Besides this being a lovely picture of my great-granduncle’s family, it also shows the various pictures they had hanging on their wall.  The one second from the left is a picture I recognize – it’s my great-grandmother and her family.   I love searching old pictures for details and clues.

I wonder if this picture was taken for a special occasion.  Everyone looks dressed very nice {even the little girl has a lovely necklace on} and there is a gorgeous vase of flowers on the table.

I wonder where all of those photos are today.  Are they hanging on someone’s wall?

I guess it’s just the fact that it clearly shows how different life was at that time.  Much slower. 

This is a picture of my great-great grandmother, Christina Elisabeth Bennberg Klarstrom while shew as on a visit to Boston.

Thank you to my cousin for sharing this with me – and for allowing me to share it with you!

Thank you so much to my cousin who sent this to me!!

I was pleasantly surprised when I received an email from a third cousin in Sweden who was also starting research on this family.  He was able to visit with an older family member and look through a stack of about 50 old letters and cards from the 50′s and 60′s – correspondence back and forth between the family in Sweden and the US.

One of the letters provided a wealth of genealogical information.  It was listing what had happened to each of the siblings, as far as was known.  And it has given me new avenues and places to search.

The letter gave us more info on the families of the siblings who settled in the US, but there were a few of my great-grandma’s siblings who seemed to just disappear off the face of the earth.  Or at least out of the records I had searched.  And now I know the reason why – one of the brothers was a sailor, another had a claim in Alaska during the Gold Rush, and another was a sailor who ended up raising sheep and goats in Australia.  How exciting!!

So, where do I go from here?  I’m actually not sure.  Are there gold rush claim records?  Is there an Australian census in the early 1900′s?  These are questions that I don’t yet know the answer to, but I’m looking forward to continuing the search!!

When someone out there starts the journey to searching for their roots, they usually begin by googling the names of their ancestors.  And I’m so happy when we have a common ancestor and they are directed to this humble little blog.

Just such a thing happened again this past week.  It seems like a miracle in itself, because I’ve been in a blogging funk.  Well, not really a funk, I’ve just been super busy with life.  Schooling the kids.  Taking pictures for friends.  Trying to keep up on housework.  And having fun with friends.  Having fun is important!!

I like that my blog works on genealogy even when I’m not.

A third cousin contacted me and we’re sharing information.  His family great-grandfather stayed in Sweden, while the rest of the 9 siblings emigrated (my great-grandmother went to Seattle).

And now I’m motivated to start posting again.  I have some new material and am ready to dive back into my Swedish roots headfirst.

I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve found out in the coming weeks.  It’s exciting!!!

And thank you to my new found third cousins in Sweden!  I’m so happy you guys found me.  And now I’m hoping that some of the descendants from the other siblings will find me too.

I had really been hoping that the death certificate of my great-great grandmother, Christina (Söderlund) Bergman would list her parents’ names.  I know who her mother was, but she was born out of wedlock and her father was not listed on her birth certificate.  Her mother married Jonas Söderlund about 10 years after she was born and I’m not sure if he was her real father or not.  I was hoping that this might clear that up, but it didn’t.  Her parents are actually listed as “unobtainable” which surprises me.  She lived with her bachelor son, who is old enough to have known his grandmother (her mother).  I’m not sure why at least her name isn’t listed – especially since he was listed as the informant.

She died tragically – she was hit by a car.  Maybe the trauma of the event clouded his memory.

It looks like I’m going to have to do some serious digging in the Swedish parish records to solve the mystery of her birth father.

But I had to show you what a Swedish household register looks like.  They are really amazing.  Really.

The household registers changed formats over the years, but I’ll show you a couple from my own personal research, just so you can get an idea of what kind of information they showed.

First, here is a family in 1789:  Yes, in 1789 they listed everyone in the household, each year!!

And in1831-1835.  It lists their full birth dates.  When they moved in or out of the parish (and where to/from).  And their occupation among other things.  Also, if they died, then it usually gives the death date.  Isn’t it wonderful??

Here are some examples from various years of Swedish birth records of how the children born out of wedlock were marked on the birth registers:

The father often wasn’t named on the records, which is unfortunate.

Here is one instance from my own family tree, when the child was born out of wedlock, but then it was crossed out since the couple got married.   Pig. stood for an unmarried female.  The date given on the second line is when Carin married Per, one month after the baby was born.

I did a simple search at GenealogyBank.com today and I’ve unearthed some great news articles about her death from the Seattle Daily Times.

A little background information first.  Christina was born 26 May 1852 in Ösaren, Valbo, Gävleborg, Sweden.  I have very little information about her childhood, but I know that she was born out of wedlock.  Her mother was married when Christina was about 11 years old and I”m not sure if she married Christina’s father, or someone else.  So many things to research!

Anyway, Christina married Lars Larsson Bergman in 1871, but her husband died of something alcohol-related just one month before their seventh child (my great-grandfather) was born.  She ended up immigrating to Seattle, WA one year after her bachelor son, David Bergman moved there.  They lived together in the Ballard neighborhood.

