Coming To The United States

My next steps will be to find the dates of departure/arrival, and with those, hopefully I can divine some of the conditions and circumstances of the journeys.

Returning to Gustave Hilmer Backman and his journal, we know that he with John Peter traveled together.

He says of this, “father’s brother John P. Backman, who was then a sailor between Gotenborg [sic] and Liverpool, was making his last voyage. Intending to leave the service upon reaching Liverpool, and then continue to Utah; arrangement was made that I go with him and we left Gotenborg [sic] on the 12^th of May, 1877, and arrived in Liverpool on my birthday, May 18, 1877.”

Prior to leaving Europe nephew and uncle stayed in Liverpool with the latter’s sister, Charlotte and her husband John Anderson. They sailed on the ship Wyoming. I have learned from a file from https://mormonmigration.lib.byu.edu that they did travel with an organized company of 188, headed by David K. Udall. This file carries additional sources.

Gustave tells us later that his younger brother, William traveled in the fall of the same year, making the trip with Mormon Elders returning to Utah.

In July 1878, Gustave’s parents came to Utah, bringing his brother George, sisters Annie and Bertha. They traveled aboard the steamship Nevada, departing Liverpool June 29, arriving New York on July 10. There were 577 passengers in their company under John Cook.

I have found the record of Inger coming in 1880 in another source, this source tells us she traveled on the steamship Wisconsin, leaving Liverpool July 10 and arriving in New York July 21. Inger was part of a company of 710, their church leader being Neils P. Rassmusen. I believe I see Carolina Maria Neilsson on that voyage, as well. Anders (Andrew, Samuel’s son)) came the same year, in September, leaving Liverpool on the 4^th and arriving on the 16^th. His ship was Nevada, traveling with John Rider’s company. I have not yet discovered other family members with these two, but both scenarios are possible, that they traveled alone but for the fellow migrants.

Family researchers have found that Axel – known as Charlie – came in through the port of New Orleans and Johan Auguste through Canada, neither knowing this of the other at the time. Charlie happened upon Lena – Carolina -  while on the street in Salt Lake City. I have found a reference in the census that Lena’s husband came in 1881, this is also the year that their first child was born in Idaho.

An interesting note – because I enjoy them – Axel’s wife was in the company with Gustave and John Peter as they crossed the country, having been in New York the year previous, to earn money to come to Utah. I don’t know if the marriage to come was already in the works, or not.

Charlotta and John Anderson, who had opened their home in Liverpool also came to America. Census records show1879 and 1880, but again I have not located the ship or company if they did travel with such.

I have made some fairly obvious errors in family history, I am old enough to accept that. For a long time, I was certain Inger Sophia had come to America, stating it quite assuredly when we met in Midway, Utah to form a Backman Family Organization. I was so sure, that it was only in my study and research for this blog that I have found records showing I was wrong. If you take anything from my writing, take this: you will find errors in family history research. At least, try not to make them. 

A correct record is a great endeavor.

Whence Our Ancestors Came

The history of Sweden inhabits our story. I have not studied it in an orderly manner, but rather by looking for historical events as needed to write more than names and dates. Give yourselves an opportunity to learn whence our ancestors came.

Some of the oldest petroglyphs in Europe are found in Sweden. The people of that region are people of migration, moving north as the ice receded and south as the population exceeded its capacity to sustain itself. Or west across the seas and east into Europe. Our people have been there a very long time.

We clothed ourselves for warmth in skins and woven plant fibers; we fished, hunted, dug and gathered food for sustenance; we agreed on alliances for safety and went to battle in their absence. We explored forests and coasts and rivers.

Water plays a part for all of us. When frozen, we skied across it; when open, we sailed across it.

The west coast of Sweden, along the Katagatt Sea is broken into many, many islands and fjords. Orust, one of the country’s largest islands, sits across Havstansfjord, to the west of the communities of Udevalla, Grinnerod, Myckleby, Resterod; these are parishes that we will see often in family research.  Orust has a similar coastline, all this the result of glacial activity and the subsequent melting at the end of the ice age. Lane-Ryr lies eastward, nearer to the country’s largest lake, Vanern.

