Anders was born April 26, 1825 in Blidsberg, Sweden, where he spent his childhood with his family until he was 27 years old. He was the second to youngest (youngest boy) of five, with only one sister who was 10 years younger than he. He never knew his oldest brother Johannes, as he died when he almost one year old. On the Household Examination records, Anders is found living with his family at Åslyckan, Blidsberg, Sweden. (During the period of 1827-1828, his family is listed at Västra Alarp in Blidsberg.) These two locations within Blidsberg are most likely farm names, where families lived and worked. The Household Examination records are great records to find your families in Sweden, as you can really pinpoint the location of your ancestor on old and current maps of Sweden (note 1). The archives of the National Surveying Office's website lantmateriet, has historical maps of Sweden with farm and village names within the parishes. I wrote about this website in another post. After looking at the historical Blidsberg map, I was able to locate the current location of the two farms Anders grew up on using Google maps, as shown below.
Anders childhood homeland (1825-1852)
left arrow is Åslyckan, right arrow Västra Alarp
View Blidsberg, Sweden in a larger map
One thing that sticks out for me after looking at the current satellite maps from Google is the lack of houses on the farms, usually only having one house on a large area of farm land. Sometimes there are more than one family listed on the farms in the household examination records, which probably meant more than one family was living together in the same houses. I wonder what the houses were like. I believe that many of the farmers were tenant farmers, leasing land and house from the owner of the farm land. There is a great article on the Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies' websiteTraceing Your Swedish Roots, under the "Life in Old Sweden" section. The article is titled Torp and Torpare - An Analysis by Nils William Olsson, which discusses the evolution of the "topare" in Sweden; giving insight into what life may have been like for Anders. I am not sure if records exist for who owned the farm land that Jeff's ancestors lived and worked on. Maybe this information can be found on tax lists, as explained on Tracing Your Swedish Roots website, under the tax records section.
Blidsberg seems to be a fairly small rural area in Southern Sweden. At the time Anders lived here, Blidsberg was part of Alvsborg County. I could not find any books on google or worldcat.org on the history of Blidsberg, Sweden, so I did not find much information on the parish. There is a book at the Family Search Centers, Min barndoms Blidsberg på 1880-talet, about the history of Blidsberg parish in the 1880s, but it is written in Swedish, so probably would not be that useful to me, but maybe it contains some pictures.
I am always interested in the churches that our ancestors attended, as sometimes the church is still standing and it is great to get a glimpse of any part of our ancestor’s lives. Anders lived only about 1 mile from his Lutheran church in Blidsberg. There is a beautiful picture of the Blidsberg Kyrka (church) on the photo website Panoramio taken by Sture Björnson, here. I was not sure this church was the same church that was standing when Anders was alive, so I searched a bit more to see when it was built. I looked for Blidsberg in the LIBRIS catalog of the National Archives of Sweden and found the following book, translated title, Blidberg old and new church: a short history: [100 anniversary 1870-1970, which of course is written in Swedish, not much help to me. I love that the LIBRIS catalog has a link to search Google and Google Books using relavent search terms. (I did not have much success finding links by searching Google independently – perhaps because of the different language). After clicking on these links, I came across an informative website and more pictures of the church at Blidsberg, on kyrkokartan.se. According to this website, the church currently standing in Blidsberg is not the church that Anders grew up attending, as it seems to have been built in 1868, by which time he was living in the parish of Humla.
Anders was 27 in 1852, when he left Blidsberg for Humla, with his new wife, Maja Lena Petersdotter. They did not travel far, as Humla is only one parish North of Blidsberg. Anders and his family lived for about 15 years at Sodra Torpet in Humla, having five children there. They moved within the parish of Humla after 1867, first to the farm Mellomakoyen until 1872, then to the farm Gunnarp until 1875, then to Nickabo until 1879. The farm of Nickabo also has his son, Alfrid, listed above him as a "soldat", or soldier. Soldiers lived in certain areas of the town, and were supported by the town (note 2). Perhaps when Anders son Alfrid became a soldier, they moved to this area with him.
farm locations for Anders Andersson and family 1852-1879
View Humla kyrka in a larger map
Much of Anders adult life was spent in Humla, so I decided to do the same search in LIBRIS for the church in Humla, and found the following book in their catalog, Humla Church, written in 1984. I again clicked on the Google link to search for webpages about the church and found the following, also on kyrkokartan.se. Another good website on the history of the church at Humla is here. This website states that the church standing now at Humla was built in the 1880s. Since Anders left Humla in 1880, it was not the church that Anders would have attended. Anders probably would have seen the new church though, as his children were still living in this area at that time. The website also states that the church that was previously at Humla, the one Anders would have attended, was actually from the 1100s. I would have loved to have seen what that church was like. I did also find a little bit of general history on the village of Humla on the website of Farfars Handelsbod (Grandpa Handelsbod).
