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-AMERICAN CHURCH RECORDS: 1. Examine membership records for Swedish-American churches. If your emigrant belonged to such a congregation, you can in most cases be supplied with suchbasic 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 RECORDS OF NON-RELIGOUS SOCIETIES: 2. Membership records from non-religious societies and clubs are another type of Swedish-American source material that at times can be very informative. They can be used just as Swedish-American church records to verify the background of 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 POPULATION CENSUSES: 3. The U.S. Federal Population Census can also be used to analyze and complement the facts you have already gathered. If, for example, you are uncertain as to what year your 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-AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS: 4. Swedish-American newspapers, particularly obituaries, are of special interest since they often mention the Swedish background of an immigrant in the United States.
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/REGISTERS: In the past, Swedish law required police authorities to list the names of all passengers 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 OF SWEDEN: The next and final stage in documenting your emigrant is to look at the church records 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 , 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 STATISTICAL REPORTS FROM THE PARISH CLERGYMEN 2. Background information can also be gained by searching the summarized statistical records, which were based on church records. Parish ministers all over Sweden were, beginning in 1860, required to submit names and vital statistics annually to the Central Bureau of Statistics in Stockholm. In the volume of our main catalog entitled Statistisk 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.
FORM TO BE FILLED OUT AND SENT TO THE HOUSE OF EMIGRANTS IN SWEDEN
Re. to your inquiry of_______________
- The House of Emigrants
- Box 201
- S-351 04 VAXJO
- SWEDEN
- Tel 0470-20120 (daily service 8-1OAM)
- Telefax 0470-394 16
FORM FOR DATA SEARCH OF SWEDISH EMIGRANTS Name _________________________________________________________________________________
Change of name, if applicable__________________________________________________________
Year, month, day of birth______________________________________________________________
Place of birth, parish,__________________________________________________________
County or Province _________________________________________________________________
Residence before emigration __________________________________________________________
Year of emigration __________________________________________________________________
Name and data of immediate family ______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
Place of settlement _________________________________________________________________
Member of the following_________________________________________________________________
Swedish-American church_________________________________________________________________
or society ________________________________________________________________________
Year, month, day of death ____________________________________________________________
Purpose of investigation—see overleaf
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Enclose $30 in cash (only accepted mean of payment because of the very high exchange rate in Swedish banking system) for each individual to be searched including postage and administration. If necessary you are welcome to make copies of the form!
Your own name and address ________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
GUIDELINES AND LIMITS SET FOR ARCHIVE RESEARCH SERVICES
Due to a tremendous increase in the number of requests for aid in Swedish archive research, we have been forced to limit public services mainly to searches in our computer data bases and other manual registers. Because of the great interest for genealogical service and our own limited resources you cannot expect to get an answer within 6 months.
There is a basic fee of $30 for each emigrant traced. If the parish of birth is known to you and you wish to obtain extensive data for a family tree, you will be referred to one of many professional genealogists. The same is valid for locating possible living relatives in Sweden (Please ask for further information).
For the moment we have access to data bases and registers based of the following historical sources:
- Local church records for more than 460 000 emigrants, mainly from Southern Sweden or the provinces of Skane, Blekinge, Smaland, Oland, Ostergotland, Halland and Vasterbotten
- Passenger lists of Swedish citizens' embarkations from most Swedish, other Scandinavian, and even continental ports. Approximately 1.3 million names
- Sailors mainly from the Western part of Sweden who have jumped ships in ports outside Europe. Approximately 20 000 names
- Swedish immigrant members located in the membership records of the Swedish-American churches. Approximately 160 000 names
- Finnish Swedish immigrants located in the membership records of the Swedish-American churches. Approximately 15 000 names
- GRS or the Social Security Death Benefit Records, register of U.S. citizens passed away 1936- 1992
- U. S. Census Index 1860, 1870 and 1880 for a few states and cities like Chicago and New York
- Biographical index to the library of the Swedish Emigrant Institute. About 80 000 names
Before writing to us you should collect as much information as possible in your own country about the emigrant.
Try to find out where the immigrant's children were baptised and confirmed! Their parents probably belonged to that church. If it is a Swedish-American congregation the place of birth is usually recorded.
Search for old letters and other documents from Sweden as well as photographs!
Try to obtain copies of naturalisation records, marriage and death certificates, census records, city directories and deeds. This information is not always reliable but will help you locate the irnmigrant at a certain place at a given time.
You are always weleome to our Institute to make a more complete study of the original records. Our offices and research section on the second floor of the House of Emigrants are open Monday through Thursday 9 am. - 4 p.m., Fridays 9 - 12 am., and Wednesdays 6 - 9 p.m. (not June- August). The exhibit halls are open weekends as well (Saturdays 11 am. - 3 p.m. and Sundays 1-5 p.m.). Utvandrarnas Hus is located at Vilhelm Mobergs gata 4 close to the Railroad Station.
March 10, 1997
