My Unbelievable (But True!) Coffee Miracle

I heard that yesterday was National Coffee Day! I have a coffee story for you! I also believe it belongs right here on my genealogy blog.

Let me tell you the story as I type and sip on my coffee this rainy morning.

My dad was fully Swedish. I grew up with most of the traditions of a Swedish-American childhood. My parents, aunts, and uncles, drank a lot of coffee as I grew up. My mom and her friends at the Swedish Covenant church I grew up in fixed huge pots of egg coffee for every church function. I can still remember the aroma of coffee wafting up from the church basement as I descended. It smelled wonderful.

I've always loved the smell of coffee. Imagine my surprise the first time I realized it tasted nothing like it smelled! I figured as I got older, coffee would taste better. Every adult I knew seemed to love it. As I reached my teen years, and sipped it here and there to see if my "adult" taste buds, I realized how different I was from everyone else. 

I got married, had children, ordered cokes, "That's my caffeine! Ha ha!" when a friend wanted to meet for coffee. I couldn't stand the taste of coffee! My teaching colleagues would walk the halls early each morning with steaming mugs of coffee. I stocked my classroom fridge with cold, diet Dr Peppers. At family dinners my aunts would wonder if I was really a member of the family. Jokingly, they'd ask me, "How can you be in this family and not drink coffee?" I had no answer for them.

I learned to keep instant coffee in my cabinet to keep my dad from leaving the house early in the morning in search of a cup of coffee every time he visited.

My sister, Laurie, owned a coffee shop for several years. When I'd visit, she'd always say, "Order anything you want!" My eyes would scan the long menu until I'd find the non-coffee drinks. Her smoothies were great but I always felt somewhat like a failure. Maybe I wasn't Swedish at all...

And then it happened. I was in contact with cousins in Sweden! My sister, Kris, and I began planning a trip to Sweden, my retirement trip, and I was so excited to meet Gunnel and her family! One day, I was visiting with a friend who had traveled to Sweden several times. She listed things I could expect when visiting a Swedish home and at the top of the list was something she considered wonderful. "You can expect to be offered coffee at any home you visit."  "Oh. Well, what if you don't like coffee?" My friend just stared at me. "Well, I guess you could ask for a glass of water..., The water is very good there." 

I went shopping, dragging home a variety of coffees, creamers, syrups, and whatever else I could find. I needed to learn how to drink coffee, fast! I sipped coffee at coffee shops in tiny paper cups. I watched what my friends put in their coffee. I tried a tablespoon of coffee in a cup of milk! Nothing worked! All I could taste was bitterness! If I couldn't make it through a second sip of coffee, how would I survive two weeks in Sweden?

The only strategy I had left was to keep trying every chance I got. I have to admit, I also asked God to heal my taste buds!

The day finally arrived for our trip and as I yet again, ordered coffee, this time on the plane headed for Stockholm, I complained to Kris. As I talked, I added cream and sugar to the coffee the stewardess had handed me. I said, "Kris, watch this." I raised the cup to my lips and took a tiny sip. Kris said, "You can't make that face when we're with our Swedish cousins!" 

"I know!" I exclaimed, completely dismayed. "There's something wrong with me!"

By the time we got to Gothenburg, it was lunch time.  We found a little cafe in the train station and decided to eat there. I ordered my lunch and coffee and sat down, doctoring the dark liquid with milk and sugar. The salad tasted wonderful! I looked at the pretty white cup filled to the brim with "the enemy." Reassuring myself that I had a bottle of water as a back-up, I lifted the cup and took a sip. 

What was this wonderful liquid?!? I took another sip. No bitter, screwed up frown as I swallowed. I was almost more excited to be drinking coffee as I was to be in Sweden!

I ordered coffee every chance I got for the rest of the day! In Sweden, you may find yourself with an opportunity for coffee five or six times a day! They even have a special name for coffee breaks. They call it 'fika' and I fika-ed several times a day that first week!

My first cup of coffee in Gothenburg!

I told Kris that I really must have been broken and needed to "return to my homeland to be reset!" Think what you want, but I believe God might have smiled at my silly prayer and decided to answer it. What better time than with my first cup of coffee in Sweden? I think He knows how to give good gifts, as odd as that sounds, and 'fixed' me. I really have no other explanation for this marvelous little event. 

Needless to say, lots of coffee and a little  jet lag, might have caused some sleep problems that week. (They do drink their coffee strong in Sweden!) But, it was all worth it! 

The next week, I enjoyed many cups of coffee with my Swedish cousins and never had to ask for a glass of water instead!

When I returned home, I tossed the pop and put a cup of coffee in my morning schedule in its place.

That's the story of how I learned to drink coffee!

Travel Tuesday - Sweden Trip

Last post, I wrote about a Swedish cousin, Gunnel, who found me on Ancestry and made all of my genealogy research on that branch of the family much more real! 

Once I knew I had relatives in Sweden, I had a great desire to meet them. Gunnel had sent me pictures of the part of our family who had stayed in Sweden through email. My sister, Kris, and I began to plan a trip to Sweden that fall and it seemed to be the perfect retirement celebration for me as I retired this spring from 35 years of teaching. I emailed my cousin, Gunnel, with our plans and learned that she was very excited to meet us also. 

This was the first visit to Sweden for Kris and I and we immediately felt as if we were home. We grew up in a very Swedish-American culture so actually being in Sweden validated so much of our lives and childhoods in ways nothing else could. On our way to Jönköping, we visited the western and southern cities of Gothenburg, Ängelholm (to meet Susann, an ebay / Facebook friend) and Malmö / Copenhagen. Then we were on to Jönköping and our family!

