From DNA start to Finnish

In my research in the university we deal with DNA all the time, using it as a clue to untangle the evolutionary history of the wasps we study. Therefore, I was pretty comfortable with the idea of DNA “testing” to help in with discovering more about family history.

There are quite a number of different tests (and prices!) available on the market from which to choose, and I decided to go with two of the most common: AncestryDNA and 23andMe. For the user, the test procedure is really simple: they send you a plastic vial and mailing envelope; you drool or spit into the vial; close the cap and shake; send it back to them in the envelope; and then sit back and wait a few weeks for your results. The testing service will compare your results with that others have submitted and report back to you the degree of similarity, possible relationship (e.g., 4th – 6th cousins), and a link to contact those persons if you want. They can also compare your results with those from people living in different parts of the world and suggest areas from which your ancestors came. Here are my results produced by AncestryDNA:

This is their “ethnicity” estimate, with fully two-thirds of my “ethnicity” linked to Ireland; another 14% to Great Britain; and a final 14% from Scandinavia. There's some variation in all of this, but it generally confirmed what I thought I knew simply from the ethnicity of my grandparents, three of whom were Irish and one Swedish.

ArkivDigital is a Swedish company that provides access to the thousands and thousands of pages of Swedish documents. About 16 months ago they ran a small promotion in which they offered to have one of their experts help possible users to find where their ancestral emigrants came from in Sweden. I was then very unsure about my great grandmother, Johanna Charlotta Barthelsson. Just to help you get oriented, she was the mother of my grandfather Fredrick Johnson. Their expert, Kathy Meade, got back to me with records from her birth to her emigration to the U.S. in 1882. With that toehold I've been able to dig backwards and forwards through the records, in the process discovering (for me, anyway) a whole new part of the family that I never knew about.

As I've mentioned before, when you add records to ancestry.com their software searches in the background for additional sources of information that correspond to the data you've saved. In addition to official documents, another source of hints are the family trees of other users. You have to treat these user-trees with a good deal of caution: often they're completely undocumented, they might just be old, inaccurate family stories, and it's very, very easy to either make mistakes or jump to wrong conclusions. I will admit to occasionally having committed all of these sins myself, and I'm trying to learn and put into use best practices for documenting genealogies.

As I was entering church records from the Barthelsson family, I began to find something a bit strange in the other family trees. When I followed the family back a few generations, I found some trees in which the last name was a bit different. I don't mean the typical spelling variants: Barthelson, Barthelsson, Bertilsson, Bartelsson, etc. No, these records had an additional word, for example, Bertil Henriksson Lehmoinen. This added word didn't seem to show up anywhere in the records, it's not a Swedish word … what was it? To find an answer I sent an email to the person who maintains one of the more extensive of those trees. His answer opened up a whole new world that I never knew existed.

It turns out that Lehmoinen is a family name, and specifically it is a Finnish family name. Records in the archives for this family go back to the 1430's! The family turns out to be part of a group known as the Forest Finns. Here's the story as I understand it. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century the empire of Sweden included not only the country we know today, but also Finland and part of northwestern Russia. The peoples of eastern Finland farmed using a form of slash-and-burn, or swidden agriculture. When a family group moved into a new area of forest, they would cut down the trees, girdle the larger ones, and allow the trees to die and dry out over the course of the next year. Then, shortly before rains came, all of the accumulated wood would be burned, the ashes worked into the soil, and then the field would be sown with rye. For the rest of the year the rye would grow along with other grasses and plants that invaded the now opened areas. Livestock would be allowed to graze during this time. The next year, though, things would get serious, livestock excluded, and the rye grain would be harvested. This form of agriculture quickly depletes the nutrients in the soil, and in a short time the family would have to move on and repeat the cycle in a new forested area. This means that the land can only support relatively small numbers of people, and this part of Finland eventually became overpopulated.

Here is a painting made in 1893 by the Finnish artist Eero Järnefelt called “Under the Yoke” that illustrates part of this process.

"Raatajat rahanalaiset" by Eero Järnefelt - 1. Hannu Aaltonen (photo)2. 4.bp.blogspot.com5. The Bridgeman Art Library, Object 476513. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raatajat_rahanalaiset.JPG#/media/File:Raatajat_rahanalaiset.JPG

I also found a video, dating from 1937, on YouTube that illustrates this. It runs for about thirteen and a half minutes. I presume – but am not positive – that the language is Finnish. But I think you'll be able to follow it. I especially like the guy that makes a pair of shoes out of birch bark! Notice that these are the same style as the girl in the center of the Järnefelt painting.

To ease the population pressure, a good number of the people from central Finland, particularly the area of Savolax (or Savonia), migrated west, across the Gulf of Bothnia, to settle in central Sweden. In particular, the migrants from our family settled in northern Värmland in the western part of central Sweden, almost directly west of Stockholm and near the Norwegian border. At first the Swedish government encouraged the migration as it increased the population in the border region, thus contributing to its security. As the mining sector grew, though, the need for wood to make charcoal increased, and the practice of simply burning down parts of the forest became unacceptable. The Forest Finns were then forced to become more traditional farmers, miners, or enter other suitable occupations.

