Saturday 27 February 2021

Ancestry

After my father died ten years ago, my brother and I were left with a house full of old papers and photos, most of which were related either to my grandfather's career as a journalist with special interest in local history, or to my dad's interest in railway history. Luckily, the main efforts of their interests in these fields had already been preserved in printed books.

When my grandfather died (in 1969, only 65 years old), he had nearly finished compiling a book about old 'crofts' in the parish where he grew up (small farms on ground owned by bigger estates - I think the English word croft comes closest). He grew up on one such croft himself. My dad (together with his mother and mine) completed the book and had it printed (much appreciated by the local history society). 

After that, dad also wrote four books about railways in south-west Sweden. (He grew up in a house by the railway in the 1930s, which was what triggered his interest.) 

After he died in 2011, there was an overwhelming amount of papers and photos left in the house to sort through and decide what to do with.

...Dad's study in June 2011...

The railway-related stuff we donated to the national railway museum. In August 2012 three guys from there came down with a big truck and took more than half the contents of dad's very large study away with them. (Phew!) We also gave some papers related to my grandfather's research to the local history society.  Even so, quite a few papers and photos related to our own family history also came home with me. Every now and then, I've taken a plunge into them. Bits and pieces have also got blogged about now and then over the years. But I obviously do not have the same perseverance for this kind of thing as my forefathers. (And I've also no wish for my own study to end up in the same state as dad's in the end...)  After a while, I always feel the need to come up for air and let "here and now" take over again. But that also means that whenever something inspires me to dive into the history again, I always sort of have to start over! (And this, I guess, is a typical starting-over post.)

There are very few photos from before the 1920s; and when you get back to the 1800s and earlier, the name-giving tradition in Sweden usually went something like this: Sven Larsson was the son of Lars Svensson, who was the son of Sven Larsson, who was the son of Lars Svensson, who was... etc... To keep people apart back then they usually also added the name of the farm or the croft where they lived. But to me, most of those place-names don't mean anything (and most people also did not stay in one place their whole life).

One day back in the summer of 2012 (while we were still up to our necks in it all), my brother and I went in search of the places where our paternal grandparents grew up, though - as we knew those still existed, and not too far apart from each other.

Our grandmother grew up on a farm. For both her parents it was their second marriage. Her father died when she was only 7 years old. Until she got married at age 30, she continued living on the farm in a family constellation consisting of her oldest half-brother (30 years older than her), her mother, a half-sister from her mother's first marriage, and a younger brother. (She also had five more grown-up half-siblings, one of whom returned from America to live at the farm again for a while when my grandmother was in her upper teens.) This is the branch of family history I heard most about in my own childhood.

The b&w photo of the farmhouse in the collage below is from the 1920s; the other three are mine from 2012. 

My grandfather on the other hand grew up in a small simple 'croft' cottage. As the only son of an unmarried mother, he was mainly brought up by his grandparents. (His own background was no doubt what inspired him later in life to dig into the history of other crofts in the same parish. But that wasn't clear to me back in my childhood.)

Back then, the cottage was grey and unpainted (the b&w photo). A century later, an idyllic little red holiday house.

So what inspired me to bring all this up again, just now? Well, as so often, one thought leads to another. Recently a fellow blogger wrote about a manuscript left behind by his father. A Swedish friend posted on Facebook about her latest family history research. I discovered my 'new' printer (bought last spring) can scan documents as PDF. And so, one day I found myself returning to some of my grandfather's notes from back in the 1950s. If nothing else, perhaps I can scan some notes to preserve them in a more handy format for the future.

These are notes typed on typewriter by my grandfather himself back in the 1950s and marked as related to family history. Most of them are just "bits and pieces" from different sources. And some things he seems to have kept repeating and putting together in different versions. A bit confusing (for me) - but I can't really blame him, I suppose, as I find myself doing the same thing!

Overall impression: Some ancestors were crofters and very poor; others were farmers and a bit more well off, but still had their troubles. Most families back in the 1800s had a number of children who died very young. Many women died giving birth. People often married again after their fist spouse died. (Which means lots of half-siblings to complicate the family tree.) Some individuals were regarded as odd, mentally deficient or fragile (how each one of those would have been diagnosed today one can only speculate about). Some got some kind of financial support from the parish in their old age. Some were sent away to institutions. Some people died young, and others lived to be surprisingly old (well over 80 or even into their 90s), in spite of poverty and various hardships.  

In among all the sad stuff one can come across some "gems". Like this piece of information:

My grandfather's grandmother's mother Annika (married to one of the Sven Larssons), born 1800 and died 1887, was "one of those women who back in the mid 1800s were hired to teach children to read and write, before there were any regular schools".  My grandfather notes that obviously Annika also taught her daughter Rebecka (his grandmother) these skills, because even in her old age (she lived to be 79), she still had a neat handwriting. 

(This story is included in my grandfather's book, related to the croft where Annika lived, but without making a point of the people mentioned being his own close relations.) 

Alas I have no photos of neither Annika nor Rebecka.

It may be a bit of a stretch, but I'm linking this post to Sepia Saturday 559.



26 comments:

  1. It's quite a project to go through people's papers. It's so revealing, but can be a chore. I've never heard the word 'croft' before and had to look it up.

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  2. The Swedish word is 'torp'. It may not have an exact equivalent in English but from what I understand, I think 'croft' in British English comes close. They did not own the cottage and the small plot of land to go with it, only leased it (paying with labor rather than money). Or if a landowner sold a property in their old age, they could set aside a small plot for themselves to be used the rest of their life, but after they died that piece of land would go back to the owner of the main property.

