Tribute: Helen Louise Acker Edwards 1921-2016

Helen has been a part of my life since 1986.

She was the best Mother-in-Law I could EVER dream to ask for and also a wonderful grandmother and great grandmother to my children and grandchildren. 

I loved her!

I loved how she and Harry accepted 5 year-old Emily and I into their hearts when I met and later married their son, Vince. Emily immediately became a beloved granddaughter; something she cherishes to this day. 

 
I loved Helen's creativity – She was always making something from doll clothes, to rag rugs, to stuffed animals, to small paintings of things she enjoyed.

I loved her joyfulness – She always had a ready laugh.

I loved her mischievousness (especially when paired with husband, Harry!) – Ask the kids how many ways they unwrapped their Christmas money over the years!

I loved her resourcefulness – Once they were stranded for a week during an ice storm without electricity. (Click on ice storm for that story!) Harry had to return to his non-motorized wheelchair which was a true hardship on the couple in their 80’s. I wanted to find a way to rescue them and find a place for them to stay for a few days but they took it all in stride. They spent their days playing cards next to the fireplace, covered in blankets for extra warmth, as the temperature inside their house plummeted into the 40’s. They ate dinner every night that week cooked in a coffee can she placed in the coals of the fire!
 

I loved her fun loving take on life. – When they took Brittany for her hospital visit once, the giant stuffed lion had to come along! It got its own wheelchair ride; following Brittany up to the children’s ward!

Her ways were something I enjoyed immensely!

When I lost my own mother, she stepped in to help fill in a little of the void left in my life.

When my husband, their only son died, they made sure I knew I would always be part of their family.

A few years later we found ourselves in the same club; the “Widow’s Club.” We laughed, cried, and shared. We shared our dreams, worries and secret thoughts surrounding the
experience.

I will truly miss having her around but I know we'll laugh together again someday.

A Tale of Two Traveling Books

Two books. One is off traveling and the other is safe in my genealogy office.

Dad’s book:

Earl Johnson, about 1944

Sometime in the early 90’s, I was digging through a box of old books that had just been purged from the library of the school in which I taught. As a book lover I was distressed by the quantity of books that had been slated for removal and destruction, in order to make room for more current reading material. I understand the need for updating school libraries but still felt the need to rummage through the outcasts. 

Among my finds was an old gray book about the US Merchant Marines. It was in my stack because my dad had been in the Merchant Marines during WWII. My thought was that it might make a nice gift for him as it had some nice old pictures of ships and men doing their jobs aboard them.

Around Father’s Day that year, I visited my parents in Missouri and casually presented the book to Dad. What I thought might be something interesting for him to look through on a rainy day got a greater response from him than I had expected. 

Inside, were pictures of the actual ship, off the coast of New York City, that he had trained on as a young man. He held on to that book for the rest of his life and once in a while, I overheard him showing it to someone or telling about that book and how I had found it.

About 2014, the book was lost during the clean out and selling of Dad’s condo a few months before he died. Likely, it was donated along with many of his other books.

I like to think someone has since picked it up at a used book store and it has continued its life somewhere else. Who knows? Maybe someday it will come back to me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mom’s book:

A few months ago, my dad’s sister, Helen, left a message asking me to call her when I had a minute. She sounded excited and said she had something interesting to share.

Vera Johnson, about 1951

When I returned her call, she told me about a Wichita neighbor who was moving and had given her some old books she couldn’t take with her. As Aunt Helen looked through them, she noticed something remarkable.

Opening the cover of author Helen MacInnes’ book, Rest and Be Thankful, she found the name of a previous owner, Miss Vera Dibbens, dated August 27, 1949. The name had been crossed out and updated with Mrs. Vera Johnson. This book had belonged to my mother when she was living in Kansas and before she married my dad!

I have no way of knowing how long ago the book left my mother’s possession. My parents moved away from Kansas for good in 1989 and she died in Branson, Missouri in 2004. 

Needless to say, the book is in my custody for now.

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!)

Ida Matilda Johnson - 52 Ancestors

Ida Mathilda Jonsdotter was born 21 October 1865 in Brånhorvan, Vena, Kalmar län, Sweden. She left Sweden with her family when she was 5 years old. Her family homesteaded on land northeast of McPherson, Kansas.  


She grew up on the farm and when she was 16, married the next door neighbor, Johan August Johannesson on 1 Sept 1882 in McPherson. Because of a shortage of marriageable women in the area, John waited until Ida was old enough to marry and married her. Their American names were Ida M. and John A. Johnson. Ida moved next door and so, came to live in the house that she had always been able to see from the window in her parents’ home.

They had 9 sons and 2 daughters. All but the first 2 sons survived and helped run the farm.

Arthur and John (both died as children)
Emil
Arthur (my grandpa)
Albin
Martin
Mabel
Edith
Reuben

By 1920, they had left the running of the farm to their son, Arthur and his wife, Ida, and moved to the Rio Grande Valley in the southern tip of Texas. They built a vegetable and fruit farm near Alamo, Texas.  Several of their children helped them with both of the farms.

After John died in 1940, Ida and Edith stayed in Texas; moving to the house at the right. This is the last house they lived in. Ida died 17 August 1952 in Alamo, Hidalgo, Texas.

Uncle Reuben's Journey Movie - The Uncle Reuben Project - Year 3

School is out for another year and I have more to add to "The Uncle Reuben Project" files. I was afraid that by the 3rd year, I wouldn't have anything else new to do for the project but that isn't the case! 

In January, my class had enjoyed making a movie about Simeon Swartz for our Kansas/Pioneer unit and they enjoyed it so much that I decided we needed to do that for Reuben, also. The story is a fairly long one so each child had to have 2 parts. They drew pictures and I filled in with some photographs from my genealogy files. I wrote the script from notes taken during interviews between Uncle Reuben and my Uncle Don.

When we were finished, we shared the movie with some other classes and our principal. They enjoy sharing their work with others. I let parents know the show times and several showed up to watch. We also invited the students from years 1 and 2 of the project (now 3rd and 4th graders) to see the new addition. 

We hope you enjoy it!

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.