The ABCs: Abandonment, Bigamy, and Concealment

In one of my earliest posts on this blog, “From Johnson to Westerlund (and back)”, I recounted the discovery that the name Johnson is not at all an old family name, but one that was adopted in the late 1910s by my grandfather Fredrick Arthur Johnson (1888-1937). To recap very briefly, my grandfather was born on Long Island, and he and his family lived in Brooklyn. But in 1917 he turned up living in central New York, in the village of Ilion. Along the way he had changed his name from Arthur Johan Alfred Westerlund to Fred Johnson. (I will be bouncing back and forth with his names: just remember that Arthur and Fred are the same person). I ended that blog post with several unanswered questions: Why did he change his name? Why did he choose the name Fred Johnson? Why, on his marriage license in 1919, did he list his father’s name as Alfred Johnson and his mother as Charlotte Rumstrom? I still can’t completely answer these questions, but some new evidence has come to my attention that, I think, go some way in shedding some light on the issue. Before I explain what I’ve found, the old warning comes to mind: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”

Fred Johnson aka Arthur Westerlund. Photo courtesy of Marcia Robbins.

In that old post I described my pet theory: he changed his name in order to avoid the anti-German sentiments that were common in the U.S. during the years of the First World War. Those sentiments were real enough, but I no longer believe that that was his reason.

Where is this coming from? For several months now, I’ve been following the trail of the families of the mother of my maternal grandmother, the Driscolls and the Collins from West Cork in Ireland. One of the intriguing – and frustrating – parts of this has been trying to figure out how some DNA matches fit into the family. These matches involve three adopted children, two of which are connected (the same mother), but the third somehow is a separate story. Last week I was looking at some folks from Bayonne, New Jersey (yes, Jersey!). Anyway, one of them was born on Long Island. That led me to remember my grandfather. His draft record said that he had been born in East Hempstead, but I had been unable to obtain a birth certificate. But that was before I knew his original name, and maybe in my earlier searches I hadn’t used the name Arthur Westerlund. So I ran another search.

What I found was a marriage record. We know that Fred Johnson married Nellie White in 1919, but this wasn’t Nellie. This was a 1914 marriage between Arthur Westerlund and a person named Helen Agnes Tucker! Coincidence? No: the father of the groom was named Alfred and the mother was named Hannah Bottleson. My Fred/Arthur’s parents were Gustaf Alfred Westerlund and Johanna Charlotta Barthelsson. There was also a small notice published in a Brooklyn paper called “The Chat” listing marriage licenses issued in which the address of Arthur Westerlund, age 25, was given as 494 Elton Street. I have several records that confirm that this was where my Westerlunds were living.

Transcript of the marriage license for Arthur Westerlund and Helen Agnes Tucker, 1914, in Brooklyn>

Listing of marriage licenses issued, published in The Chat in Brooklyn, 25 Apr 1914.

It is at this point that alarm bells started going off in my head. What do we know about Helen Tucker? In the transcription of the marriage license (I haven’t gotten a copy of the original yet), her parents are cited as Elom Leroy Tucker and Mary Delany. Further investigation showed that her father’s name was actually Alvin Leroy Tucker. This marriage record gives Helen’s age as 18. This is not true: Helen Tucker was born on 27 Feb 1898, in the Bronx. Therefore, she was only 16 years old when she married Arthur.

That prompted me to try to do a little research on the question of the minimum legal age at which a woman (a girl?) could marry. What I found was, frankly, disturbing. Leave aside for the moment the question of what the laws were in 1914. Today, in the year 2021, the minimum age at which a girl can marry in the state of Massachusetts is 12, yes, twelve, years old. Prior to 2017, the minimum age in New York was 14. Looking back to the 19th century, the age of consent in the state of Delaware in 1880 was … wait for it … seven. I have tried to avoid applying 21st century morals to people living centuries earlier, but I must admit that this pushes me close to my limits.

Let's continue following the timeline. In the 1915 New York state census, we find Helen listed as Helen Westerlund, but living with her parents at 373 Cleveland Street in Brooklyn, about 3 ½ blocks from the Westerlund home on Elton Street. But there’s no Arthur living there. In fact, the Westerlunds seem to be entirely missing from that census. I worked through the records, page by page, following the census taker as he walked the blocks: he goes straight from 492 Elton to 496 Elton. I guess that either no one answered the door when he knocked, or he didn't even recognize it as a separate dwelling.

The Westerlund and Tucker homes in Brooklyn. The Westerlunds lived in the small brick house at 494 Elton (on the left, the home with the air conditioner in the upstairs wind), and the Tuckers lived at 373 Cleveland (on the right). In the center is a map of the routes between the two, only a short 8 minute walk today.

The next record of Arthur Westerlund/Fred Johnson is in the 1917 WWI draft registration. He was then living on Railroad Street (now Central Ave) in Ilion under his new name. A year later he is in the army, in the Syracuse Recruit Camp, in 1918, Fred then married Nellie on 01 Nov 1919 in Ilion. As I mentioned earlier, Fred listed his parents as Alfred Johnson and Charlotte Rumstrom. Alfred was, indeed, his father’s name; Swedes often go by either their first, second, or even third given names in everyday life. Charlotte Rumstrom is a mangled form of his mother’s name. Although her real maiden name was Barthelsson, her mother in 1888 had married a private detective in New York named Herman Maleus Eugene Olausson Rundström. I suppose that if we squint a bit, Fred didn’t really falsify the names of his parents.

If the names of his parents were reasonably close, though, what about his own name change? There is, and was at the time, a legal process for changing one’s name. All this involves is filing a form with a court and paying a fee. That filing then becomes a public record. I haven’t actually done the research, but I doubt that Fred bothered to go through with this. I’ll explain why in the next paragraph. But if you think about the times, Fred had never traveled abroad (to my knowledge), and I’m not even sure how widely passports were in use at the time. In the 1910 Federal census Arthur’s occupation is said to be a driver for a private family. Whether he drove a motorcar or some sort of horse-drawn conveyance is not clear. But driver’s licenses were not mandated in New York City until 1919. So, I’m left wondering what kind of personal identification people would generally be using at the time. I suspect that there was none at all. I can easily imagine that if you moved from one place to another, your name was what you said it was, no questions asked.

On Jan 26, 1920 in Portsmouth, Virginia, Helen Westerlund divorced Arthur on grounds of desertion. I’m sure you’ve done the arithmetic in your head already: that leaves a period of nearly three months in which Arthur Westerlund aka Fred Johnson is legally married to two different women. To me, then, a likely scenario is that Arthur married Helen and almost immediately abandoned her. He then scuttled north to central New York under a new name, presumably to avoid being discovered. When his father died in 1923 (his mother had died the year earlier) Fred returned to Brooklyn to sign away any claim to the estate. Thus, it seems likely that at least his sister Wilma (the only other heir) knew where he was living so that he could return to Brooklyn to take care of the paperwork.

