Looking for a town

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lynn Anderson on December 31, 2010 at 11:49am

the moderator of this group lives in the area and so may be able to help better than me. Hopefully she will see this.

Background

By your dates I assume you are talking about the 1850s. If you look at the history of Sweden at that time you will see that a huge percentage of the people lived on farms... this was rural. Skaraborg itself is a mostly rural area today with mostly flat plains. The placename Svenstorp is likely a farm name (like a street address in a city). Sven's farm. Sven is a very common name so it is not surprising there are many. Think of it like Bill's farm in Kansas... there coult  be lots. Do you know the parish??? There is probably only one Svenstorp in a parish. Births, deaths and marriages will be associated with a parish church. You can get pictures of most churches on the net. I can help if you like.

   I presume you have a b igger map that shows Skaraborg. It is a county that sets between the two major lakes in central/southern Sweden. The cities of Skövde and Falköping in the area. neither are very big even today... maybe 20,000.

 

   For your other place name... does it have some marks over some of the A? Like Bäståsen? Versås?  Those are critical. I will do a little search later.

Permalink Reply by Robin Liljenquist Anderson on December 31, 2010 at 1:01pm

Thank you so much for your explainations! I am fairly new to tracing familiy histories and excited to learn how to do all of this. Both my husband's paternal line and my paternal line come from Sweeden so I was really excited to find this message board.

I don't have a parish name. The history I have says Mary Charlotte passed the test that allowed her to be taken into the Lutheran church in the summer of 1859. This history was written by my husband's grandfather and there are no symbols above any of the letters. Darn Americans. :}

 

Thanks for being willing to help!

Permalink Reply by John Monson on December 31, 2010 at 9:12pm

Robin,

 

Don't give up hope too quickly.  You have some good clues.  You know that 2 of the three people come from Skaraborg.  Skaraborg (county) and the Diocese of Skara covered largely the same area.  And there are a lot of churches in that diocese.  Also explore alternative spellings.  If you cannot find a place name with the unaccented letters, try substituting the accented letters.  There are only three in wide use:  å, ä, and ö (plus the capitals of each).  (You can actually type these on your English keyboard, by using "insert symbol" or by typing the code for each.  IF you use Windows, I can give you the ALT codes for each.) 

 

Look again at how "Svenstorp" is written.  Might it be "Stenstrop"?  Stenstorp is a small town and a parish church.  Check confirmations in Stenstorp for 1859 and a couple of years on either side.  Also check marriages from about 1835 to 1850 or so for Gustav and Johanna's marriage.  Mary would have been about 14 when she was confirmed so look for her birthday within a couple years either side of 1845.

 

Also check the emigration records kept by the police from Gothenberg (Göteborg).  Many of the people emigrating from Skaraborg left from that port.  They should show as a family and it may show where they were living just before emigrating.   

 

Good luck to you on your search.

John Monson

Permalink Reply by Robin Liljenquist Anderson on January 1, 2011 at 11:05am

Is there a way to check for marriages and confirmations, or the emmigration records online?

Permalink Reply by Annelie Jonsson on January 2, 2011 at 8:30am

 

My guess that your Svenstorp is Sventorp parish. This as it's a neighbour parish to Värsås parish. Both in Skövde district

There is no marriage or confirmation lists online. An emigrantlist are online at www.emiweb.se for a fee of 500 SEK per year.

I have however the two major Swedish emigrant data bases on CD. So I can  make search for you.

Found:

Olausson, Gustav Torpare  B. 15/5 1820 i Sventorp, Skaraborgs län (Västergötland)

Andersdotter, Johanna B. 27/10 1810 i Sventorp, Skaraborgs län (Västergötland)

Gustavsdotter, Maja Lotta B. 27/9 1843 i Sventorp, Skaraborgs län (Västergötland)
Gustavsdotter, Gustava Fredrika B. 21/3 1848 i Sventorp, Skaraborgs län (Västergötland)

Gustavsdotter, Matilda Christina B. 16/3 1854 i Sventorp, Skaraborgs län (Västergötland)

Emigrated 1864 from Hästhagen, Sventorp, Skaraborgs län (Västergötland) to Amerika

/Annelie

Permalink Reply by Robin Liljenquist Anderson on January 2, 2011 at 1:15pm

You are wonderful!! These names and dates match the ones I have. Thank you sooo much!!!  Can you tell me the name of the data bases you used so I can reference them?