And on to the articles…

The first article I found was dated March 10, 1924.  She must have been in horrible pain and it breaks my heart that she lay in the hospital for several hours before she was identified – without any family around.  It doesn’t mention whether she was conscious or not, but with a fractured skull, I’m not sure.

Another little mention on March 11th.  There seem to have been quite a few car accidents reported.And also from March 11th, this article gives some more information on the accident.  She was hit by a 17-yr-old Ballard High School student, Fred Schultheis.  He was arrested and held in city jail over night.  He apparently didn’t have a driving permit. The coroner ordered an inquest.  My great-great grandmother was crossing the street on a Saturday night to attend a church function.  He said that he saw her before he hit her, but couldn’t stop his car in time to avoid the accident.He was found to be responsible for her death, by reason of gross negligence.  Some of the witnesses testified that the car kept going over 75 feet after she had been hit.  He wasn’t going over 20 miles per hour though (this was 1924).Despite the fact that he was found to be responsible, no charges were brought against him.  He was a minor and even though he was a negligent driver and didn’t have a license, there was no testimony to indicate that he was driving at an excessive rate of speed and Christina was crossing the street between intersections when she was hit.  Fred was driving the car without the authority of his father – and I bet he got in more trouble from him than he did with the law!! {this articled dated March 14, 1924}

I didn’t find an obituary for Christina Bergman, but I did find this Card of Thanks, dated March 20, 1924.

So now I know that my great-great grandma did in fact get hit by a car. I hope that the boy learned his lesson, but wasn’t haunted by the accident the rest of his life.  That would be a hard thing to live with.

This last article, the Card of Thanks, left me a little mystery – which may have been nothing but a typo.  The three children of Christina Bergman’s who were living in Seattle (that I know of) were Kerstin Elisabet (Mrs. Peterson), David Bergman (a bachelor), and my great-grandfather, Lars Julius Bergman.  My question is – who the heck is Talino?  That doesn’t sound very Swedish to me!  Maybe they just simply wrote the wrong name?

I’ve devoted my free time this week to searching this line. It’s nice to have a little focus instead of randomly skipping from line to line.  I definitely need more focus. I tend to be a scatterbrained genealogist.

Here are some (very random) observations and thoughts that have crossed my mind while researching my Swedes:

• When I was a kid, I don’t remember my Grandma Eleanore every doing anything “Swedish”.  Her parents were both born and married in Sweden.  They had 2 children before immigrating to Seattle and another 2 afterward.  My grandma was the youngest and I suppose that she simply was an American.  Her older sister seemed to have held onto her Swedish roots more, but she spoke Swedish as a first language, and married another Swedish immigrant.  I wonder what my grandma’s childhood was like – did her parents speak Swedish or English to her?
• I just realized that both of my great-grandparents (my Swedish immigrants) were fatherless.  Lars Julius Bergman’s father died one month before he was born.  His wife, Eugenia Klarstrom’s father died when she was 2 years old. I wonder if this had something to do with them deciding to leave Sweden.
• The number of children born out of wedlock in Sweden in the late 1800′s was much higher than I would have thought.  I have a number of ancestors whose parents weren’t married when they were born. I never would have guessed that this was so common.
• It’s really hard reading documents written hundreds of years ago in another language, with sometimes different script and abbreviations.  Trying to figure out place names has been a challenge too.  The Family Search site has been helpful in that it lists out the place names of the different parishes.  I never would have figured out most of them without this tool.
• I’ve had an easy enough time finding my ancestors who lived in small rural communities.  It’s not so easy to search page by page through a big city though.  I suppose I’ll just have to put a movie on and start looking through the entire city of Gavle for them.
• The Swedes were not original with their names.  It seems like there are just a handful of names which are used over and over and over again: Lars, Anders, Nils, Olof, Johan, Per, Karl, Erik, Sven, Kjerstin/Christina, Catherina, Maria, Karin, Brita etc.  It makes finding MY Lars and Per and Nils and Kjerstin a lot harder.
• Add to that the fact that they didn’t have last names, and it gets even more difficult.  It is helpful though since it gives you their father’s name.  It’s just a lot of the same names over and over which is sometimes hard to sift through.
• I’m thankful that at least a couple of my ancestors adopted a surname early on (before 1800) – Klarstrom and Bennberg.  It has made them a bit easier to find amongst all of the -sons and -dotters.
• I think it’s really cool that I have ancestors that came through Ellis Island.  Most of my other lines came to America much earlier than my Swedish ancestors (who came in 1913-1914).
• I really want to go to Sweden someday.
• I’m wishing that America had such wonderful parish records as Sweden has.  Household examinations, births, deaths, moving ins and outs, burials, baptisms, etc.  It’s WONDERFUL not having to skip 10-20 years to find them in the census.  The household examinations are continuous – every year!!!
• I realize that I’m very lucky that I knew what parishes my family came from, because it saved me a lot of research time.
• Searching through the parish records has reminded me of the fact that I really need to use a research log – so I can mark down which records I’ve already searched.  It’s so uncool to search the same records again (and again and again in some cases).

