Family Breadcrumbs

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Coming to Amerika

Susan Lebold

19th Century Sweden

In 1862, during the reign of King Charles XV, new legislation was passed in Sweden that dramatically changed the political and economic landscape of that country. Prior to that year the governance structure of schools and local communities was based around the church and its surrounding parish. The parish divided the land within its borders into strips and assigned farmers to specific parcels. Voting in the parish was based on who owned the parcels, how they were divided and assigned, and the productivity value of each. Not everyone owned their own parcel, but tenant farmers were given voting rights along with the owners and could still participate in parish meetings, have a voice, and exercise some level of influence on matters affecting them. Basing votes on the productivity value of the land meant that there were limits on the number of votes that any one person could control.

After 1862, this parish structure was supplanted with a form of municipal government, with city councilors, county councils, and a more centralized parliamentary system of national government. The right to vote was now linked to income taxation and land ownership, with no upper limit to the number of votes any one person could control. Under this new system, the “crofters,” or tenant farmers, lost whatever voting rights they once had, and were left to the mercy of the landowners. Almost overnight it became possible for one landowner to own the majority of votes and thus totally control a particular local community.

Life in Redslared Parish

Lars Svenson was born in 1809. His first wife died in 1852 when he was only 43, leaving him with five children to care for. The youngest was six and the oldest was just eighteen. Lars did the best he could on his own for the first couple of years, but he knew that his oldest daughter would be leaving his farm soon. Planning for that day, he did the prudent thing and brought in a young woman to help take care of the family. In 1854, twenty-four year old Anna Stina Persdotter moved into the household as his nanny, cook and housekeeper. Apparently this new arrangement went exceedingly well because a year later, in 1855, they were married and over the next ten years she had six children, including Franz and Wilhelm.

Sometime after Anna Stina married Lars and began having her own children, a family version of “musical chairs” occurred. Anna Stina’s brother, Johannes, joined the household also in 1855 and ended up marrying Lars’s daughter Anna from his first marriage. Johannes and his new bride pooled their resources with Lars’s son Karl and set up their own farm together, separately from their father. They moved out of the house of Lars and Anna Stina, and took the remaining children from the first marriage with them. This meant that Lars and Anna, as newlyweds, could concentrate on building and taking care of their own family, and all five siblings from the first marriage were able to stay together while the younger ones finished growing up.

Despite the difficulties of farming in an uncertain economy, Franz and his siblings grew up in a close-knit family and had a rich and vibrant social life. Anna Stina maintained close ties with her own family, returning to her family home in another parish when it was time to give birth, accessing the support of her own people at those critical moments. Lars and Anna made sure that their four sons and one daughter (whose twin sister had died in infancy) went to school and took advantage of educational opportunities. Coming from peasant stock, Lars was not a very good reader, but I’m guessing that he saw the proverbial writing on the wall, and knew his children would need good educations in a rapidly changing world. The boys studied hard and enjoyed reading. The family attended church and regularly passed their Bible exams (whatever those were…!). The parents made sure that the children were all vaccinated, no small thing in the days when smallpox, which was highly contagious and had no effective treatment, could quickly lead to early death or blindness.

Communication was not well developed in Sweden during this time, but it is not hard to imagine that families interacted in the normal give and take of daily life. They helped each other out during harvest and planting seasons. They met up while purchasing supplies in the village market. There would have been plenty of weddings, funerals and other celebrations to attend. Activities at the Redslared church would have been very important. Children of different families came together for school, whether it was by the itinerant teachers who went from farm to farm or, in later years, at a more centralized location that brought students together from surrounding farms. Bottom line, the families of Redslared had plenty of ways of finding each other (which would have been particularly important when the boys and girls got to be a certain age…). Lars’s boys were active in the parish, and when they were old enough they sought and received permission to leave the farm to work on neighboring or more distant farms.

By 1880, however, it had become clear that Lars’s children would probably not be able to stay in the parish for much longer. While they were working where they could and courting their future wives, they were also discussing and exploring options for a very different kind of future.

Leaving Sweden

All of this shuffling about of people and families within Redslared parish is important because the economic situation in Sweden and around the world was shifting dramatically while Lars’s children were growing up in the 1860’s and ‘70’s. The industrial revolution was in full swing in the United States and Europe, with heavy industry and manufacturing of equipment and consumer goods replacing farming as the dominant economic driver. In 1870 eighty to ninety percent of the population still lived on farms, with the population on the farms increasing more rapidly than in the cities. This meant that when farming production declined dramatically in response to the rise of factories and cities, the villages and farms dotting the countryside could no longer produce enough to support their large populations. While Lars’s life as a tenant farmer had been pretty good in the early 19th century when he was raising his first family, the situation had shifted substantially by the time his second family came along. Periodic crop failures and economic depressions in Sweden and around the world in those later decades didn’t help.