This stone-laden land (or wet lower elevation areas) was cleared for small farming, and the development of kommuns, loosely connected, that allowed groups of farmers to help and rely on one another. In some areas, the forests were the source for banding together. Others fished the shallow sea or ventured further out for deep sea hunting and trade. Sweden had its own variety of Vikings, too, so that there was trading (yes, and raiding) anywhere with a coast! Not all farmers owned the land they tilled. One family history refers to Sweden’s own variety of share crop farmers, topare. Many records identify pigans, female servants, probably tasked with drudgery. The widow risked the poor house (my phrase).

Climate and environment have never been far from the experience of the people of Sweden. Early 19^th century saw a series of weather related food disasters with their resultant health concerns. Failed farms drove unemployed farmers into cities, where the industrial revolution was creating its own inequities and health concerns.

Sweden was, at one time a very powerful country, with subjugated peoples and territories, even competing with Poland and Russia. As a monarchy, it developed land owning classes as well as non-landed working classes. Early on, saw fault with tyranny, moving to elect its kings, taking on the landed church, and even its sister states of Denmark, Norway and the Baltic States. For more than a century it was the dominant power in northern Europe, according to the history in my Travel Sweden book, gaining strength in Finland, and northern Germany, as well. Family alliances have made it into world news more than once.

A constitution ‘came into force’ in 1719, from this same book, which is described as a parliamentary democracy. There came cultural shifts as well, even the declaring of a national costume.

This is the Sweden our family lived in.

Our Family in Sweden, Part 3

I find Inger Dahlberg’s birth at Lane-Ryr, Göteborg och Bohus lan, recorded as Okt. 9, 1813 and christening on the 10^th. Her parents Johannes Bryngelsson and Kerstin Bryngelsdotter. The mother was 24. Birth was at Skäleröd. The household on the farm Tegelbruket included Elin Svensdotter, the sav mor, or step-mother. In this record – household record, 1812 to 1815 – the Dahlberg name is used, though it wasn’t in the birth record.

Another record – Household Record, 1814 to 1819 -  shows the family has left this farm and gone to another as of 1815. The gothic script is difficult to read, but it may be that the family moved to Anfasterud, a farm in the Dals-ed parish, in Älvsborg lan.

I identify the sources I used here because they are at odds with other family histories. The parents’ dates given here are: Johannes, 3/5 [1]787 and Kerstin, [1]790.

Dals lan, Alvsborgs lan and Bohus lan are all connected at the northern part of today’s Västra Götaland county. A quick glance at parish maps shows familiar placenames: Grinneröd, Myckleby, Udavalla, Resteröd, Lane-Ryr, Stora Lundby. In effect, farmers did not move far.

Not until farms failed did moving farther away make sense. 

Our Family in Sweden, Part two

While I continue to look through records in Sweden I will present this short family record of Swen and Inger.

Samuel Backman married Charlotta Bruhn in January 1812.

On October 1, 1812 Swen’s birth was recorded at Lilla Lunden in the Resteröd Parish. I believe I am seeing him as the fourth child, but only Britta is named as being born in 1809. I am uncertain if she was born of an earlier marriage, this record makes a point that she is a sister of Swen.

In the next record, Ana Marie and Sofia Christine are included, having been born at the same place, but the record notes that they have all moved to Turebacken, another farm in the parish.

Charlotta passed away in Turebacken on the 29^th of April, 1823. There is a note that she died of “colik” and was buried on the 8^th of May. Samuel married Elin Hansdotter in December 1824, at which time Ana Marie and Britta are no longer in the household, with Ana’s name crossed through, suggesting she had died.

I must thank those family historians and genealogists who came before me. I mean no disregard of their efforts when I try to locate and read the same original documents they have obviously used.

Two family trees I have come upon www.ancestry.com are Dahlberg/Fogelberg/Borneus Slakttrad and Kennington Nelson Family Tree. These have given me direction for my search. These sources, with others, show Inger as the eldest of seven children born to Johannes Bryngelsson Dahlberg and Kerstin Bryngelsdotter.

