandparents. Both sets of great great grandparents were born around 1820, and I guess they are roughly 50 years old in this picture. Then this was taken around 1870, but I could be out by 15 years easily.

Are there any clues in the way they are dressed, I ask myself? Probably not, because one of these men was a shopkeeper and the other one was a shoemaker, and one must assume they have got their Sunday bests on anyway. Does the man in the photo look six years older than his wife? If so, that would point towards the shopkeeper, whose wife was the one mentioned in the letter referred to above. My grandfather never ever met those grandparents because of the geographical distance, since they did not have a horse and cart. So did his grandparents therefore have their picture taken to send to the grandchildren? Does that sound plausible?

On the other hand, the shoemaker lived and worked in the small village of Bjellerup. My grandfather chose that to become his new surname in 1907. Is that connection why the photograph has been kept all these years. My father had it, and before he passed away five years ago, I seem to remember he told me it was the shoemaker in this picture. But I cannot be absolutely sure about it. Who can tell me? Can I phone a friend?

Family Tree - Genealogy (Update)

A year ago I wrote a post about having discovered a new web site (geni.com) where you can build your family tree. After having gone through all available family documents, including deceased relatives' research, I have come as far back in time as possible without doing more extensive, genuine research in Sweden. I have selected a few interesting facts to blog about.

One of my great grandfathers married four times because three of the wives died prematurely. *My* great grandmother died of pneumonia shortly before her 25th birthday. She had by then given birth to my grandmother and her older brother, who himself died at the age of 18 in 1909. He was in the merchant navy and worked below deck as a stoker. He caught pneumonia in the winter from moving up and down between deck and the hot fire he was stoking in the belly of the ship. The four wives gave birth to a total of six children. Only three survived into adulthood; one of the wives lost her two infants in some epidemic.

Even worse was the situation for another couple (he was born in 1827). They had nine children, and when the youngest one was still a baby all the other eight children died within a short period of time. Epidemics, which we today can prevent, swept the country regularly. Can you imagine losing eight children, more or less in one go? This is Thérèse, the only surviving child, as a young woman.

Then we have the the person at the top of the tree, as far as known birth date goes. He was a soldier called Elg, which means elk or moose, a typical name given to a soldier in those days. Since everybody was either "son of" or "daughter of" the father, they had names like Persson or Persdotter. This naming convention lasted into the late 19th century, and Icelandic women still have names ending with "-dottir". These short soldiers' names were intended to make it easier for the officers to shout and also differentiate between men with the same father's name. So when you joined the army you were simply given a name, and that was that! Many of these names live on in Sweden to this day, and are quite easy to recognise; they are often mono-syllabic and/or with a military connection.

So when was soldier Elg born? In 1688! He fought, I assume, with the famous (or infamous) Swedish warrior king Karl XII, whose soldiers were called Carolines, and did battle with the Russians, the Danes, the Norwegians and many more. Karl XII, just like Napoleon later, was stopped just outside Moscow and had to retreat in freezing winter conditions losing most of his men. He later died in Norway, possibly from "friendly fire", or not so friendly, because the debate still goes on whether the bullet that killed him was fired from the Norwegian side or from his own. Many were tired of all the fighting and had reason to get rid of the monarch. There have been conspiracy theories ever since.

Something else which has emerged from the documents, is spelling problems. In 1794 a priest misheard/misspelt Lönberg, and wrote Lundberg, which still today is the family name for some of my relatives. Oops, sorry, from now on you are Lundberg!

Also within the same family, the name was sometimes spelt differently. In 1907 my grandfather and his brother lost patience with the issue and registered a new name, which still is my surname. Their three sisters kept the original family name, which confused me as a child!

I take consolation from the fact that even the Great Bard, Shakespeare, spelt his name, and other words differently sometimes. If you have spotted any "alternative spelling" in this post, it is simply because I got into the spirit of my ancestors.

My Great Grandfather

Frans, my great grandfather, was the fifth of nine siblings. His father, who had established himself as a shopkeeper after having had a number of other jobs, insisted Frans become a blacksmith. But just look at his wedding photograph from ca 1878; it is quite obvious that he really wasn’t built for heavy, manual work. He looks like he would struggle to lift an ordinary hammer, let alone a sledgehammer. Talk about parental pressure on their children! But his father’s wish was law, so Frans started training as a blacksmith.

