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.