 

Just so I am sure I understand, Sventorp is the parish? What would Skaraborgs Iän and Västergötland be? How would I look these up on a map? What does the little i after the dates represent?

 

I am so excited to be learning about these people. Thank you for your willingness to help.

Permalink Reply by Annelie Jonsson on January 2, 2011 at 1:28pm

Västergötland is the landskap, Skaraborg the län and Sventorp a parish.

You could read Hans Högman's explanations about how it works in sweden - Facts about Sweden.

http://www.algonet.se/~hogman/swegen.htm

The database I use is Emibas, which was published 2004 by the Swe Federation of Gen Soc and The Swedish Emigrant Institute. It's sold out and no reprint are planned. Myself was in the group which worked with the product.

 

/Annelie

Permalink Reply by Robin Liljenquist Anderson on January 2, 2011 at 1:45pm

Hans Högman's site is wonderful!

 

I looked at www.emiweb.se. It seems to be all in Sweedish. Unless there is an English translation, I have some language learning to do first. :) But there are some links here that have me interested in the possiblity of learning.

 

Thanks again for your generous help.

Permalink Reply by Annelie Jonsson on January 3, 2011 at 4:16am

The site Emiweb is also in English http://www.emiweb.eu

 

/Annelie

Permalink Reply by Lynn Anderson on January 2, 2011 at 6:33pm

It does not take much Swedish to do typical research. When you needd more help there are lots of wonderful people here. We should guess that you are in USA?  FYI  Annelie lives in Sweden.

 

One thing you should learn is about Swedish geographical system because it is critical to finding things. There is a Swedish Genealogy group on Genealogy Wise and I posted a geography lesson there a year ago. The quick version....   all records were kept by a parish (the Swedish state church).  There were about 3500 parishes in all of Sweden and they mostly remain stable forever. For the genealogist,  the next level up is the county (län in Swedish--I think everybody should use the Swedish terms to avoit confusion). Skaraborg is a län.   There is a concept of Landskap but they have no legal or record value but you must learn them too be canuse people associate with them... Johan from Våstergötland...  We usually render this Province in Engleis. 

Sorry Im typing this without glasses.     Need books?  On line reading?

Permalink Reply by Robin Liljenquist Anderson on January 3, 2011 at 8:57am

Lynn,

I am living in Central California with my husband and three small children. I have joined the Swedish geneolgy group here and have realized that there is a lot there from which I can learn. I have only a few hours each week to work on this, but find myself sneeking time in more often.

I have quite a bit of information on this family, including biographical sketches, but after the next generation, it gets very sketchy. I am also seaching for as much documentation as I can find: birth, death and marriage records, photos of graves, photos of any kind, newspaper articles, etc. I love having proofs that these people were real.

Any suggestions you have on the best places to start are greatly appreciated!

 

Robin

Permalink Reply by Lynn Anderson on January 15, 2011 at 9:59pm

I am here in Los Angeles where we have a number of resources and quite a few Swedes. I joined the Nordic Genealogical Society a few years ago to get together an talk to others... very helpful. In Thousand Oaks in Ventura County on the CLU campus is the Scandinavian Center, a library and mini-museum open one day a week. They put on a two-day festival in April and a Symposium in February. Kingsburg in Fresno County has a Swedish festival in May... lots of fun. There is a Swedish cultural group in Santa Cruz in the Central Coast (I have two daughters in Santa Cruz so I visit ofen)

Go to the Google link posted by Richard Dahlquist. On the left of my screen was a link to Sventorp kyrka (church) which went to photos of the church. A typical small country parish church with white stucco walls. From the sattelite photo it looks like a little housing development has been built in recent years nearby just across highway 49. In the church your relatives were baptized as babies, confirmed as young teens, married and buried (nearby). The priest also kept the official records of the above (by law since 1686).

quick English Swedish lesson (if you have not figured it out)...
photo   =   foto
church  =   kyrka
map     =   karta

You will see that it is a sparsly populated rural area even today.

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