Swedish Genealogy

SWEDISH GENEALOGY If traveling to Sweden you can visit the The Swedish Emigrant Institute/The House of Emigrants Vaxjo, Sweden THE SWEDISH EMIGRANT INSTITUTE/THE HOUSE OF EMIGRANTS VAXJO, SWEDEN Postal Address: BOX 201 S-351 04 VAXJO SWEDEN Telephone: 0470-20120 OR 201 24 (direct connection with the research department on weekdays 9-11 a.m. Street Address: VILHELM MOBERGS GATA 4 SUGGESTI0NS AND GUIDEILINES FOR GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH AT THE HOUSE OF EMIGRANTS Welcome to the research department of The House of Emigrants. We are located on the second floor of this building. Also on this level, you will find our library, computer center, administrative and staff offices etc. There are two areas open to the public. They are:

I. THE REFERENCE ROOM, which is immediately to the right after coming up the stairs to the second floor. A large number of catalogs and reference indexes are available here, as well as the card catalog to our library. Members of our staff are ready to help when you need assistance in your research. A description of the archival collections and catalogs most often used by genealogists is given below. The source materials which you would like to study are ordered on our special requisition form and given to the staff member at the Reference Room Desk. Be sure to include your name and address on this form! You can then go to the Reading Room, which is directly across the hall from the Reference Room.

II. THE READING ROOM seats approx. 12 people. There are also a number of microfilm and microfiche readers available in this room. In order to ensure yourself a seat and a microfilm reader, you should place a reservation by telephone before coming. If the entire Reading Room is full, seats will be assigned to people in the order in which requisition forms have been received. Please remember that this is a reading room and not a conversation corner! There are others in the room concentrating on their own research. The materials you have ordered will be brought directly to your seat in the Reading Room. After you have finished with them, please return all materials to our staff in the Reference Room.

SOME OF THE MOST COMMON SOURCE MATER1ALS AT THE HOUSE OF EMIGRANTS A number of basic facts about Swedish-American genealogy are given in a small booklet called Tracing Your Swedish Ancestry by Professor Nils William Olsson and published by The Swedish Institute in Stockholm. We have a reference copy of this small booklet in our Reading Room. It contains a very informative introduction to the most valuable historical records in America and how to use the information gained there to enter Swedish records. A more extensive presentation particularly on Sweden, its administrative division now and in the past as well as the various records is given in a book named Cradled in Sweden, written by another genealogical expert Professor Carl-Erik Johansson

First of all, you have to know the name of the emigrant and the exact location (parish) of birth, or the parish of emigration. It is also very useful to know the emigrant's birthdate in order to make a positive identification. There are many ways of locating this information in America. Here are the most frequently methods:

SWEDISH- 1. Examine membership records for Swedish-American churches. If your emigrant AMERICAN CHURCH belonged to such a congregation, you can in most cases be supplied with such RECORDS basic information as names, dates and background in Sweden. The Swedish Emigrant Institute has guaranteed the preservation of these unique records by microfilming them in the United States and Canada. A full index of these microfilmed church records, arranged by state, city or town and congregation, is to be found in Svenskamerikanska kyrkoarkiv, a printed survey of our holdings. For a more detailed presentation of the contents of each roll of microfilm, see our complete set of inventory reports in the Institute's main catalog.

MEMBERSHIP 2. Membership records from non-religious societies and clubs are another RECORDS OF NON- type of Swedish-American source material that at times can be very informative. RELIGOUS They can be used just as Swedish-American church records to verify the background of SOCIETIES your emigrant here in Sweden. The Institute has microfilmed hundreds of lodge archives all across the United States. The volume of our main catalog entitled Svenskamerikanska Forenings- och Foretagsarkiv lists the societies and clubs that have been microfilmed. The volume is organized into such categories as Vasa, Vikings, temperance organizations etc.

U.S. FEDERAL 3. The U.S. Federal Population Census can also be used to analyze and complement the POPULATION facts you have already gathered. If, for example, you are uncertain as to what year your CENSUSES immigrant came to the United States, you can gain this information by going through the 1900 or 1910 Federal Census. The Institute has the majority of all Federal Census microfilms for the first year of each decade between 1850 and 1910 from those states and counties in which most Swedish immigrants settled. The volume of our main catalog entitled U.S. Federal Population Census gives you further details as to the Swedish Emigrant Institute's holdings.

SWEDISH- 4. Swedish-American newspapers, particularly obituaries, are of special interest AMERICAN NEWS- since they often mention the Swedish background of an immigrant in the United States. PAPERS If you know the date and place of death for your immigrant, check our microfilm holdings for the ethnic press. Presented in the volume of our main catalog entitled Svenskamerikanska tidningar. Other private documents, such as old letters from Sweden, Family Bibles, Swedish hymnals etc., may lead to a clearer picture of your immigrant, his/her background in Sweden and the relatives that were left behind. Remember, there are normally many branches of the same family and that a second cousin or some other distant relative may have such documents in their possession.

PASSENGER LISTS/ In the past, Swedish law required police authorities to list the names of all passengers REGISTERS who intended to emigrate from Sweden before their final departure. These were compiled as early as 1869 and right up to the beginning of the 1950's. You will find a bound set of green indexes to these lists in our Reference Room. They are called Emigrantregister and are arranged chronologically by year and alphabetically by surname of the passenger leaving Sweden from the port cities of Gothenburg or Malmo. There was also a considerable number of Swedish emigrants who preferred to leave Europe via port cities outside of Sweden. The most intense emigrant traffic outside of Sweden was through Hamburg in Germany, Copenhagen in Denmark, and Oslo, Trondheim, or Bergen in Norway. The Swedish Emigrant Institute has an index to most passenger lists.