The Forest Finns moved into Värmland around the 1640's. They seem to have retained much of their culture and language before eventually being absorbed into Swedish culture. The language survived until the early part of the 20th century, and I understand that in that part of Sweden many placenames are still Finnish. The names of the people that you can find in the household examination records of the church are only the Swedish versions. There is one book for Östmark parish, however, in which the Finnish names are also recorded.

Anyone looking into Forest Finn history quickly comes across the name of Carl Axel Gottlund (1796–1875). Gottlund grew up in Finland, in Savonia, the son of a Finnish father and Swedish mother. He became one of the great proponents of Forest Finn culture, both in Sweden and Norway. In fact his political agitation eventually led to his exile. He first travelled to Dalarna in 1817 and then to Värmland in 1820–1821. He published a diary of his travels in Värmland in which he not only describes what he sees, but names names and places. The diary is online at www.nordvarmland.com/istid/ Of course, it's in Swedish. You can use the Google translate function and get a bit of an idea of what he says, but the translation is pretty dodgy.

I mentioned the diary because in one part of it it gets pretty personal. Here we're back to the Lehmoinen family. Gottlund describes a double wedding on November 4, 1821, the first pair being Hindrik Hindriksson Lehmoinen and Maria Bengtsdotter Manninen; the second couple was Pehr Hallesson and Maria Hindriksdotter Lehmoinen. For context, Hindrik and the two Marias all are my 2nd cousins 5x removed. Here's my translation (apologies in advance!) of a section from Gottlund's diary describing the scene:

"After I had eaten a little, I went to church and sat on a bench with some farmers at the door. Frychius preached, after the sermon, I went to him in the sacristy, the door of which was behind the altar, much as in Fryksände. The township was mostly Finns. As there was no Communion, the service was almost over. As it ended, two Finnish peasant boys began playing an old march at the altar rail. During the sermon, they had been in the sacristy and tuned their violins. It so happened that there were two brides in the church. They sat in the nearest benches to the choir. They were both from Finnskoga, the most repectable farmsteads in the township and also the richest in Finnskoga. The wedding, which I thought to attend uninvited, would tonight be in Kronskoga.

One couple was Hindrik Hindriksson Lehmoinen, the son of the farmstead, and the bride Mari Bengtsdotter Mammoinen from Rattsjöberg. The second couple was the daughter of the farmstead, Mari Hindriksdotterr Lehmoinen and the groom a Swedish boy from Häckfalle. It was therefore, son and daughter, now to be married at the same time. The brides, who were sitting next to each other, were truly magnificently arrayed. They were dressed in white silk, on which were sewn several rows of roses and other flowers, glistening a little here and there, and looking very charming. Then they had black skirts, with red patches under the breast as a breastplate, which were studded with tufts of ribbon roses, flowers and glitter of all kinds. The grooms were dressed like complete dandies, the Finnish boy had his gray Finn coat, the other his black Värmland shirt, and then both had red [pale] bands that were sewn on the back, shoulders and chest, a red ribbon bow on the shoulder, on the arms, etc., all of which made them more like a Harlequin, and into the bargain there hung three pieces shiny riksdalrar [coins], one from each of the red ribbons, one behind each shoulder and in the middle of the back. Furthermore, their hair was powdered and doctored so that they were complete dandies."

The couple in the picture are wearing what was advertised on the Web as traditional wedding clothes for Värmland. Although it's not exactly as Gottlund described, I think you can probably get an idea of what he was talking about. As the text continues he describes the ceremony, wedding meal: fish, meat, capercaillie roast, salty cabbage soup, beer, and schnapps.

“Eventually, I became acquainted with the host, we became fairly good friends. My recommendation from the priest helped, as well as my flutes, and most important was my Finnish language. Nearly everyone was Finnish, except some Swedes from Häckfalle, 3 or 4 in number. And Finnish was spoken everywhere.... The priest confessed that he thought the Finns never used their mother tongue as much as now. In particular, after they had a few glasses of acquavit, he never heard a Swedish word.”

Afterwards the dancing began, and, interestingly, while the brides danced, the two grooms did not. But the priest's sister did, reportedly the best polka dancer of them all. Actually, Gottlund only got part of the story of interrelationships right. Pehr Hallesson was only half-Swedish, his mother was Finnish. Maria Hindriksdotter was not the daughter from the farm, but a niece who seems to have been raised in the family of her aunt and uncle. Hindrik and Maria Bengtsdotter were first cousins, and Maria had lost her mother in the past year (her father had died some 14 years earlier). Hindrik and Maria went on to have four children. Pehr and his Maria never had any children.