Record of the divorce of Arthur Westerlund and Helen Tucker, 20 Jan 1920.

To wrap up some loose ends, Arthur Westerlund and Helen Tucker – to the best of my knowledge – had no children together. After divorcing Arthur in January of 1920, Helen married Charles Aloysius Angley on 18 Jun 1920. Angley’s father had died when he was only 8 years old. This is another ugly story, with charges of his father regularly beating his mother showing up in the local papers. His mother subsequently remarried to a man named John James Campbell. As a result, Charles appears in the records under both the name Angley and Campbell. By 1930 Helen and Charles Angley/Campbell were divorced, and she then married Jacob Stelling sometime before 1940. They stay together until he passed in 1969 and she died in 1986. Helen apparently never had any children of her own. I have found her nephew on Ancestry.com, and, in a biography of his grandfather, he wrote that Helen and Jacob raised a grand-niece from the time she was a baby. I have reached out with a message to this nephew, but he is now in his mid 80s, and I haven’t heard back from him yet.

By the time that I discovered the Westerlund to Johnson name conversion, only one of the children of Fred and Nellie Johnson was still living, my aunt Phyllis Dickenson. I had a chance to chat with her about the name change, and she somewhat wryly said that she suspected that her family was being suspiciously secretive and that there might have been something untoward or illegal going on (gasp!). Maybe her intuition was right all along. I’m also reminded that Nellie’s sister, Kathryn (Kaddie) Squire, was extraordinarily reluctant to talk about family history. I wonder if this story of abandonment and bigamy was involved. I also shudder to think that that is only the tip of this particular iceberg. Obviously, I haven’t answered all the questions with which I began this post, but I think we’ve taken a few steps toward in that direction. I wonder where the path will lead us.

Rescue at Sea

The Storm

Saturday, the 14th of December, 1839 was a mild day with clear skies. In New England many ships took advantage of the weather to sail to Boston, New York, and ports farther south. That all changed during the night. Around midnight snow began falling and mists and winds from the northeast blew in fog off the ocean. Ships quickly made for shore up and down the coast, looking to find safe harbor from the storm that was brewing.

Gloucester, Massachusetts was one such harbor. The town is located on Cape Ann, the spit of land that marks the northern boundary of Massachusetts Bay. Ships anchored in the harbor, most of them north of Ten Pound Island. This did not prove to be safe enough, though, as the wind shifted to the southeast greatly increased in force, reaching hurricane levels..

"The scene in Gloucester harbor during this storm has never been equalled in any other New England port. Many vessels sought this haven of refuge from the tempest, and in all as many as sixty were there during the gale.Between three and four o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday, they began to drift, dragging their anchors or breaking the cables that bound them. Upon the beach were many willing fishermen to assist the mariners if it were possible. ... On Monday morning only a single mast was left standing in the harbor. Twenty-one vessels were driven ashore, three schooners sank, and seventeen were so thoroughly dashed to pieces that in some cases no fragment larger than a plank was left. Twenty vessels still rode in the harbor, all but one without masts, they having been cut away. From each vessel a slender pole stood to bear aloft a signal of distress. They were tossing like egg-shells upon the still raging sea, liable at any moment to part their cables and be driven to sea with all on board. The pieces of twenty-two wrecks were scattered along the shore, scarcely any one of which being larger than a horse could draw. The crowd had staid on the beach all night to give assistance if it were possible. On the following afternoon as soon as it was considered safe to do so, a brave volunteer crew under the direction of Capt. William Carter procured the custom-house boat, and pulled out to the vessels that still floated, taking the weary and suffering seamen to the shore. The shipwrecked men were obliged to jump from their decks into the boat, as the sea was still too violent to enable the gallant little craft to approach nearer. One of the vessels, just after her crew were taken off, drifted out of the harbor and was never again heard from.

The exact loss of life was never ascertained. About forty lives were believed to have been lost, including the persons who perished by the wreck of a schooner near Pigeon cove, and twenty were known to have died, though only twelve bodies were recovered. One of the bodies was taken away by friends, and the funeral of the other deceased mariners was held at the Unitarian church on the following Sunday afternoon. ... The people of the town were so deeply in sympathy with the occasion that between two and three thousand persons listened to the exercises. ... The vast congregation formed in a procession, which was nearly a mile in length, and followed the remains of the mariners to the public tomb.^[1]

The Schooner Glide

The picture at the head of this post is a schooner. Since I've never lived anywhere near the sea, researching this story has prompted me to find out the exact meaning of familiar terms. A schooner is a vessel with two or more masts, and the lower sails on the masts are "gaff-rigged" The gaff is the pole, attached to the mast at one end and to which the head of the sail, its top margin, is attached. During the storm in Gloucester, one such schooner, the Glide, was tied up at the wharf, already loaded with cargo and ready to sail for New Orleans. Newspapers at the time reported that the Glide suffered damage due to "chafing" as it rode out the storm. This ship, though, is not the Glide that is the focus of this story. There was another schooner Glide that had already put to sea before the storm. It had been cleared from Boston harbor on November 30, and finally set sail on December 11, leaving Boston under Capt. James Colburn and headed for Havana. On board were six men and one woman, and part of the cargo was stored on deck.

Captain James Colburn was descended from an early settler in New England, an Edward Colburn who purchased land north of the Merrimack River in 1668 and occupied it a year later. James was his 3rd great grandson, five generations separated. James was born in Leominster 30 May, 1787; in 1821 he married Mary Shelton (1800-1825) with whom he had one daughter, Mary. After his young wife's death, James married Mary Herrick of Hopkinton, New Hampshire in 1836. The captain had one incident that was widely reported in newspapers of the time before our story begins. On 08 Mar 1836 he was captain of the brig Barafine (a brig is a square-rigged vessel), at the time anchored in Boston harbor. At four in the morning the ship was discovered to be on fire. Capt. Colburn was sleeping in his cabin and was the only person on board. He managed to save himself by knocking out a dead light (the cover over a porthole) and getting out of the cabin window. The fire apparently began from the stove in the captain's cabin.^[2]

The Pehr Ennes

The second "actor" in this adventure is the Swedish ship, the Pehr Ennes, captained by Sven Norberg. The ship was sailing from Gävle to New York, carrying a cargo of iron for the company Boorman, Johnston & Co. with offices in Manhattan. All the records I've seen refer to the Pehr Ennes as a "ship." I believe that this means that this was a larger, square-rigged vessel. One site on the web says that the Pehr Ennes was one of Sweden's finest ships.^[3] The ship was based in the port of Gävle, roughly 110 miles (175 km) north of Stockholm on the Gulf of Bothnia. The name of the city is, roughly, pronounced like "Yef-la," and in English-language newspapers in the 19th Century often spelled Geffle. Today the city is famous for the Gävle goat (Gävleboken). This is a holiday tradition, begun in 1966: a huge goat made of straw and set up in the city center. Its height varies from year to year, generally it's about 40 feet tall (12 m). The ship was named after Pehr Ennes (1756-1829), a Gävle wholesaler and shipowner. Sven Norberg (1792-1850) captained the Pehr Ennes from 1839-1846. He was based in Gävle, where he was married to Greta Stina Nordberg (1798-1832) in 1818, but he was born in the south of the country, in Allerun parish in Skåne. In the church records, the captain's name is spelled Nordberg.

