Osmi - a first stumbling step in my genealogy quest

I still did not do genealogy research; I was only interested in the old Finn Peder Pedersson Ossmi that should have arrived in Sweden in the early 1600's. Anbytarforum gave me interesting tidbits on a Per Osmi who by Royal letters from Karl IX had been allowed to be the first settler to reside in Hörken in Ljusnarsberg. But, still, I did not know if this Per Osmi was an ancestor to my Erik Matsson. I had learned from my reading of the contributions on Anbytarforum that such assumptions could not be made easily, solely based on an old hand written manuscript from the early 1900s.

How I then jugglery with different keywords on Google is impossible to remember in detail, but suddenly it was there. A family tree of a certain Per Persson Osmi. It was compiled by the editor of the web newsletter - GLIMTEN - as a birthday present to the family Roggentin. Here, I could follow the Osmi family to the present days. In this family tree was also an Erik Matsson born in 1774 in Hörken in Ljusnarsberg son of the mine owner (Bergsman) Mats Henriksson Osmi. According to my hand written source Erik Matsson got his first child in 1799 so, so far, it seems consistent. The problem was that I could not be absolutely sure that this was the same Erik Matsson because there was no date of birth for him in my hand -written tree.
I knew, however, whom he was married to and that he had at least 12 children.

I called Mr. Bertil Magnusson - the author of Roggentin's family tree. That was how I got my first lesson in genealogy. During nearly two hours at his home, we turned and twisted the problem and concluded that it most likely was the same Erik Matsson we talked about but not with absolute certainty.

The crucial evidence, I found again on Anbytarforum by searching for the farm Stråtgården on Google. Under the category Ljusnarsbergs, Mr. Harald Stråth had written about his family farm's (Bergsmansgård) history.

He writes: ".....The Bergsman [1] and Sexman [2] Erik Mattsson, born in 1774 in Södra Hörken, became the new owner on the farm. He married in 1803 with Christina (Stina) Hansdotter from Kyrkbacken. They had 13 children together. The wife died in 1839. Erik Mattsson married at 77 years of age with Elisabeth Catharina Hammar born in 1774 in Linde. Erik Mattsson died in 1844 and wife No. 2 moved back to Linde."[3]

Voila! Here, we apparently talk about the same person since the year 1774 is the same as that of the descendant of Per Osmi and
all other data including the wife's name, are consistent with my relative. I have looked up some other details and found that some information both in Roggentin's Pedigree and Harald Stråth's information on my ancestor is not completely accurate, but nothing that alters the fact that we are talking about the same person. This taught me to be critical in the sense that many genealogists have better accuracy of their data, the more central a person is for their own family. Peripheral persons are for natural reasons not worth that much double checking. As Erik Matsson was central to my research, I have later - when I started with genealogy - checked him extra carefully in church records and found, for example, that he is not born in 1774-03-05 but 1774-05-15. Probably the first date comes from a PARISH CATECHETICAL MEETING (Husförhör) minutes of Mats Henriksson's family. The priest's handwriting can sometimes be difficult to interpret.
I checked the birth records which are probably the nearest the truth as one can get because it is written in connection with the birth. I have also checked the data on Osmi in Ljusnarsberg's Chronicle from the 17th century during a visit in Kopparberg. I have now taken the habit of always looking in the year after and before the alleged birth if I do not find a person directly in
the birth record. It has often produced results.

A fun event was much later when I searched for my grandfather's mother Sofia Mose. She would, according to the CD Sveriges Dödbok 1947-2003 be born in 1873 in Färnebo, Värmland. The same information I had received from relatives who remember her.

There was however no Sofia Mose born in Färnebo 1873 - however, an Amanda Moses was born November 4 that year and in the PARISH CATECHETICAL MEETING RECORDS 1874 a younger sister Sofia was born June 12. Sadly enough the mother died in 1880 and the father Nils Johan Mose was alone with four young children. Apparently, this became too much for him and he emigrated to America in 1882 and left the children remain in Sweden to be taken care of by the "social authorities" or "he escaped to America" as the church record says.

If one follows Sofia Moses in PARISH CATECHETICAL MEETING RECORDS, one can see that she in 1888, only 14 years of age, moved from Pärlby to Björnhyttan in Norrbärke parish to work as a maid. Exit records from Färnebo parish has the correct birth time, but in the entry records to Norrbärke, she has become half a year older and thus 15 years in a couple weeks. Could she have been so enterprising that she stated the wrong date of birth at the new place to hide her low age or was it again i sloppy priest who was to blame? She however carried with her the new birth date all her life. Certainly, it is exciting to try to understand her situation?

This was a story that came much later and at the time of my studies of the family Osmi, I had never seen a PARISH CATECHETICAL MEETING RECORD. Nor had I any way to document my discoveries. But I was of course not a genealogists at the time!

[1] A Bergsman was a person who owned a mine. He was also farmer and a forester. The mining was however his main profession, the timber was for the production of iron and the farm for providing food for his family and employee. The home of a Bergsman was called Bergsmansgård and were often quite impressing buildings build in timber. Quite a few of them are still around.

[2] A Sexman was one of six elected and highly trusted Bergsmen who had the duty to control that all legal and economic regulations were met by the other Bergsmen in the community.

[3] Linde is nowadays formally called Lindesberg, but still, Linde is used by people who live there.

Pictures: First picture shows Pershyttan Bergsmansgård outside Nora, second picture shows the old blast furnace at Pershyttan. The third picture shows Sofia Mose.

/This text was first published in January 2007/

Anbytarforum - a powerful service that fill us with some fear

Anbytarforum is a forum for genealogists organized by Rötter. Anbytarforum is divided into a number of different departments and have very strict rules. Warning! Read them and follow them! For a beginner, it can be tricky! A common mistake we make is to ask the wrong things in the wrong place. Then, immediately rapped on the knuckles - not always with a particular pedagogical finesse.

For instance, if we are interested in the family Svinhufvud we might be in trouble. The family occurs namely in three different locations on Anbytarforum, namely under Other families, Under Introduced Nobility (Introducerad Adel) and under Not Introduced Nobility (Icke introducerad adel). Nowadays we know that they are all related in some way but dammed is that stupid beginner who asks a question in the wrong place. Not just the monitor of the page comes forward, but also a number of advocates of law and order quickly addresses the ignorant beginner of the fatal mistake. Talk about feeling as an idiot!

The list of flagellation on Anbytarforum could be made quite long, but to dwell on it becomes so boring. Not so long ago, however I found a real good thing. It was a very animated discussion whether to spell the surnames contemporary as they did at the time or if we had to normalize ie. choose a spelling as we will consistently follow through the years. To discuss different approaches to the sources are really good but the discussion developed to affect the personality characteristics of the persons who went far beyond genealogy research. The worst thing one can do is to suggest that one might be related to a significant person without having strong scientific evidence. As a beginner and enthusiast maybe you think you can ask a simple question whether such a relationship could be possible, but then you are completely wrong out there. You might think you should get a polite "no, it's not for the following reasons ...", but not. The naive beginner have to be put in place vigorously! Anyway, I have not myself been affected, but suffered with all the happy beginners who have experienced this. Hope they have not stopped with their genealogy research, but continues and becomes more tolerant than some others. As a professional researcher, I have quite difficult to understand the views of fundamentalism that I have encountered in Anbytarforum.

Anbytarforum is a treasure cave of knowledge. It is often here you get your first hit when you browse the web for an ancestor. Often it gives you valuable contacts with other very helpful genealogists and then you have to put up with the few "Messerschmitts" contained. Search regularly for your ancestors on Anbytarforum to keep up to date with new knowledge that you would otherwise miss. A good way I've found is to add the word "genealogy" to your search. Then you can be sure to find all instances of what you are looking for from Anbytarforum.
But - keep a low profile and be humble!

To be honest Anbytarforum lately have tried to do something about its bad reputation and are now more conscious about the debate climate. I have however found out throughout the last years that there are quite a few genealogists who "knows better" than the rest of us and therefore pop up everywhere and give themselves right to teach us idiots better.

/This text was first published in January 2007 and is now updated/

How I started with genealogy

As I previously told it was poor with relatives on my father's side since he was born in a home for single mothers an was afterwards left by the authoroties to different farmers for upbringing. My father has written some very interesting stories on this. My grandmother, whom I knew who she was, but had very little contact with died in 1996 in old age. She refused until her death to reveal who my grandfather was. Some years later, I received of her brother - my fathers uncle - a copy of a hand-written family tree made around 1905. It was a tree of my grandmother's mother's side and had stated births and deaths of people but had very few surnames. The tree stretched back to a "Bergsman", which is a mine owner, in Ljusnarsberg in late 18th century. Anyway - I rooled the tree an had soon forgotten about it.

The same year as my grandmother died, in time for my father's 75th birthday, he received a telephone call from a woman claiming to be his half sister and that he also had half brother. Since their father's death they had known about my fatgers existance, but not considered it appropriate to reveal anything until his mother died. So suddenly I had a relative on my father´s side, which was pretty exciting. My new aunt, who were of teh same age as me, gave my father a bunch of old pictures of her father and some documents about the family ancestors. My father put this away in a boxs somewhere.

Nearly ten years passed and the end of 2005, I found the old roll with the family tree and the Bergsman´s family. I started studying it and found that the top was: 'Erik Matsson from Hörken, Bergsman (Mine Owner), resident on Stråtgården in Ljusnarbergs Parish, comming from a Finnish ancestor from the 1600s, a certain Peder Persson Ossmi according to Ljusnarsbergs chronicle from 1607. Married to Kristina Katarina Hansdotter from Kyrkbacken Klastorp in Ljusnarsbergs Parish, Örebro län. Eriks in all 12 children were recorded and their descendants until the early 1900s. This was interesting and since I have had research (not genealogy, however) as my profession for 25 years, I attacked the problem in the only way I knew. I searched on the Internet.

I was mainly interested in going back in time because it was the most exciting to do. Who was he Ossmi? Searches on Ossmi returned no results, but on Osmi. It gave lots of international organizations and companies with OSMI as acronym. Eventually, I wrote Osmi + Ljusnarsberg and Google hit a jackpot. It turned out that several other researchers had been interested in a Osmi in Hörken in Ljusnarsbergs and now I found their messages on Anbytarforum. I will tell you about Anbytarforum later.

The picture above shows my grandmother´s parent´s home, where my father could have been brought up if things had been different

/This text was first published in January 2007/

Genealogy - the employment of older nerds?

I must admit one thing that certainly leads many to stop reading here. I have always thought of genealogy as an employment of older, predominantly male, nerds. At the same time, I have been quite fascinated by these people who travel from parish to parish on the country, preferably on a bicycle or moped, and sit for days and go through old dusty books in search of ancestors. Another bias I have had for genealogists is that they always find the counts, barons and kings among their ancestors. If such is not to be found they might find at least a condemned person long back in time. It may be easy as outsiders to sense that the entire Swedish population consisting of descendants of the nobles and bandits - often in the same person.

When I learned more, I realized that the geek factor is actually quite high and that I am becoming a geek myself. My admiration for old-time genealogist, has however also increased. I can imagine how heroic it must have been to do family research before Genline, DIS and Anbytarforum existed. See, I have already become one of those who throws concepts around that a beginner thinks is tools in transplantation medicine, or a database for the genetic manipulation of our food. Relax, I will return to this later!

Back to the Ancient genealogists! Imagine a person who found a relative in any church register for example Järnboås Parish and managed to follow the person until the upper teens, which states that he moved to Ljusnarsbergs. Up on the bike and off to Kopparberg to track him in the church regiter of Ljusnarsberg Parish. (There are bad connections from Järnboås to Kopparberg). Well, in Kopparberg he will discover that his ancestor only after a few years moved back home again, but now he was registered in Nora Parish. It is only to jump up on the bike again and off to Nora to search for him among immigrants in order to find out which village he moved to. His new home is actually just two hundred meters from his childhood home, but on the other side of the parish boundary. Imagine what a heroic efforts in the search for his roots! Just the physical hardship has been one of the reasons that I never even considered to begin genealogy research. Another contributing factor is that I have not had a family to do research on because my father was illegitimate of unknown father and, I have understood, that research on other than the direct descendants, ie. on Fathers side is not quite as good as any other branch. Above you can however see my parents Nils Erik and Britt Maywor G.

/This text was first published in January 2007/

Genealogy for Dummies

Being inexperienced, ignorant and naive can be tough in many areas, but perhaps particularly to genealogists. One year of experience in genealogy has taught me that it is a good idea not to be ignorant even in the beginning. At the same time, I am completely taken by all the wonderful tools available and all the incredibly enthusiastic people engaged in family research. The first genealogist I came into contact with a very experienced genealogist who devoted much of his life to publishing a newsletter in the area. I found when searching on the web that he has produced information on an alleged relative of me in the 1600s. (Just a lucky stroke because I did not know A BIT on how to do). Anyway he lived in my neck of the woods so I called him and he immediately invited me home to talk. This incredibly knowledgeable and nice person spent over two hours for me and gave me all the issues he had left of his newsletter, and extracts from his database concerning my relatives. When we said goodbye he said: "Take it easy with family research. Remember that there are other things in life. It is easy to overdo it, so you forsaken everything else. So weird people I have met among genealogists are not common anywhere else." During my first year as genealogists I have realize that he was really right. At least my wife thinks that I am a bit one-sided in my interests and could be a little more social at times and I have encountered quite fundamentalist people during my travels on the web. Above all, I have as a novice felt quite lost among all the "besserwissers" I have encountered at various genealogists-sites.

I therefore wish to share my thoughts and experiences - and they are not very advanced - with you who are in the same situation I was a year ago, ie. total ignorance about the most basic of family research. I was so ignorant that I did not even understand beginner instructions in the most popular books or on the various genealogists-sites on the web.

For you to understand my deep ignorance, I can tell - though I blush with shame - that I had not a clue what proband meant or clearly understood the difference between ancestors and descendants, let alone could interpret the relationship of a tree numbered with Kekules' system. Now I have at least taught me enough to make jokes and write about it.

For those who expect advanced advice like those you may find in countless books on the subject will be disappointed. For those who wish to hear about ordeales from a total beginner and get answers to questions so stupid that a serious genealogists or primer on the subject would never deal with them, it may be useful and perhaps a good time, to follow my comments.

/This text was first published in January 2007/