There are several columns of information in these indexes. They are: Name, Age, Last Residence in Sweden (parish prior to emigration), Destination in America and to the far right side a code number. This code number refers to the original lists and the passenger's location in that list.

If you would like to compare information contained in our indexes with that in the passenger lists themselves, you can look at these on microfilm. Besides the information in our indexes, the passenger lists themselves will give you the name of the ticket dealer and representative of the ship line selling a ticket to the emigrant, as well as the name of the ship that carried the emigrant across the North Sea to Hull in England. Names of the transatlantic ships from Liverpool in England to such American port cities as New York and Boston are not included in the Swedish passenger lists.

CHURCH RECORDS The next and final stage in documenting your emigrant is to look at the church records OF SWEDEN for the parish in which he/she lived. The State Church of Sweden has for centuries been the official recorder of vital statistics. By the time you reach this stage, you are well acquainted with the parish from which your emigrant came or was born in and it's really just a question of when and where you can look at these church records.

Most church records prior to1900 have been microfilmed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church). The original church records are today to be found in one of the seven regional archives (landsarkiv), or, in the case of Stockholm and Malmo, in the City Archives stadsarkiv). At the end of this paper you will find a list of addresses to these archives. Microfiche copies of all church records microfilmed by the Mormons are available at SVAR (Swedish Archives Information) in the northern Swedish town of Ramsele. SVAR has microfiche which covers the entire country. Sweden is divided geographically into provinces and administratively into "lan" (counties). In each county there is a main public library. Each of these county libraries has a copy of the microfilmed church records from their particular county. At the present time, the Swedish Emigrant Institute can help researchers with a complete set of all microfilmed church records from the following districts of Sweden:

Province of Smaland (lan of Jonkoping, Kronoberg, and Kalmar)

Household examination and migration records 1840-1895, the most essential types of church records are now available for the rest of the country. It means that family researchers can operate on a national basis in the House of Emigrants.

In the volume of our main catalog entitled Mikrofilmade Svenska Kyrkoarkiv you will find a complete list of all our holdings.

Although we may not have microfilm copies of the church records particularly after 1895, there are two other ways of finding information regarding your emigrant:

1. We have done inventories of church records from parishes all over the country and from this inventory compiled a large number of excerpts and indexes. The information that has been registered for each emigrant on our excerpt cards reflects what is to be found on a certain page of the Swedish church records. A listing of those counties (lan) and parishes that the Swedish Emigrant Institute has gone through is to be found in a volume of our main catalog called Svenska Kyrkobaksexcerpter. In most cases, church records cover the period from 1850 to 1895, but in a few cases there are some excerpts as late as the 1930's. Our long-term goal is to computorize these excerpts and therewith form a national database.

SUMMARIZED 2. Background information can also be gained by searching the summarized statistical STATISTICAL records, which were based on church records. Parish ministers all over Sweden were, REPORTS beginning in 1860, required to submit names and vital statistics annually to the Central PARISH Bureau of Statistics in Stockholm. In the volume of our main catalog entitled Statistisk CLERGYMEN kallmaterial there is a section called Annual Summaries (summariska arsredogorelser). Although this type of records does not give you the same amount of information as church records, it can verify which year and which parish your emigrant left Sweden from. There are also a few alphabetical indexes for the entire period of emigration from 1860 to 1947, which can be used in the Reference Room. If you should not succeed in finding out more about the person or people you are looking for, we can give you other suggestions and advice on where you might continue your search. A number of archival institutions and other organizations exist in both the United States and Sweden that may be able to help you with that special research problem you have been trying to solve. Please remember the Swedish Emigrant Institute in going through your own papers at home. There could be unique archive materials about emigrants in your family. These materials could be in the form of old letters, diaries, photographs etc. The Swedish Emigrant Institute can by simply xeroxing make these materials available to other researchers. Our research department is open weekdays Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., Fridays 9 - 12 a.m., and Wednesdays 6 - 9 p.m.

USA: Swesnson Swedish Immigration Research Center Augusta College Rock Island, IL 61201 (309) 704-7204

Genealogical Society of Utah Family History Library 35 North West Temple Street Salt Lake City, UT 84150

The Library of St. Olaf College 1520 St. Olaf Avenue Northfield, MN 55057-1098

The Memorial Library of The University of Wisconsin Madison, WI 53706

Minnesota Genealogical Society P.O.Box 16069 St. Paul, MN 55116-0069

Minnesota Historical Society 345 Kellogg Boulevard West Saint Paul, MN 55102-1906

The National Archives Washington D.C. 20408 National Archives Microfilm Rental Program P.O. Box 30 Annapolis Junction, MA 20701- 0030

The Superintendent of Documents U.S. Government Printing Office Washington D.C. 20402

University of Minnesota Library Meredith Wilson Library 309 19th Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55455-0414

Sources fro Swedish Newspapers University of Chicago Library New York Public Library

Swedish American Genealogist (journal) Available from Swesnson Swedish Immigration Research Center Augusta College Rock Island, IL 61201 (309) 704-7204 Subscription $20.00

CANADA: National Archives of Canada 395 Ellington St. OTTAWA Kl A ON

The House of Emigrants Box 201 S-351 04 VAXJO SWEDEN Tel 0470-20120 Telefax 0470-394 16

Or check out our Website www.seniorfocus.com