Top: The Gävle goat, fenced and with security cameras in an attempt to avoid its natural enemy, holiday arsonists. Bottom: Pehr Ennes, namesake of the ship. The text below his name translates simply as oil painting.

Now, to bring these two ships, Glide and Pehr Ennes together. The Glide had left Boston before the storm hit. It was next heard of when Capt. Norberg spotted it. Here is an early account as published first in the Commercial Advertiser in New York on January 22. As you'll see, there are several errors in the initial version:

DISASTERS

Captain Norburg, of the Swedish ship Frobenis, from Gefle, fell in with on the 19th inst. Lat 34½ long 66, the schr Glide, Colburn, 8 days from Boston for Havana, in a sinking condition. The G. on the 15th, 16th and 17th inst. encountered severe gales, lost sails, deck load, and set the vessel aleaking so badly that the pumps could not keep her free, and thought advisable to abandon her.

To translate some of the abbreviations in that passage:

• inst., for instant, refers to the current month
• lat, for latitude, and long. for longitude, are the coordinates where the Glide was spotted. This location is roughly 134 nautical miles (248 km) NNW of Bermuda, or 534 nautical miles (989 km) SE of New York City.
• schr: schooner. Note that the record refers to the Pehr Ennes as a ship. After citing the name of the vessel, custom seems to be to name the captain.
• G.: the Glide

The obvious error is that Norberg's ship was not the Frobenis, but the Pehr Ennes. Later reports give more details, but then introduce another error, citing the latitude as 81°N. That would place the ship north of Greenland, a very unlikely place to be if your destination was Cuba! Two days later, the Evening Post (New York) published this note:

Extract from the Log Book of the Swedish ship Pehr Ennis from Geffle, S. Norberg, master.

The 18th December, at 4 o’clock P. M. fell in sight of a schooner (Glide, Captain Colburn) without sails, and drove right before the wind, and as his flag was hoisted at the foretop as in distress, we made several tacks to come up with him, in which we succeeded at 8 o’clock. We hailed him, but could not hear the answer, for it blew rather hard. Consequently I sent the jolly boat, with three men on board to inquire if they were in distress; the answer was that the schooner was sinking, and the crew asked to be taken off. I now despatched the large boat with five men, which with great danger took six men and a woman from the wreck.

The wind had now increased, and it continued to blow very hard. I laid by with the ship until 12 o’clock, when I had the great pleasure to see our men and the strangers all well on board, because I am persuaded that without our assistance no one on board the unfortunate schooner would have lived. We were then in lat N. 81 6, and long W 67 81, and arrived safe in New York, after severe weather, the 21st of January, the captain and passenger of the schooner having been on board 5 weeks.

The Commercial Advertiser echoed this report, but added an additional note. This, I hope, will finally explain to you why I'm telling this story:

Captain Colborn, of the Glide, in behalf of himself, passengers and crew, has published a card of thanks to Captain Norberg for his gentlemanly and kind attention to him while on board his vessel, and to Mr. Charles Westerlund, the first officer of the Peter Ennes. They say – “We consider ourselves under infinite obligations for the kindness and intrepidity he displayed in managing the boat which came to our relief. Undaunted by the tempest or the heavy sea running at the time, rendering it impossible to board the schooner, he, happily for us, succeeded in saving a part of our clothing, and our whole company, as we threw first our trunks and then ourselves overboard from the stern, and finally after much perseverance got us safely to the ship, then at 6 or 7 miles distance, during a … driving rain and dangerous sea, at midnight – thus distinguishing himself as a man of courage and a philanthropist.”

Over the next few months I found accounts of the rescue published in newspapers up and down the eastern seaboard, in Portland, Maine; Keene, New Hampshire; Woodstock, Vermont; Philadephia, Pennsylvania; and Charleston, South Carolina. One noteworthy point, I think, is that the newspapers reported that the Pehr Ennes arrived in New York 90 days out of Gävle. Also you probably noticed that it took the Swedish vessel 5 weeks to travel ~500 nautical miles to New York. The weather was not great, to be sure, but that would equate to an average speed of less than one knot. Perhaps that's a good pace for a sailing ship laden with iron.

The real reason that this article caught my attention, of course, was the heroics of a certain Carl (= Charles) Westerlund. That's my paternal grandfather's surname, so that explains my interest. I'm not sure if Carl was aboard the small jolly boat that initially set out to communicate with the Glide, but he was certainly in command of the larger boat that rescued the passengers and crew. It's almost unimaginable: a boat powered only by oars (certainly if it had the capacity to raise sail, the intensity of the storm would have prevented it), 6-7 miles distant from the mother ship, in the middle of a raging storm in the middle of the night. I think that I'd agree with Captain Norberg: those passengers were lucky to make it out alive. Upon arrival in New York, Captain Colburn and the passengers attempted to raise funds to repay the crew of the Pehr Ennes for their heroism. I don't know if that ever came to fruition. But the real question is, is there a sailor named Carl Westerlund in the family? The answer is yes.

Carl Axel Anshelm Westerlund

Carl Axel Anshelm Westerlund was born 08 Dec., 1816 in Stockholm, in the old city (Gamla Stan), son of Axel Jansson Westerlund (1784-1840) and Catharina Ulrika Hempel (1789-1831). He had 3 siblings: Mathilda Eleonora (born 1815, date of death uncertain, but sometime after 1840), Frans Daniel (1818-1881), and Helena Sophia Ulrica (1819-1820). His father, Axel, was a grandson of Lars Ericsson (1698-1757) and Margreta Ersdotter (1710-1784), which is as far back as I've been able to trace the Westerlund lineage. Axel was a policeman in Stockholm, and, in an earlier post, I included a picture from my visit to Stockholm standing in front of two of the buildings Axel and family lived in (see Retracing Steps: Stockholm). At the age of 14 Carl was apprenticed to the tailor C. Dahlin. The household examination records from Stockholm for this time are pretty minimalistic, and I lose track of Carl until, in 1841, he is recorded in the moving-out book. This is a record of members of the parish (Sankt Nikolai, or the Storkyrkoförsamling) leaving for another parish. Here Carl's profession is recorded as a sailor (sjöman), and he is headed for the sailor's home in Gothenburg (Göteborg).

