Happy birthday, Johannes Ivarsson!

Johannes Ivarsson was born on July 8, 1816 in Byarum, Jönköping, Sweden on Bodabygget farm. He

Plätt Farm, Byarum parish, Jönköping

was the second child of Ifvar Knorr Assarsson and Eva Johannessdotter. Johannes had four sisters and two brothers.

He grew up in the area of Byarum and when he was twenty-eight, he purchased land on Plätt farm where his older sister Lena, also lived with her family, near the town of Vaggeryd.

A year later, on the 31st of May 1846, Johannes married Inga Christina Svensdotter and they began their family with a son, Johan. (Johan was later known to his family in America as John August Johnson who settled in McPherson County, Kansas.) Johannes and Inga Stina had three boys and three girls in the following years. Johan, Britta, Emilia, Christina, Sven, and Anders.  

In 1846 dysentery swept through southern Sweden. Christina (age 4) and Sven (age 2) contracted it and died on the same day. One week later, Johannes also died of it on September 14, 1846.

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.