Do YOU have Swedish Roots?

He was only 39 when he died and he left behind a family that needed him.  I was very curious as to what his cause of death was.

Was it some work-related accident or perhaps an epidemic going through town? Nope.

I don’t speak Swedish, but between the help of some foreign friends and online translating, what I can came up with is this:

omöjligt (possible a different spelling since many of the spellings changed over the years) = impossible

förlamad, förlammat = paralyzed

starka drycker = strong drink

What does this mean when I put it all together?  I’m not exactly sure, but it looks like he became paralyzed from having drank too much.

Anyone have any different thoughts? Better yet, can you speak Swedish and correct me?

His death leaves a lot of questions for me.

He was a 39-year old man with 5 children and a pregnant wife.  What caused him to drink this much?

Was he sick?  Out of work?  Depressed? Did he have a nag for a wife?  Was he an alcoholic or was this a one-time episode of binge drinking?

I also wonder how his death changed the lives of those he left behind.  Did his wife have to find work?  His oldest son would have been 15 – did he have to support the family?

I have a lot of research to do on this branch of the family and I’m hoping that as I do that, I will be able to answer some of these questions.  The one thing holding me back right now is time.  I have to search page by page through the registers to find them in the household examinations and unlike many of my other Swedish ancestors, they actually lived in a city – and that means many more pages of searching.

She was the tenth (and last) child of Carl Magnus Klarstrom and Elisabeth Christina Bennberg. I have written 9 previous posts on each of her older siblings over the past few weeks.  I am glad I took the time to do some more research on them, because it has given me greater insight into the entire family.  Don’t forget the siblings!!!

Eugenia was born January 4, 1888 in the Lenhovda parish, Sweden. Her family had previously lived in Gavle and in nearby Alvkarelby.  I am not quite sure what caused the family to move to the Lenhovda area, but they only lived there for about four years.  You can see in the map below that it was quite a ways from the Gavle area.

Her father, Carl Magnus, was listed as a “Klamparen”, which is a supervisor in a sawmill, who sorts the lumber out. Maybe they moved because of his job.

I started to get a bit confused, because despite the fact that I found Eugenia’s birth record in the Lenhovda parish records, she listed her birth place as Nybro on her declaration of intention.  I wasn’t sure which to believe.  Nybro is in nearby Kalmar county and there don’t appear to be any parish records from that town until 1932.  Could the records for Nybro have been included in Lenhovda in 1888?  They are about 55 miles apart.

I finally made sense of it all when I realized that the “Skogstorp” listed in her birth record was in fact the place where she was born.  Her family was living in the Skogstorp area of Lenhovda parish also:

And Skogstorp appears to be between Lenhovda and Nybro (actually closer to Nybro!).  Mystery solved.  I love those little “aha” moments.  I zoomed in as close as I could on Google and Skogstorp looks like it’s  not much more than a couple of houses and a whole bunch of trees.

The family moved to Alem in 1889 (one year after she was born).  Alem is along the coast in Kalmar county (not far from Nybro).

Here is the family in the household register in Alem.

And then the family moved yet again on June 27, 1890 – back to Gavle.  What is with all of the moving??  Why didn’t my family peacefully live in one village for a hundred years?   For this reason, I am forever grateful that Sweden has such spectacular parish records available.  To be given the exact date that they left the parish is amazing to me.

I have yet to find the Klarstrom family in the household registers in Gavle.  It’s proving to be much more difficult than finding them in the smaller parishes.  Gavle was a large city and the records are not indexed, which means I have to page through them.  I do know that they moved there in 1890 though, because it was recorded in the moving out records in Alem.

Eugenia’s father, Carl Magnus, died in Gavle on September 7, 1890 – only a little over a month after they moved to the city. She was only 2 years old at the time and would never know him.

I posted a request on Genealogy Wise for someone to help me translate what the cause of death was.  Someone kindly helped me out and told me that it says “submersio”.  He drowned.  I’m surprised and of course full of a lot of questions.  Was it an accident?  Was it suicide?  Was he working?  Did it happen in the river?  The sea?  The bathtub?  I’m not sure that I’ll ever know the answer to these questions.

I do know that his death left my great-great grandmother alone and she didn’t remarry.  Three of her ten children were already living in the U.S. I think that this paved the way for the younger ones heading over also, especially since they probably had to earn some money now that their father wasn’t working.  Eugenia’s brothers Hjalmar, Robert,  and Reinhold headed to the U.S to work in the 1890′s.  Olga left in 1892 and then returned briefly in 1898, to bring Klara back with her also.  Klara was the closest child in age to Eugenia.

As far as I know, this left my great-grandmother and her brothers Carl and Napoleon as the only children who were still in Sweden in 1900.  As I’ve said, I haven’t found them in the household records yet, so I’m not entirely sure if Carl and Napoleon were actually there.