Moving-out record for Axel Westerlund in 1841 (the sixth record down from the top). It records his occupation (sjöman or sailor), date of birth (1816 8/12), place of birth (Storkyrkoförsamling, the main cathedral parish is the old city), destination (Götheborg), where he'll live there (the sailor's home or sjömans huset), and then details on his religious capacity and participation. Source: Storkyrkoförsamlingen BIIa:7 (1835-1843) Image 228 / page 221 (AID: v90642.b228.s221, NAD: SE/SSA/0016)

After this, I've been able to find very few records of Carl Axel's whereabouts and fate. But if he was the first mate on that tiny boat in the Atlantic on that stormy night, then that's enough in my book to look up to him as a real hero.

Epilogue

After his rescue at sea, Captain Colburn was not out of the woods. This item was published in the Boston Traveler on January 31, 1840:

Capt. Colborne, of the schooner Glide, who arrived at New York last week, escaped from the wreck of his vessel, was a passenger in the stage from New Haven, returning to his family in Boston. The stage overset twice on the journey, and once it was thought Capt. Colburne was killed, as he had the whole weight of the stage and a large number of passengers upon him. When extricated he was found to be much bruised, but not seriously injured.

Colburn continued in the maritime trade in the West Indies. He died in Trinidad de Cuba on Sept. 2, 1843, aged 56.

After the death of his first wife in 1832 Captain Norberg was remarried to Brita Cathrina Sundberg (1793-1863). According to a post in the Gefle Dagblad his last voyage, in command of the Oden, brought emigrants to New York from Sweden. Among those passengers were Eric Norelius (1833-1916). Norelius studied here in Columbus, Ohio at Capital University, and then continued west to Minnesota. As the Latin form of his name might suggest, he was a Lutheran minister. Norelius, initially at least, seems to have been part of a group led by Joris Per Andersson from Hassela parish in Gävleborg (the county, or län, of Gävle). Andersson, his family, and followers were early settlers in Chisago, Minnesota, and the diaries of Norelius were part of the research materials upon which Wilhelm Moberg based his historic novels, the Emigrants. These books were also discussed in an earlier post (see Unto a Good Land). Captain Norberg died on 25 November, 1850 in New York and is buried there. As for the Pehr Ennes, it was abandoned in the North Atlantic on 14 July, 1853 on a voyage from London to Québec City, and its crew rescued by the British ship Parthenia.^[4]

That, at last, brings me to the central question: was the heroic Carl Westerlund actually the Carl I've found in the family? If the goal was to write an interesting story, I should have stopped at this point. My Carl was a sailor, he was about the right age, and the heroic acts are abundantly documented. But curiosity and skepticism pushed me to look a little further. The answer that a lawyer might give to the question is that I have no definitive evidence, one way or another, that Carl Axel Anshelm Westerlund born 8 December, 1816 was the first mate on the Pehr Ennes during the events of December, 1839. But, honestly, I don't think it was the same person (sigh). You may have noticed in the document pictured above, that when he left Stockholm in 1841 he used the name Axel, not Carl. This isn't definitive, to be sure: it seems that Swedes often switched from their first to their second names, or both(!), pretty liberally. But it isn't supportive of my argument. Second, my Carl was in Stockholm, not Gävle where the ship was based. In fact, looking through the Gävle records there were two, two! other Carl Westerlunds who were sailors based in Gävle. One was born in 1815, the other in 1816. I haven't (yet) found the crew list for the Pehr Ennes at the time, so this isn't definitive. However, in browsing for the death record of Captain Norberg, I did come across one of those Carls: he also died in 1850, and he was listed as Styrsman, the same rank of the Charles Westerlund in the newspaper reports. So while I can't say for sure, my own hunch is that it was the Carl Westerlund, born 1816, died 1850, who was the real hero of this story.

There is one further record for cousin Carl that I've found. It is from the Karlsborg Garrison. Karlsborg is a fortress on a bay off the western shore of lake Vättern, one of the huge lakes in central Sweden (I'm not quite sure how to refer to it in English, is it Lake Vättern, Vättern Lake, Vätter Lake...?). This was supposed to be a central defensive position: if Sweden were attacked, then the monarchy, administration, and all the gold could retreat to this central, fortified position. The garrison there seems to have been a mix of regular soldiers and men who had been sentenced to service in the garrison. I say this because Carl Westerlund's record documents that he was convicted of counterfeiting and attacking a police officer in 1855. He was sentenced to 28 days on bread and water. I don't know if this was a euphemism, or the real punishment. He seems to have been released in December, 1855, but then returned the next year, sentenced to two years. I'm not sure what the second sentence was for; perhaps the counterfeiting and assault were two separate incidents. Interestingly, the record shows that after he served this sentence he returned voluntarily (!!!) in 1861. And that's the last record I've found of Carl so far. As a final note, Carl doesn't seem to have been the black sheep of the family, at least not the only one. His brother, Frans Daniel, and his uncle, Lars Gustaf, also served sentences at Karlsborg.

Carl Axel Anselm Westerlund's record from the Karlsborg Garrison. https://sodabreadcrumbs.blogspot.com/b/post-preview?token=APq4FmBfacqcS9uCjH63aVggHvzK2UtFZ5WtmYjrKxDGJEkRWdGUGx8f546SwwpsN0cWBK6oaSBR6aGegpjEYgo8HOklpnTSvf97nYzG0T41qZyXoWV-EnfUcPKyYjZXO5Q0q1ZuwKIO&postId=1376938000395805820&type=POST

I'd like to close with the thought that it doesn't really matter too much if I'm related to the daring Carl Westerlund of the Pehr Ennes or not. It's a helluva story, and I admire the man and his courage on its own. I hope you do too.

Sources

1. Perley, S. 1891. Historic storms of New England. The Salem Press Publishing and Printing Co., Salem, MA. 341 pp. Link to Google Books.
2. Newburyport Herald, March 08, 1836, page 1.
3. Kaptensgården i Furuvik - snart ett minne blott? https://www.gd.se/artikel/kaptensgarden-i-furuvik-snart-ett-minne-blott
4. Fate of the Pehr Ennes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_July_1853

The Lost Son

For the past several months most of my genealogical efforts have been invested in tracking down and documenting all of the descendants of the oldest direct ancestors that I've so far been able to find on the Westerlund (= Johnson) line: Lars Ericsson (1698-1757) and Margreta Ersdotter (1710-1784). This has proven to be a much bigger job than I first thought. As of today  - 03 Mar 2019 - that encompasses 2422 people (including spouses) over 12 generations. I still haven't followed some trails at all, and information on the later generations is sparse. (I sometimes feel almost like a stalker.) Of course, among those many relatives are some interesting stories, stories of really talented individuals as well as an understanding of the times in which they lived. Let me share one with you.

One of the children of my Westerlund "Adam and Eve" was Maria Larsdotter (1753-1824). In 1778 Maria married the soldier Anders Bjurman (1757-1831), and together they had a big family of 10 children. Remarkably, all the children survived early childhood. From 1783 on, they lived in Västerfärnebo, a town in Västmanland. When Maria died in 1824 from tuberculosis (lungsot), there was a note in the entry in the book of death records that stated that she had had 3 sons and 6 daughters, of which 2 sons and daughters survive. One son was unknown. He remains imprisoned in Russia: "3 söner och 6 döttrar, hvaraf 2 söner och döttrarna lefvar. Om en son är det ovist. Han blev fången i Ryssland." Again, when her husband Lars passed away from a stroke in 1831, the same notation was made.

