What did you do on your summer vacation? I built these bookcases:
I’m the ED for our local Historical Society (you can learn more about us at humboldthistory.org). We needed new storage for some of our genealogy books. Wish I had more time to build stuff.
Okay, now that summer’s over maybe we’ll have some time to blog.
I really wanted to do these things more consistently, but looking back, it’s been a month and I haven’t posted anything. I could make a bunch of excuses but I won’t. I’ll just promise myself to work a little harder at it.
Since we last spoke, Christel wrote back sending pages from her grandmother’s cousin’s book showing a drawing of the Ekholm farm that came as a pdf and I don’t know how to share that with you. But she did have some insight into the holm part of Ekholm.
Holm or more right “holme” means a little hill (or a little field) standing alone in its surroundings. The verb “holma” means surround. Nowadays the word stands for a little uninhabited island.
The noun “holm” exists in English too with the same meaning as in Swedish, but in English the word also can mean “kind of evergreen oak”!
So my next post is going to have to be about my side of the family. My sister whined about that the other day and we have to keep her happy.
At some point I have to assume people who read this stuff know that the story actually starts below and I shouldn’t continue to direct readers to part one of each post. So I’ll stop doing that now.
I mentioned earlier that I had discovered the wonder of Swedish Church records, essentially nosy Lutherans looking into your family life. But how cool to have a record of all the families in an area (parish), when the kids were born, when they went off to America or got married, where they moved…all on a yearly basis. And you can search all those records for a fee at this cool site: genline.com. (Watch the skills grow as your author learns to insert links)
But those records can only take you so far and as all genealogists know, you run out of information that leads you to the next branch of the family tree. They even have a phrase for it: hitting the brick wall. Say that to any genealogist, or genealogy hobbyist, and they’ll know exactly what you mean and will share with you, at considerable length, their own personal brick walls, both broken -through and existing. I’ve even attended seminars on how to break through your brick walls and I’m happy to say I ended up employing one of the strategies I picked up somewhere along the way.
I found a site that allows folks to post queries regarding Swedish genealogy…scangen.se. So I posted my Ekholm questions and waited. Waited for several months. Part of the problem was the site’s in Swedish and I posted my query in English. And then the most remarkable thing happened. In the space of a couple a days I got several replies to my query, one in Swedish and the others in English. It seems Christel Lindstrom had a cousin who did some genealogy work regarding the Ekholm name and she was able to fill me in on a lot of the story in my earlier post. Better yet, her cousin had compiled a book on the farms in that area and she knew exactly where the farm was. Now how cool is that. So Christel is my new Swedish girlfriend because a few days ago she sent pictures of the farm along with a map locating where all this action is taking place.
This has all the key towns we’ll mention in the Ekholm story and this pretty much covers the area all sides of my wife’s family, going back at least to the mid 1700’s, have lived and died. Right in the middle is Vasta Karup, the parish where the Ekholm’s and the Nilsson’s (Donna’s Grandmother’s maiden name) lived. At the bottom is Hjarnarp and Forslov, also big in Nilsson stuff. Keep that in mind as we learn more about them. But then Christel sent a better picture of where the Ekholm’s actually lived.
And you’ll see on the road, just west of Bastad where she has written Ekholm Farm. How cool is that. And then to top it all off, she sent pictures of the farm today. Compare those with the ones earlier.
The internet is perhaps the greatest creation of mankind. What a wonderful thing Al Gore has given us.
This will make more sense if you read the next post first. Go down one, then come back here.
Go now…don’t read anymore.
That was okay, and you can click on the picture to make it quite big. Let’s see how this works:
Okay, I like that much better. You can actually see things.
Next up, some real pictures about Sweden.
Let’s see how this works:
This is the Ekholm Farm from the old days.
Let’s see how it posts.
Finally, Super Sunday. Super Tuesday coming up. This must be Super Week.
Like most, I think the Pats will win but I’m rooting for the Giants. Uncle Dave will be here to grill some steaks (post game since ours starts at 3).