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  3. I know it's a chore, but within all that 'mess', there are treasure troves as you have or are discovering. When my uncle died his children had little time to sort through his things and decide what to do with them. He had quite a library of books which were given to a library. For a time, when no one could find or remember where a great grandfather's private journal was, we thought it had gone to a library with the rest of his books. Luckily we finally discovered it had not, but it was a worry. So do take your time. There may still be treasures hidden amongst those remaining papers?

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    1. LaN, the big question is really "treasures for whom", as I have no obvious younger generation (children/grandchildren etc) to leave things behind to. If I scan some things I could give a digital copy to the local history society, though.

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  4. I related to your post on a number of levels. My collection of papers and bits and pieces of this and that keeps growing - and as I am growing older, I know I must do something with them! I have stops and starts with research, so I often feel like I am starting all over again. It is wonderful that those homes still exist and are in use today.

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    1. Kathy, thanks for reading. The problem with "bits and pieces" is that it can be really hard to make something of them, isn't it... (Like trying to lay a puzzle knowing from from start that at least half the pieces are missing!)

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  5. No wonder you are such an avid reader, you come from a family of authors. The croft book sounds so interesting, did he include pictures? I remember when you and your brother were going through all the things in the house. I got your card, thanks!!

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    1. Ginny, a family of authors may be stretching it a bit - but "readers & writers", definitely. On both sides of the family.

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  6. my grandmother, my dad's mother, was born in 1886. a year before your great grandmother. i can't decide which is my favorite, the white house or the one that is red now. those two photos are what i love, like they looked then, not how they look now.. i am glad to see they remodeled and saved them and did not tear them down. that is what happens here.

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    1. Sandra, not that it matters much, but Annika (who I mentioned was born 1800 and died 1887) was my great-great-great grandmother. Five generations removed. (The mind boggles!)

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  7. That study and its contents would totally overwhelm me. I store my'Bits and pieces' in folders so I can hopefully keep track of them, but I don't have as many as you. Good luck with it all. At least you will always have something to do!!

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    1. Liz, it overwhelmed me as well. It just had to be sorted through because I knew it was a mix of things that should go to museums vs private stuff that should either be kept in the family or thrown away.

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  8. You were smart to wade through all those papers and recognize their value.

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    1. Wendy, it was more about endurance than being smart...

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  9. Wow, that is quite a collection of papers in the first few photos! Your decision to donate many of them was a wise one. I am hoping to organize my own collection for donation -- digitizing as I go, the way you are doing, so I can discard some of the hard copies in advance. Yet how wonderful to find those nuggets about your family history! They make all the sorting worthwhile.

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    1. Molly, I think what made it feel most worth while was getting "the right things" sent off to museums.

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  10. Have you ever considered writing short stories for children and teenagers? You write very well.
    Your knowledge of local history could be the basis of social history novels. Take one of your ancestors and write a fictional account of something from her life. Include facts. Include photos or sketches. There are many writers all over the world who publish books like this. Schools love them. Teenagers love them. These stories make history real and build compassion for others whose way of life is different.
    My sister-in-law has done something similar, writing short history books about people and places where she lives. It is not a great money-making machine but it is definitely worth attempting. We all need books about ordinary people; there are enough books about kings and heroes.
    I sincerely encourage you to go to your library and ask the librarian to show you books about social history.
    I find your writing fascinating and I am sure you could publish more than one social history book.

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    1. Thanks for the compliments on my writing, Louise. The bits and pieces of old family history collected by my grandfather are not really of the kind to inspire children's books, though. Most of it is just dates of births, deaths, marriages, or moving from one place to another. Plus a few copies of inventories of estate (after someone died), in one or two cases also followed by disputes among the relatives about the legacy. Or requests to have someone declared legally incompetent and in need of a guardian (or mental hospital)... Not the best bedtime story material. Possibly of some interest to other adults interested in local history. [I'll keep your suggestion at the back of my mind, though. ;)]

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  11. Your family history would make very good reading as a book, or a great series for TV - too much in there for just one little film :-)
    Do not underestimate the interest of the "general public" in the daily life stories of other people; not only local historians find reading about what things were like for real people, their real lives, fascinating.

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    1. Meike, I wouldn't mind reading the book either. Writing one is totally different matter, though! ;) (Seriously, I just don't have the kind of energy/inspiration/stamina required, neither mentally nor physically...)

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  12. I think of how my collections of things need to be organized better, so my sons won't just throw away everything when I'm gone. But then, maybe that's what their worth really is. Thanks for reminding me of how you came to this post!

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    1. Barabra, even if my aim was/is to get things better organized, I strongly suspect that I'll end up just multiplying them instead (leaving behind a gazillion digital versions...)

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  13. I had to look up what a croft is but even so I think it's important to hold onto the information about who your dad was, that's what memories are made of.

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    1. Amy, it's mostly the lives of the earlier generations (before my own parents) that are hard to grasp. The more I look into my grandfather's book, the more I marvel at how much information he had been able to collect and preserve for the future.

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  14. As always I find the stories and bits and pieces that I don't know or have forgotten fascinating and interesting. 'Croft' is not, so far as I am aware, a term used in the United Kingdom outside the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. They are the same as the crofts to which you refer and the term is, I have read, West Germanic in origin so how it arrived in Scotland I'm not sure. However the crofts you describe are the same as the crofts here.

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    1. Graham, I suppose more countries must have had similar systems as well, even if legal details and names varied. (In the introduction to my grandfather's book, he expands on four different kinds of 'torp' in Sweden alone.) Trying to find the best match for the Swedish word, I checked 'croft' in online dictionaries. Merriam-Webster for example says: "chiefly British : a small farm worked by a tenant". Close enough for my purposes in this post...

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