The missing son's name was Anders. So what was Anders doing such that he ended up being imprisoned in Russia? And what happened to him? The last record that I have for him comes from the household records for 1808 in Västerfärnebo. You can see the record in the image below, with his name listed as Anders Andersson. After this point, he completely disappeared from the church books. But in that record, on the right-hand side, there is a two-word note that says "Comanderad Svanfelt." In other words, he entered the army.

That begs the question, though: what was the Swedish army doing around 1808 that would account for one of the soldiers ending up as a Russian prisoner? And isn't the country of Sweden noted for its neutrality? I had so many questions. The short answer to this one is, yes, but Swedish neutrality is a relatively recent phenomenon. The last time Swedish armed forces engaged in a declared war was in 1814, over 200 years ago. Actually, that year two conflicts ended. One was the War of the Sixth Coalition. This was one of the series of wars against Napoléon Bonaparte and the French Empire. This one ended with Napoléon's defeat and exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The other was the Swedish-Norwegian War, and at its conclusion the two countries were united in a union. Since that time, Sweden has adopted a position of neutrality, a stance that at times has been difficult to maintain, especially during the Second World War when Germany imported large quantities of iron ore from Sweden.

Let's go back to the time that Anders Bjurman (or Andersson) entered the army in 1808. A great source to learn about all things associated with the military (and more) in Sweden is a website developed and maintained by Hans Högman (www.hhogman.se/military.htm). First things first: Sweden has continuously had an army, even through the last two centuries of official neutrality. How did they man their armed forces, in particular, how did they do so around the time when Anders disappeared from the record?

The Swedish army and navy acquired their manpower from two sources. First, of course, men could volunteer. The other was called the allotment system (indelningsverket), introduced as a reform in the late 17th Century. Under this system the country was divided into districts called rotar. The freeholders within a rote were collectively responsible for contributing one soldier to the army (or a sailor to the navy depending on where the rote was located). Together they would provide for the maintenance of this soldier, providing equipment and a uniform, as well as a small house and land for the soldier (and his family, if needed). Sometimes you see this home called a croft in English. The local farmers were then exempt from being drafted into the army. The soldier, in turn, was responsible for reporting for training, such as it existed, and going off to battle if called upon.

Another feature of the army and navy that sometimes complicates family history research is the practice of assigning soldier names. Most of the men going into the army had patronyms. What we call a surname was actually the combination of a man's father's name plus the word "son." As a result, the ranks of the army were filled with men named Andersson, Larsson, Johansson, and every other combination. Put this together with a relatively low diversity of given names and you end up with many soldiers with exactly the same name. The solution to this potential confusion was the soldier's name: the company commander would assign each soldier a new "surname" to distinguish him. Usually, this was a relatively short word based on military terms or weapons, personal characteristics, names from nature, or names from the rote from which the soldier hailed.

In our case, Anders was assigned the name Svanfält, meaning, I think, field of swans. You may notice the difference in spelling from the church record: Svanfelt vs. Svafält. Spelling in those days was not as tightly regimented as it is now. The two words are pronounced just the same. In this case, the name Svanfält was given to each generation of the soldiers from that rote even though they were not necessarily related. Our Anders Svanfält belonged to the Berg Company of the Västmanland Regiment. The Central Soldier Registry (Centrala Soldatregistret) at Linköping University records that he was both enlisted and "discharged" in 1808. Again, my question: what was going on in 1808? It turns out that this is where family history intersects the larger conflicts in Europe in the early 19th Century: the Napoleonic Wars.

Tsar Aleksandr I of Russia

Napoléon Bonaparte of France

Earlier I mentioned that Napoléon was defeated and exiled to Elba (able was I ere I saw Elba) by the Sixth Coalition in 1814. I need to begin the story a bit earlier, though, with the Third Coalition against Napoléon from 1803-1807. The Third Coalition was made up of Russia, Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden. It was during this period that two very famous battles occurred: the British naval victory at Trafalgar under Horatio, Lord Nelson, and the victory of the French Grande Armée at Austerliltz in Austria over Russian and Austrian troops. These two battles assured British dominance at sea and French dominance at land, leading to a stalemate. Austerlitz is also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors: the French emperor Napoléon I defeated Tsar Aleksandr I of Russia and Emperor Franz II of the Holy Roman Empire (Austria and Prussia). As a consequence of the loss, the Holy Roman Empre was dissolved. More relevant to my story, though, is that Tsar Aleksandr signed the Treaty of Tilsit with Napoléon in 1807, thus switching his allegiance from one side to the other. Russian ambitions in Finland were blessed by Napoléon, and the Russians demanded that Sweden participate in the "Continental System." This system was the response to the British blockade of the French Empire by the Royal Navy. In retaliation for the blockade, the French pushed all their allies - and other countries on the continent - to close their ports to British commerce. Aleksandr I pressured the king of Sweden, Gustaf IV Adolf, to participate in this boycott of British goods. Gustaf, however, detested Napoléon and resisted the Russian pressure.

Napoléon and Aleksandr I signing the Treaty of Tilsit

Gustaf IV Adolf of Sweden

As a result of this combination of Russian expansionist ambitions and the refusal to close Swedish ports to Britain, 24,000 troops under Friedrich Wilhelm von Buxhoevden moved west from Russia (near Saint Petersburg) into southern Finland on 21 February, 1808, thus beginning the Finnish War. At this point in history Finland was an integral part of Sweden, and to this day Swedish remains one of the official languages of Finland. The winter invasion was unexpected, and the Russians encountered little resistance to their initial push. The defenders' strategy was to retreat inland and wait for summer when more troops could be brought as reinforcements. Additionally, the plan was to maintain the series of sea fortresses along the Baltic coast of southern Finland. From there smaller ships could effectively maneuver in the maze of small islands off the coast where the larger warships could not venture. One of the most famous of these fortresses was Sveaborg (known in Finnish as Suomenlinna), built upon the Susiluodot Islands within view of Helsinki. However, the latter half of this strategy collapsed after both Sveaborg and another fortress, Svartholm, surrendered to the Russians after short sieges. The commander of Sveaborg, Admiral Carl-Olof Cronstedt, was subsequently vilified not only for the loss of the fortress, but for the eventual outcome of the war.

Sveaborg Fortress. The city of Helsinki is visible in the background.