Back to the modern day. This year cousin Ann Meyer Nordström and her husband travelled to the old family stomping grounds in and around the town of Östmark. The colors on the map suggest that much of the land is forested, and Anne gave me permission to share some of the pictures of the landscape in the area. It reminds me so much of central New York that I immediately felt at home.

This next clip from YouTube is a Finnish father and son (I assume), Sigurd (the father) and Bernt Ruotimaa (the son). The piece they're playing is called Livet i Finnskogarna, or, Life in the Forests of the Finns. In preparing this post I've gone through a half dozen versions of this song and listened to it probably 20 times. It may be my sentimental side, but somehow it just makes me feel good.

Now I look back at that map produced by AncestryDNA and realize that there was more to it, much more, than I'd initially imagined! Thanks to Ann for sending the pictures from Värmland and allowing me to share them with you. Apologies for my weak Swedish and non-existent Finnish. I'm working on the Swedish, though, and promise that I will get better. And finally, please excuse the mistakes and oversimplifications of Swedish and Finnish history. Every day I learn more and more.

Update to "Share..."

I got some welcome feedback on Facebook, from my last post on the purported picture of the Whites in front of their car. The photo itself apparently only identifies the young lady on the far left as Lillian White. The woman in the middle I thought I recognized as Lillian's mother, Mary Elizabeth (Farnham) White. That's when the trouble started. I made the unwarranted leap that the man on the right was Luke White, Lillian's father. But those in a better position than I to know thought not.

Photo from previous blog in which the man on the right was erroneously identified as Luke White

The notes on the back of this photograph identify all three people:

Clifford Sprague, Luke White, Edward White (left to right).

Cliff was a family friend, perhaps a friend of Ed. And the consensus of opinion was that the man in the upper picture is him as well. I know that I know I should stick to facts, and I do try, but it's good that there are people to help keep me on the straight and narrow! Sorry for the mistake.

Share and share alike

The purpose of this blog is to share the discoveries I've made in researching family history with other members of the family. As I was writing that sentence, it struck me that I need to emphasize that many - most - of these "discoveries" are only new to me. It turns out that many of these stories and facts were already known by one person or another. So in the interest of humility, I will stipulate that I am more of the vehicle through which this information is shared rather than the actual source of anything new. And it struck me recently that through the generosity of family members, I've been privileged to be able to accumulate a bit of a store of images from the past. These aren't my images, so while pondering my next blog post, I thought that sharing those pictures of past generations would be appropriate. So this entry is more of a picture gallery than one based on a story. I hope you find the images as interesting as I have!

I'm breaking this post into four separate parts, corresponding to my four grandparents' families, Harrigan, Burns, White (these three being the Irish side of the family) and Johnson (the Swedish quarter). And don't forget: you should be able to click on each picture in order to get an enlarged view.

Harrigan.

Dennis Horgan (1819-1891)

This is my great great grandfather, Dennis. Choose the spelling of his name that you prefer! This one is what I found on his gravestone in old St. Mary's Cemetery in Little Falls, NY. His year of birth is a little sketchy: the gravestone says that he was 74 years old when he died, but his death certificate says 72. So that would make it either 1817 or 1819 (plus or minus). Dennis's children were the Harrigan family's emigrants to the U.S. As you can see the photographer of this portrait was W. H. Abbott of Little Falls. The picture was taken only shortly before Dennis's death since he was in the U.S. only one year. There is no record of his wife, Julia O'Connell, either in the newspaper account of his death or in the death certificate. Presumably, she had passed away prior to his trip across the Atlantic. I can't say whether this was just a visit to his children and their families or he was planning on staying permanently. The image comes from the ancestry.com website of Mike Sciortino.

To go with that formal portrait, here is a picture of two of the nine children of Dennis Horgan and Julia O'Connell:

This picture comes from John Burrell, a 3rd cousin that I got in contact with through a DNA test. On the left is John Harrigan (1853-1927) and on the right his brother, Denis Horgan (1866-1933). When the Horgans came to the U.S. they seemed to gravitate first to the Little Falls region. Afterwards, several of them continued west to Missouri. John lived in Monett, in the southwestern part of Missouri, and he passed away in St. Louis. Denis stayed in the central New York area, living in Utica and working for the New York Central Railroad.

Burns.

This is another great great grandfather, Patrick Connel Burns (1839-1893). The framed portrait seems clearly to be derived from the other picture. I presume that the woman in the picture is Patrick's second wife, Mary Elisabeth Gallagher (1852-1910). They lived in the area of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and both are buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Marne, MI. The pictures come from Jack Kelley, another third cousin who lives in Utah. He tells me that the framed picture is hanging in the house of his sister, Colleen.

White.

From right to left: Luke White (1873-1928), Mary Elizabeth Farnham (= Grandma White, 1887-1956), Lillian White (1902-1952). Oh, and Spunk on the far right.