In 1880, at the age of 55, Anders and his wife left Humla, where they are found in the 1880 Census in Brunn, with their youngest son, Frans Wilhelm. In the census, Anders' occupation is "arrendator", a tenant farmer or leaseholder. This is most likely Anders occupation through out his life. Brunn is about 14 miles south of Humla, closer to the city of Ulriceham. I am not sure why they would move to this area after being in Humla for 27 years, especially since most of their children were still living in Humla and Blidsberg with their families. The only connection I have found is that his younger sister, Helena Kristina Andersdotter, is living in Brunn with her husband and children during the 1880 census. The houshold examination for Brunn has Anders on the farm of Bjorkelund until 1883. While searching on the internet for information about this area, I came across Ulricehamns Kommun's website with an interesting page on the natural history of the Ulriceham area, which gives much history of the land.
The Brunn household examination shows that Anders and Maja left Brunn in 1883 to Blidsberg, the parish he grew up in. I have lost track of them after this move. The household examination records and "moving out" records on ancestry.com and Swedish Genline end here for all the towns I have mentioned, so I was not able to find where in Blidsberg Anders and Maja were living. (note 3)
The 1890 census on SVAR only lists one Anders Andersson (Anders Petter Andersson) born in 1825 in Blidsberg, living in Orebro parish of the county Orebro, as a widow. I did not find a Maja Petersson in the 1890 census. I am not sure if this Anders is the correct one, but Orebro is 129 miles north of Blidsberg. This seems like a long distance to travel to find work. To narrow down who this Anders Petter Andersson is, I checked the birth records in Blidsberg 1825 to see if there was another Anders Andersson born in Blidsberg that year. There actually was another Anders born that year in Blidsberg, with a middle name of Petter. This most likely is the Anders living in Orebro in 1890, not my husband's ancestor.
Since I did not find Anders in the 1890 or 1900 Swedish Censuses, I think he probably died between 1883 and 1890. I searched through the Brunn, Blidsberg and Humla death records up to 1897 but was unable to find a record of either Anders or Maja's death. I know that his daughter, Emma, moved to America in 1892, I wonder if he knew this before he passed and what he thought of one of his children leaving Sweden. (UPDATE : see next post about death of Anders)
notes :
1. Household examination records for Sweden can be found online with a subscription on Genline and Ancestry. You need to know the parish your ancestor was from in order to use these records. These records were kept for each family in a parish for the purpose recording their knowledge of catechism each year. The records allow you to follow your ancestors through moving within farms and in and out of parishes.
2. Information on soldiers in Sweden from the book: Clemensson, Per, and Kjell Andersson. Your Swedish Roots: A Step by Step Handbook. Provo, UT: Ancestry, 2004.
3. I believe later household examination records for these areas are available at the provincial Archives of Landsarkivet i Göteborg under the National Archives of Sweden, Riksarkivet, in Sweden; as long as the records are 70 years or older.(UPDATE : see next post)
to do :
1. Look at the legal records of the time kept at the judicial district level. The judicial district for Brunn, Blidsberg and Humla is Redväg. The Family Search centers do have microfilm available for this distrcit, but do not seem to go past the year 1860. Some of these records available at the Family Search Center for this district also include land divisions, mortgages, and criminal records, so it would be worth looking through in case Anders or his family is mentioned.
2. Find tax records for the land and farms Anders lived and worked on.
3. Find Swedish records after 1883 to locate where Anders Andersson and his wife Maja were living in Blidsberg (Household Examinations at archives, provincial Archives of Landsarkivet i Göteborg, or National Archives of Sweden, Riksarkivet). (UPDATE : found 1880-1900 household examination records for Humla and Blidsberg on SVAR - see next post)
4. Find where and when Anders Andersson died. The National Swedsh Archives, Riksarkivet, has the following (as noted on the Archives Section of the Swedish Roots Website):
"Copies of all birth, death and marriage records from 1860, copies of the clerical surveys for every 10 years from 1860, and also copies of church records from all Sweden are kept in the microfiche reading room, which moved in 1998 to the new facilities at Arninge, just north of Stockholm (see info below). The microfiche are available up to 1930, due to the 70 year secrecy law." (UPDATE : found death dates for Anders and Maja - see next post)
5. See if any other of Anders' children, or Anders himself, went to America as their daughter Emma did in 1892 with her husband (Jeff's great great grandparents). (UPDATE : found some more information on children - see next post)
books on topic:
1. translated title: Ulricehamns municipality. D. 2, Blidberg, Dalum, Humla, Kölaby and Timmele parishes and Ulricehmans city of Brunn and Vist former parishes
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