I'm not going to try to go into depth on the Finnish War: it was a confusing time, often with little coordination between actions in the south, the west and the east of Finland. One of the most important battles took place on 14 September, 1808 near Oravais, a small town on the west coast of Finland on the Gulf of Bothnia. Here the Swedish and Russian armies were arrayed in a long line on either side of a small stream. One of the Swedish units participating was the Västmanland Regiment, presumably including Anders Svanfält. The battle was a tactical give-and-take. First, a Russian attack on the Swedish right flank was pushed back. The Russians then tried the left flank, advanced, but were then repulsed. The Russian commander pulled troops from his center to again attack the Swedish left flank, and the Swedish commander counterattacked up the weakened middle. Unfortunately, the arrival of Russian reinforcments prevented the Swedes from being victorious. After 14 hours of bombardment, cavalry charges, and infantry attacks both sides were physically spent and running low on ammunition. After nightfall the Swedes retreated, and the Russians were in no condition to pursue. The Swedish army retreated north around the Gulf of Bothnia and then south into Sweden proper.

Images from reenactments of the Battale of Oravais. See and read more at the website of the Oravais Historical Society. At the upper right of the web page are buttons to render the site in Swedish (SV), Finnish (FI), English (EN), or Russian (RU).

A side note: One of the battles of the end game of the Finnish War was a daring march of Russian troops in winter from Finland to the Swedish city of Umeå across the frozen Gulf of Bothnia. These troops were under the command of Bogdan Fyodorovich von Knorring (the German version of his name was Gotthard Johan von Knorring). I add this tidbit just as a bit of historical irony: in 1942 my 6th cousin 1x removed, Vega Cecilia Norman, married a man named Gustaf Mauritz von Knorring, a relative of the Russian general. The name von Knorring, not a typical patronym, suggests that the family had royal connections. In fact, this was a noble family from Estonia.

Bogdan Fyodorovich von Knorring

von Knorring coat of arms.

What was the ultimate outcome of the Finnish War? With Swedish war fortunes going badly, on 13 March, 1809 King Gustaf IV Adolf was seized and imprisoned in a coup. He abdicated 16 days later and his uncle became King Karl XIII. On 17 September, 1809 the Treaty of Fredrikshamn was signed in which Finland was ceded to the Russian Empire as an autonomous grand duchy under the direct control of the Tsar. At the time he became king, Karl XIII was 60 years old and had no heir. As a result of his mental incapacity and lack of heir, a search was made for someone who could take his place. Eventually, one of Napoléon's generals, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, was chosen for the role and he accepted. Bernadotte was the brother-in-law of Napoleón's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, but it seems that he was far from a favorite of the Emperor. (He was perceived to have a habit of failing to appear at battles.) Reigning as Karl XIV Johan, he founded the Bernadotte dynasty of Sweden, a dynasty that continues to this day in Carl XVI Gustaf.

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte who later reigned as Karl XIV Johan of Sweden

Anders Svanfält: what happened to him? The short answer is that I don't know. I've mentioned the notations in the death records of his parents that said that he was a prisoner in Russia. In contrast, the inventory of possessions of his father upon his death (called a bouppteckning) listed all living heirs but did not include Anders. In my opinion the most likely outcome was that Anders had died during or after the Battle of Oravais, either in the battle itself or during the retreat as a result of wounds, illness, cold.... The "imprisonment" story may have been just a way to avoid acknowledging a painful truth. That's just a guess, though: who knows, Anders may have served time then settled into Russian society.

Although the Finnish War appears to have been a resounding defeat on all fronts, it did lead to a growth in Finnish nationalism under Russian rule. One form that this took was in the works of the schoolteacher and poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877). Runeberg is now claimed by some as the national poet of Finland, and probably his most famous work is The Tales of Ensign Stål (Fänrik Ståls Sägner). By the way, Stål, meaning steel, is one of those soldier names mentioned earlier. The Tales of Ensign Stål is a collection of 35 ballads depicting events and personalities of the Finnish War, the emotional impact of the war on the Finnish people, and an expression of their love for the land. I thought it might be interesting to highlight two of these poems.

Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877).

The first is entitled Sven Duva. In it Runeberg describes the heroic defense of a small bridge crossing against advancing Russian troops with an ironic twist at the end. I found a short (about 10 minute) video made in the 1950s that tells the story (but not in verse!).

The next poem is actually the first in The Tales of Ensign Stål and is entitled Our Land (Vårt Land in Swedish, Maamme in Finnish). The words have been adopted as the national anthem of Finland. Here is a video of the anthem sung in the two national languages of the country, first Finnish and then Swedish.

And here is a translation:

Our land, our land, our native land,
Oh, let her name ring clear!
No peaks against the heavens that stand,
No gentle dales or foaming strand,
Are loved as we our home revere,
The earth our sires held dear.

Coat of arms of the Västmanland Regiment.

---

Notes

• The painting at the top of the post is entitled Porilaisten-marssi, Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905).
• The English version of Fänrik Ståls Sägner that I used was translated by Charles Wharton Stork and published by the Princeton University Press and the American Scandinavian Foundation in 1938. If you would like a PDF of the Sven Duva, just drop me a line or leave a comment (with an address: the commenting function in blogspot.com does not record how to get back to you).

Places mentioned in the text. 1. Västerfärnebo, where Anders and his family lived. 2. Helskinki and, offshore, the Sveaborg fortress. 3. Oravais, site of the battle where, likely, Anders fought and may have been captured or died. 4. Umeå: Russian troops marched across the frozen Gulf of Bothnia to attack the city.

West to Zion

My father was in the Air Force, and so during my early years we moved around quite a bit following him from base to base: Georgia, New York, Maine, back to New York, Mississippi, and Illinois until finally returning to upstate New York in 1966. All of these, you'll notice, are in the eastern half of the United States. At the time, though, the TV programs that were most popular were focused on the American West. Without breaking a sweat, I can clearly remember a number of them, shows like Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Wagon Train, The Rifleman, Wanted Dead or Alive, and in a lighter vein, F Troop. These introduced me to a world utterly unlike the one I was familiar with: deserts, mountains, and plains; populated by card sharks, gun slingers, drovers, cattlemen, and, of course, “wild Indians.” I don't think that I ventured west of the Mississippi until I was in my late 20s. There are still parts of the West I've only seen on TV, like the mesas and buttes of the Southwest, Devil's Tower, the Grand Tetons, the sequoias. This was a part of the world that was familiar, yet distant. So it came as some surprise to me that the American West was not quite so distant as I imagined.

I'm going to focus on a young lady named Clara Björling (also spelled Bjurling). Clara was born in 1840 in Kumla, Västmanland, the eldest of eight children of Jan Eric Björling (1817-1906) and Anna Greta Bergström (1817-1897). Her family name is pronounced something like“b-your-ling.” To put her in context, Clara was the 2nd great granddaughter of Lars Ericsson, the oldest ancestor on the Westerlund line that I've been able to document. To be specific, the line is from Lars Ericsson (1698-1757) to Maria Larsdotter (1753-1824) to Margareta Bjurman (1779-1864) to Anna Greta Bergström (1817-1897) to Clara. She is my third cousin 4 times removed.