Since my earlier post, The fading trail of the Whites last year, I think things might just be opening up a bit. The break came from Kay Pfister. I wrote to her, via Facebook, asking if she had any family information and she came through big-time. Not only did she have pictures like the one above and the one below, but she also sent me copies of correspondence from the 1980's to her mother, Mary Kirby, and to Mary's sister Kaddie. The letter came from a gentleman in the Washington, DC area - let's call him Mr. D (I'm reluctant to put his name "out there" on the Internet), and he was searching for the family of Luke White who lived in Ilion, New York. It turns out that Mr. D's grandmother was Luke White's sister! I've since begun a snail mail correspondence with Mr. D and have made contact with a 3rd cousin 1x removed who lives in New York City. More to come on this soon!

Kate Fitzpatrick (1854-1935)

Although a bit worse for wear, this is a precious image of my great great grandmother, Kate (McGuire) Fitzpatrick, holding her great grandson, Alfred Johnson!

Johnson.

This one is from yet another 3rd cousin, Hans Malmkvist from Sweden. This quaint little house is likely the birthplace of my great grandfather, Gustaf Alfred Westerlund *1855-1923) and his brother Gottfrid Theodor (1863-1919). Unfortunately, there was no one at the house at the time to ask about its history.

I hope that everyone finds a little something of interest here. I want to stress that all of this comes from the generosity of family, and I sincerely thank all for sharing these treasures.

The Name on the Stone

Just about a year ago we visited Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn/Queens in the hope of learning more about the family of Alfred and Lottie Westerlund. We know they had two children that grew to become adults: Arthur (later Fredrick Johnson) and Wilma. But apparently there were a few other kids as well. I have a birth certificate for Eric born in 1897, and the federal census of 1900 lists two others (and doesn't include Eric): Harry and May. In New York I was hoping to find some data for these children that would help me to track down their births and deaths.

Alas, no luck on that score. As you can read in more detail in my earlier post, Westerlunds in NYC, the plot where Alfred and Lottie are buried has no headstones or dates to help. But there was the one marker with two surnames: Westerlund and Östergren. I was left with the mystery, who are or were the Östergrens?

So this post is to update you on what I've been able to discover about the mystery family. I must admit that I don't have all the answers yet, but what I have been able to find adds a bit of color to an otherwise dry story of names and dates. It begins with a simple question, so simple that it took me more than six months to think to ask it. I wonder what the cemetery records can tell me about the people buried in Grave #16642 along with the Westerlunds? I turns out that they do know the answer to that question: there's only one other person there: Gustava Ostengren [sic].

The New York Death Index 1862–1948 has a record for the passing of a Gustava M. Ostengren (that same misspelling!) on 27 Dec 1903, age 72. This was a good 20 years before the deaths of Alfred and Lottie. The record put her date of birth as 1831 plus or minus. This is only an index record, so it contains none of the information that would be recorded on a death certificate. A 1903 death means that the latest census in which I might find a record of Gustava would be the national census in 1900. The search of those records came up entirely empty. I did eventually find a possible record, though, “Wilhelmina Ostergreno.” This woman was recorded as the mother-in-law, living in the household of John and Anna Johnson at 33 Cornelia Street in Brooklyn. John and Anna had three children: Elin, Gorden, and Maple. Wilhelmina immigrated to the U.S. In 1895 and spoke only Swedish.

But is this the right person? Although the age, Swedish origin, and surname are correct (once you verify by looking at the actual record), the first names don't match. I quickly concluded that this was the person I was looking for because the names of her daughter and grandchildren rang a bell. You see, in looking for records of Westerlunds in the local Brooklyn newspapers I'd come across an article published in The Daily Standard in 1911, a short notice of a party that had been held. You can see the article in the image, but here's a quick transcription, with important names highlighted:

A pretty wedding anniversary was celebrated recently at the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund, on Fulton street, when a reception was given to their East New York friends. The Rev. Mr. Borgendald, who officiated at the wedding of the couple, was among the guests. Others present were: Gordon Johnson, Arthur Westerlund, Mrs. A. Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. S. Goldberg, Mr. and Mrs. H. Thorne, G. Thorne, Richard Bender, Mr. and Mrs. F. Quillan, Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Williams, Mr. and Mrs. J. Harrar, Mr. and Mrs. J. Anderson, Miss Wilma Westerlund, Miss Emily Harrar, Mr. and Mrs. P. Werner, Mr. and Mrs. J. Duffy, Mrs. Rundstrom, Miss Wilma Folk, Miss Thekla Field, Miss Marie Donaldson, Miss Juliette Karr, Miss E. Karr, Miss Ella Johnson, Miss Lisa Petterson, Miss Mabel Johnson, Miss May Harrar, Miss Ella Quillan and Miss Mildred Thornex.