In DISBYT, self-acknowledged as a secondary source, I find Bryngel Persson, believed to be the father of Kerstin, in Toftedal, Älvsborgs lan. His parents are listed as Per Anfastsson and Chirsti [sic] Nilsdotter. He is the third child.

In Stora Rinnane I find a household record with Per and Kerstin living at the same place as their son Ander Parsson. In another record, I found the July 26, 1717 birth of Per, the son of Anfast Bryngelsson and Ingrid Sigfridsdotter in that parish.

 The deaths of Kerstin, on June 26, 1795 (or 1796) and Per, on January 26, 1797 each occurred in Stora Rinnane, Töftedal, Älvsborg lan.

These short histories have much information missing still. Because my main activity over several years has been to identify the descendants of Swen and Inger, I am going to go forward with that. I have enjoyed the study of Swedish records. Challenging as it has been, when I have realized I found another item it has been thrilling. I invite you to do this for yourselves.

Our Family in Sweden, Part One

One pedigree chart from www.familysearch.org extends back several generations of Swen Backman’s paternal line. Recently I have found an alternate pedigree that shows Inger’s pedigree extending several generations back. You can see that our family research has no single conclusion. Nor is there one single researcher; this, a note “to self”.

My usual project is to give an accounting of five generations of descendants in a  family, which for me would be Samuel Backman and Anna Anderson. Most of my Utah Pioneer ancestors are within five generations from me. Because Inger Dahlberg Backman did come to Utah I am using her as the common ancestor for this blog, and this makes it a six-generation project.

Let’s look back to the beginnings. Through the 18^th and 19^th centuries we were farmers, usually. And, usually, we were farmers on someone else’s land, so it was not uncommon to change farms here and there. Generally, I have found us in Älvsborg lan or Göteborg och Bohus lan, there were families also in Dals lan, which later was absorbed by the other two

Bohus was the name used for the county until 1700, when the designation was changed to Göteborg och Bohus lan and so it remained until 1998. The modern county is Vastra Gotaland, within Bohuslan Province.

Before the 11^th century there were only small kingdoms throughout Scandinavia. With the advent of Christianity strong leadership wrought more control and order in the north lands. At about this time there were two notable kingdoms, one from which the national name, Sverige was derived and another in what is now Vastra Gotaland, our ancestral homeland. Skone, the very southernmost part of Sweden, was under the control of the Danes.
Prior to emigrating, several of the children of Inger and Sven had moved to Gothenburg, engaged in work there.

Gothenburg was founded in the 17^th century, developed with influence from the Dutch, Scot and German allies of the monarchy. Shipping became all the more vital to Sweden as the industrial revolution and trade expanded. Gustave Hilmer Backman, in his recollections talked of the adaptations his family made to economize, writing that if they were poor, it was never shared with the children. Still, rye bread (which I take to mean course) with lard was sometimes a meal, and bread with butter a luxury. Sam and Anna would take fine clothing to a pawn shop for cash in hand during the week and reclaim it for Sunday. Famine, due to political and environmental events, during the 1860s probably drove increasingly more work-seekers into Gothenburg so that employment may have been stressed, certainly food supplies were. Immigration to America -or Canada, Great Britain or Australia was spoken of on farms, in the factories, the ship yards, and the docks. Sweden lost hundreds of thousands in the nineteenth century to this.

Add a new religious fervor.

When the LDS Church made converts in Scandinavia there arose the desire to join up “in Zion.” By the time our family began to plan for this gathering, the Zion they envisioned was Utah. Gustave Hilmer, Inger’s grandson was one of the first.  His uncle, Johan Peter Backman, had been in the Royal Navy for several years before 1877 hoping his wages would enable him to come to Utah.  He brought Gustave (who could travel at half-price) with him, as there was no way to purchase passage for everyone to come together.

They departed Gothenburg May 12, 1877 and traveled by boat and rail to Liverpool, England (I presume: the path often was Sweden to Denmark by sea, over the isthmus to the English Channel by rail, across to Hull, England by sea, rail to Liverpool and from there by sea to America). It is possible that Johan Peter sailed with his ship to England, if I read it correctly he planned to leave the navy at Liverpool.