In 1842 Clara and her family moved from Kumla to Kila, and six years later to Romfartuna. In 1849 they were back in Kumla for about a year, and then they moved south to the city of Västerås. At the age of 18 Clara set off on her own to find work. The church records say that she went to Stockholm, but in fact she moved south: first to Ringarum in the province of Östergötland, then to Dagsberg, and then to Norrköping. It wasn't until 1860 that she finally found her way to Stockholm where she lived in the quarter of Cerberus (a block of buildings). I haven't found a record of what she was doing for work during this time: she's simply listed as piga, that is, an unmarried young woman. A later family history says that while in Stockholm she sang with the Stockholm Royal Opera. On February 26, 1862 there was a life-changing event: on this day she was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then, together with Truls Asarsson Halgren, in 1864 she left Sweden to head to Zion, to the new Mormon settlements in the Utah Territory.

Truls was born on 5 Jan 1835 in Lilla Slågarp in Skåne, in the far south of Sweden. He was a blacksmith by trade. He had been baptized into the LDS church on 26 Aug 1858. These were early days for the Mormon church in Scandinavia, and the state Lutheran church did not look kindly on the competition for souls. Truls was ordained a priest and sent to Torshälla where he was arrested and jailed for proselytizing. After release he continued his work in Gotland for 18 months, and then went on to Stockholm.

From Sweden to America

In April of 1864 Clara and Truls decided to emigrate from Sweden to America, heading to the Utah Territory that had just recently been settled by Mormons. The couple travelled from Stockholm to Copenhagen, and then to Liverpool in England. I haven't found specifics of how they got to Liverpool, but one common path was to sail from Stockholm to Copenhagen, then sail to Lübeck (now in Germany) on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. A short overland trip from Lübeck to the port of Hamburg, from which a ship would take them down the Elbe River and across the North Sea to the port of Grimsby. From there a train ride would take them directly west to Liverpool (home of the Beatles!).

Top: One of the typical paths from Stockholm to Liverpool, with stops in Copenhagen, Lübeck, Hamburg, and Grimsby along the way. Sea routes indicated by arrows in blue, overland routes (probably by train) indicated by black arrows.
Bottom: The port of Hamburg in 1875, 11 years after the trip of Clara Bjurling.

In Liverpool Truls and Clara, still unmarried, boarded the Monarch of the Sea for the voyage across the Atlantic to New York. From this point on, although I don't have any records directly from Clara, a number of other emigrants did have contemporaneous diaries or later wrote of the trip in their memoirs. Some of these memoirs were written by people who were in their early teens during the voyage, so it's not surprising that often the fine details of the trip differ, but I think the spirit of the times comes through loud and clear. I've listed some of these sources at the end of the post.

Top: The Monarch of the Sea
Bottom: Liverpool in 1864

Clara and Truls were not making this trip alone. Far from it: the entire transport all the way to Utah had been arranged in advance by church officials. They were accompanied by 971 other Mormon emigrants aboard the Monarch of the Sea and were led by patriarch John Smith. Each emigrant either paid for the trip up front or, probably more commonly, signed a note promising to repay $60 plus 10% interest to the permanent emigrant fund. The ship, under the command of Captain Kirkaldy, was delayed in port, partly because of the difficulty in taking on acceptable sailors. This problem was caused by the high bounty the United States was paying for sailors to serve in the Navy: this trip was being taken in early 1864 at the height of the Civil War. The ship finally set sail on the 28th of April, 1864.

The Monarch of the Sea was a sailing ship, and so progress depended on the strength and direction of the winds. The wind seems to have been particularly fickle, often very light so that progress was slow, and at other times frighteningly strong. In one case the winds blew so hard that two of the jib beams were broken under the strain, and the sailors struggled to repair them while the ship was underway. The strong winds, of course, led to seasickness among the passengers. One young girl recorded that her father actually lashed her to the ship in the hold because it was rocking so severely. She also recalled an occasion in which her uncle was just sitting down to a meal of peas when the rolling ship sent him and all the food flying, and he was soon on the deck sliding around in the middle of his dinner.

Page from the passenger manifest of The Monarch of the Sea with Truls Halgren and Clara Bjurling listed at the top.

Meals were a problem. Each emigrant received a ration of oatmeal, rice, peas and meat (bacon and corned beef), occasionally some potatoes, coffee and tea. As the voyage progressed the meat, shall we say, "ripened," so much so that one man claimed that when a barrel was opened it could be smelled the length and breadth of the ship. It was so bad that he thought the barrels must be ready to explode from the pressure inside. Even beyond the quantity and quality of the rations, though, a big problem was that the ship was simply not equipped to accommodate cooking for nearly a thousand people. There was a single pot where each family, in turn, could have their food cooked. Often it came out scorched, but no one was in a position to complain.

There were more severe forms of illness on the trip than seasickness. The details are sketchy, particularly since the information comes from the passengers themselves and not doctors. Speculation of the nature of the disease(s) on board included measles and scarlet fever. The impact of the diseases was borne by the children. The reported numbers vary, but somewhere between 42-66 children and one adult man died and were buried at sea. Even assuming the lowest number of deaths, this is heartbreaking. But also during the trip 14 couples were married. One of these was Clara Bjurling and Truls Halgren. The family history says that, because so many people were confined to their bunks because of seasickness, the captain asked Truls and Clara to get married immediately so that they could be moved into the the married quarters and open up space where they had been berthed.

On 3 June, 1864 the weary travelers reached New York after a voyage of 37 days. There they were processed at Castle Garden (the predecessor of the more famous immigrant reception at Ellis Island). This consisted of a medical check and recording of names. I can't imagine this was done too carefully: there were over 900 immigrants on this ship alone, and by the end of the day they were already on their way out of New York on the next stage of their trip.

New York to Nebraska

On the evening of June 3 the company boarded a steamer to take them up the Hudson River to Albany. They arrived there about 4 a.m. the next day and then boarded a train to start west. The train pulled 22 passenger cars and traveled parallel to the Erie Canal. They made it to Rochester at dawn, June 5, and by 1 p.m. had reached Buffalo. There they crossed the Niagara River on a steamer and reboarded a train on the Canadian side of the border. By the next day they had made it to Port Edward, crossed the Detroit River, and then continued across Michigan. The entourage arrived in Chicago at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, the seventh, where they spent the night.

The overland route, by train (in black) and steamship (in blue), from New York to Wyoming, Nebraska.