I found Eugenia and her mother on the moving out list in Gavle on June 9, 1904.  They are listed as emigrating to North America.

I found them on a passenger list from Goteborg to Boston in June of 1904.  They were domestic servants.

I also found them returning to Sweden in 1905 though, so it appears that they only stayed for one year.  Why didn’t they go back?

Eugenia married Lars Julius Bergman on October 24, 1908 in Gavle.

Their first child, Martha Elizabeth Victoria, arrived a few months later – on January 3, 1909.  Did they marry simply because she was pregnant?

Another daughter, Elvy Kristina Eugenia was born in 1913.

Lars then left for the United States in November of 1913.  He immigrated through Quebec and moved on to Seattle, Washington.  He settled in the Ballard neighborhood, which was a thriving Scandinavian community.

Eugenia and the two children arrived the next year.  They traveled on the SS Helig Olav, arriving October 13, 1914 in New York.  They were processed through Ellis Island – which I think is very cool.  I am assuming that they probably took a train across the country to Seattle to meet up with Lars.

A son, Walden Julius was born to them in Seattle in 1917.  Here is a picture of the family which must have been taken in about 1918-1919.  I love the bows on Martha and Elvy’s heads.

And then my grandmother, Eleanore Sonia Bergman came in 1922.  Here she is as a small child.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that Lars and Eugenia’s marriage was a very happy one.  They were still living together in the 1930 census, but I found an announcement of their divorce being granted in the Seattle Times in October of 1937 – after 29 years of marriage.

In 1935, Eugenia had put in her declaration of intention to become a citizen.  I was so overjoyed when I found this document, because I was lucky that it included a picture!

Eugenia never remarried and she died on April 15, 1960 in Seattle, WA.

If you’ve made it this far, then thank you for sticking with me.  I find that it often helps me to write out my research so that I can find the holes in it.  From looking back at what I have on Eugenia, there are a few things that I know I want to look into further:

1. Try to find the family in the Gavle household registers.  (This will take a lot of patience, chocolate and BBC movies as I page through it.)
   
2. Order the divorce records of Lars and Eugenia (although I feel a little bit like it’s none of my business.  I think one generation further back and I wouldn’t have any second thoughts about it.  What do you think?  None of their children are still living, but they have many grandchildren that remember them.Am I being too nosy?)
3. Order her death certificate, just to have it.I’d like to know the cause of her death.
   
4. Visit her gravestone and take a picture of it.
   
5. Find out what the Order of Vasa was, which she was a member of.
   

Any other suggestions? Oh, and does anyone know how to get the little dots above the letters?  Klarstrom should have dots (I really want to call them umlauts but that’s German) over the o.  And many of the place names have special Swedish letters also.  I don’t know how to type those (other than to copy and paste them and I was WAY too lazy to do that throughout this entire post.)

She was born in Lenhovda, Kronoberg, Sweden on 22 Aug 1885.

She moved with her family to Alem in 1889 and then on to Gavle in 1890.  Her father died that same year, when she was only five years old.

Klara, like most of her siblings, decided to immigrate to the United States. Did she go to be close to her older siblings?  Did she need a job?  Probably both.  It seems like there were many young Swedish immigrants settling in urban areas during this time period  – mostly for economic reasons.

She arrived in America in 1898 at the age of 13  and settled in the Boston area – where a few of her sisters were already living.

Can you imagine traveling from Sweden to America without your parents at this age?  And knowing that you were going to be working when you got there? She was traveling with her older sister Olga (21), who had already lived in Boston from 1892-1897.  The passenger list said they were headed to their sister Marie Johnson/Johanson’s in Dorchester.

I have an almost 12 year old myself and I can’t even fathom sending her across the ocean to work.  Different times, I know.

In the 1900 census, she was 14 years old and working as the only servant in the family of Albert Smith, a printer in Boston.  I wonder if she was lonely or if she had time to visit with her sisters.

Did her sisters help her get her job?  They had worked as servants before their marriages also.

In 1910, at 24, she was one of five servants living with the family of Robert McQuillen in Dedham, Norfolk, MA.  At least ten years of being a servant.  It doesn’t sound like any fun to me.  I suppose one has to earn a living though.  I’ve noticed that many of the servants in the Boston area were Swedish.  I wonder why.  Were the Swedes better servants than say, the Irish or Germans?

At least she seems to have moved up in the world – to a family with 5 servants rather than one.  She was a “maid”.  It appears there was also a waitress, cook, seamstress, and coachman in the household.

I wonder which was more work – being an only servant in a smaller house or one of many servants in a bigger home.  I think I’d rather be in the larger home with some company. What about you?

Klara eventually escaped servitude by marrying Ellis N. Silver, a plumber,  on 28 August 1911 in Boston.

They had a daughter Christine on 1 July 1912 and another daughter Olga in about 1917.

In the 1920 census, they were living in Boston.

They had a son Robert in about  1926 and were still living in Boston in 1930.