Altogether, we met 14 relatives! Our cousins welcomed us with open arms and we immediately felt like family!  We stayed with Gunnel for a few days and celebrated Midsommar with them in Jönköping and later, in Dalarna. 

One cousin's husband, who is also a genealogist, presented me with a large notebook containing his work on the history of our family. Besides the family tree information, it's full of pictures of family and beautiful color pictures of the inside of some of the homes belonging to them over the years! 

We all traveled south of Jönköping to the towns of Vaggeryd and Byarum. We visited Plätt Farm where my great grandpa John August Johnson and his younger brother, Gunnel's grandpa Anders, were born and raised. We ate traditional meals and talked over fika at an old house at Byarums hembygdsgård.

I was overjoyed and very touched with the warm welcome and acceptance! 

We just got home a few days ago and the last month still feels like a dream! I would never have believed this could happen to us, even two years ago!

Take-Away: Never give up on the missing branches in your family tree and always try to keep a public tree open! Someone might be looking for YOU!

If you're looking for family, keep a public tree!

 My great grandfather, Johan August Johannesson came to America from Jönköping in 1869 and settled near McPherson, Kansas. He homesteaded there and married the neighbor girl, Ida Matilda Johnsdotter (Johnson) from Kalmar. He always told about a younger brother back in Sweden but by the time we began looking 100 years or more later, too much time had gone by and ties had been broken.

Uncle Don (one of my dad's brothers) and I have looked for relatives in Sweden for years with no luck. I put what I knew on Ancestry in my public tree there several years ago. As I learned how to use Arkivdigital, I added what I found to that file. It was online for years and although it had been instrumental in finding many cousins on my mom's side, we never made any progress on the Swedish branches.

Meanwhile, in Jönköping, Sweden, a woman in her mid eighties named Gunnel, often wondered what happened to the part of the family that had gone to America. Her grandfather, Anders Johannesson told of a brother, Johan and a sister, Brita who had emigrated from Sweden to America in the 1860's.

Then at Christmas 2012, Gunnel received an iPad as a gift from her children. She told her children she was going use it to find out what happened to the family that moved to America. They recalled saying, "Okay, Mom!" at the time, not really believing anything would come of it. As she learned how to use her new iPad, she decided it was time to try to find her family in America.

Johan August Johannesson
and family in Kansas

Anders and his family in Sweden.

In April of that year, I received a message on Ancestry from an 86 year old woman from Jönköping (from her new ipad) saying that she thought we were related. I was very excited but also afraid of being disappointed if I found out that it wasn't a match. After MUCH checking and matching of our information, I finally allowed myself to believe I was communicating with the granddaughter of my great grandpa's youngest brother, Anders. I just about reached hero status among my aunts and uncles and of course my own dad who has since, died, just for having put the family tree on ancestry where it was found.

Gunnel and I have been emailing back and forth for the last two years. We send greetings, family information, questions and answers, and plenty of pictures (old and new). It has been wonderful!

I'm writing this to motivate others to keep a public tree online. The benefits outweigh all.

Come back tomorrow for Travel Tuesday. Yes, it's what you think! (hint, hint!)

Never Give Up - Friday's Faces from the Past

My family tree has a few researched branches so long they could span the ocean, and they do! I can't take the credit for most of the information. Much of it was accomplished years before I ever began my research.

Memorial stone in Byarum Parish, Jönköping, Sweden
My loose translation: Memorial To the memory of the

532 Byarum residents who 1853-1930 emigrated to America,
to seek their livelihood.
My great grandfather, Johann August Johannesson, was one
of the 532 that left Byarum in 1869.

I have had help and I've been fortunate to meet some wonderful cousins along the way who dropped crumbs for me to follow when I needed it.
Other branches have only grown a few inches in all the years my family has been working on our genealogy.

One of the most stubborn branches has been my dad's Johnson and Nelson lines. All four of his grandparents came to America from Sweden in the mid 1800's as young, mostly single adults. We had vague stories of Sweden, and a few names that had been passed down, but little else.

If you know anything about Swedish names before the 1900's, you know that each generation received new last names depending on their father's name.

August Johannesson really was Johannes' son! Johanna Håkansdotter really was... you guessed it, Håkans' daughter!
That makes for very difficult searching made even harder by the fact that I didn't speak much more Swedish than "thank you," "yes," and the names of some traditional dishes.

It was a very slow growing branch! 

The information I had on my Swedish ancestors existed on my Ancestry.com tree for years without comment, as the branches around them grew with new information and newly found cousins.

I spent time in Lindsborg, Kansas at the Old Mill Museum learning how to research using the Swedish records. Every time I found a new person or fact, I'd go to my family tree and enter the data. Years of searching and waiting ended abruptly one day last spring when I opened a message from a

Anders and his family in their home in Jönköping, Sweden

woman in Sweden claiming that her grandfather, Anders, and my great grandfather, John, were brothers. John had come to America while Anders had remained in Sweden.

The pictures started coming and I found myself looking into faces of family. Familiar family resemblances! I never dreamed this would happen after so much time.

After many questions, much research, and major breakthroughs in my understanding of Swedish records, I am proud to call Gunnel my cousin. We write back and forth and share new and old bits of family news.

And... I've started planning a trip to Sweden!

Never. Give. Up.