Pinterest: Saving Gardens of the Past

May 17, 2020Leave a comment

I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. It’s a great way to search for new ideas, aesthetics, and daydream about gardens. I joined in it’s earliest years. My sister sent it to me knowing how much I would love it. Before pinning stuff online, I was tearing out magazine clippings and saving those (I still do!)

I will admit I spend a lot of time pinning gardens and garden ideas without looking into their sources. I’m just their for the pretty pictures…and that is O.K.. Have you checked out my Farm and Garden board? Please do. It’s where a lot of my garden plans start. While you’re at it, check out my board for Family History. I use it to save research tips, info relevant to my personal genealogy, and ideas for creating.

Today, I want to share a new board I am creating called Vintage & Historic Garden. This one is all about historical gardens and images that relate. For this board, I will not be re-pinning, I will be on the hunt for photos found elsewhere. Most of the pins I hope to find from Open Access collections. I also plan to share photos from sites I use often in my research: The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Both have really wonderful digital archives.

I have just made this board public, I hope you enjoy the images I have discovered! Maybe they will add context to a piece of your family history or inspire a heritage space in your garden! I plan on adding to the board every week. It will be interesting to see what sort of images I find. I’m sure the pins will reflect whatever garden mood I am in that week!

Here is just an example of one of the images I’ve pinned!

Finding my Swedish Ancestors

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I wrote about trying to read and translate a birth record for one of my Swedish ancestors, Carl Victor Johnson. I was so stuck that I turned to a Facebook genealogy group for help. They did help, so much so I posted about that too! From the help I was given and that other tidbits I picked up from other posts, I dove in to my Swedish roots. The Swedish National Archives take a little getting used to, but they are really quite amazing. I have been able to find several generations of Swedish ancestors on both my father’s and mother’s sides of the family.

1861-1870 House Hold Examination for Carl Victor and his family in Högsby Parish, Kalmar County, Sweden.

In the records you can find a lot of details beyond birth, death, and marriage. The household examination records detail the movements of the family from what town the moved to next and departure dates to America. The records are also very specific down to farm names (I need to do a little more research into that)!

A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded my computer for the first time in a decade. Now that I have a faster, and not on its last-leg computer, I can research records faster, and put together compilations for my family. I’ve linked a document about my father’s Swedish ancestry, which included Carl Victor. It isn’t a professional genealogy examination, but it’s easy to share and understand for my family. I’ve included images and links throughout, as well as, my own commentary on what they’re looking at.

Our Swedish Ancestors

For me, the genealogical research is just a stepping stone to finding out more about the people and places my family comes from. I don’t just want names and dates (even though I love that, and all the old documents that go with it), I want to connect to the places, landscapes, and stories that come with finding those names and dates. So, really, I’ve just started finding my Swedish ancestors. I can’t wait to find out more.

Family History and Social Media

December 9, 2018December 10, 20181 Comment

In my last post, I shared a screen shot of a record I’ve been looking for, for a long time. It was so exciting to find it, but unfortunately, I could not figure out what it said! I was staring at the names of another generation of ancestors without being able to read it.

That’s when I turned to social media, Facebook to be exact. I have over the last year or so joined a wide variety of genealogy groups, local historical society pages, and specific family groups, as well. I have rarely, if ever, posted in these groups. I finally decided now was the time to ask for assistance with translating this record. I joined the Swedish American Genealogy Group and posted my query.

Not only did several people respond within an hour, they helped me translate the text and also linked another record to the family. The generosity and shared interest in the group is phenomenal. To be honest, most of the genealogy and history groups I follow are the same way.

While, I couldn’t tell anything about what was going on in the 4th column a few days ago. I can now tell you that my 2nd great-grandfather, Carl Victor Johansson was born in Högsby, Sweden on January 26, 1845. He was baptized February 2nd. AND his parents were Jonas (Johan) Peter Samuelsson and Eva Lisa Danielsdotter of Kisebast. I was able to find out more about each parent through the help of the link shared by a kind person in the Facebook group. I’ve added Eva Lisa’s parents too! I am still searching for Jonas (Johan) Peter Samuelsson’s family.

If you haven’t tried using the help of social media on your brick-wall ancestors, I highly recommend it! If nothing else, you’re bound to get in touch with other people who share your genealogy obsession.