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Swedgenco performs professional Swedish genealogy research in order to help you find your Swedish ancestors and family. Free of charge, Swedgenco always makes an initial search to see if the research outcome would be successful, in other words to tell whether the immigrant could be found based on your information.
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Holmhällar, Gotland
April 2013 What a satisfaction each time when I have managed to find the right person, the emigrant from Sweden searched for! Especially when the case has been complicated.
Very often clients just have got a name of an immigrant from Swede, sometimes a date of birth as well, but no parish of birth. They just know Sweden. By that we rather soon had got a problem because a lot of Swedes during the emigration period had got exactly the same names. There were thousands of Nils Andersson or Anna Olsson or Olsdotter emigrating.
Today we genealogists have some archives to check in, censuses or emigrant records, but with just common names the chance to find the right man or woman is small. A year of emigration will make a better chance, exact date of birth a still better one.
At the emigrant ships from Europe records had to be kept on the people onboard, and sometimes even notices on the emigrants home parishes. The later during the emigration period the more notes.
Recently I searched for weeks for a woman, let us call her Anna Andersson, born in 1877, December 12, emigrating in 1899. There was no such woman to find neither in the census of 1890 nor in any emigrant record. I almost gave up. But all of a sudden, in a ship record I found a note on the woman.
There I got more information on her and could search on - and find her rather soon. But - her date of birth was not correct, it did not fit with the birth record in Sweden! In her new homeland over there she had reduces her age a bit. Actually she was born in 1876 and not 1877.
I would like to add that this kind of change of birth year was not very uncommon. Who does not want to be younger?
Farmers, crofters and soldiers
Sweden of the past was a farmer’s country and most clients will find farmers among their Swedish ancestors, farmer and more farmers. Very often crofters, too.
In Sweden, however, for centuries we had soldiers enrolled by the State of Sweden, soldiers with special surnames as long as they were serving the State. A lot of us have them among our roots. Sweden’s last war, hopefully for ever, ended in 1809. After that we were involved in as short campaign in 1812. Quite recently I had a client with an ancestor from the very north of Sweden. He was a soldier and as I discovered that he died from a special and very local decease which ran in the area in 1809, connected to the war situation.
If we find soldiers in service before that period of time it is often possible for me to tell if they have been involved in war campaigns.
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