GENEALOGY KICKS
I know that some of you who read the things I write
about genealogy think I’m nuts and I admit that before I started I might have
thought the same thing, but there are some parts of it that are real kicks.
Granted, the data input and organizational activities are pretty boring.
That’s why my website, database, charts and files are never quite up to
date. It is more fun researching!
Long before I started seriously researching my
ancestry, my ex-wife and I tried to contact contemporaries on both sides and
gather as much data as they had and were willing to share. We
filled two large notebooks with data about aunts, uncles, cousins and their
spouses. After retirement, I got into the ancestry of my
mother and father, whose parents migrated from Sweden to the USA.
Since all four of my grandparents were from Sweden, in pursuing my own
ancestry I became very familiar with Swedish records and found that they were
accurate, quite extensive and readily available.
That initial effort resulted in the discovery of
some 567 direct ancestors and many more siblings, spouses and in-laws.
Every one of these discoveries was a kick and I suppose that might have
been enough, but apparently I am obsessive, compulsive, or otherwise committed
to filling in blanks, such that I looked for other trees to climb.
Once in a while a discovery gives me a big kick.
I’d like to share a few of these with you to see if you get a feeling for
what I’m seeking.
WHAT BECAME OF GREAT-UNCLE ERIK?
My father’s father was born out of wedlock.
His mother married two years later and grandpa took the Sandin surname
from her husband. Three years later grandpa’s half-brother
Erik Sandin was born. Grandpa migrated to “Amerika” when he
was 18 and never saw Erik again. Grandpa told family that
Erik also migrated, but I had no luck finding him in the USA.
As the years have passed, more and more Swedish data
has been released, and more and more has been made available online.
Some time ago, I found church records indicating that Erik made
arrangements to migrate when he was 20 years old. But still
no indication in the US records or the Swedish records of such a journey.
Another batch of church records became available and
I found Erik after the scheduled date of departure. With help
I found that he became a chauffeur, married a girl from Norway, lived some in
Sweden and some in Norway and died in 1902 when he was only 24 years old.
The mystery of uncle Erik was solved.
But wait, I followed his bride, only to find that he
had left her pregnant, and a son was born in 1903. This
preceding and the balance of this story all took a lot of time and effort, but
let me condense it. Erik’s orphan son Victor migrated to the
US, settled in Washington State, had two sons, and eventually, I am now in touch
with one of his sons, a half first cousin!
A REVOLUTIONARY TREASURE
During the research of my paternal grandfather’s
half-brother, I had my first exposure to the Sons of the American Revolution.
A person I was searching for appeared on an application for membership in
that Society. To qualify one must submit the relationship
line from himself to the person who participated in that war.
As you can see, this application included information about the applicant and
seven generations of ancestors. Of course you can’t plan
these things, but what a treasure if you should happen to have a relative who
made such an application. I was able to use and/or verify six
generations of information in one line of Erik’s tree from this single source
document!
WE ARE ALL RELATED (APPARENTLY)
Two of my mother’s sisters married two young men who
happened to be Lindberg brothers. This concentration of
relationships provided an opportunity that was difficult to ignore.
To add to the temptation, the brothers had Swedish ancestry, the research
of which was by now familiar to me.
The older sister and her husband had two daughters
while the younger had one son. These three are my first
cousins. These cousins were (and the two remaining are) quick
to inform me of family events to keep the contemporary trees current.
A few years ago I dug out several generations of
Lindberg ancestry and shared a nearly 200 page report and some charts with these
first cousins. Included in that report was a bit of data I
found about the wife of the male cousin.
The two female cousins (sisters) married two men who
happened to be Wiersbe brothers. Once again I was faced with
the opportunity and temptation of digging into a concentration of genes and once
again I succumbed to the temptation.
I didn’t get very far with the Wiersbe line because
the paternal grandfather of the brothers came from Germany and I really don’t
know my way around German records. However, the maternal
grandparents were born in Sweden and migrated to the USA, so I was off and
running.
As usual, some of the lines petered out after about four generations, but one
eventually went out to nine generations with earliest births in the mid-1600s.
A birth in 1806 on that line occurred in the parish of Hällefors, where
some of my ancestors came from. This encouraged me to go on,
and the next generation produced a man with the surname Zander, which rang a
bell. I checked my database and, sure enough, I had that very
person listed. He was not a direct ancestor, but I had
significant information about him.
To make a long story short, the maternal grandfather of the Zander I ran into
married twice. His first wife had a daughter that led to the Wiersbe line and
his second wife had a daughter that led to my line. The
Wiersbe brothers who married my two first cousins turn out to be half fourth
cousins once removed! The “half” is due to our lines coming
from two different wives of our common ancestor, Sven Larsson.
Now that alone was a big thrill, but on closer examination, Sven's
bouppteckning was one that I had translated and have online.
The Swedish bouppteckning is kind of like probate papers, but includes an
inventory of the deceased’s estate with values, information about heirs and
sometimes an indication of the estate’s distribution. It is a
wealth of insight into the life of the deceased.
Not done yet - another
bouppteckning I have online was for Sven's son-in-law, the husband of Sven's
daughter who is in the Wiersbe line, and the father of the Zander I first ran
into. Even though this person was not in my direct ancestry,
I chose to translate it to see if any items listed could be identified as the
same ones that were passed down from Sven.
Still more – I wrote and put online
two
Ponograms that describe the life of Sven from the eyes of Sven's widow,
using his bouppteckning as a source for details.
And then the frosting on the cake of discovery.
When I made the announcement of my discovery of the common ancestor, I
heard from a 5th cousin in Sweden who now lives just two miles from
the Sven Larson farm Hyttbacken and ON the same property of the Zander farm
Södra Torpen! The kicks just keep coming.
To summarize, the Lindberg sisters are my first
cousins through my mother’s side, and they married Wiersbe brothers who are my
half fourth cousins once removed through my father’s side!
FOUR BROTHERS MARRY FOUR SISTERS
Sound familiar? If you have been
following Ponograms for a while, you may remember this kick.
You can see the details in
Ponogram #86.
The part that tickled me the most was that while the parents of the four sisters
were my direct relatives, it was their SON who perpetuated my line, not one of
the four sisters.
DID GRANDMA TRAVEL ALONE AT 19yo?
Early in my research, I was able to find in church
records that my maternal grandmother came to the USA when she was 19 years old.
I was shocked that a girl of that age would have the courage to make a
journey like that alone. But then, her mother and her sister
had died, her older brother had migrated, and all that was left of the family
was a younger brother. Her father had been away to the USA
for several years and she was cared for by her father’s mother.
When he returned he remarried and grandma didn’t get along with the new
wife, so she was probably incentivized to get away from home for a new life.
New records shed new light on the story.
It turns out that grandma’s older brother apparently returned to Sweden
from the USA for the
sole purpose of picking up and traveling with grandma in her grand journey!
I breathed a sigh of relief.
AFTERWORD
I hope these summaries give you a bit of the flavor
of genealogy and why I spend so much time on it. The kicks
are unexpected and really rewarding, but I'm told that the real benefit of the
genealogy research is keeping my mind sharp. Is it working?
You tell me.