There you see the names of my grandfather (Arthur Westerlund), his sister (Wilma), and their maternal grandmother, Mrs. (Charlotte) Rundstrom. We also see the names of four of the people listed in that census record: Mrs. A. (Anna) Johnson, Gordon, Ella, and Mabel. (I've learned that you have to be flexible with spellings!) I took this as evidence that the Johnsons and the Westerlunds were travelling in the same circles and corroborated my interpretation that Wilhelmina from the census could be the same person as Gustava.

Let's take a slight detour here from my original purpose of trying to figure out who the Östergrens were. Several of the people attending the anniversary party were familiar to me, but who in the world were Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund? One possibility was that they were another branch of the family that had emigrated. However, in none of my records have I found a J. Westerlund who fit the profile - no Jan, Johan, Jonas, etc.. Census records in New York have a few John Westerlunds in the general area, but none living at or anywhere near Fulton Street in Brooklyn. There's always the possibility of coincidence, that these Westerlunds had no relationship to my farfars far (paternal grandfather's father).

Well, I think I've resolved this, and it reminded me of one of the clues that helped Sherlock Holmes solve the case of a stolen racehorse and the death of the trainer in the story Silver Blaze: the case of the dog that didn't bark. At the anniversary party we have the son and daughter of Alfred Westerlund; we have his mother-in-law, Mrs. Rundstrom. The Johnsons are, I think, clearly friends of the family (if not more). Finally, we have the name of the anniversary couple themselves, Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund. So what's missing? Why didn't the dog bark? The rest of the family of Alfred and Lottie were at the party; why weren't they? I think it's because the newspaper made one further error in reporting or writing the story. The couple being honored was not Mr. and Mrs. J. Westerlund, but Mr. and Mrs. G. Westerlund (Alfred's first name was Gustav). A quick check revealed that in 1911 they'd been married for 25 years: a nice number to have a “pretty wedding anniversary.”

Back to the basic question: were the Östergrens and Johnsons merely friends of the Westerlunds, or is there some family relationship hiding there. That question remains open. I've followed the Östergrens back to Sweden. As the census record of 1900 indicates, Gustava-Wilhelmina Östergren came to the U.S. In 1895. The Emigrant Database shows that she embarked, alone, from Göteborg on May 3, 1895 bound for New York. Her full name was Gustafva Magdalena Wilhelmina Saltgren. On 22 Nov 1863 she married Anders Fredrick Östergren, who was an artilleryman. He died in 1870 of a lung inflammation. Together Anders and Gustava had only one child who survived to adulthood, Anna Wilhelmina. Anna left for the U.S. On 10 Sep 1889, again from Göteborg. This, by the way, is one of the major ports of departure from Sweden, located on the west coast with direct access to the North Sea. In English it goes by the name of Gothenburg (although the Swedish pronunciation is nothing like that!).

Anna married John Alfred (or Albert?) Johnson on 20 Aug 1892. John Johnson was also Swedish. The censuses of 1900 and 1910 say that he arrived in the U.S. in 1875 at the age of 18. There's no record of an emigrant with that specific name and about that age arriving in 1874 or 1875; in 1876 a young man from the county of Östergötland named John A. Johnsson did arrive. This might be him, and I'll be pursuing that possibility, but with the name of John Johnson – and its several Swedish variants – I'm not too confident that I'll be able to positively identify him. One interesting note about their marriage: I've posted a copy of it below. Note who the witnesses are: Alfred and Lottie Westerlund! Convincing evidence that I've got the right Östergrens, now Johnsons.

At this point I've found no evidence that the Östergrens and the Westerlunds are connected in anyway back in Sweden. I haven't been able to confidently find or follow John Johnson's lineage either. Perhaps if we go forward in time there will turn up a link between the families.

John Johnson's occupation on his marriage license was listed as sailmaker. This job was probably on its way out even in the 1890s; more commonly he's listed as an awningmaker. He worked for John Boyle & Co., tent and awning makers in Manhattan, for 38 years. His obituary in 1919 confirms that he was born in Sweden, but does not provide the city, parish or county he came from. The three children listed in the 1900 census – Elin, Gordon, and Mabel – were all for whom I've found any records.

Gordon William Johnson was born on 29 Aug 1895 in New York, presumably Brooklyn. In 1914 he graduated from Public School 85, now in Astoria, Queens. He enlisted in the Army in 1917. There was a short notice published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 9 Dec 1917, marking a farewell party held for him by his friends:

Dec 1 a farewell party was given in honor of Gordon W. Johnson at his residence, 730 Halsey street, by his numerous friends.

Mr. Johnson is leaving for Camp Joseph Johnston, Jacksonville, Fla., to serve in the Quartermaster's Department. He is the only son of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Johnson, a resident of Brooklyn all his life.

A pleasant evening passed in interesting and amusing games and dancing.

Three tableaus were presented by Frederick Meyer, assisted by Bert Thompson, with Gordon Johnson acting as announcer.

Several operatic selections were also rendered by Mr. Meyer, a Brooklyn tenor, assisted by William Templeton, pianist.

Supper was served at midnight, the decorations being the colors of the Allies.