And that’s all I have on Klara.

He was born April 4, 1882 in Älvkarleby, Uppsula, Sweden.

His family moved to Lenhovda in 1885, then on to Alem in 1889,

and finally to Gavle in 1890, where his father died that same year.  He would have been about 8 when he lost his father.

Many of his siblings immigrated to the US.  Maria left in 1883, when he was 1. Christina Josefina left in 1887, when he was 5. Olga in 1892, and Hjalmar and Robert in 1893 when he was 11 and Klara in 1898.  Even though he had 9 siblings, it looks like he didn’t grow up with many of them in the house.

He decided to follow in their footsteps and he immigrated in 1903.

Swedish parishes kept “moving out” records when someone left the parish.  Isn’t that wonderful?  Here is his moving out record from Gavle in 1903:

And here he is listed on the passenger lists.  He was headed to his sister’s in Boston – Christina Josefina Jensen, wife of Anton Jensen.

In 1908, he signed his Declaration of Intent to become a naturalized citizen.  His physical description said that he was 5’10 1/2″ tall and 165 lbs – with a light complexion, light brown hair, and blue eyes.

He married Jennie Lindberg in about 1909 (I’m not sure where).  She was born in Massachusetts, but her parents were both born in Sweden. Did he meet her while living in MA?

Their first son, Raymond William Klarstrom, was born on May 9, 1910.

In 1910, they were living on George Avenue in Waukegan, Lake, Illinois.  He was listed as a machinist in a mill.  I wonder what made them move to Illinois, when the majority of his sisters were living in the Boston area.  Did his wife’s parents move there?

He was naturalized on 7 Mar 1911.

In about 1913, a daughter, Alice was born.

He registered for the draft in September of 1918.  At the time, he was working as a toolmaker at Northern Brass Manufacturing Company.  As far as I know, he didn’t serve in the military.  In the 1930 census, he was not listed as a veteran.

He was still living in Waukegan in 1920. Somewhere along the way, it appears he Americanized his name from Reinhold to Raymond.

Another son, Richard E. Klarstrom, was born in 1921.

In 1930, they were still in Waukegan.  He was listed as a machinist and toolmaker at a rare metal factory.

Reinhold (Raymond) Ambrosius Klarstrom died on January 4, 1940 in Waukegan, Illinois.  His wife Jennie, lived until 1973.

I wonder if he kept in contact with his sisters.  Did they visit?  Did their children know each other?  Did my grandmother know her cousins? I wish that I was able to ask her.

Napoleon Victorinus Klarström was the seventh child of Carl Magnus Klarström and Christina Elisabeth Bennberg.

He was born 26 February 1880 in Alvkarleby, Sweden – south of Gavle.

His father is again listed as “Klamparen”.  I got another answer to my question on the boards at Genealogy Wise and now I know that a Klampare was: A foreman or supervisor at a lumberyard whose task it is to oversee the sorting of wood that is left over from the saw mill. This sorting was organized into six classifications. The classifications vary according to the production.

Napoleon moved with his family from Alvkarleby to Lenhovda, then to Alem, and finally to Gavle in 1890 – where his father died that same year.  He would have been about ten years old at the time.

I have yet to find the family in the household examinations in Gavle, so I’m not sure how long Napoleon lived.  I didn’t find any immigration records on him, so I don’t believe he left Sweden like the majority of his siblings.

More mysteries to solve.

As I looked at the birth record a little closer, I noticed the word “Skutskar”.

I found Skutskar using Google Maps. I love the internet. It is a town just north of Alvkarleby.  I couldn’t seem to decipher first word though.   I figured out that the Gifta 1868 means that her parents were married in 1868.  I believe that Klamparen is her father’s occupation and he must have worked in Skutskar.  That’s my educated guess since I saw it on a number of her siblings birth records also.  I tried looking up Klamparen in the dictionary, but was unable to find it.  Luckily, I posted a question on Genealogy Wise and someone quickly replied that “a  klampare is a person, who works in the sawmill and sorts pieces of wood which are cut out in different shapes and sizes.”  So, Carl Klarstrom worked at a sawmill.

The Klarstrom family moved to Lenhovda in 1885, to Alem in 1889, and to Gavle in 1890. Olga’s father Carl died in Gavle in 1890.

Olga left Sweden in 1892 at the age of 15, heading for Boston.  I know that two of her older sisters, Maria and Christina were both married and living in Boston already.  Perhaps she went to live with one of them.

I have included the two people next to her on the passenger list out of Goteborg.  I don’t recognize their names, but they were both also headed to Boston and one was from Lenhovda and the other from Alvkarleby – both places that her family had lived before Gavle.  Could they be friends or cousins of some sort?

I then found her again traveling from Sweden to America in 1898. I’m not sure if she was simply visiting on her first trip over. Maybe she worked for a while and then returned home. I don’t know. But this time, she was traveling with her younger sister Klara, who was only 13. They were both listed as servants.

