Help with a Swedish Ancestor

Question

I have a roadblock with tracking back any further than Anderson-76980, because he immigrated from Sweden. Family Search fails me (as outlined in Anderson-76980 Research Notes) and I am at a loss where I can or should look to expand genealogical history along that line.

Any recommendation or help is welcomed.

Comments

Just a quick comment: Fitzgerald is an extremely unlikely name for a Swede.

There is a single man with that name in the ArkivDigital database of the Swedish population 1800-1947, and he's an Englishman, living in the Stockholm area.

It's a lot more likely that he was, after all, an Oscar Fredric to start with and modified his name in America. Lots of name changes going on when people emigrate, which always complicates matters.

---

Thanks. Interesting possibility. Of course, his story that he told his family about being born in Sweden could have been false, too.

---

…and you have me questioning my source for the name “Fitzgerald”, I suspect it was on the back of one of the photos I have of him, written by a daughter

Answer 1

What is the source for the exact birth date 13 January 1863?

Comments

Thanks. So, as a young man coming to Tanum, he was a cobbler, but eventually found fishing to be more profitable for raising a family.

I would not have figured that out, having to translate between languages, read the penmanship, and interpret the abbreviations!

I wouldn’t have found anything on Oscar or his parents without your help.  

The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. My genealogical goal has been to find the first immigrants and their parents (anything beyond their parents is “icing on the cake”). With the exception of Oscar (and one other from 1780) when I find the “first immigrants” they arrived while the US was still a British Colony.

I’ll keep looking around in the free sources, for now.

Thanks and best wishes from Northwest Florida.

Doug

---

Oh, I had searched in church records before I had a name, community, or parents’ names. I need to do it again.

---

There were lots of emigrants from Sweden in the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th. I think most Swedes have great-great aunts and uncles who emigrated - I certainly have a number (too far back to have kept in contact). They can be pretty difficult to find in the other direction as well. FamilySearch helps, but has to be taken with great caution, as illustrated by the case in your research notes. I could find that family in the Swedish sources, although their Oscar F wasn't born before they left Sweden (may have been conceived here).

I was very happy when the family I found for your Oscar F turned out to be consistent with family lore about the father's name, Zac, which I had no idea about while searching. It IS awfully easy to go wrong, due to name changes and the vague dates in US cnsuses.

---

I just read up on the Swedish migration. Interesting. 

A few observations:

1. Despite having a good deal of photos and letters from family members. I have no indication that Oscar maintained any correspondence with his parents. So it was sad seeing the 1910 Swedish Census that had his parents living alone in their 70s and 80s. (It is possible that if there was correspondence it was in Swedish and as such his descendants - not knowing any Swedish - didn't know or consider keeping them.)

2. Oscar named his children with "E" names like the sister Elvira Eleonora that he left behind. So, whether he kept in contact or not - he didn't forsake his family in his mind.

3. The photo on Oscar's WikiTree Profile with two of his daughters has written on the back, ""Edna, Ellen, Mamma, Papa – Astalula, Fla when papa was building bridge across Howey-in-the-Hills. One of the last wooden bridges. By camp house they built for papa's family as he wouldn’t take job unless he could take family.”  That last line, "unless he could take family" may paint a picture of lingering loss of losing connection with his parents and siblings.

4. He apparently continued to assist Scandinavians that he encountered in America.  I came across on the reverse side a photo that I have that says in my Great Aunt's handwriting, ""Kris, Ernest, Dahl Norwegian boy who stayed with us during war.  Dahl's ship sunk in the next war. Drowned.  Mama & Papa saved them in first war. My parents were very hospitable" My note on that:  Arthur Dahl was master of a Norwegian steamboat "Hvoslef" sunk by German U-boat on 11 Mar 1942 off the coast of Delaware. (https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/1421.html#google_vignette).

I'd attach the photo, but I don't know how on this thread.  Besides, I think Dahl is the one with his face cut down the middle becasue the photo was taken off centered.

---

His mother died in 1912 and his father lived his final years with Oscar's brother Adolf, who had returned from the US with his wife and their children. I added the sources for this to the pages for Oscar's parents. There is one source that has the household record for Adolf and his family, if you want to give them profiles. (Adolf is underlined in his name, indicating that this was the name he went by.)

-Elisa

---

Thank you.  I tried to visit the sources you added, but I don't have a subscription to the site.

My mother mentioned to me that Adolf may have been someone she had met at one time when she was a child.  At this point, though, it is too late to ask the detailed questions and expect confident or accurate responses from her on occurrences of that long ago.

---

Riksarkivet doesn't require a paid subscription, but for some documents it will ask you to log in. The account is free through, you just need an email. https://sok.riksarkivet.se/skapa-anvandarkonto to create a login

Some more details about Adolf: His wife was born in Ireland, and they married in New York in 1899. They had two children born there before moving to Sweden.

---

Thanks.  I'll have to sign up.  I may have to learn a bit of Swedish, too, if I am going successfully navigate any records I find there. Great-Grandpa Anderson didn't pass any of that knowledge on to his children (I knew them all). Fortunately, there is Google Translate.

---

It's when a volume contains stuff less than 110 years old that you need an account.

You can toggle between Svenska and "other languages" which means English (nothing else). The translation only affects the basics of the interface, a lot of the text will still be in Swedish. The digitized images are not transcribed (of course) - but I think that even Swedish-speaking beginners mostly look for names and dates.

---

Thanks. I understand. You and E. Kippner have been extremely helpful and have led me to discovering information that even Oscar’s children did not know.

Answer 2

I poked around and found different trees on Ancestry and Family Search. None of them were convincing that they were the correct person. Apart from some additional information on who his parents were, or where in Sweden he came from, it is pretty much the "needle in a haystack" problem.

One suggestion may be to have a DNA test done so that you can find matches who share common Swedish ancestors. It is possible that building out the trees of those closer matches may lead to an Oscar Anderson who moved to the US at the appropriate time frame. It could certainly narrow down which locations to search through the birth records for an Oscar born on the 13 Jan 1863 date (assuming that date is correct, of course).

Comments

I thought he was from Stockholm area. I’ll have to double check with one of my cousins. I did a check for Swedish births for the “correct” in the Stockholm region with no luck. (Learned a touch of Swedish along the way, today.).

of course, if he left his home country at 16 and evidently didn’t discuss parentage, there may have been a reason.

Thanks for going the extra mile.