Among the guests were: Miss Mabel Johnson, Miss Irene Hoblin, Miss Julia McCormick, Miss Marie Shuldiner, Miss Marjorie Brown, Miss Edna Pullman and Miss Etta Kaiser, Bert Thompson, Gus Elstrom, Harry Kharrs, William Templeton, Harold Ward, Willworth Delaney and Frederick Meyer.

Many gifts were received by Mr. Johnson for use when “Somewhere in France.”

Athough this was a gay sendoff, the aftermath was tragic. Pfc Gordon shipped down to Jacksonville for training on 11 Jan 1918, and from there he went to overseas on 6 Jun 1918. In France he died of pneumonia on 9 Oct 1918.

Back to the other children of John and Anna Johnson, the two daughters Mabel and Ellen. I haven't been able to round out my story of Mabel. She married Harry Howard Hulse in 1926 when she was 27 years old. Harry had been a sailor in WWI and worked for International Printing Ink Co. in Brooklyn during the World War II years. As far as I know they had no children, but that may not be the full story. For some reason I haven't found Mabel in the 1940 census, even though I Harry is listed, married, living with his parents. In 1942 he and Mabel are living at the same address, so it seems that they hadn't split up. Perhaps she was out shopping when the census taker came around.

Ellen married Harry C. Keiner on 17 Oct 1915. They had three children, Harry Jr., Dorothy and Margery. I was able to get in contact with Ellen's grandson, and asked him if he had any knowledge of where John Johnson had come from in Sweden. Unfortunately, he didn't know, but he did say that he would consult the family Bible. It's the Keiner family Bible, though, so I don't have really high hopes that it will have information on Harry Keiner's father-in-law.

There are still lots of avenues of exploration open for the Östergren/Johnson clan. Nothing at this point, though, suggests that the relationship between them and the Westerlunds was anything other than that of friends. The two families emigrated from different parts of Sweden and came to live near one another and attend the same church in Brooklyn. The fate of Gordon is a sad one, but that was really a drop in the bucket in the context of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and the carnage of World War I. The newspaper accounts, both of his farewell party and the reports of his passing, go a little way toward bringing that time in our history back to life.

Cue the Trumpets

For the past several weeks I've been poring through Swedish church records from the 18th and 19th centuries. So it's exciting when something comes up that adds some real color to the picture. This posting is about just such a happy event that occurred last weekend.

I primarily make use of the website ancestry.com to store data, pictures, and other sources and to build the family tree. Ancestry has over 2 million subscribers around the world, and it's one of the major players in the market. One of its features is that unless you've specified that your family tree is “Private,” then anyone in that user-base can see the data you've entered. (Not to worry: unless given explicit permission to do so, all information about living people is hidden from other users.) They also have a “Hint” function, which will send you suggestions of other information available that you might find relevant. So it's this way that I've been able to find and make contact with other more distant members of the family who are also involved in researching their past. Finally, if you find that someone has a useful bit of information like a story or an image, then you can link that to your own tree. The original person, in turn, gets a notification that this has been done.

Last weekend I saw that the birth and death records I'd found for Alma Viktoria Larsson (my 2nd cousin 2x removed) had been saved by another user, Ken Olsen. I'd made brief contact with Ken earlier; he's a fourth cousin: we share 3rd great grandparents (that's 5 generations back) Per Barthelsson (1814-1858) and Kjerstin Persdotter (1814-1888). The person in question, Alma Viktoria, was the sister of Ken's grandmother, Signe Teresa Larsson. On an impulse I went to Ken's tree to see where he'd added the documents just to double-check that our records agreed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was an image:

This turns out to be a newspaper clipping kept over the years by Signe. The caption is a bit hard to read. What I can make out is “Fröken Tora Larrson” and then only a couple of words below that. The word fröken in Swedish means a young lady, like Fräulein in German. Ken's caption to the image is “Alma Tora Larsson competed at the 1912 Summer Olympics finished 8th in the 10 meter diving platform.” This immediately set me to some Internet searching both to corroborate the information and to see what else I could find.

The Summer Olympic Games in 1912 were held in Stockholm. Some of the participants are well known to this day, at least to Americans of a certain age. Duke Kahanamoku was on the U.S. swimming team and won a gold medal in the 100 meter freestyle and a silver medal on the relay team.

Duke Kahanamoku receiving gold medal from King Gustav V.

Jim Thorpe won the gold medals for both the pentathlon and heptathlon. He completely dominated the competition: of the fifteen track and field events in these two competitions, he finished in first place in nine! At the conclusion of the Games, King Gustav V of Sweden congratulated him with the words, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” To which Thorpe replied, “Thanks, King.”

Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympic Games.

It turns out that the 1912 Olympics was the first time that there was a women's diving competition. As far as I can make out in this first competition the women were limited to what was called plain diving which consisted of a standing dive from both the 5m and 10m platforms, and then a running dive from both heights. No flips, twists, handstands: just jump in and land headfirst!