In the 1900 census, Olga was living at 637 Dudley Street in Boston, as a servant to George Bartlett, a widower and his single daughter. She was the only servant in the household.  I wonder if it was lonely being a solitary servant.  Was her work hard?  Did she have time off to visit with her sisters?

By the 1910 census, she had found a new position.  She was living on Fairfield Street in Boston and working as a maid to an architect, Francis R. Allen and his wife.  There were 3 other servants living in the house, so she appears to have had company.

I did a little searching and found that Francis R. Allen was quite a famous architect during that time period. I wonder if he gave lavish parties that she had to work at.

She left America again in June of 1910 and returned in November of the same year, this time with her mother, Christina (Bennberg) Klarstrom.  Was her mother coming to visit or work?  I am not sure how long she stayed. Olga was listed as a dressmaker this time.

I then found her in another arrival list in 1912.  She had been in Sweden again.  It stated that her last permanent residence was in Beverly Farms, MA – north of Boston.

It also stated that she was headed to Woods Hole, MA – which is quite a ways south of Boston.

It looks like she was moving around from one position to another quite a bit.  Was this normal for a servant of this time period?  I guess I envisioned servants staying with one family for years and years.  I have a feeling that part of the reason she continued to find new positions, was that she made frequent trips back to Sweden.  I was unable to find her in the 1920 census – perhaps she was in Sweden again.

I found her leaving New York for Sweden in 1923.  Her residence was listed as Springvale, Connecticut.

She returned to America in October of that same year.  This time, she was listed as a “sick nurse” and she was heading to Boston.

In 1924, she signed her Declaration of Intent.  At the time, she was living at 1125 Lexington Avenue in New York City – a few blocks from Central Park.  She was listed as a trained nurse.

She was naturalized in 1928. In 1928, she was living at “The Caravela” in Cohasset, Massachusetts.

In the 1930 census, she was living at the Woodward Hotel on West 55th Street in Manhatten.  From what I gather, the building is still standing, but it is now called “The Dream Hotel”.  She was listed as a nurse at the hotel.

(the picture found while I was searching Google Maps)

In 1936, she arrived in New York from Sweden yet again.  This time she was living at 14 Perham Street in West Roxbury, MA.

And lastly, I found her in the Social Security Death Index.  It stated that she died25 May 1970 in Norwood, Norfolk, Massachusetts.

As far as I can gather, she never married and never had any children.  She obviously did a lot of traveling back and forth between Sweden and MA/NY.  I wonder if she ever went to visit my great-grandmother (her sister) in Seattle.

He was born on 24 April 1875 in Alvkarleby, Sweden.

His family moved to Lenhovda when he was ten, then on to Alem for a year and then to Gavle.

When he was 18, he boarded a ship bound for Boston, with his older brother Hjalmar.  His sister Maria was already living in Boston at the time.  Did he stay with her family?

The only trace of him I’ve found after this immigration record, is the 1900 census.
He was living in Odell Twp, Fall River County, South Dakota as a boarder to Gustav Johnson. He was working as a sandstone quarryman.

Fall River county appears to be in the middle of nowhere!

I then found a Robert Klarstrom in the 1910 census (although the birth year and immigration dates are off a bit).  It might be him.  This Robert was living in Gales Creek Precinct, Washington County, Oregon – on a Rail Road Construction gang.  Could this be my Robert?

Did he die working on the railroads?  Did he return to Sweden?

His family moved from Alvkarleby to Lenhovda in 1885, from Lenhovda to Alem in 1889, and on to Gavle in 1890, where his father died that year.

At 20 years old, on 26 May 1893, he left Goteborg for Boston with his younger brother Robert.

His older sister, Maria, had been in Boston for ten years and was already married with a young daughter at this time.  Perhaps they stayed with her family when they arrived.

I thought that he would be easy to find.  Hjalmar isn’t exactly that common of a name, after all (but I was really surprised at how common of a name it is in Sweden).  It means “helmet- warrior” in Old Norse, by the way.

I have no trace of him after his immigration record though.

I wonder if he may have Americanized his name.  What would Hjalmar be changed to anyway?  I am having a hard time making a guess since I can’t even figure out how to pronounce it. Or perhaps he went by his middle name instead.  I didn’t find any trace of an Alexander Klarstrom either though.

I wonder what happened to him?  His sisters were so easy to trace in the Boston area.  Why did he disappear?  Maybe he only used Boston as a jumping off point for further adventures.  Did he head West?  Did he work for a while and return to Sweden?

Perhaps I’ll never know…

1. I have absolutely fallen in love with the beautiful St. Lucia Day celebration.  I am bound and determined to attend one.  One of my favorite pictures is of my grandmother, participating in one of these lovely ceremonies.
2. IKEA.  Who doesn’t love IKEA??
3. The landscapes in Sweden are breath-taking.
4. I always loved the Swedish chef from The Muppet Show.  Yes, I’m a child of the 80′s.
5. For some reason, I really like Swedish names.  Lars. Gunnar. Brita. Elvy. And it cracks me up that my great-great grandfather’s middle name was Magnus.  I imagine him as a huge hulk of a man just because of that name.
6. But by far my favorite thing about having Swedish roots is the fact that they kept such fantastic parish records!  Births, Deaths, Baptisms, Marriages, Moving records, and Household Examinations that list everything from birth dates and places, immigration information, shot records, and lots of other really helpful stuff.  Most of them go back to the early 1700′s and some further than that.  I have been having so much fun trying to decipher what I’ve found.