As Lars’s children came of age in the 1870’s and ‘80’s, it became more and more clear that they would have to seek their fortunes beyond their beloved Redslared parish where they had lived all their lives. One by one and in small groups, the children of Lars and Anna Stina began to leave for “Amerika.” In that they were not alone. By the 1880’s a large, decades-long wave of immigration from Europe to the United States was well under way. Sweden was no exception, with more than a million individuals choosing to leave their farm and journey to the United States between 1850 and 1910.

The trip took several months from start to finish, and involved changing boats and trains as they made their way from Gothenburg, Sweden (where they got permission to leave the parish), to Hull, England and eventually to Liverpool and across the Atlantic. The boys could not afford to travel in style and were crammed in with the hundreds of other immigrants in steerage aboard the ship City of Paris. In all, there were over 1000 Swedes, plus several hundred other Dutch, German, Norwegian, Polish and Russian families on that ship, for a total of 1,562 people accounted for. Over 100 souls died on the voyage.

As I think about what it must have been like to be on that ship I find myself getting tingly and a little emotional. Despite the crowded, and probably unsanitary, conditions, I’m sure there was a constant vibe of tense excitement running through and surrounding the throngs of people:

  • Babies crying and being soothed with soft singing and cooing. Mothers helping mothers care for young ones, who have no idea what is happening but can sense the palpable, indefinable electricity of emotion coming from everywhere. Food coming out of satchels, happily shared among families and with new friends.

  • Roaming among the crowds of people searching for familiar faces and shouts of glee and hugs when friends find each other. Regaling each other with stories about adventures and mishaps getting from the homeland to Liverpool and onto the City of Paris, while the children run around, shrieking with delight as they play hide and seek among the nooks and crannies of the ship. Cards and gambling and laughter. Collective sadness and offers of comfort when someone gets sick or dies.

  • Stepping out of steerage onto the deck every now and then to glimpse the sky. Trying to stay warm in the frigid cold of the northern Atlantic as you search the horizon for signs of land and soak up sun if there is any that day.

  • Multiple languages and excited voices at all hours of the day and night. The relative stillness as people sleep (or try to), with quiet murmurings and other sounds of the night ebbing and flowing in rhythm with the rocking ship. Not caring one bit that you have to sleep on a hard, dirty surface, a small price to pay for the reward waiting for you when you finally reach New York.

  • Appreciating the weather change as winter fades away into your past life and spring brings the promise of new adventures and new beginnings. Tamping down the fear and anxiety while giving in to the overwhelming sense of anticipation as the ship gets closer and closer to its destination.

  • Finally, gazing awestruck at the skyline of New York as the ship approaches and docks (no Statue of Liberty yet to welcome them). The giddiness and nervous joy as they gather their belongings and get in line for processing prior to being allowed to disembark.

It’s hard to imagine the true level of their excitement as the three brothers stepped off the ship. Given the thousands of other Swedes emigrating in those years, they were most certainly not the only family who left Redslared. I wonder if there was anyone to meet them as they disembarked, surely exhausted but also filled with anticipation. By the time they arrived in New York, there were already several hundred thousand Swedes living in the United States. As they were processed through Castle Garden they became Frank, John and William, throwing off the “old country” names as easily as their winter coats in the warm May breezes.

Once released from all the paperwork and processing, they apparently did not waste much time in New York and headed straight to western Pennsylvania, Costello to be exact. How they got there I have no idea, but they seemed to know where they wanted to end up. I’m guessing there was probably a fair amount of correspondence back and forth with those who had preceded them with clear instructions on how to navigate their way at every stage of this journey. Either that or they just didn’t care and left without a clear plan, having a vague idea of where some opportunities were and deciding they could figure it out as they went along. After all, these were bright young men, fearless and confident and ready to take on their new life with gusto!

The logging industry throughout the western Pennsylvania forests was in full operation and a ready source of employment for any new arrivals. Their youth and health, coupled with the enthusiasm and passion they brought with them, gave these young men all the components they needed for success.

Over the next several years a lot happened as the Larson boys married, moved around, had children and pursued various business and family interests.

Whereto From Here?

And now you know why I need to go to Western Pennsylvania and New York to do some field work and historical sleuthing. I want to see up close and personal where a bunch of important events (some joyful, some tragic) occurred. Report on that coming soon!

For More Swedish History

Sources for much of the information presented in this article: