February 2012 What a feeling of satisfaction when a difficult case finally has been solved! Some ten years ago I got a e-mail message from a man in Minnesota. His name was Bill Jacobson and he was searching for his grandfather’s background in Sweden. The fact he had was his grandfather’s name – Charles Peter Jacobson, and his possible year of birth (about 1852) . He also had a family tradition that his grandfather had left Sweden because of a family dispute in 1882.
Well, that was ten years ago and in Sweden we had no censuses digitalized yet – or no CD-discs usable for genealogical search at all.
So, ten years ago, what could I do? Almost nothing. By then we had to know the birth parish of an emigrant to have a chance to find him.
Unexpected names on a licence
But Bill and his wife Cheryl did not want to give up. They searched on there the other side of the Atlantic, and suddenly in Iowa they found Charles Peter’s marriage certificate. Very, very strange, because there Charles Peter, who according to his name in America would have been called Karl Peter Jakobsson in Sweden, had given his parents’ names as Kate Thompson and Charles Peter Rund!
That really did not help. On the contrary, it made this case more complicated. Primarily, he had translated their names from Swedish into English. If we leave the question why for a moment, and just look at the names, we had to face the question where the name Jacobson comes from. And – where did the surname Rund come from?
In a census in Iowa they had found the place Kalmar as Karl Peter’s home town, as well. Kalmar is a city in Småland region in the south of Sweden. I tried an archive on people born in the Kalmar area in the 1850’ - but with no progress.
Full stop for a long while.
Then came the CD on the 1890 census. Full of hope, as soon as it had been published, I started searching for Charles Peter or his parents, but with no success. No people by those names. Then the CD on Swedish emigrants came and full of hope - --- but just a negative response. No emigrants by the name of Karl Peter Jakobsson or similar spellings.
They came for a visit
A couple of years later Bill and Sheryl came for a visit all the way from Minnesota to Gotland in Sweden where I live. We drove around on the island and had a great time together, but I could not present them any roots, neither here nor anywhere else in Sweden.
A couple of more years passed. Nothing new to add. So, at last - the 1880 census came out.
Of course, I gave it an immediate check - and was immediately disappointed, because Charles Peter who had left Sweden after 1880, barely had to be found in this CD.
After a while I understood I had to check from another point. I checked for all women called Karin, Katarina or similar first names plus Thomasdotter, Tomsson or similar surnames married to somebody called Karl.
There was just one such couple: Katarina Thomasdotter married to a man called Karl Karlsson. This man was a farmer on Gotland - of all places in Sweden!
They had a son born in 1852, noted as a sailor, but he was called Jacob Petter, not Karl Petter.
A new check in the census of 1890. Jacob Peter was still noted there, but noted as “Obefintlig” meaning that nobody could tell his address. All emigrants who did not report to the minister of his of her parish were noted as Obefintlig.
The solution
I had found the missing man after some ten years of searching. I had got all pieces of the puzzle to fit together:
A man called Jacob Peter Karlsson, born in 1852, a sailor and a farmer’s son on Gotland, left his home for America probably because of a row with his parents. He left Sweden as a sailor, and he left from Kalmar.
In his now country, as a resident in Iowa, of any reason he mixed his names a bit. Jacob Peter Karlsson became Charles Peter Jacobson. He translated his mother’s names into English and created a new name for his father. Maybe he was very angry with him. Instead he took a bit of his brother in law’s surname Rundlund and invented Charles Petter Rund as his father.
Quite easily I could trace a great grandchild of Charles Peter’s sister, married to Jacob Rundlund. A what a family party she gave, Britta Lindström in Etelhem parish! A number of relatives of Bill were there to see him. I was invited to meet them all as well.
It took ten years, but we managed!
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