Do you have Swedish roots?

Have you traveled to Sweden to do research or simply visit?  Did you find long lost relatives still living there?

I would really love to go there someday.

Carl Gustaf Adolph Klarstrom was the third child of Carl Magnus Klarstrom and Christina Elisabeth Bennberg.

He was born on 6 Nov 1870 in Alvkarleby, Sweden – near Gavle. I found his birth in the Swedish parish records on Ancestry.

His family moved to Lenhovda, Sweden in 1885 and then on to Alem in 1889 where they only stayed for one year before moving again to Gavle, where they had lived before Carl’s birth.

His sisters were on a passenger list bound for America in 1910.  They listed him as their closest living relative – and stated that he lived in Gavle.

I found a Karl Klarstrom in 1893 on the SS Gallia arriving in New York.

I also found a Carl Klarstrom heading to Minnesota in 1901 who fits his age range.

I have no idea if either of these guys is him.

On one of the household examinations, it also mentioned that he immigrated.

He may have come to America for a time and then returned to Sweden though.

I did find a clue in Sweden, Births from the Swedish Death Index, 1947-2006 on Ancestry.  There was a Gustaf Adolph Klarstrom listed as being born 1 Nov 1871 in Alvkarleby.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t give a death date, but it does mean that he died in Sweden -if this his him.  I searched the parish records for that date and didn’t find anyone with a similar name born at that time, so I’m assuming that this is my guy and his birth date is simply incorrect in the Death Index (it’s a year and five days off).

Unfortunately, that’s all I have.  I know that there is more research I can do in the Swedish parish records, but it’s so difficult since…

1. They are in Swedish, which I don’t speak
2. The handwriting and abbreviations are sometimes hard to understand
3. It isn’t indexed, which means I”m searching page by page

I might do a quick perusal, but this is definitely something I”m going to need to delve into when I have a bit more time on my hands.  So, in 15 years when all of my kids are grown up, maybe I”ll have the time to devote to it. 

My last post was about her older sister, Maria Ottilia, who was born in 1865.

Christina Josefina was born 15 July 1868 in Gävle, Sweden.

Her parents were married one month before her birth. Perhaps they decided since they were about to have their second child, it was finally time to tie the knot.   Here is her birth record:

In 1869, a devastating fire hit Gävle.  It’s no surprise that family moved to nearby Alvkarleby in 1870.  They stayed there for about 16 years.

In 1883, Christina Josefina’s older sister Maria left for America.  I’m sure that she wrote letters home, telling of her adventures in Boston.  Her siblings must have been very excited to hear of her new life.

In 1885, the family moved again, this time to Lenhovda, Kronoberg, Sweden.  It is quite a ways from where they were living near Gavle.  This time, I really have no idea what prompted such a big move. You can see in the map below, how are they are from each other.

Christina Josefina didn’t live there for long though.  She followed in her older sister’s footsteps and left for America in 1887.  The passenger list from the SS Cephalonia listed her as a servant. It seems like there were many Swedish servants in the Boston area.

In any case, she only worked for a few years, because on 2 Mar 1890, she married Anton S. Jensen in Boston.  He was a native of Denmark and a barber by trade. He appears to have had his own shop.

Anton was naturalized in 1893:

They moved to Everett, Middlesex, Massachusetts – just north of Boston, where I was easily able to find them in the 1900-1930 census records.  They lived on Ferry Street for a number of years.

They had one son, Arthur H. Jensen, who sadly didn’t live for very long.  He was born 2 Feb 1891 and died 2 May 1891.  His death record didn’t state what happened, but it must have been a very sad time for this couple.

I found Christina Josefina on a passenger list for the SS Cephalonia (the same ship she had originally traveled on), which arrived in Boston from Liverpool in 1894.  No doubt, she was returning home after visiting her family in Sweden.

I found a picture of the SS Cephalonia at Norway-Heritage.  The site also has an entire timeline of the ship’s departures and arrivals – and those of many other ships too.

The most common route that my ancestors seem to have taken in their travels was : Goteborg, Sweden to Hull, England, then they would have to go across land to Liverpool, and then sail on to Boston or New York.  It must have been quite the trip!  I’m wondering how long she stayed to visit.

Anton and Josefina did end up having another child after the loss of their first baby. Flora E. Jensen was born about 1907.

After the 1930 census, I have lost the trail.

Maria was the oldest of their ten known children.

She was born 2 July 1865 in Gävle, Sweden. It’s on the Eastern Coast of Sweden, north of Stockholm.