Tora Larsson did indeed compete in the Games as part of the Swedish team. Actually, the team was fairly large with 12 members. From the website of the Swedish Olympic Committee I was able to find pictures of ten of them, including one of Tora! The image is cropped pretty closely, so it's hard to get the full impression of what she looked like. (Note: the website did not have images of Ester Edström or Elsa Andersson.)

The diving competition was held in two stages, two preliminary rounds from each of which the top four contestants would advance to the final round. Tora did pretty well in the prelim, but, unfortunately finished eighth in the final. The gold medal was won by her teammate, Greta Johansson (pictured below), and the silver by another teammate, Lisa Regnell.

The first women's diving gold medalist, Greta Johansson (age 17) of Sweden.

I hope that you studied the team pictures carefully, because there's going to be a test. I was able to find a couple of videos of the Swedish women's diving team at the 1912 Olympics. One can be seen at the official Olympics website featuring Gerda Johansson: Click here. (Gerda is not the diver who won the gold, that was Greta. Gerda did not make it into the final round.) The video shows the two types of dives involved. But pause the video near the end when there's a picture of several divers. Can you identify them? (Hint: Gerda is second from the right.) Specifically, do you think that Tora's in the picture? I'm not sure, but just maybe.... Here's a screen grab from the end of the video. This image is not actually a video, although it looks like it. You'll need to go to the official Olympic site to see it (the link is just above):

Here's another video of the team: Click here. I'm pretty sure that Tora's not in this video, but, see if you can identify any of the others. Here's another screen shot:

I came across another web page from the Queen Mary University of London entitled “William Allan Stewart's memories of the Olympics 1912.” Originally I did a quick browse through the images that were posted and didn't find anything particularly interesting. But then I took a closer look at a photo on which is written “Swedish and English swimmers.” As you can tell from their uniforms only one is on the English team (unless, like football/soccer players, they exchange jerseys), and the other five are on the Swedish team. When I actually saw the picture (instead of the thumbnail), I immediately thought I recognized Tora on the far right. Take a look at the picture and let me know what you think!

Finally, I do have a positively identified picture. It comes from the official report of the 1912 games, a document that I can send you if you're interested. It has a full page picture of Tora in mid-dive! I think that's a fitting way to end this post. I never imagined that there was an Olympic athlete in the family. Thanks very much to Ken for sharing that gem!

Good fishing grounds

It's been a while since my last post, and I've already failed to live up to my biweekly target. It's been a busy time, though: aside from the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, we had to prepare for attending the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America. Just imagine, over 3000 people talking bugs all week! This year the meeting was held in Portland, Oregon. It's really a pretty bad time of year if you want to see anything other than the inside of hotels and the convention center, but it is a good chance to get together with friends from around the US and the world. So I really can't complain too much (just a little bit, though).

Most of the genealogical research I've been doing for several months now has concentrated on the Swedish side of the family. Partly this is because it was very poorly known to me: in contrast, my Harrigan relatives have done quite a bit of work. But the big reason for this concentration is that the documents that are available from Sweden are very extensive. OK, you have to learn a bit of Swedish along the way, but I've found that for that all the German courses that I took in grad school have been very helpful. I'm also digging in and trying to learn real Swedish along the way.

So what is it about the Swedish records that make them so useful? In the U.S. the federal government conducts a national census every 10 years. Some states, in turn, have their own census that helps to fill in the gaps. For example, the state of NY had its own censuses in 1892, 1905, 1915, and 1925. This helps a lot when you're trying to follow people as they move.

In Sweden the Lutheran Church is the state church, and its priests were charged with keeping records of the parishioners: births, deaths, baptisms, marriage banns, marriages, familiarity with religious teachings, literacy, even whether a child had been vaccinated against smallpox. The core resource are the parish household records, the församlings husförhörslängd. Here, for example, is the page from the household record for the parish of Teda (in Uppsala county) where Johan Erik Westerlund (my 2nd great grandfather) lived together with his young family.

There's a wealth of useful information here for the family historian. Names, of course, in the left-hand column, with titles for each person directly above. A dräng is a farm-hand, hustru is wife, and son is son (surprise!). The next set of columns gives information on the birth (födelse-) of each person: the year (år), month and day (månad och dag, expressed as day/month), and the place of birth. So we see that the father, Johan Erik, was born on 9 Jun 1825 in Björksta; mother Johanna Larsdotter was born on 11 Mar 1820 in Teda (with a different spelling); and the two sons Gustaf Alfred (9 Mar 1855) and Gottfrid Teodor (15 Jun 1863) were also born in Teda. The Äktenskap columns refer to dates of marriage (Gift) or widow(er)ing (Enkling or Enka). The Flyttat columns tell from where and when the family moved into the parish to be recorded in the book. In this case, the family came to Teda from Björksta in 1857 as recorded on page 104 of the previous parish household record book. Finally, Död would record the date of death of the person. I´m not showing the facing page in this image so that you get sufficient resolution to be able to read it, but the columns there give information on the person´s ability to read and understand the Lutheran catechism and also to where, and when the person might have moved out of the parish. In this case, the Westerlund family left Teda on 24 Oct 1865 for the town of Kungsåra.