The next leg of the journey was from Chicago to Quincy, Illinois. After crossing the Mississippi, the train continued across Missouri, first to Palmyra, then to Brooksfield, and finally to St. Joseph on the Missouri River. Most of the trip from Albany to Quincy was not made in passenger cars. Rather, the emigrants were loaded into freight box cars and sat on wooden benches without any back support. After crossing the Mississippi they were again confronted with the prospect of continuing in the freight cars, and at this point they mounted a small rebellion:

"Here our company refused to travel that way and we had to wait till the next day. We had no shelter for the night and no access to our bedding. We went into the woods and the weather being fine, and by the use of shawls and overcoats we made ourselves tolerable comfortable. I think it was the most comfortable night spent for a week. The following day we were furnished regular cars, and we traveled on to St. Joseph. I think now it may be that the railroad company had been furnishing cars for the transporting of soldiers to battlefield and that the freight cars, fitted up with temporary board seats were such as had been for such used transportation, and perhaps on this account was unprepared to furnish cars for an extra train as was required for our company." (Reminiscences of H.N. Hansen)

After a week, the saints reached St. Joe. "St. Joseph was not much of a place at the time when we arrived there. We were dumped off near the Missouri River on the sand. If there was a depot we were not taken to it. Perhaps if there was one, it would have been too small to accommodate our crowd. Here we boarded a steamer which slowly paddled us up the Missouri River to a place called Wyoming, about seven miles above Nebraska City where we arrived about the middle of June. This was the place selected from which we were to begin our tedious journey across the plains." (Hansen)

Walking from Nebraska to Utah

The last, long leg of the trip was made on foot. This was organized by the church. Wagons pulled by teams of oxen had been sent out from Utah in the spring to meet the emigrants and lead them back to Salt Lake. The expedition in which Truls and Clara travelled was led by Captain Isaac A. Canfield (1818-1891). After six weeks roughing it along the Missouri, the expedition started off on 27 July 1864. It consisted of about 218 people, 30 teamsters, and about 50 wagons. The expedition had two purposes: to bring the emigrants to Utah, but also to pick up goods for merchants and cooperatives in Salt Lake City. In fact, each emigrant was allowed only 50 pounds of goods including bedding.

Isaac Augustus Canfield, company captain.

One of the other impacts of the ongoing Civil War, beyond the availability of passenger cars for the train, was that many of the Army units were called back from the West to take part in the hostilities back east. A little more context might be helpful here. The construction of the transcontinental railroad had just begun, but would not be completed for another 5 years. However, telegraph lines had been strung from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so as the expedition proceeded they were able to send news of their progress ahead to Salt Lake City. And here's a little reminder from those Social Studies classes you may have dozed through back in the day: in 1862 the Homestead Act was signed into law. This allowed any American to claim up to 160 free acres of federal land. This impacts our travellers because these federal lands were not empty: no, they were the homelands of numerous Indian (Native American) tribes. Clara, Truls and the rest of the expedition were to travel through territory occupied by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux tribes. The influx of homesteaders and the departure of soldiers were two elements that opened the door to armed conflicts.

There are two records of their progress from emigrants, and this combined with newspaper reports of the expedition's progress make it possible to track Clara and Truls in their journey from Nebraska to Utah. Initially the company followed the North Branch of the Platte River to its confluence with the Sweetwater River. Along the way they crossed the rivers several times. These rivers are wide but very shallow, only reaching up to the axles of the wagons. Early after they began, they ran right into evidence of the Indian resistance. Here is the account of Hansen:

Cheyenne Dog Soldier

"One day we passed a house right by the road side, it was burning slowly, and about two or three rods from the house laid a man dead presumably the owner of the place having being killed by the Indians that same day, perhaps not an hour before we arrived on the scene. I do not know whether anyone examined to see if he was shot or where, or how he was killed but we saw that he was dead. I, like boys would be likely to do ran with the rest to see the sights.

The ground was dusty where the corpse lay, and it was so besoiled that it was difficult at first glance to tell whether it was a white man or an Indian, but of course by a little closer examination it was seen to be the body of a white man and we took it for granted that it had been the owner of the house which now was burning. The Indians had taken out of the house what they wanted and then fired it. They had emptied the feather beds and the contents were flying round by the breeze. They evidently thought they had no use for feathers, their custom not demanding so soft a bed. Whether the rest of the family was murdered and laying somewhere in the weeds or the burning house, or if any of them had been carried away by the Indians we did not learn, and I do not know if any gave the matter serious thoughts at that time."

Overland trail (in yellow) from Wyoming, Nebraska to Salk Lake City, Utah. The route follows the North Branch of the Platte River through Nebraska, the Sweetwater River in the Dakota Territory (present-day Wyoming), and through the South Pass to Salt Lake.

The accounts of Rev. Hansen and others record numerous deaths along the way, likely a combination of sickness and fatigue. Fortunately, the trek started early enough that they were not trapped by snows in the mountains as had some earlier expeditions to Utah. There were periods when water and firewood were difficult to find, and as they traveled west the forage for the oxen gradually dried out. Wagon wheels broke down, wagons themselves were overturned, the oxen stampeded on one occasion with one breaking a leg and two others had their horns broken off. Despite these setbacks, the company made good progress and finally arrived in Salt Lake City on 4 Oct 1864.

Truls and Clara Halgren settled about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City in Ogden, Utah. They had eight children: Asser Theodore (1865-1875), Ellen Wilhelmina (1866-1923), Anna Magdelena (1868-1944), Alma (1870-1871), Clara Sophie (1873-1874), Olivia Victoria (1875-1878), Joseph (1877-1951), and Otelia (1879-1944). The portrait of the family below shows Clara with baby Joseph on her lap, so this was taken sometime around 1878-1879 depending on how old you think Joseph is and whether Clara was already pregnant with Otelia. Truls was twice called upon by the church to missionary work, once in Sweden and once in Finland. His biography and portrait are included in the book Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, published in 1913. Truls passed away in 1902, and Clara in 1910. They are both buried in Ogden.

The Halgren family, probably 1878-1879. From left to right: Truls Halgren, Ellen Wilhelmina, Olivia Victoria (sitting), Anna Magdalena, Clara (Bjurling) Halgren, Joseph.

A later photograph of Clara (on the right). The young girl on the left is not confidently identified; perhaps it's Anna(?).

As far as I'm currently aware, Clara was the first descendant of Lars Ericsson to emigrate to the United States. The wealth of records maintained and made available by both the church and Clara's descendants made it possible for me to much better understand and, to a limited extent, relive her experiences traveling across the world in the 1860s. I hope that I've been able to give you a taste of it as well. I came away from this story with a great deal more appreciation and admiration for their tenacity and ability to withstand the hardships that these people suffered in order to restart their lives in the American West.

Some source materials

Note: I have not directly consulted the hard copies of these journals and manuscripts, only that which is available online. Therefore the citation details may not be entirely accurate.

• Mormon Migration.
• Do you remember? The lives of Joseph Halgren and Sara Alice Aldous As remembered by their children.
• Finlinson, G. 1974. George Finlinson family, 1835-1974, comp. by Angie F. Lyman. Privately printed.
• Hansen, H. N. 1971. An account of a Mormon family's conversion to the religion of the Latter Day Saints and of their trip from Denmark to Utah. Annals of Iowa, summer 1971: 722-28, and fall 1971: 765-67.
• Sprague, M. O. Reminiscences. Utah Pioneer Biographies 27: 51-52.