He later found employment with Kockums, the big shipyard in Malmö. One day he had an accident; filings or some little piece of metal damaged one of his eyes, resulting in loss of eyesight. In those days, over a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as insurance or social welfare, so he was left to find other employment himself.

Frans set up his own business, selling water and soft drinks from a hand-cart in the street. He was often outside office buildings where, just like today, many people were hurrying back and forth. One can only assume that he got to know some of his regular customers, and one day one of them said – “You’re wasting your time here, you shouldn’t be selling drinks in the street; you should come and work for us.”

Frans started working for this emigration agency. They must have spotted how good he was with customers, I guess. So, in modern speak, Frans, a young man with excellent entrepreneurial and customer relations skills, had just been headhunted!

His new job involved travelling by horse and cart to villages in the countryside, trying to persuade people to up their sticks and move to America. It must have been a lucrative business, because after some years Frans set up his own agency.

As far as I know, there were two main routes from Sweden to America. You either went by train to Gothenburg and boat from there to Hull, or by train to Malmö, boat to Copenhagen, train across Denmark, and boat from Esbjerg to Hull in England. From Hull the emigrants travelled by train across to Liverpool, where they had to wait for a suitable crossing to Ellis Island in New York. What an adventure it must have been just getting there! Of course, some did not make it. The journey was long and dangerous.

The good days for emigration agencies came slowly to an end, I believe, at the beginning of the 20^th century. I know that, when times were hard, Frans helped his wife, Anna, to make ends meet making socks at home with a “sock-knitting-machine”. They had five surviving children; two died as infants in 1883. (Imagine my grandfather being born in January, adding to the two other children, then the three-year-old dies in April and the two-year-old dies in June, leaving Frans and Anna with only the one baby.) When my grandfather was about ten he had to be farmed out to his aunt, who had more space and food on the table. She spoiled him rotten until he got married at the age of 35. My grandmother must have had a tough time, trying to convert this bachelor into a husband, in particular since she was only 18 and had been his pupil!

After the emigration business Frans had yet again to come up with something, and he did. He got a contract with a metal tools factory, selling files to Russia, of all places. Somewhat ironic (!) considering it was filings that forced him out of the smithy in the first place.

So to conclude, forced to become a blacksmith, Frans started by building ships, then, after a short drinks break, he filled ships with emigrants and finally shipped metal files to Russia. And all the time, throughout his whole life, he spent as much time as possible building doll’s houses, which was his hobby and passion, because he had always wanted to become a carpenter.

Here he is, my great grandfather Frans, at an old age with his damaged eye that changed his life completely. If he’d become a carpenter, he might have got a wooden splinter in his eye instead, who knows? Health and Safety wasn’t top of the agenda a century ago.

Family Tree – Genealogy

Here is the reason I have not posted for a few days; something caught my attention.

My brother emailed me last week, or rather, it looked like I had emailed myself; you know when it says ‘Me’ as the sender. I suspected it was something dodgy, somebody trying to make me click on a link and download offensive rubbish on my PC. So what did I do? I googled the source and found it was a completely legitimate URL, a reputable company albeit at the beta stage. It turned out to be something quite interesting, a website where you can build your family tree online. It’s like an extended-family-Wikipedia. Somebody starts building it, invites other relatives to join in the fun and contribute to a growing tree with their knowledge about relatives. It’s got the potential to spread like a bush fire.

As it happens I have taken an interest in my ancestors in the last couple of years and done a lot of scanning from photo albums. I have immersed myself in it completely sometimes, asked my 85-year-old mother about names and relationships while she still is lucid. She is the last one of the oldest generation that I can turn to for reliable information, so time is of great importance. My interest got even stronger when my dad passed away and I started looking into his old belongings, photos, slides, letters, books etc. My mother had quite a lot from her side of the family as well, so it all mounted up. My idea is to share it with siblings and cousins once it is all sorted.

So this family tree website fits the picture perfectly. I had some information from my dad, which I believe he had had from his dad. Somebody, I don’t know who, had in the past done some genealogical research and presented it in the customary way like a tree, but also attached information in prose, seemingly from parish records, about the people in the tree. Then you can read between the lines and understand even more yourself sometimes. Absolutely fascinating! The furthest this research reached into the past was the late 17^th century. It is a heck of a long time ago!

I will probably come back to this and post some of the interesting stuff and my thoughts about the people from whom I descend. Hopefully I can include pictures as well, although I have to confess I don’t have any photos from the 17^th century. If you are interested in starting your own tree, go to http://www.geni.com/ .