According to her birth record, she was “oakta” or born out of wedlock.  Her father’s name was not even mentioned on the birth record, which was normal for an illegitimate child of this time period.

According to the book Your Swedish Roots, by Per Clemensson & Kjell Andersson, “The fact that the father isn’t noted in the birth record doesn’t mean that he wasn’t known.  It only means that the parents were not married.  In many cases they married later and the child was considered legitimate.”

This is the case with Maria.  Carl and Christina married in 1868, one month before the birth of their second child.  I’m not sure why they decided to wait to be married, but the aforementioned book also says that “Having a child out of wedlock wasn’t necessarily a shame.  In Stockholm in the nineteenth century, for example, many couples lived together and had children without being married.” Perhaps in the city of Gavle, which was a decent sized city, it wasn’t as looked down upon as it would have been if they had lived in the country.

The family moved from Gävle to nearby Alvkarleby in 1870.  At first, I hadn’t put much thought into this move.   People move all of the time – for so many different reasons.  But as I started to read about the history of Gävle, I learned that in 1869 there was a huge fire, in which 8,000 of the 10,000 residents lost their homes.  Could my ancestors have been amongst those who lost their homes and all of their possessions?  Did they have to start over?  Even if they didn’t lose their house to the flames, I am sure that this was a very chaotic time to be living in Gävle.

Maria’s parents had 9 more children after her, the youngest one of which was my great-grandmother, Charlotta Eugenia Viktoria Klarström.  Maria wasn’t around when her youngest three siblings were born though.  She left Sweden for America when she was 17 years old.  She was on board the S.S. Romeo bound for America in August of 1883.  Her final destination was Boston.

Did she have a specific reason for leaving Sweden?  Was she looking for work or a husband?  Was there family already in the Boston area?  I have a sneaking suspicion that she may have had some aunts or uncles who lived in the area.  I will have to do some further research on the next generation up when I’ve finished this one.  Some of my questions might be answered then.

I’m not sure what she did when she arrived.  She must have found work of some kind though, because it was about five years before she married Klause G. Johansson on 2 Dec 1888 in Boston, MA.

They had a daughter in August of 1889, named Agda M. Johansson.

In the 1900 census, they were living at 153 Lauriat Avenue in Boston.  Klause was listed as a machinist.

I’ve personally never been to Boston before, but I thought I’d look on the map to see where they lived anyway. The “A” marks the spot.

In 1904, Maria’s mother Christina and her youngest sister (my great-grandmother) came to Boston on the S.S. Ivernia.  They listed Klaus Johanson as the relative they were joining.  The interesting thing is that the two women were listed as servants.  Were they coming to America to earn some money before returning home?  Or were they visiting?  Or maybe a little of both?   Whatever the reason, I know that they did end up returning (although I have yet to find the passenger list for their return, so I’m not sure how long they stayed). Charlotta was married in 1908 in Sweden and Christina died in Sweden in 1919.  I guess I’ll have to dig a little deeper to fill in some of those blanks.  Here they are in the passenger list:

In the 1910 census, Klause and Maria were still in the same house.  They had added 2 more children: George F. and Ethel C. – both adopted.  I am not sure if they may have been children of a relative or maybe they just longed for more children and couldn’t have any of their own so they adopted.

Their newly married daughter Agda and her husband Gustaf Peterson were living with them also.

As were Klaus’s brother Charles and his son Edward.

It was a house full of Swedes.

By the 1920 census, it appears that they moved to 153 Woodrow Avenue.  It seems odd that they would be at the same numbered house, but on a different street.  It was very close to their first home.

They had a boarder living with them in 1920. His name was Gunther Peterson. He may have been related to their daughter Agda’s husband – Gustaf Peterson. What sparked my interest about him is that he was listed as a photographer. That makes me envision stacks of pictures of the family, waiting to be found….

And that is where this chapter of the story ends folks.

I have absolutely no idea what happened to Maria and Klaus Johanson. I didn’t find them in the 1930 census, although I didn’t dig very deep. Maybe they’re there and I’m just being blind. Maybe they moved. Maybe they died.  There is obviously more research to be done. Isn’t there always?

MRS. EUGENIA V. BERGMAN

Mrs. Eugenia V. Bergman, 72, of 1505 W. 60th St., died in a hospital yesterday.

Funeral services will be held at 1 o’clock Monday in Mittelstadt’s Ballard chapel. Burial will be in Mount Pleasant.

Mrs. Bergman, born in Sweden, came here 45 years ago.  She was a charter member of Frihet Lodge, Order of Vasa.

Surviving are three daughters, Mrs. Albert Rangwald,  Mrs. Gunnar Kollen, and Mrs. Eleanore Sanchez, and a son, Walden J. Bergman, all of Seattle; a sister, Mrs. Olga Klarstrom, Milton Mass., and 12 grandchildren.

And here is a picture of her with her grandchildren.

I believe that it was taken at Christmas, 1956.  That would have been 3 1/2 years before she died.