It was six days before they arrived in Liverpool where they stayed with Charlotta, Johan Peter’s sister, and her husband, John Anderson. A little over a month later they landed in Castle Garden, New York, and two weeks later arrived in Salt Lake City. Many families donated to the Perpetual Immigration Fund or pooled money with other members of the LDS Church; Samuel, along with family efforts, had taken part in a group who pooled resources to buy property from which they could withdraw shares to make the expenses for the journey.

In time, most of Inger’s children came to America; settling both in Utah and Idaho. The last of the second generation passed away in 1924. They are memorialized from Santaquin, Utah County, Utah northward to Annis-Little Butte, Jefferson County, Idaho.

I would enjoy the thought that my record of this family is correct. Experience has taught me that I need help with that: when – not if – you find an error, tell us all; you can even do it here. If you have a question about this story ask it here, I hope someone will know or find an answer.

I have a little cheat sheet for using the Swedish alphabet. If I ever figure out how to use it here, I will. I enjoy being able to spell names and places correctly in my research, next perhaps I will learn the correct pronunciation!

The Backman Families: Sweden to America

Coming to Utah in 1880, Inger Johannesdotter Dahlberg, mother of our Backman Family deserves no less appreciation than the “pioneer” mothers of some other - indeed, of some of our own other collateral family lines! Inger was my third-great grandmother.

Inger traveled a large part of the world to live out her life in communities that would continue to know needs and hardships for several years in the foothills above the Great Salt Lake. The Rocky Mountain Kingdom, someone has called it. This is the pleasant community of Centerville, only minutes north of Salt Lake City today, with the ‘old highway’ US-89 Main Street and tree shaded neighborhoods on the bench. It looks out on new neighbors rather than the farmland of half century ago; the farmland and the Great Salt Lake with its distinctive Antelope Island that I remember from the 1950s, and continue to be touched by today.

Inger was born in Sweden early in the nineteenth century. My record says 1813. Her home was on the west coast, in the Dalsland region. Her parents were Johannes Bryngelsson Dahlberg (1785 – 1845) and Kerstin Bryngelsdotter (1784 – 1866). For a long time, my record would go no further back than this on her line. (My record is a personal ancestral file (PAF). I will try to share my sources as I go.)

I have jumped over one hundred years; 137, to be exact – so let me slow down, and let you catch up with a story I think worth telling. It is your story as much as mine. I do not claim to hold the sole rights to this story. I certainly will learn more as I repeat it, because I will stop to fill in blank lines, confirm or correct information, and sometimes maybe even forget my purpose and wander off into other stories.

In 1833, when Inger was about 20 she married Swen Samuel Backman in Goteborg-Bohuslan, also on the coast of Sweden. Swen – Sven – was born in 1812, to Samuel Persson Backman and Charlotta Christine Bruhn (1784 – 1861 and 1775 – 1823, respectively).

Swen would pass away in Sweden in 1853, leaving Ingrid with seven children aged 18 down to toddler. In February 1855 Inger had a daughter, Augusta, who passed away the same year in April; this information is found in ArkivDigital, a Swedish genealogical site, in the household record. There was no second marriage.

The Backman children were Samuel Christian, Johan Auguste, Charlotte Christina, Axel Emanuel, Inger Sophia, Carolina Maria and Johan Peter.

While researching correct spellings, and confirming dates, I came across two Backman family historians: Jacki Lynn Greaves Latin and Cindy Jarvis. Each has submitted family stories to the family trees in www.familysearch.org which is the program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Anyone can open a no-cost membership in this program. The histories can be found under the various members of Inger’s family. One, for which I cannot find authorship is found under Axel Emanuel Backman (Charlie), and gives an account going back further than I had seen before, in the Bruhn lines.

Living near the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City has been a great asset, I encourage you to use it as well. Oh, the helpful hands, eyes and minds you will find!

This Backman family is a living family, not an historical note; we lose from our number each year and gain anew each year. It is unlikely we will all meet each other in person, but I believe that we each continue this story in our own lives and can pass it on as we go.