As you can see, these records can be quite detailed and give very valuable information on the relationships between people, their professions, and movements. When it all goes right, you can follow a person from one book to another, from one town to another, from birth to death. But it wouldn´t be any challenge if everything always went right, would it? There are the typical minor problems you´d expect: misspellings, people don´t go where they say they are, people emigrate without leaving me a forwarding address, etc. Here are my big problems, though.

First, until well into the 20 th century, these records were all handwritten. In the example above the handwriting is excellent, and I think easily legible. Check out these examples for the other end of the spectrum.

Any guesses? I picked these two examples because, based on other evidence, I do know what they say. The first, written in blue ink, is the name Elin Maria Axelsson (4th cousin 2x removed). The second says Gevaldigern Vesterlund, and it refers to Constable Axel (Jansson) Westerlund (4th great grand uncle, 1784-1840).

The second difficulty in handwriting arises from the fact that in the old days the Gothic script was used. Here´s an example of that:

This is the birth and baptismal record of my 5th great grandfather, Johan Larsson. I will not pretend that I can read everything, but this is what I can tease out now. On the left it says Martius, Latin for the month of March. The two numbers are the birth and baptismal days. Then, in the big block of text you see the underlined name Johan, the name of the child. Preceding that you can see the name of the father: Lars Ericsson (yes, really!). On the right hand side are the witnesses or godparents (not sure): I see the name Erick Pärsson and wife, Anders Pärsson and wife Anna Pärsdotter, and then maid (i.e., single, marriageable woman) Anna Larsdotter).

My last difficulty comes not from handwriting, but is a reflection of societal change beginning in the early 19th century. My first example of a parish household record was rich with information. However, in the 1800s people began moving to city regions, and one area of tremendous growth was Stockholm. I think that as a result of the sheer numbers involved, the household records in Stockholm were much sparser in terms of the information recorded. Here´s an example:

This is the entire record! All it records is the city quarter (Cupido), the house number, name of the persons, and birth year. The records that I was interested in are the fourth and fifth handwritten lines. There, it records the workman´s widow Lindberg and her son U.A. This refers to Brita Stina Lindberg (born in 1782) and her son Ulric August (born in 1822). (I´ll have more about Brita in another post, I promise!) Sometimes the records are even more obtuse, just listing 4 children - no names, thank you - or in other cases the name of the head of household and the number of people living there. The record in the picture comes from St. Nikolai parish, the main cathedral in the Old Town or Gamla Stan. Stockholm had a whole series of other parishes as well, so to follow a clue that a person moved to Stockholm, you have to check the records from each parish in order to find them. Things got so bad, both with a massive influx of people into Stockholm, constant moving from one parish to another, and emigration that the church basically gave up on trying to maintain the records.

I should say at this point that all of these records are accessible online. The images I´ve included here come from ArkivDigital (you have to pay, but it´s been well worth it to me). You can read up on them at www.arkivdigital.net. After they gave up in Stockholm toward the end of the 19th century, you can still access a database with many records, but not always with images of the real record. That you can find at Rotemansarkivet.

OK, a special treat now. Two weeks ago I got an email from a Mr. Hans Malmqvist. He noticed that people in the family tree I have on ancestry.com overlapped with those in his. In particular, his grandmother, Beda Sofia Westerlund (1891-1975; she is my 1st cousin 2x removed). He said that he had a picture of Beda Sofia, her parents, and brothers and sisters outside the family house in Lerbo, Södermanland around 1914. Hans asked if I would be interested. To use the vernacular, OMG! Absolutely! Here you are:

The head of house is the bearded gentleman, Gottfrid Teodor Westerlund. (See, we've come full circle from the beginning of this post. Gottfrid was my great grandfather´s brother.) From left to right we have the matriarch Ida Sofia Karlsson (1857-1942); son Sigurd (1888-1967); Gottfrid (1863-1919); daughter Anna Maria (1893-1975); daughter Beda Sofia (1891-1975); daughter Margreta (1898-1933); and son Eric Ture (1895-1974). Hans tells me that the family still owns the little house, now with some additions. It started out as a soldier´s house. In those days, in lieu of conscription into the army, the local community would "convince" someone to be their contribution to the armed forces, in return for which the community would supply the soldier with a home and land to farm. Eventually, somehow, this one passed into the hands of the Westerlund family and remains there to this day. Help me out, though: I look at this and I wonder what those plants are that they're standing in. Are they potatoes?

I hope you found this interesting. More on the Swedish family links to come! As always, please post or send me comments, questions or suggestions. Hej då!