Don’t have any plans for Super Monday.
Actually, she’s only part Swede, but that’s the part I’ve been doing genealogy on recently. We had followed her roots back to when her grandparents came to this country just after the turn of last century. I began searching for a site to work on Swedish records to see what we could find. That’s when I discovered Swedish church records. Apparently the church people (sounds like Saturday Night Live) came around to check on you and yours yearly and kept meticulous records. If you’ve done any genealogy you know how cool that would be. It is very cool, but it’s all in Swedish
The other problem for us is the last name…Ekholm. Most Swedish names are patronymic, meaning you are a “son” or “dotter” of your dad. My son would be Clay Durrysson. If I had a daughter, she would be Olga Durrysdotter. After awhile, every male’s name in Sweden was Jonsson, Nilsson, Fredsson, Tomsson (I made the last two up)…you get the drift. And it becomes very difficult to follow over time, especially working backward as we do in genealogy. And it was hard to figure out where Ekholm came from.
A little research helps. Around the mid-1800’s the people in charge of names in Sweden decided this son and dotter thing wasn’t working, so they told every family to pick one and keep that for everybody, male and female alike. That’s when women started showing up with names like Nilsson instead of Nilsdotter.
Still, where did we get Ekholm. Ek means oak and I’m not sure what Holm means but I think it’s something like place or area or home. Here’s what we found. Gudmond Jonsson, who was born in Voxtorp, Sweden in 1768 married Elsa Hansdotter in 1793. They had three kids…Jon Gudmondsson, Ola Gudmondsson and Hanna Gudmondsdotter. Since it appeared Jon would get the family farm, Ola went off to sea. When he returned to Sweden, Jon had died and Hanna had married Ola Paulsson and they had the family farm. I don’t know if our Ola was ticked off at Hanna and Ola Paulsson for taking the farm but it evidently didn’t bother him long because he took the name Ekholm, bought his own farm (with a grove of oaks, maybe), married Ingar Svensdotter and raised a family, one of whom was Sven Petter who’s my wife’s great-grandfather. Maybe it did bother Ola since he decided he’d had enough of that Gudmondsson family and started fresh with a new name.
When I learn how to put up pictures, I’ll show you what the farm looks like today, courtesy of my new Swedish girlfriend.
Think of this as a continuation, not as a month of sitting around doing nothing. Life is built around routine and for those of us past a certain age, routine becomes difficult to change. I hope to establish a routine that includes a regular blogging time but up until now, that hasn’t happened. The holidays, my mom’s visit, woodwork in the kitchen have all intervened. That said, let’s pretend this past month didn’t happen and I’m continuing that post I started yesterday. Works for me.
One of the bad things…I remember very little of the instruction my son gave me on blogging. For instance, what should I do about tags? How many categories should I have? I know I learned how to add a picture but that was so long ago. And then there’s the question of blog roll and all those things under the Options tab.
This should be fun. Stick with me and we’ll learn together.
I wanted to get this up before the day passed for a number of reasons. First, it’ll be easy to remember the anniversary of my first post. Ease in life is something I constantly try to achieve. And second, it’s my birthday and putting this blog together was my son’s present to me. Seems only right to reward him with some pithy thoughts. If only I had some.
This will be a blog mainly about genealogy. I’ve been collecting the family history for twenty years now and I need to start writing some of it down. I want to share the stories of looking for things, the problems I encounter along the way (they are the same problems everybody else encounters) and the excitement of discovery…like that extra cousin you never knew you had. One of these days I want to write a book and maybe this will help.
That said, I’m one of those guys who has opinions…and will be happy to share. It’s my blog…I’ll say what I want.
Finally, general folderol is anything that catches my fancy…and that could be anything. Like my apparent fascination with ellipsis.
One other note…I Must Be Full honors the memory of the grandfather who, when I was an impressionable child, took a sip of his tea, dribbled some on his shirt, and said “I must be full.” I always thought that was funny…still do in fact. You can make kids laugh with this little trick. No attribution necessary.