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/